Frequency Effects in the L2 Acquisition of French Liaison: A Corpus-Based Adaptation of Gradient Symbolic Representations

This study investigates how German learners of French acquire liaison and proposes a formal account within the Gradient Harmonic Grammar (GHG) framework. A production experiment with 65 secondary school learners (aged 10–17 years) identified several distinct realisation types (including glottal stop insertion, /l/-insertion, and emerging target-like resyllabification) and revealed systematic effects of lexical and positional frequency. Building on these findings, a revised GHG model is developed that integrates corpus-based activation values for Gradient Symbolic Representations, allowing item-specific variation to be modelled formally. Adjustments to the original analysis by Smolensky and Goldrick include the incorporation of further constraints and frequency-shaped activation values for both liaison and nonliaison consonants. The resulting model successfully captures both variable learner patterns and target-like liaison. The study demonstrates that combining usage-based insights with a gradient approach to underlying representations provides a powerful framework for understanding the phonological mechanisms involved in L2 liaison acquisition.