The Acquisition of French as a Second Language is a republication of a 2012 thematic issue of the journal Language, Interaction and Acquisition edited by Christina Lindqvist and Camilla Bardel (vol. 3, issue 1). The book brings together seven studies dealing with a range of issues in second language (L2) French development research carried out in Europe, especially in Sweden, within the context of the InterFra project initiated by Inge Bartning in the late 1980s. The chapters are authored by senior and younger scholars, and include both formal and functional theoretical perspectives.

The first paper, by Inge Bartning herself (7–28), surveys 20 years of L2 French research conducted at Stockholm University, with special reference to a synthesis of the InterFra project, its corpus of L2 French data, and the findings regarding high-level proficiency in L2 French.

Next, Victorine Hancock (29–51) explores the pragmaticalization of temporal adverbs. The syntactic position and pragmatic functions of déjà, encore, toujours, alors, après, and maintenant are analyzed in the discourse of four high-proficiency L2 French learner groups in the InterFra corpus. Detailed quantitative and some qualitative analyses of the use of these adverbs are provided. A particularly interesting finding is that native and nonnative speakers exhibit different preferences for the functional use of alors.

In the third paper, contributed by Hugues Engel (53–73), the focus turns to the acquisition of dislocation (i.e., subject and object doubling) as evidenced in the InterFra corpus (all developmental levels are included). Three principal findings are reported: lexical dislocations tend to develop before pronominal dislocations; left dislocation appears before right dislocation; and subject doubling is acquired before object doubling. The formal and functional analyses are clear and easy to follow.

The fourth paper, by Fanny Forsberg Lundell and Christina Lindqvist (75–94), examines the extent to which lexical formulaic sequences and lexical richness develop at the same rate. Data are taken from the InterFra project. Differences between developmental stages are reported for both formulaic language and lexical richness. However, there seems to be no relationship between the two measures of vocabulary development, which is an interesting finding that suggests different developmental trajectories for the two domains of vocabulary acquisition examined here.

In the fifth paper (95–115), Richard Towell explores formulaic and proceduralized language in the initial and advanced stages of L2 French development. The author makes two main assumptions: first, learners have access to universal grammar that may facilitate L2 acquisition and second, all knowledge is initially stored by declarative memory before it is proceduralized as implicit knowledge. A survey of research carried out over the past 20 years or so supports the two assumptions, at least in general terms, though the author notes that the findings of the various longitudinal case studies reviewed in the chapter may not be generalizable.

Georges Daniel Véronique (117–141) focuses his attention on the acquisition of additive scope particles (i.e., aussi, même, encore) by Moroccan learners of French. Through detailed analysis of three speakers, the author arrives at the conclusion that aussi is acquired early, whereas même and encore are acquired later. Encore is especially difficult, according to the author, because of its ‘semantic and cognitive complexity’ (139).

In the final paper (143–165), Jonas Granfeldt explores the development of object clitics among child L2 French learners. The author pays particular attention to differences in age of onset of acquisition in comparison to control groups of bilingual and monolingual children. The analysis focuses on the interplay between age of onset of acquisition and first language capacities.

Overall, the book provides an interesting mix of research foci in L2 French acquisition research, with specific attention given to the examination of stages of development, including characterization of advanced learner varieties. The chapters will be of interest to L2 acquisition scholars in general and to L2 French researchers in particular. There are also potential links to be made to L2 (French) instruction and assessment, especially with regard to the kinds of linguistic features teachers and testers might expect learners to be able to control in relation to other more global measures of proficiency, for example the Common European Framework of Reference for Language as discussed in Bartning's chapter. To be sure, no book can cover all potential topics, so readers should not expect complete coverage of all phenomena of interest in the acquisition of French as an L2. Notable exclusions from the volume are sociolinguistic, pragmatic, and interactional competencies, which have received a good deal of attention in L2 French research elsewhere. While this is certainly a limitation of the book, it should not detract from the fact that the topics that are included are of high quality and will be of interest to a great number of scholars.