Their data shows furthermore that children at early stages have not yet mastered the given-new distinction in general, and that it is not merely a problem with the dislocation. Adult L2 data is analyzed and the results are compared with that from children. In contrast to the children, their dislocations occur as often in coreferential as in non-coreferential contexts. As far as form is concerned, data shows that children have no problem acquiring it, whereas adult Chinese learners have difficulties keeping dislocations and cleft constructions apart. Adults know that dislocations cannot be used for referent introductions, children have to learn this.
Children use dislocations mainly in non-coreferential contexts with one function only.
Adults use dislocations in coreferential and non-coreferential contexts, with a multitude of functions that correspond to the functions of topics in their source language. Finally, the unclear form-function relation in French seriously disturbs the L2 learners' acquisition of the form. Starren found clear evidence that the basic position of temporal adverbials in early learner varieties functions as a mould for building up the target morphosyntactic tense and aspect system in later stages of second language acquisition. A comparison of Moroccan Arabic learners of French and Moroccan Arabic and Turkish learners of Dutch showed a similar acquisitional pattern in building up verbal morphology. However, the learners of French go through a much longer stage of analyzing the synthetic cluster of prefixes and suffixes around the French lexical verb.