Arnaud Arslangul

Introducing a New Protagonist in L2 Chinese Narratives: Syntactic Construction and Information Organization

Keywords: L2 Chinese, narratives, referent introduction, information organization, spatial anchoring, locative inversion, presentative construction, unaccusative

Building a complex discourse is not an easy task for second language learners. This study investigates how L1 French L2 Chinese learners convey the function of referent introduction in narratives. It aims to identify which syntactic constructions are used to highlight new information and relate it to given information at the utterance level, and how learners organize information between utterances to ensure discourse cohesion. The procedure used consists of the analysis of an oral corpus collected from five groups of participants (N = 110): French and Chinese native speakers, and three groups of learners (low, intermediate and advanced levels).

The stimulus of the elicited task is a comic strip. The results show that low learners mostly follow the canonical word order, while intermediate learners demonstrate more syntactic diversity but still differ from native speakers at the discourse level. Advanced learners almost achieved native-like proficiency and demonstrated only one difference when compared with the target pattern that lies in the lexical-semantic characteristics of the predicate used.

Introduction

Learners of a second language (L2) who want to build a complex story face a very difficult task 1 . Compared to young children learning their first language, L2 learners have the social cognitive skills to fashion a successful narrative [START_REF] Hendriks | Reference to person and space in narrative discourse: A comparison of adult second language and child first language acquisition[END_REF][START_REF] Slobin | Child language study and adult language acquisition: Twenty years later[END_REF].

However, in order to construct a coherent and cohesive discourse in L2, they do not have to acquire only a new set of lexico-grammatical features and their syntactic combinations, but must include the particular discourse that guide the principle of information organization in their target language. They need to select and order information of different conceptual domains (such as time, locations, entities, etc.) in a sequence of sub-events, and also take into account the hearer's knowledge of what is given or new information [START_REF] Carroll | Reorganizing principles of information structure in advanced L2s: French and German learners of English[END_REF][START_REF] Levelt | Speaking: From intention to articulation[END_REF].

What is more, all human languages also appear to have different syntactic constructions for describing the same particular event (the so-called allosentences in Lambrech, 1994). For instance, several constructions are available to introduce a new referent in discourse in standard Chinese [START_REF] Liu | Yī gè" de yòngfǎ yánjiū [A study on the usage of "a[END_REF][START_REF] Liu | Jùfǎ yǔ yǔpiān: Hànyǔ xùshì zhōng shítǐ shǒuxiàn de guīlǜ yǔ wúdìng gòushì de chéngyīn fēnxī[END_REF][START_REF] Zhang | Cóng shī shòu guānxì dào jùshì yǔyì [From the relationship between agent and patient to sentence semantics[END_REF], as well as in French [START_REF] Fuchs | La postposition du sujet nominal: Paramètres linguistiques et effets stylistiques [The postposition of the nominal subject: Linguistic parameters and stylistic effects[END_REF][START_REF] Lahousse | NP subject inversion in French: Two types, two configurations[END_REF][START_REF] Lambrecht | Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus, and the mental representations of discourse referents[END_REF]. A language may employ different allosentences to serve the same particular discourse function; moreover, languages may differ in the manner in which information structure is mapped onto syntax in describing the same event. In L2 acquisition, this kind of discourse-motivated form-function mapping corresponds to another typical difficulty [START_REF] Callies | Information highlighting in advanced learner English[END_REF][START_REF] Ryan | Referring in a Second Language: Studies on Reference to Person in a Multilingual World[END_REF].

Several studies have examined the introduction of referents in L2 discourse for European languages (see [START_REF] Hendriks | Reference to person and space in narrative discourse: A comparison of adult second language and child first language acquisition[END_REF][START_REF] Lambert | Incidence des langues sur le développement de la cohésion en L1 et en L2: Gestion du statut des entités dans une tâche de récit [Impact of languages on the development of cohesion in L1 and L2: Management of the entities' status in a narrative task[END_REF][START_REF] Turco | Introduction et identification d'un référent chez les apprenants francophones de l'italien L2[END_REF]inter alia), while research on L2 Chinese has focused on more formal descriptions of the linguistic means to be found in the introduction of new referents, including the locative inversion and the unaccusative verbs [START_REF] Xue | L2 acquisition of Chinese unaccusative verbs by English-speaking learners: Testing on unaccusative trap hypothesis[END_REF][START_REF] Yang | Hànyǔ zuòwéi dì'èr yǔyán cúnxiànjù xídé yánjiū [The L2 Acquisition of the Chinese Existential Constructions[END_REF][START_REF] Yuan | Acquiring the unaccusative/unergative distinction in a second language: Evidence from English-speaking learners of L2 Chinese[END_REF][START_REF] Zhang | L2 acquisition of Chinese locative inversion[END_REF]; but see [START_REF] Lena | Referent introducing strategies in advanced L2 usage: A bi-directional study on French learners of Chinese and Chinese learners of French[END_REF]. The present study tries to combine these two aspects by investigating the discoursesyntax interface. It focuses on the function of referent introduction in order to better understand discourse cohesion in second language, and how it evolves with the development

Background

Referent Introduction in Chinese and French

Natural languages are equipped with different formal means of conveying information structure meanings, including prosody, morphology, lexical markers, or syntactic positioning. This section focuses on the main syntactic constructions used to introduce a new animate referent (protagonist) in Chinese and French narratives, starting with the canonical predicative construction, and then considering three constructions that represent non-canonical word order using postposing or inversion [START_REF] Birner | Information structure and syntactic structure[END_REF][START_REF] Ward | Information structure and non-canonical syntax[END_REF]. All these constructions correspond to what [START_REF] Lambrecht | Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus, and the mental representations of discourse referents[END_REF] calls sentence-focus structure. They reflect the non-binary semantic structure which characterizes thetic sentences [START_REF] Kuroda | Le jugement catégorique et le jugement thétique: Exemples tirés de la syntaxe japonaise [Categorical judgment and thetic judgment: Examples from Japanese syntax[END_REF][START_REF] Sasse | The thetic/categorial distinction revisited[END_REF]. Unlike categorical statements, which are made up of two acts (naming an entity and making a statement about it), thetic sentences are simple non-predicative assertions of states of affairs that present the existence of an event or an entity in a holistic way. The statement is considered in focus as a whole; i.e., the focus extends over both the subject argument and the predicate.

Canonical Predicative Construction

According to [START_REF] Kuroda | Le jugement catégorique et le jugement thétique: Exemples tirés de la syntaxe japonaise [Categorical judgment and thetic judgment: Examples from Japanese syntax[END_REF] and [START_REF] Lambrecht | Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus, and the mental representations of discourse referents[END_REF], a canonical predicative construction with an indefinite subject reflects the non-binary semantic structure which characterizes thetic sentences. Even if it presents the pragmatically unmarked word order, it has a sentence-focus structure: its function is to introduce a referent into the discourse and not to attribute a quality to a topic referent. In (1a) is reproduced an example from Lambrecht (1994, p. 168), to which are added the Chinese (1b) and French (1c) translations:

( Many authors have noted that there is a strong tendency in Chinese to have a definite subject, the so-called definiteness effect (i.a., [START_REF] Li | Mandarin Chinese: A functional reference grammar[END_REF][START_REF] Xu | Definiteness effects on Chinese word order[END_REF]. However, more recent studies reveal that there are exceptions to this tendency. They show that this construction can be used to introduce a new event and the beginning of a new episode in the chronology of the narrative (the indefinite subject is often preceded by contextual information, related to the time of the action); it emphasizes the event, and not the protagonist, who is considered secondary information [START_REF] Fang | On the discourse function of the co-called 'indefinite-subject sentence[END_REF][START_REF] Liu | Yī gè" de yòngfǎ yánjiū [A study on the usage of "a[END_REF][START_REF] Liu | Jùfǎ yǔ yǔpiān: Hànyǔ xùshì zhōng shítǐ shǒuxiàn de guīlǜ yǔ wúdìng gòushì de chéngyīn fēnxī[END_REF][START_REF] Wang | Hànyǔ wúdìng míngcí duǎnyǔ de yǔyì hé jùfǎ [The semantic and syntax of Chinese indefinite NPs[END_REF][START_REF] Zhang | Cóng shī shòu guānxì dào jùshì yǔyì [From the relationship between agent and patient to sentence semantics[END_REF].

Bi-clausal Presentative Construction

The bi-clausal presentative construction involves the postposing of the noun phrase (NP) referring to the new protagonist that is in subject position in the canonical predicative construction. The construction is semantically simple but syntactically complex, composed of a presentative clause followed by a predicative clause. The NP is the object of the first verb and the subject of the second verb. The discourse function of this construction is not to make a statement about an entity or event, but to introduce a new referent in the discourse and provide new information about it.

In Chinese [START_REF] Huang | A reference grammar of Chinese[END_REF][START_REF] Li | Mandarin Chinese: A functional reference grammar[END_REF][START_REF] Xu | Yǒu + NP + VP" jiégòu kǎochá [On the construction of "You + NP + VP[END_REF][START_REF] Zhou | Hànyǔ zhōng de "wúdìng NP zhǔyǔjù" jí xiāngguān de "yǒu" zì chéngxiànjù [The sentence with an unidentifiable NP subject and its relevant "you" complex presentative relative construction[END_REF], the construction begins with the existential verb yǒu 有 'exist', which is followed by the NP referring to the new protagonist, and then directly by the second clause:

(2) 有一群游客从博物馆里走出来。 yǒu yī-qún yóukè cóng bówùguǎn=li zǒu-chu-lai exist one-CLF tourist from museum=inside walk-out-hither 'There is a group of tourists that is walking out of the museum.'

In French [START_REF] Conti | La construction en avoir SN qui SV (« j'ai ma copine qui habite à Paris »): Une forme de dispositif clivé? [The en avoir SN qui SV construction (« j'ai ma copine qui habite à Paris[END_REF][START_REF] Lambrecht | Presentational cleft constructions in spoken French[END_REF][START_REF] Lambrecht | Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus, and the mental representations of discourse referents[END_REF][START_REF] Lambrecht | Prédicative seconde et structure informationnelle: La relative de perception comme construction présentative [Second predicative and informational structure: The relative of perception as a presentative construction[END_REF], the bi-clausal presentative construction often starts with a personal pronoun and the verbs avoir 'have', y avoir 'there be', voir 'see' or with the presentatives voici 'here is' and voilà 'there is'. The following position is filled by the NP, itself followed by the relative pronoun qui 'who' introducing the predicative relative clause:

(3) Il y a un homme qui sonne à la porte. there.is a man who is.ringing at the door 'There is a man ringing at the door.' This construction is very frequent in spontaneous oral speech in Chinese [START_REF] Zhang | Cóng shī shòu guānxì dào jùshì yǔyì [From the relationship between agent and patient to sentence semantics[END_REF][START_REF] Zhou | Hànyǔ zhōng de "wúdìng NP zhǔyǔjù" jí xiāngguān de "yǒu" zì chéngxiànjù [The sentence with an unidentifiable NP subject and its relevant "you" complex presentative relative construction[END_REF] as well as in French [START_REF] Lambrecht | Presentational cleft constructions in spoken French[END_REF][START_REF] Lambrecht | Prédicative seconde et structure informationnelle: La relative de perception comme construction présentative [Second predicative and informational structure: The relative of perception as a presentative construction[END_REF].

Monoclausal Presentative Constructions

The term monoclausal presentative constructions bring together two constructions that are often compared in the literature: the existential construction as in (4), and the locative inversion as in (5) [START_REF] Bresnan | Locative inversion and the architecture of universal grammar[END_REF][START_REF] Fuchs | La postposition du sujet nominal: Paramètres linguistiques et effets stylistiques [The postposition of the nominal subject: Linguistic parameters and stylistic effects[END_REF][START_REF] Fuchs | Les éléments initiaux dans les énoncés à sujet inversé : une étude sur corpus [The initial elements in inverted subject utterances: A corpus study[END_REF][START_REF] Givón | Syntax: An introduction[END_REF][START_REF] Lahousse | NP subject inversion in French: Two types, two configurations[END_REF][START_REF] Lambrecht | Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus, and the mental representations of discourse referents[END_REF][START_REF] Levin | Unaccusativity: At the syntax-lexical semantics interface[END_REF][START_REF] Teixeira | Locative inversion and stage topics: A cross-linguistic study[END_REF]. In the Chinese literature, the existential construction and the locative inversion are referred to as sentences of existence and appearance [START_REF] Huo | Xiàndài Hànyǔ yǐnxiàn gòushì de rènzhī yǔfǎ yánjiū [The fugitive construction in modern Chinese: A cognitive grammar approach[END_REF][START_REF] Li | Yǔpiān shìjiǎo xià de Hànyǔ cúnxiànjù yánjiū [Study on existential sentences in Chinese from a discourse perspective[END_REF][START_REF] Pan | Xiàndài Hànyǔ cúnxiànjù yánjiū [On existence constructions in Chinese[END_REF][START_REF] Pan | Lùn xiàndài Hànyǔ cúnxiànjù de yǔyòng fēnlèi [On pragmatic classification of existential sentences in modern Chinese[END_REF][START_REF] Paul | Existential and locative constructions in Mandarin Chinese[END_REF][START_REF] Shuai | Cóng cíhuì -gòushì fànshì kàn Hànyǔ cúnxiànjù de fēnlèi hé fànwéi [The classification and category of Chinese existential sentences: A lexical-construction account[END_REF][START_REF] Wu | Xiàndài Hànyǔ cúnxiànjù [Existential sentences in modern Chinese[END_REF][START_REF] Xuan | Xiàndài Hànyǔ yǐnxiànjù yánjiū [A study on fugitive sentence in modern Chinese[END_REF][START_REF] Zhang | Xiàndài Hànyǔ cúnzàijù yánjiū [Existential sentences in modern Chinese[END_REF] At the syntactic level, the monoclausal presentative constructions involve a locative phrase (LocP) and a NP that denotes the referent whose existence or appearance is being asserted. The existential construction involves the postposing of the NP, while the locative inversion causes the relative positions of the two constituents to be effectively swapped: the NP that canonically appears in subject position instead appears post-verbally, while the LocP is in pre-verbal position.

At the discourse level, these constructions have a function of presentative focus: the previously inactive referent denoted by the post-verbal NP is introduced on the scene (referred to by the LocP) to become the new focus of attention, and thus to ensure that this referent becomes active for the following discourse [START_REF] Birner | The Discourse function of inversion in English[END_REF][START_REF] Bresnan | Locative inversion and the architecture of universal grammar[END_REF][START_REF] Levin | Unaccusativity: At the syntax-lexical semantics interface[END_REF].

In French, when the verb of the existential construction is the stative verb y avoir 'there be', the LocP can occur in pre-verbal position or in post-verbal position (6). Unlike in French, the place of the LocP in Chinese is fixed, always in pre-verbal position (4a)-(5a).

(6) (En face) il y a un petit restaurant (en face). (in front) there.is a small restaurant (in front) 'There is a small restaurant in front.'

The existential construction has an unbounded stative predicate (y avoir 'there be' and yǒu 有 'exist'), while the locative inversion has a bounded eventive predicate that includes unaccusative verbs, such as inherently directed motion verbs (e.g., venir and lái 来 'come', arriver and dào 到 'arrive'), and verbs of (dis)appearance (e.g., se produire and fāshēng 发生 'happen', apparaître and chūxiàn 出现 'appear').

In Chinese, the predicate can also include a directional verb compound that is a verb of motion followed by a directional complement [START_REF] Li | Mandarin Chinese: A functional reference grammar[END_REF][START_REF] Liu | Qūxiàng bǔyǔ tōngshì [Introduction to directional complements[END_REF]. This complement is an intransitive verb that indicates the deictic and/or non-deictic path of the moving entity (e.g., pǎo-chu-lai 跑出来 'run-out-hither').

It is important to note that the locative inversion has a canonical word order alternative; compare (5) and ( 7 Whereas the locative inversion is frequent in colloquial speech in Chinese [START_REF] Xuan | Xiàndài Hànyǔ yǐnxiànjù yánjiū [A study on fugitive sentence in modern Chinese[END_REF][START_REF] Xuan | Yǐnxiànjù de yǔtǐ chàyì kǎochá [An investigation on stylistic differences of fugitive sentence[END_REF], it is very restricted in French and often more used in literary discourse [START_REF] Cappeau | Le sujet postposé [The postposed subject[END_REF][START_REF] Fuchs | La postposition du sujet nominal: Paramètres linguistiques et effets stylistiques [The postposition of the nominal subject: Linguistic parameters and stylistic effects[END_REF][START_REF] Fuchs | Les éléments initiaux dans les énoncés à sujet inversé : une étude sur corpus [The initial elements in inverted subject utterances: A corpus study[END_REF].

To summarize the main differences between the four preceding syntactic constructions, [START_REF] Liu | Yī gè" de yòngfǎ yánjiū [A study on the usage of "a[END_REF] and [START_REF] Zhang | Cóng shī shòu guānxì dào jùshì yǔyì [From the relationship between agent and patient to sentence semantics[END_REF] pointed out that the monoclausal presentative constructions are used to introduce a referent in respect to a spatial anchoring, using the space domain to establish a distinction between given referents and new ones. The canonical predicative construction, on the other hand, is used to introduce a referent in the storyline of the narrative in respect to a temporal anchoring. In narratives, the temporal ordering of the sub-events can be lexically encoded (e.g., ránhòu 然后 and ensuite 'then') or left implicit when the chronological order of the events in the story is respected. Finally, the bi-clausal presentative construction lies between the two former constructions. It often does not use explicit temporal or spatial anchoring to introduce the new referent; the event is understood as taking place "here-and-now" in the discourse. [START_REF] Huumo | Incremental existence: The world according to the Finnish existential sentence[END_REF] as well as [START_REF] Partee | Existential sentences, BE, and the genitive of negation in Russian[END_REF] also suggest that the main difference between existential and canonical predicative sentences is not in their objective semantic content, but rather in the subjective way in which the situation is addressed.

According to them, the canonical predicative structure places the protagonist at the center of the perspective, whereas the existential sentence takes the locative phrase as the starting point for structuring the description of the situation. This should also apply to the locative inversion (spatial anchoring).

Those four syntactic constructions with a sentence-focus structure are all established means to introduce a new discourse referent. Following [START_REF] Carroll | Information structure in narratives and the role of grammaticised knowledge: A study of adult French and German learners of English[END_REF], a distinction is drawn between these prominent introductions in which the only animate referent of the utterance is the new protagonist, and the introductions that do not occur in their own right but are embedded in other contexts referring to actions of another given protagonist.

These introductions also occur in a canonical predicative construction, but it has here the unmarked topic-comment or predicate-focus structure [START_REF] Lambrecht | Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus, and the mental representations of discourse referents[END_REF]. The new referent is mostly introduced as the object of a verb of perception (e.g., pèngdào 碰到 'run into', découvrir 'discover') in respect to another entity, the protagonist of the story, which is the subject of the utterance (entity anchoring):

(9)

他突然看到了一个陌生人。 tā tūrán kàndào-le yī-gè mòshēngrén 3SG suddenly see-PFV one-CLF stranger 'He suddenly saw a stranger.' In (9), the new referent of the focus expression mòshēngrén 陌生人 'stranger' in object position is introduced through the perception of the NP-referent tā 他 'he' that is the topic-subject of the utterance. [START_REF] Levelt | Speaking: From intention to articulation[END_REF] language production model provides a representation of the various processes involved in the generation of spontaneous oral speech and the macrostructural organization of information. According to this model, the production process starts with the conceptualization of the message to be transmitted. The speaker selects and orders information in a sequence of sub-goals, and plans an informational perspective (assignment of an accessibility status to the referents, assignment of the topic role to one of the referents, etc.) for each speech act in the form of a conceptual structure, called the pre-verbal message. The conceptual structure is then translated into a linguistic structure with the grammatical and phonological encoding of internal speech. The last operation is the execution of the phonetic plan with the articulatory organs to produce overt speech.

Language Production and Discourse Analysis Model

The process of discourse construction as envisaged by this psycholinguistic model of production can be described through the discourse analysis model developed by von Stutterheim and [START_REF] Von Stutterheim | Referential movement in descriptive and narrative discourse[END_REF][START_REF] Von Stutterheim | Quaestio and L-perspectivation[END_REF] (see also von [START_REF] Von Stutterheim | Texts as answers to questions: Information structure and its grammatical underpinnings in narratives and descriptions in German and English (topic and anaphoric linkage)[END_REF]. It allows us to analyze how L2 learners construct their pre-verbal message and structure their discourse regarding the introduction of new referents. This model considers that any coherent discourse differs from an arbitrary accumulation of utterances because it is entirely the answer to a question, either explicit or implicit, which constitutes the interpretation given by the speaker to a situation of communication. This abstract question is called the quaestio, which gives its name to the model. The quaestio applies four constraints to the organization of the discourse.

At the global level of the text, it defines the distribution of information between the foreground and the background of the discourse. The foreground constitutes the skeleton of the text; it consists of utterances which answer the quaestio. The background includes utterances that do not directly answer the quaestio but are used to add marginal informationin the text.

At the utterance level, the quaestio selects the domains to which the utterances of the foreground refer. There are five referential domains: time, space, entities (animate and inanimate), predicates (states, events and properties) and modality.

The quaestio also determines referential movement, i.e. the way in which the information from the five referential domains develops from one utterance to another. After the introduction of a referential domain in the text, the reference to this domain can be maintained or shifted by other information from the same domain in the following utterances and throughout the discourse.

Finally, the quaestio determines the distribution of information between the topic and focus components of the utterance. The topic is composed of the given information presupposed by the quaestio, while the focus is the component that answers the quaestio.

In narrative discourse, the quaestio can be formulated as: "What happened (to a protagonist) at this time (and at this place)?" The foreground is composed of sub-events which are related to each other in a causal or temporal relation (chronologically ordered by default). This study analyzes the referential movement in two domains, the shift in the entities domain and the maintenance in the space domain respectively, as illustrated in ( 10 In this short example, there is a shift in the domain of entities between tā 他 'he' in (10a) and lǎoshǔ 老鼠 'mouse' in (10b). This new entity is part of the focus component of the utterance. It is introduced in relation to the spatial point of reference dòng 洞 'hole' which is given information maintained from (10a), and represents the topic component of (10b). When a main protagonist has already been introduced in a narrative, and the speaker wants to add a new one into the storyline, there is a shift in the entities domain that has a contrastive function.

This study precisely examines the introduction of the supporting protagonists such as lǎoshǔ 老鼠 'mouse' in (10b); the reference to the main character in the story is not analyzed. For the sake of clarity, the term 'introduction of a new protagonist' is used throughout the study in place of 'shift in the entities domain'.

Previous Studies

Developmental Principles in Word Order

According to [START_REF] Klein | Utterance structure[END_REF], word order at a very basic level of proficiency can be explained on the basis of a limited set of syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic principles.

At the semantic level, they showed that the NP-referent with highest control comes first in the utterance (Controller First Principle). This leads learners to establish a correspondence between the pre-verbal position of the utterance and the controller of the action. At the pragmatic level, they argued that the focus expression occurs toward the end of the utterance (Focus Last Principle).

These semantic and pragmatic constraints on the utterance structure can be related to the Unmarked Alignment Hypothesis developed in the Processability Theory [START_REF] Pienemann | Language processing and second language development: Processability Theory[END_REF](Pienemann, , 2005)). This hypothesis predicts the correspondence principles between the three levels of structures in syntax (argument, functional and constituent-structure). At the initial state of development in L2 acquisition, the default mapping is the canonical word order: the most typical word order for that language. In SVO languages, such as French and Chinese, this results in the agent being mapped onto the subject. Furthermore, the first noun phrase of the utterance is mapped onto the subject, as the learner does not differentiate between topic and subject functions. At later stages, the topic is assigned to non-argument functions (adjuncts) and finally to a core argument other than the subject.

According to the same aspect of word order acquisition, [START_REF] Oshita | The unaccusative trap in second language acquisition[END_REF] formulates a developmental account to capture and relate a variety of phenomena observed with unaccusative verbs (e.g., the use of ungrammatical passive unaccusatives or the reluctance to accept unaccusatives in the canonical 'NP + V' order) which he calls the Unaccusative Trap Hypothesis. He claims that they can all be explained by the fact that L2 learners "fail to distinguish unaccusatives and unergatives as distinct lexico-syntactic classes because of the saliency of the NP-V word order in which most tokens of intransitive verbs appear in the input" (p. 286).

The lexical-semantic characteristics of the unaccusative verbs is captured by [START_REF] Sorace | Incomplete vs. divergent representations of unaccusativity in non-native grammars of Italian[END_REF][START_REF] Sorace | Contraintes sémantiques sur la syntaxe: L'acquisition de l'inaccusativité en italien L2 [Semantic constraints on syntax: Accusativity acquisition in L2 Italian[END_REF] Split Intransitivity Hierarchy (about Chinese, see Lu & Lee, 2020;[START_REF] Xue | L2 acquisition of Chinese unaccusative verbs by English-speaking learners: Testing on unaccusative trap hypothesis[END_REF].

The author claimed that events can be analyzed at the lexico-conceptual level in terms of three paired features, i.e. dynamic/static, telic/atelic, and concrete/abstract. Change of location verbs, which display dynamic, telic and concrete features, are considered at the core of unaccusativity, while verbs of controlled non-motional process, which display static, atelic and abstract features, are at the core of unergativity. 3Several studies have investigated the acquisition of non-canonical word order related to the locative inversion and unaccusative vs. unergative verbs distinction in L2 Chinese, mostly by English learners [START_REF] Xue | L2 acquisition of Chinese unaccusative verbs by English-speaking learners: Testing on unaccusative trap hypothesis[END_REF][START_REF] Yang | Hànyǔ zuòwéi dì'èr yǔyán cúnxiànjù xídé yánjiū [The L2 Acquisition of the Chinese Existential Constructions[END_REF][START_REF] Yuan | Acquiring the unaccusative/unergative distinction in a second language: Evidence from English-speaking learners of L2 Chinese[END_REF][START_REF] Zhang | L2 acquisition of Chinese locative inversion[END_REF]. In judgment tasks, the results showed that only advanced learners allowed the "V + NP" pattern with unaccusative motion verbs. In oral production tasks, only some learners at intermediate and advanced levels were able to correctly make the unaccusatives vs. unergatives distinction, and had the intuition to use locative inversion in a context eliciting the use of that construction, instead of the canonical SV construction.

In the present study, learners' ability to identify the unaccusative verbs and use the "V + NP" pattern will greatly determine their choice between the different syntactic constructions available to convey the introduction of the referent in the discourse.

Referent Introduction

Many studies analyzed the syntax-discourse interface and overall discoursedetermined word order (including presentative constructions, cleft sentences, dislocations, etc.) in several L1s and L2s configurations, at different levels of proficiency (for a literature review, see [START_REF] Lozano | Word order and information structure in advanced SLA[END_REF]. The results basically showed that low level and intermediate level learners did not demonstrate knowledge of how new information interacts with word order, and that only advanced learners' production was native-like [START_REF] Donaldson | Syntax and discourse in near-native French: Clefts and focus[END_REF][START_REF] Hertel | Lexical and discourse factors in the second language acquisition of Spanish word order[END_REF]. [START_REF] Chini | Ordres marqués et perspective du locuteur en italien L2 [Marked orders and speaker's perspective in L2 Italian][END_REF] showed a clear developmental sequence in L2 Italian discourse: whereas low and intermediate learners were able to use the existential construction "esserci 'there is' + S" and the presentative construction "esserci 'there is' + S + che 'that'…", only advanced learners used the "unaccusative V + NP" construction to the same extent as native speakers. [START_REF] Andorno | The cohesive function of word order in L1 and L2 Italian: How VS structures mark local and global coherence in the discourse of native speakers and of learners[END_REF] confirmed this result, but also showed that even advanced learners were different from native speakers in respect to the textual function of the VS word order. From a language awareness perspective, [START_REF] Callies | The teaching and acquisition of focus constructions: An integrated approach to language awareness across the curriculum[END_REF] showed that even near-native German-speaking learners of L2 English lack conscious awareness and explicit knowledge of the linguistic devices which are used to highlight information in a text.

Past research on the introduction of a referent in discourse primarily focused on the marking for newness at the NP level [START_REF] Chini | Reference to person in learner discourse[END_REF][START_REF] Crosthwaite | Definite discourse-new reference in L1 and L2: A study of bridging in Mandarin, Korean, and English[END_REF][START_REF] Crosthwaite | Definite discourse-new reference in L1 and L2[END_REF][START_REF] Nakahama | Cross-linguistic influence on referent introduction and tracking in Japanese as a second language[END_REF][START_REF] Ryan | Introducing referents for recognition: L2 pragmatic competence and miscommunication[END_REF]. L2 studies of the syntactic position of the new referent at the utterance level are less numerous. [START_REF] Hendriks | Reference to person and space in narrative discourse: A comparison of adult second language and child first language acquisition[END_REF] showed that L1 Chinese L2 German learners used the postverbal position to mark new information to the same extent as native speakers. [START_REF] Turco | Introduction et identification d'un référent chez les apprenants francophones de l'italien L2[END_REF] and [START_REF] Aleksandrova | Reference to entities in fictional narratives of Russian/French quasibilinguals[END_REF] also confirmed this tendency. Moreover, [START_REF] Turco | Introduction et identification d'un référent chez les apprenants francophones de l'italien L2[END_REF] showed that L1 French L2 Italian learners primarily postposed the new referent with the existential construction and the bi-clausal presentative construction, but much less with the "unaccusative V + NP" construction (as described by [START_REF] Chini | Ordres marqués et perspective du locuteur en italien L2 [Marked orders and speaker's perspective in L2 Italian][END_REF].

These studies on syntax-discourse interface and discourse referent introduction all confirm the difficulty of the "Unaccusative Trap".

Information Organization

Languages often provide several options for describing the same event. When producing an utterance, the speaker must make three different types of choices: lexical choices (choosing particular words over others), structural choices (between different syntactic constructions) and contextual choices (expressing information or not, according to the knowledge shared with the interlocutor). These choices reflect the way in which the speaker wants to formulate his discourse, his "perspective" on what is being said. Perspective taking, or information organization, represents a challenge in L2 acquisition because the target language may involve subtle principles that are not easy for learners to recognize. A number of studies have examined these principles in different conceptual domains, such as time, space, events, and entities [START_REF] Carroll | Information structure in narratives and the role of grammaticised knowledge: A study of adult French and German learners of English[END_REF], 2006;[START_REF] Flecken | Driving along the road or heading for the village? Conceptual differences underlying motion event encoding in French, German, and French-German L2 Users[END_REF]Gerwien & von Stutterheim, 2022;[START_REF] Lambert | Under the surface[END_REF][START_REF] Tomita | Strategies for linking information by German and Japanese native speakers and by German learners of Japanese[END_REF]. They focused on the extent to which learners succeed in the planning of their discourse as formulated in [START_REF] Levelt | Speaking: From intention to articulation[END_REF] model, and provided empirical evidence supporting the fact that L2 learners tend to retain the underlying principles of their native language4 . [START_REF] Carroll | Typology and information organization: Perspective-taking and language-specific effects in the construal of events[END_REF] even suggested that "recognition of these principles constitutes one of the ultimate hurdles in gaining full proficiency in a second language" (p. 366).

Research Questions

This review of previous studies showed that learners, especially at lower levels of proficiency, are not very aware of how new information interacts with word order at the utterance level, and have difficulty with the information organization at the discourse level.

The present study analyzes the function of referent introduction in L1 French L2 Chinese narratives in order to understand how learners construct a cohesive narrative in a second language. Its aims to identify the developmental path of L1 French L2 Chinese learners at three levels of proficiency for the following research questions: RQ 1: At the utterance level, how is the information structure mapped onto syntax (ordering of given/new information in syntactic constructions)? Do learners use the same syntactic construction(s) as native speakers to introduce the new (supporting) protagonists in narratives?

RQ 2: At the discourse level, which domain of reference or perspective is chosen as the given information to introduce new information and achieve discourse cohesion (spatial vs. temporal vs. entity anchoring)? Do learners follow the principles of information organization of their target language?

The study

Participants

The participants in this study fell into five groups (see Table 1) Note. The mean (standard deviation) length of classroom exposure to Chinese and residence in a Chinese speaking country are given in "year(s);month(s)".

Materials

The oral corpus collection was based on a comic strip composed of twelve sequences.

It included a first sequence that introduced the main protagonist, a little dog looking for something to eat. It was followed by a training sequence which was used by the experimenter to present the procedure to the participant. This was followed by the eight target sequences that were under analysis (see Figure 1). They were interspersed with two sequences used as distractors. The target sequences, as well as the training sequences, were built on the same model and each introduced a new protagonist. They were all composed of four drawings. The second image showed the main protagonist approaching a three-dimensional entity which was the spatial point of reference for the appearance of the new (supporting) protagonist in the following image. The third image revealed the sudden and unexpected appearance of the new protagonist that came out of the entity introduced in the previous image. The last image showed the dog leaving the scene.

Figure 1

Example of target item

Procedure

The experimenter assigned the elicited task to each participant individually. He briefly presented the support, the main protagonist and his journey, and then gave the instructions to the participant. He/she was asked first to browse the entire comic strip, in order to get familiarized with the overall story, then to narrate it using the images. The participants were instructed to retell the story in the third person, as if they were speaking to a native adult speaker who was not physically present during the collection, who did not know the story and had no visual access to the comic strip. They were also instructed to tell a story rather than providing a static description of each image. The learners had at their disposal a small list of Chinese nouns with their French translations, which were assumed to be unknown (e.g., lājītǒng 垃圾桶 'trash can', sōngshǔ 松鼠 'squirrel').

Coding System

The data was recorded, then transcribed and coded with the CLAN software of the CHILDES system [START_REF] Macwhinney | The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk[END_REF]. The discourse was segmented into utterances. The total number of utterances analyzed was 880 (eight target items per story by a total of 110 speakers). Each target utterance introducing a new supporting protagonist, other than the main protagonist (the little dog), was coded at two levels: at the syntactic level, the construction used, as well as the locative phrase expression and position; at the information level, the perspective taking (spatial vs. temporal vs. entity anchoring), and ordering of the topic/focus components. The marking for newness at the NP level (with the indefinite determiner "yī 一 'one' + classifier" in Chinese) was also coded, but since the three groups of learners showed no difficulty with this indefinite marker, the results were not discussed in this study. 5 All the examples below come from this corpus; the abbreviation of the group and the number of the participants are noted in parentheses.

Results

This section reports the experiment results obtained by applying the quaestio discourse analysis model to the corpus collected from the five groups of participants. It first details the syntactic constructions used to introduce the new protagonists in discourse (Section 4.1), and the expression and position of the locative phrase in the utterance (Section 4.2). When the data followed a normal distribution, a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) parametric test was used to compare the means of the five groups. Otherwise, a Kruskal-Wallis nonparametric test on medians was used. A significant level of p < 0.05 is assumed throughout the experiment.

Syntactic Construction

Canonical Word Order

A one-way ANOVA on the canonical predicative construction ( 11)-( 12) showed a statistically significant difference between the groups (see Figure 2), F( 4 ránhòu cóng xiǎo dòng lǐmian mào-chu yī-gè tùzi then from small hole inside emerge-out one-CLF rabbit 'Then a small rabbit emerges from the small hole.'

A one-way ANOVA on the existential construction ( 16) showed a statistical difference between groups (see Figure 3), F(4,105) = 13.00, p < 0.001, η² = 0.331. Post hoc analyses using Tukey's HSD revealed that low learners (M = 0.23, SD = 0.21) and intermediate learners (M = 0.28, SD = 0.20) used it more frequently than Chinese native speakers; no difference was found between Chinese (M = 0.07, SD = 0.12) and French native speakers (M = 0.00, SD = 0.00), between the three groups of learners, and between advanced learners (M = 0.19, SD = 0.15) and Chinese native speakers.

Locative Phrase: Spatial Point of Reference

An important characteristic of the materials used in this study is that the new supporting protagonists are all introduced in respect to a particular spatial point of reference which is represented in the second image of each target sequence. The reference to the entity used to do so is first introduced in a preceding utterance (17a)-(18a), and then (explicitly or implicitly) maintained as topic (given information) when introducing the new protagonist (17b)-( 18b).

Locative phrase: Explicit expression and initial position

Discussion

L1 Discourse

French speakers rarely modified the SV word order, and mostly introduced the focal new protagonist in pre-verbal position: "NP + V (+LocP)". These utterances were integrated in the chronology of the story with the same syntactic construction as those describing the actions of the main character (temporal anchoring).

Chinese speakers changed the canonical word order using the locative inversion to introduce the focal new protagonist in post-verbal position: "LocP + V + NP". This choice had two consequences. At the utterance level, the information structure followed the givennew and topic-focus order. At the discourse level, a clear referential linkage from one utterance to another was created in the space domain (spatial anchoring): the focal entity of a preceding utterance was maintained in utterance initial position as the topic, in reference to which the new protagonist was introduced. This type of referential movement, which [START_REF] Daneš | Functional sentence perspective and the organization of the text[END_REF] calls simple linear thematic progression, is well known in Chinese [START_REF] Zhu | Zhǔwèi tuījìn móshì yǔ yǔpiān fēnxī [Patterns of Thematic Progression and Text Analysis[END_REF], and has also proven to be important for establishing cohesion in descriptive discourse [START_REF] Arslangul | Locative phrase and descriptive discourse in L2 Chinese[END_REF].

Developmental Path in L2

The aim of the present study was to investigate how L1 French L2 Chinese learners achieve discourse cohesion, and more precisely how they manage the introduction of new protagonists in narratives at three levels of proficiency. Before examining the details of this developmental path, it is first possible to notice that the three groups of learners rarely used the embedded introduction (entity anchoring). These adult L2 learners all know how to fashion coherent narratives, their discourse skills were already fully developed in their L1, from which they transferred the basic principle that new protagonists who play a role in the storyline should be introduced in a prominent way.

Utterance Level: Syntactic construction

Low learners constitute the group of learners that used the canonical predicative construction to the greatest extent (40% of all their introductions). The SV word order is the most common in colloquial French but also in Chinese, as learners were easily able to notice in their input. Thus it may be considered language neutral, unspecific word order, which allows them to map the most prominent semantic role available in the utterance onto the subject in initial position, as the Unmarked Alignment Hypothesis [START_REF] Pienemann | Language processing and second language development: Processability Theory[END_REF](Pienemann, , 2005) ) predicts.

When the NP-referent with the highest level of control also happens to belong to the focus of the utterance, the learner is faced with a choice between the principles of Controller First and Focus Last [START_REF] Klein | Utterance structure[END_REF], which are contradictory in this particular situation. In this study, low learners gave up the Focus Last principle (utterance level) and indicated the accessibility status of the new referent with the sole indefinite determiner "yī 一 'one' + classifier" (phrase level), as for example yī-gè yǎnshǔ 一个鼹鼠 <one-CLF mole> in (13). It allowed them to clearly mark the referent for newness with a simple and wellestablished linguistic device in their L2 system without moving away from the SV word order.

It is however important to acknowledge that low learners also happened to deviate from the canonical word order, using the existential construction (23%), the bi-clausal presentation (17%), and to a much lesser extent, the locative inversion (3%). Also in the scope of the Processability theory, [START_REF] Håkansson | Transfer and typological proximity in the context of second language processing[END_REF] formulated the Developmentally Moderated Transfer Hypothesis and argued that the transfer of morphosyntactic structures from L1 can occur only if the L2 has developed to the point at which this particular material can be processed. Even if constructions of non-canonical word order are available in French, it seems that low learners had not totally developed the processing prerequisites needed to transfer these L1 linguistic devices to L2 consistently.

With the development in proficiency, intermediate level discourse was characterized by a clear evolution toward the target pattern. These learners did not rely on the canonical predicative construction anymore (15%); they went beyond the unmarked alignment, and started to prepose the locative phrase using the existential construction (28%) and the locative inversion (17%).

In intermediate learners' data, there were 4 occurrences (2.1%) of a syntactic structure that differed from the native-like word orders, with the locative phrase followed by the new referent ("LocP + NP + V"):

(19) ?从这个洞一个兔子出来。(Int-15) cóng zhè-gè dòng yī-gè tùzi chū-lai from this-CLF hole one-CLF rabbit exit-hither '?From this hole a rabbit comes out.'

The fact that these occurrences were very rare shows that learners did not consider it as a totally acceptable and productive structure. Learners seem to know that in order to prepose the LocP, the NP that refers to the new protagonist has to be moved out of the subject position of the canonical SV construction. Therefore, the tendency to prepose the LocP is related to their ability to postpose the NP after an unaccusative verb ("V + NP" pattern), and it is clear from previous studies that it is generally not frequent at this level of proficiency.

It is also worth noting that this group is the one that used the bi-clausal presentative construction most often (29%). They may have considered this construction, which is also available in their L1, as a more dedicated tool to markedly identify a new referent in discourse (as in [START_REF] Turco | Introduction et identification d'un référent chez les apprenants francophones de l'italien L2[END_REF].

Contrary to the results of several previous studies (i.a., [START_REF] Donaldson | Syntax and discourse in near-native French: Clefts and focus[END_REF][START_REF] Hertel | Lexical and discourse factors in the second language acquisition of Spanish word order[END_REF], intermediate learners indicated some knowledge of how new information interacts with word order. However, as [START_REF] Chini | Ordres marqués et perspective du locuteur en italien L2 [Marked orders and speaker's perspective in L2 Italian][END_REF] and [START_REF] Andorno | The cohesive function of word order in L1 and L2 Italian: How VS structures mark local and global coherence in the discourse of native speakers and of learners[END_REF] demonstrated for L2 Italian, these learners had the tendency (even if not statistically significant) to select the existential construction over the locative inversion.

As for advanced learners, they achieved native-like pattern as they organized the utterance in given-new and topic-focus order with the monoclausal presentative constructions.

The only difference from native speakers' productions lied in the lexical-semantic characteristics of the predicate.

Whereas Chinese native speakers postposed the NP that refers to the new protagonist after a directional verb compound, such as tiào-chu(-lai) 跳出(来) 'jump-out(-hither)', advanced learners did so after the verb yǒu 有 'exist' of the existential construction to a greater extent. They used less change of location verbs that are at the top of the Split Intransitivity Hierarchy [START_REF] Sorace | Contraintes sémantiques sur la syntaxe: L'acquisition de l'inaccusativité en italien L2 [Semantic constraints on syntax: Accusativity acquisition in L2 Italian[END_REF]. This tendency to avoid motion verbs (and compounds) and to select the existential verb is in line with previous studies [START_REF] Xue | L2 acquisition of Chinese unaccusative verbs by English-speaking learners: Testing on unaccusative trap hypothesis[END_REF][START_REF] Yang | Hànyǔ zuòwéi dì'èr yǔyán cúnxiànjù xídé yánjiū [The L2 Acquisition of the Chinese Existential Constructions[END_REF][START_REF] Yuan | Acquiring the unaccusative/unergative distinction in a second language: Evidence from English-speaking learners of L2 Chinese[END_REF][START_REF] Zhang | L2 acquisition of Chinese locative inversion[END_REF], which suggested three explanations for the difficulty of the acquisition of unaccusative verbs.

First, they pointed out that the locative inversion is not frequent in the learners' input, especially at low and intermediate levels. Second, whereas the external argument of the unergative verbs has to move to the pre-verbal position, the movement of the internal argument of the unaccusative verbs is optional. This type of verb is then characterized by syntactic optionality: the construction is most of the time an alternative construction for its canonical counterpart, which can be confusing for learners. Finally, the use of locative inversion is, to a great extent, determined by discourse constraints that learners may not be aware of.

These phenomena certainly contributed to the general tendency observed in the present study, it is also possible to add a number of other observations captured during the analysis.

In our data collection materials, all the new protagonists appeared for the first time as rushing out of a location. According to Talmy's (2000) typological framework, French and Chinese belong to two different categories of languages in respect to how they express motion events. Our data confirmed this tendency: whereas the motion events were dominantly described with the simple path verb sortir "exit" by French native speakers, Chinese native speakers used a directional verb compound to encode path in the directional complement (chū 出 "out"), while the verb added an information about the manner of motion (pǎo 跑 "run", zuān 钻 "slip", etc.). Comparing the two languages, it is clear that Chinese is complex as far as the linguistic means used in motion events expression for learners who speak French as their L1. What is more, a large number of studies showed that the typological properties of the L1 have an influence on the encoding of motion events in L2 even at a fairly advanced level [START_REF] Cadierno | Learning to talk about motion in a foreign language[END_REF][START_REF] Hendriks | Finding one's path into another language: On the expression of boundary crossing by English learners of French[END_REF][START_REF] Sharpen | L1 conceptual transfer in the acquisition of L2 motion events in Spanish and English: The thinking-for-speaking hypothesis[END_REF]; on L2 Chinese see [START_REF] Arslangul | How French learners of Chinese L2 express motion events in narratives[END_REF][START_REF] Arslangul | L'expression des procès spatiaux causatifs chez les apprenants francophones du chinois: Pousser ou entrer? [The expression of caused motion event in French-speaking learners of Chinese: Push or enter?[END_REF][START_REF] Wu | Influence of L1 Thinking for Speaking on use of an L2: The case of path expressions by English-speaking learners of Chinese[END_REF][START_REF] Wu | Crosslinguistic influence in the conceptualization of motion events: A synthesis study on L2 acquisition of Chinese motion expressions[END_REF]. This can partly explain why advanced learners avoided the use of directional verb compounds to a certain extent.

Furthermore, the verb of the existential construction denotes an unbounded stative situation that does not need to be marked for perfectivity by the aspectual particle -le 了, which also constitutes a well-known difficulty in L2 Chinese. Besides, the fact that the existential construction does not have a direct canonical alternative represents a regularity that can be considered as a facilitating factor. As a result, the existential verb yǒu 有 'exist' may be bound to the "LocP + V + NP" word order (Zhang, 2011). 6 Furthermore, the post-verbal NP of the existential construction can refer to an animate or inanimate entity that is introduced in the discourse. In the case of the locative inversion, it only refers to animate referents which participate to the change of location and present semantic properties of the controller of the action, usually in subject position.7 Therefore, using the existential verb has two advantages. First, it enables learners to follow the pattern of the L2 they have identified at the utterance and discourse levels (topic-focus order and spatial anchoring). Second, it allows them to still conceive the post-verbal NP as a more prototypical object. This way, they avoided postposing an argument that could also occur in subject position. These learners were still reluctant to the "unaccusative V + NP" pattern with an inherently directed motion verb (or compound), but instead of using the SV word order as low learners did, they went around the "unaccusative trap", and distinguished themselves from the native speakers, by choosing a verb that is lower on the Split Intransitivity Hierarchy.

Discourse Level: Information Organization

The function of referential introduction in Chinese was mainly conveyed by the locative inversion; the reference to space was explicit, in utterance initial position, and assigned the role of perspective anchoring. In order to develop their discourse competence and achieve native-like proficiency, learners have to identify the linguistic means available in L2 as well as to determine which of the spatial vs. temporal anchoring is used in Chinese to ensure discourse cohesion.

Low learners have not acquired the most important syntactic construction to do so for the present narrative task, which was the locative inversion, and to a lesser extent, the existential construction. They were thus not able to take into consideration the information organization of their target language. They introduced all protagonists (main and new) in the same utterance initial position, and their actions were organized in chronological order. This strategy was the simplest way from a syntactic and discourse point of view to deal with the production task.

Intermediate learners developed a complex L2 system but they still were not aware of the principles of information organization in Chinese. This is not surprising since many studies analyzing L2 discourse have found evidence that learners, even at very advanced stages of acquisition, tend to retain the underlying principles of their L1 [START_REF] Carroll | Typology and information organization: Perspective-taking and language-specific effects in the construal of events[END_REF][START_REF] Lambert | Under the surface[END_REF][START_REF] Tomita | Strategies for linking information by German and Japanese native speakers and by German learners of Japanese[END_REF].

Advanced learners, however, achieved native-like pattern. As Chinese native speakers, they used a spatial point of reference as the given information to introduce the new protagonists, i.e. they choose the spatial anchoring to ensure discourse cohesion.

Limitations

The present study concentrated at the utterance level on the syntactic marking of information structure; it did not touch upon the prosodic focus marking, and the interaction between the prosodic and syntactic means of focus marking. It is clear that learners' use of syntactic positioning to mark focus increased with their level of proficiency. However, more work is needed to determine if learners can use prosodic marking when they do not use syntactic marking, or if they can combine the two levels of focus marking, with utterance final position on the one hand, and extended pitch accent and longer duration on the other hand [START_REF] Yang | Prosodic focus marking in child and adult Mandarin Chinese[END_REF][START_REF] Zhang | Hànyǔ jùwěi xìnxī jiāodiǎn yǔ zhòngyīn shíxiàn [Sentence-final information focus in Chinese and nuclear stress[END_REF].

The data analyzed in this article was elicited by using a comic strip especially created for the study. It was designed to incite participants to describe the appearance of the new protagonists introduced in the target items with a locative inversion. In order to represent the appearances as unambiguously as possible, the new protagonists were represented as rushing out unexpectedly from inside a three-dimensional entity. Furthermore, in order to prompt the use of the locative inversion, the target items had to create the discourse conditions of use of this construction. To do so, the three-dimensional entity used as a spatial point of reference to introduce the new protagonists was clearly introduced in the second image of each sequence. This given information was then available to be referred to in the locative inversion. The comic strip had the advantage to guide the productions and thus making it easier to compare the different groups of speakers, but it also undoubtedly contributed to the results in the present study, and especially to the high frequency of the locative inversion and reference to space in the Chinese data. Future research, using other materials representing different of appearance is therefore needed to complete the present study.

Conclusions

The corpus analysis carried out in this study allowed us to understand the relation between the word order at the syntactic level and the information organization at the discourse level in Chinese and French.

Additionally, the marked differences between the three groups of learners have been discussed. Their L2 system follows an evolution from the unmarked alignment to native-like pattern. These findings are consistent with previous studies showing a developmental sequence from the canonical to the non-canonical word order, and the existential construction before the locative inversion.

From the information organization standpoint, there is a switch from temporal to spatial anchoring at the advanced level. This demonstrates that, contrary to previous results, advanced learners, who have not totally mastered the formal system of the target language for the lexical-semantic characteristics of the predicate used, can first achieve native-like pattern in the principles of information organization in L2 discourse.

As an extension of the present study, it would be pertinent to test when the transfer of morphosyntactic structures from L1 can occur in L2 in order to assess whether learners that frequently use the locative inversion in their L1 (e.g., Italian) follow the same developmental path in L2 Chinese as French-speaking learners.

As an extension of the present study, it would be pertinent to test further the Developmentally Moderated Transfer Hypothesis [START_REF] Håkansson | Transfer and typological proximity in the context of second language processing[END_REF] in order to assess whether learners that frequently use the locative inversion in their L1 (e.g., Italian) are able to the transfer this syntactic construction from L1 to L2 from a lower level of proficiency and follow a different developmental path in L2 Chinese from French-speaking learners.

  : two groups of native speakers (French and Chinese speakers) and three groups of L1 French L2 Chinese learners (N = 110). The level of proficiency in the L2 for low and intermediate learners was controlled based on their grades in their university programs. Low learners had received approximately 400 hours of classroom training at the end of the first year of their bachelor's degree; according to their program, their average level corresponds to A2 on the CEFR scale. They learned the existential construction a year prior to the data collection, and the locative inversion as well as the bi-clausal presentative construction a few months prior to the experiment. Intermediate learners had received around 900 hours of classroom training at the end of the third year of their bachelor's degree, which corresponds to level B2. They had all spent at least a month in Chinese-speaking countries at the time of the corpus collection. Advanced Chinese learners have spent long periods of time in Chinese-speaking countries and had over ten years of learning experience in the language. Unlike the other groups of participants, who were all university students in France or China at the time of recording, advanced level learners were teachers of L2 Chinese in the French secondary education system.

Figure 2

 2 Figure2

( 16 )Figure 3

 163 Figure 3

  Figure4), F(4,105) = 6.81, p < 0.001, η² = 0.206. Post hoc analyses using Tukey's HSD

Figure 4

 4 Figure 4

  ).

	(4)	a.	饭馆里有两个人。
			fànguǎn=li		yǒu liǎng-gè	rén
			restaurant=inside	exist two-CLF	person
		b.	Il y a		deux personnes	dans le	restaurant.
			there.are	two people	in	the	restaurant
			'There are two people in the restaurant.'
	(5)	a.	饭馆里走出两个人。
			fànguǎn=li		zǒu-chu	liǎng-gè	rén
			restaurant=inside	walk-exit	two-CLF	person
		b.	Du	restaurant	sortent deux personnes.
			of.the restaurant	exit two people
			'Two people walk out of the restaurant.'

existential construction does not have such a direct alternative. In (4a), the new referent can only occur in post-verbal position. The pre-verbal position is only possible if the existential verb is replaced by a locative verb such as être 'be' and zài 在'be at'.

			):
	(7)	a.	两个人从饭馆里走出来。
			liǎng-gè	rén	cóng fànguǎn=li	zǒu-chu-lai
			two-CLF	person from restaurant=inside	walk-exit-hither
		b.	Deux personnes	sortent du	restaurant.
			two people		exit of.the restaurant
			'Two people walk out of the restaurant.'
	However, the The construction in (8) is mostly used with a definite NP in the subject role to answer the
	question "where is X?", and not to introduce a new referent in discourse.
	(8)	a.	那两个人在饭馆里。
			nà	liǎng-gè	rén	zài	fànguǎn=li
			that two-CLF	people be.at restaurant=inside
		b.	Les	deux personnes	sont dans le	restaurant.
			the	two people		are	in	the	restaurant
			'Those two people are in the restaurant.'

Table 1

 1

	Participant information
		n (male /	Mean	length of	length of
		female)	(SD) age	exposure	residence
	French native speakers (Fr)	24 (12/12)	23 (4.4)	n/a	n/a
	Chinese native speakers (Ch)	24 (12/12)	22 (2.6)	n/a	n/a
	Low learners (Low)	24 (8/16)	22 (3.9)	3;3 (1;9)	0;2 (0;4)
	Intermediate learners (Int)	24 (7/17)	22 (1.3)	5;2 (2;1)	0;9 (0;6)
	Advanced learners (Adv)	14 (7/7)	40 (10.5)	11;6 (4;9)	5;5 (4;7)

I would like to express sincere thanks to anonymous reviewers for their valuable remarks on the earlier version of this paper.

Abbreviations used in the examples: CLF classifier, CRS current relevant state, PFV perfective aspect, and

3SG third person singular.

The Split Intransitivity Hierarchy is composed of eight categories: change of location (e.g., 'arrive'), change of condition (e.g., 'wilt'), appearance (e.g., 'appear'), continuation of pre-existing condition (e.g., 'stay'), existence (e.g., 'exist'), uncontrolled process (e.g., 'tremble'), controlled motional process (e.g., 'swim'), controlled nonmotional process (e.g., 'work').

L2 learners evidence conceptualization transfer from their L1 in different aspects: L1 French L2 English learners link utterances via causal instead of temporal relations in narratives[START_REF] Carroll | Information structure in narratives and the role of grammaticised knowledge: A study of adult French and German learners of English[END_REF]; L1 French L2 German use path adjunct to express the location of the entity instead of the contours of the ground in motion events description[START_REF] Flecken | Driving along the road or heading for the village? Conceptual differences underlying motion event encoding in French, German, and French-German L2 Users[END_REF]; L1 English and Spanish L2 German learners use objectcentered perspective instead of a spatially-based perspective in descriptive tasks[START_REF] Carroll | Typology and information organization: Perspective-taking and language-specific effects in the construal of events[END_REF].

A one-way analysis of variance (Kruskal-Wallis non-parametric test) showed no statistically significant difference between the Chinese native speakers and the three groups of learners, χ 2 (3) = 4.73, p = .193, ԑ² = .056 (Mdn = 1.00 for each group).

It is worth noting that, in the scope of Construction Grammar,[START_REF] Stefanowitsch | Collostructions: Investigating the interaction between words and constructions[END_REF] proposed the concept of Collostructional analysis which precisely measures the degree of attraction/repulsion of a lemma to a slot in one particular construction. In L2 research,[START_REF] Ellis | Constructing a second language: Analyses and computational simulations of the emergence of linguistic constructions from usage[END_REF] also accounted for the emergence of constructions from their frequency distributions in the input.

For contributions of animacy to grammatical function assignment and word order, see[START_REF] Branigan | Contributions of animacy to grammatical function assignment and word order during production[END_REF];[START_REF] Comrie | Language universals and linguistic typology: Syntax and morphology[END_REF];[START_REF] Li | Processing a language without inflections: A reaction time study of sentence interpretation in Chinese[END_REF].


Elisabetta Raguseo
email: elisabetta.raguseo@grenoble-em.com

Claudio Vitari
email: claudio.vitari@grenoble-em.com

Giulia Pozzi
email: gpozzi@liuc.it

Investigating the Impact of Digital Data Genesis Dynamic Capability on Data Quality and Data Accessibility

Keywords: Digital Data Genesis, dynamic capabilities, data quality, data accessibility

HAL is

Introduction

In the big data era, huge amount of data are created in digital forms every day [START_REF] Mcafee | Big Data. The management revolution[END_REF]. Managers have the opportunity to measure, and hence know, radically more about their businesses, their customers' tastes, and needs, by analyzing digital data. Explaining whether and how leveraging on the capability of exploiting digital data can be a way for firms to achieve success and higher outputs is becoming an evergreen issue in management and Information Systems fields.

Previous studies have conceptualized various types of capabilities, categorizing them in generic, organizational, ordinary, dynamic, heterogeneous, and homogeneous [START_REF] Drnevich | Clarifying the conditions and limits of the contributions of ordinary and dynamic capabilities to relative firm performance[END_REF]. However, in the big data era, since market changes occur very quickly, focusing on the development of dynamic capabilities at firm level, based on the exploitation of digital data, is becoming even more important [START_REF] Raguseo | The development of the DDG-capability: An evaluation of its impact on firm financial performance. Smart organizations need smart artifacts: fostering interactions between people, technologies, and processes[END_REF]. Therefore, in this article, we seek to contribute to the emerging literature on Information Technology (IT) dynamic capabilities investigating their linkage with possible outputs, as data quality [START_REF] Nelson | Antecedents of information and system quality: an empirical examination within the context of data warehousing[END_REF] and data accessibility [START_REF] Zimmer | Determinants of the use of relational and non-relational information sources[END_REF]. In so doing, we innovate in the choice of the dynamic capability object of our study: Digital Data Genesis (DDG). We define DDG as the coming into being of digital data. Specifically, DDG represents the naissance of digital data: it is a phenomenon (an observable fact or event) that involves the direct generation of new data in digital form, and takes place when information representative of a physical action, event or condition is created digitally concurrently with the event taking place. DDG thus enables real time digital representations of objects and events -so that these objects and events can exist as symbolic representations that can interact and be manipulated in the information space. For example, when a waiter takes an order using a palm device, an informational representation of the customer wishes is created in real-time in digital form. Thus, since dynamic capabilities allow organizations to reconfigure organizational capabilities in response to changes in the business environment, and since data is a precursor to many organizational processes, we decided to study DDG dynamic capability and their output at firm level.

Theoretical background and hypotheses development

In the bog data era, more than before, organisations need to constantly match market changes by developing dynamic capabilities, defined as "the firm's processes that use resources -specifically the processes to integrate, reconfigure, gain and release resources -to match and even create market change" [START_REF] Stoel | IT capabilities and firm performance: A contingency analysis of the role of industry and IT capability type[END_REF]. Thus, dynamic capabilities have the potential to create, to evolve and to recombine internal existing resources to allow the firm to adapt continuously to changes [START_REF] Li | Information technology and firm performance: Linking with environmental, strategic and managerial contexts[END_REF]. This adaptability has been argued as offering improved customer value [START_REF] Zhou | Technological capability, strategic flexibility, and product innovation[END_REF], and is especially required in fast-paced technological environments [START_REF] Wang | Examining the role of information technology in cultivating firms' dynamic marketing capabilities[END_REF]. We define DDG dynamic capability as the four-fold organizational process of: 1) "choosing IT" in order to unobtrusively generate and capture data in digital form; 2) "integrating IT" in the existing processes; 3) "managing digital data" so produced; and 4) "reconfiguring IT" in the appropriate business processes. The technology embedded in a DDG initiative may be emerging IT -a new technology not yet commercially viable (e.g., retinal implants for blind people) -or may be an enabling IT: an established technology used by a firm in an innovative application (e.g., RFID in gaming chips to track table play in a gambling context).

We theorize DDG as a dynamic capability for two complementary reasons. First, it consists of deploying "new configurations of operational competencies relative to the competition" [START_REF] Galy | Post-implementation practices of ERP systems and their relationship to financial performance[END_REF] -in other words, a firm with a DDG dynamic capability can identify opportunities for digital data generation and for recombining internal existing resources and data to adapt to changing environmental conditions, through the collection and production of new digital data. Second, the DDG dynamic capability includes the dynamic reconfiguring of the existing combinations of resources for digital data generation [START_REF] Galy | Post-implementation practices of ERP systems and their relationship to financial performance[END_REF]. The degree to which an ineffective DDG process can be reconfigured into a more promising one that matches its environment, better, faster, and cheaper than the competition determines the capability's dynamic quality [START_REF] Stoel | IT capabilities and firm performance: A contingency analysis of the role of industry and IT capability type[END_REF]. Therefore, the higher its degree of reconfigurability, the more dynamic the DDG dynamic capability is. Examples of DDG dynamic capabilities exist, such as the Harrah Corporation. For several years, Harrah has systematically and repeatedly integrated new IT (such as computerized slot machines or RFID chips) to gain -unobtrusively, and always in new ways -valuable digital data on customers' behavior at the Harrah's casinos and has exploited these new data to improve its customers' profiles and to better reward customers. Furthermore, DDG dynamic capability may aim at outputting accessible, accurate, complete and current digital data. The use in, for example, analytical processes of the gained digital data will depend on their accessibility, accuracy, completeness and currency ( [START_REF] Culnan | Environmental scanning: the effects of task complexity and source accessibility on information gathering behavior[END_REF], [START_REF] O'reilly | Variations in decision makers' use of information sources: The impact of quality and accessibility of information[END_REF], [START_REF] Zimmer | Determinants of the use of relational and nonrelational information sources[END_REF]). Specifically, information accessibility is the extent to which an individual perceives that any particular source is available for use [START_REF] Zimmer | Determinants of the use of relational and nonrelational information sources[END_REF]. Information accessibility is the most important driver for information source selection for use, with people consistently choosing and using lower-quality sources that are more accessible over higher-quality sources that are less accessible ( [START_REF] Culnan | Environmental scanning: the effects of task complexity and source accessibility on information gathering behavior[END_REF], [START_REF] O'reilly | Variations in decision makers' use of information sources: The impact of quality and accessibility of information[END_REF], [START_REF] Zimmer | Determinants of the use of relational and nonrelational information sources[END_REF]). Since DDG enables informational representations of real objects, facts, and events without any significant delays (i.e., in real time), the digital format of these representations may increase their accessibility, which means that the direct output of DDG can be accessible digital data, which can be exploited for various purposes such as information processing [START_REF] Hirsh | Seeking information in order to produce information: An empirical study at Hewlett Packard Labs[END_REF], sophisticated analytics [START_REF] Piccinini | Computation vs. information processing: why their difference matters to cognitive science[END_REF] and decision making and monitoring. Given that digital-data accessibility is a parallel form of information accessibility (defined by the perceived extent to which any particular source is available for use), it likely drives information source choices [START_REF] Davenport | Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning[END_REF]. Also information quality is important because when sources are equally accessible, individuals will consistently choose and use sources that are perceived of higher quality ( [START_REF] Davenport | Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning[END_REF], [START_REF] O'reilly | Variations in decision makers' use of information sources: The impact of quality and accessibility of information[END_REF]). Information Accuracy, Completeness and Currency are dimensions of the quality of the information retrieved from an information system ( [START_REF] Delone | Information systems success: the quest for the dependent variable[END_REF], [START_REF] Nelson | Antecedents of information and system quality: an empirical examination within the context of data warehousing[END_REF]). Accuracy refers to the degree to which information correct, unambiguous, meaningful, believable, and consistent. Completeness is about the degree to which all possible states relevant to the user population are represented in the stored information. While currency concerns the degree to which information is up-to-date and precisely reflecting the current state of the world that it represents.

DDG dynamic capability

Data quality

Harrah's corporation appreciates the quality and accessibility of the collected data on customers at the slot machines. Basing on the accessibility, accuracy, completeness and currency of the accumulated transactional data from past guests, Harrah's can quickly estimate the customer's future value within minutes of the player joining the program. This enables the casino to start treating the customer according to his or her future value rather than having to wait for observed play before starting to provide rewards [START_REF] Piccoli | Profit From Customer Data By Identifying Strategic Opportunities And Adopting The 'Born Digital' Approach[END_REF].

Based on these considerations, the hypotheses we propose are following listed: H1: The development of high DDG dynamic capability will positively influence the data accessibility. H2: The development of high DDG dynamic capability will positively influence the data quality.

Methodology

Data collection

To test our hypotheses, we conducted a questionnaire-based survey between 2012 and 2013 that was delivered to firms located in Western Europe.

Because dynamic capabilities are best measured at the organisational-process level [START_REF] Li | Information capability and value creation strategy: advancing revenue management through mobile ticketing technologies[END_REF], we surveyed sales managers. We made this choice because sales departments tend to be advanced with respect to the DDG phenomenon relative to other firm departments because of their focus on customer relations, in particular [START_REF] Piccoli | Profit From Customer Data By Identifying Strategic Opportunities And Adopting The 'Born Digital' Approach[END_REF]. In H1 H2 addition, we operationalised the model constructs using existing measurement scales that had previously been tested, with the exception of the Choosing IT dimension of DDG dynamic capability. This construct measured firms' ability to select IT to unobtrusively collect valuable digital data. We conducted a pilot study, beginning with four indicators from the prior literature [START_REF] Williams | Identifying the Organizational Routines in NEBIC Theory's Choosing Capability[END_REF] that had not been previously tested empirically. We recruited 35 managers from small, medium, and large enterprises in different industries in the US. Our four focal indicators were inserted within a set of 26 questions to reduce common method bias. The responses indicated that the scale was reliable (Cronbach's alpha = 0.837); for parsimony, we reduced it to three items. For all other constructs, we used the validated scales. Before the main data collection, we consulted an expert panel and used Q-sorting methods both to adapt the chosen scales to our research context and to assess the scales' content validity. The expert panel included seven sales managers who proposed and validated adaptations of the items with respect to each construct. The Q-sorting involved four rounds of refinement before we reached a threshold of 50 per cent of attributions to the correct construct for each item. One hundred and nineteen respondents (primarily employees of different organisations between 20 and 40 years of age, equally distributed between men and women) participated in the Q-sorting procedure.

We consulted three sources to ensure heterogeneity in the sample, thus facilitating the generalisation of our results. First, we surveyed 220 sales managers using contacts from customer-relations management applications maintained by a French business school. Most of those sales managers worked in the Rhône-Alpes region in which the business school is headquartered. Second, we listed 402 organisations from the Piedmont region of Italy that previously had participated in an Italian engineering school's survey in that same region. Third, we gathered a selection of 370 organisations from Italy's Veneto region, which represented various corporate trade-union members in that region and ensured diversity of organisational sectors and sizes. Our complete sample pool thus included 942 organisations; we contacted these organisations by telephone or e-mail to request their participation. Data were primarily collected over the telephone or through face-to-face interviews, although a few respondents chose to answer autonomously by accessing an online questionnaire. In this latter case, three weeks after the initial mailing, we sent a reminder postcard to sales managers asking them to complete the survey if they had not previously done so. We also said that we would provide the results of the study to those who completed the questionnaire. 125 questionnaires from different organisations (an overall response rate equal to 21%) were analysed. Such a high response rate is uncommon in survey research [START_REF] Cycyota | What (not) to expect when surveying executives a meta-analysis of top manager response rates and techniques over time[END_REF].

Measurement

All the research variables that constitute the DDG dynamic capability were measured using multi-item Likert scales from 1 (not at all) to 7 (to a large extent) based on prior empirical research (Table 1) with the exception of the "Choosing IT" construct, which we empirically tested directly through our pilot study. "Integrating IT" adapts the ability to integrate IT solutions into business processes [START_REF] Bharadwaj | IT Capabilities: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Operationalization[END_REF]. "Managing digital data" adapts the information-management dimension of the information capability measurement scale [START_REF] Marchand | Information Orientation: The Link to Business Performance[END_REF] to measure the ability to manage digital data. "Reconfiguring" adapts the reconfigurability measurement scale [START_REF] Pavlou | From IT Leveraging Competence to Competitive Advantage in Turbulent Environments: The Case of New Product Development[END_REF] to estimate the potential to reconfigure DDG dynamic capability. The final construct, DDG dynamic capability, was measured as a second-order construct based on the four components of DDG dynamic capability, each of which was compounded as the mean of the related items.

Looking at the outputs, data quality was measured through three variables: data accuracy, data completeness, and data currency [START_REF] Nelson | Antecedents of information and system quality: an empirical examination within the context of data warehousing[END_REF]. Instead, data accessibility was based on the measure proposed by Zimmer et al., 2007 [13]. The integration of digital data into the enterprise processes makes our sales personnel more effective [START_REF] Bharadwaj | IT Capabilities: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Operationalization[END_REF] IIT2 DDG is successfully integrated into our sales processes [START_REF] Bharadwaj | IT Capabilities: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Operationalization[END_REF]

Managing digital data (MDD)

MDD1 Our sales personnel effectively handle the digital data that they obtain [START_REF] Marchand | Information Orientation: The Link to Business Performance[END_REF] MDD2 Our sales personnel effectively process the data obtained in digital form [START_REF] Marchand | Information Orientation: The Link to Business Performance[END_REF] MDD3 Our sales personnel have effective methods for managing the digital data that they obtain [START_REF] Marchand | Information Orientation: The Link to Business Performance[END_REF] Reconfiguring (REC) REC1 When our DDG must evolve, our sales personnel successfully steer its evolution [START_REF] Pavlou | From IT Leveraging Competence to Competitive Advantage in Turbulent Environments: The Case of New Product Development[END_REF] REC2 When our DDG must evolve, our sales personnel effectively lead its reorganisation [START_REF] Pavlou | From IT Leveraging Competence to Competitive Advantage in Turbulent Environments: The Case of New Product Development[END_REF] Data Our digital data are easily obtainable for our Sales personnel [START_REF] Zimmer | Determinants of the use of relational and nonrelational information sources[END_REF] * The variable was reversed while computing the final factor

We introduced also control variables in the models: firm size (number of employees), firm age (number of years since each company was founded), and firm industry (four dummies for the four industries following list: traditional manufacturing, high-tech manufacturing, material services, and information services).

Data analysis

We employed SmartPLS and SPSS software for our data analysis. We choose PLS in SmartPLS as "the most accepted variance-based structural equation modelling technique because it can accommodate models that combine formative and reflective constructs" [START_REF] Gruber | Configurations of resources and capabilities and their performance implications: an exploratory study on technology ventures[END_REF]: p. 1342). The PLS path modelling technique with reflective indicators in Smart-PLS was used to assess the validity and reliability of the data [START_REF] Ringle | SmartPLS release: 2.0 (beta)[END_REF] complemented with SPSS calculations. This approach was better equipped to handle formative measures ( [START_REF] Chin | A partial least squares latent variable modeling approach for measuring interaction effects: results from a Monte Carlo simulation study and electronic-mail emotion/adoption study[END_REF]; [START_REF] Diamantopoulos | Advancing formative measurement models[END_REF]). Modelling moderating relationships in PLS required adding moderating variables as direct relationships to outcome variables and then calculating interaction variables based on the predictor variables.

Results and Analysis

Respondent characteristics

As can be observed by Table 2, the sample of our study was balanced. Specifically, the companies surveyed cover four industry groups [START_REF] Ringle | SmartPLS release: 2.0 (beta)[END_REF] and were almost homogeneously distributed. The majority of the surveyed companies are between 11 and 20 years of age, with the oldest at 77 years old 1 . In terms of the 1 countries in which firms operate, the sample is balanced. Finally, the salesmanager respondents are primarily sales-department directors.

4.2 Tests for validity and reliability of the measures .3 provides information about the psychometric properties of variables used in this study. In a confirmatory factor analysis, the loadings of the measures on their respective constructs ranged from 0.605 to 0.948. We checked the recommended levels for reliability (measured by composite reliability and Cronbach's alpha) and average variance extracted (AVE). [START_REF] Nunnally | Psychometric theory[END_REF] [START_REF] Nunnally | Psychometric theory[END_REF] suggests a value of 0.70 as a benchmark for modest composite reliability. [START_REF] Churchill | A Paradigm for Developing Better Measures of Marketing Constructs[END_REF] [START_REF] Churchill | A Paradigm for Developing Better Measures of Marketing Constructs[END_REF] suggests that a Cronbach's alpha value of 0.6 is acceptable. [START_REF] Bagozzi | On the use of structural equation models in experimental designs[END_REF] [START_REF] Bagozzi | On the use of structural equation models in experimental designs[END_REF] suggest that AVE must be higher than 0.50.

In this study, factor loadings, composite reliability and AVE values were generated as a part of the SmartPLS output. Using SPPS18, the Cronbach's alpha scores were computed. The composite reliability (CR) of all constructs range from 0.824 to 0.946, Cronbach's alphas ranged from 0.604 to 0.909, and AVE ranged from 0.615 to 0.898, all acceptable results because they are of higher values than the acceptable thresholds. These results demonstrate convergent validity in the measurement model. The square root of average variance extracted for each construct was compared with the correlations between it and other constructs [START_REF] Fornell | Structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error: Algebra and statistics[END_REF]. Each construct shared greater variance with its own measurement items than with constructs having different measurement items. Therefore, discriminant validity was also supported.

Tests of the research model

The results of the structural model assessment in SmartPLS are presented in Table 4. Our results supported Hypothesis 1: the development of Digital Data Genesis dynamic capability has a significant positive effect on data accessibility (β=0.385, t=4.654, p-value<0.001). Further, results support Hypothesis 2: the development of Digital Data Genesis dynamic capability has a significant positive effect on data quality. Path coefficients of data accuracy, data completeness and data currency are all positive and significant. Specifically, the path coefficients are respectively equal to 0.355, 0.269, and 0.366, and all of them are significant with a p-value less than 0.001

Discussions

The study results highlight that the theorization of DDG dynamic capability, as a four-fold organizational process, is supported by the empirical data analysis. More importantly, DDG dynamic capability aims at outputting accessible, accurate, complete and current digital data. The data analysis confirms that DDG dynamic capability releases information resources of higher quality and of higher accessibility. Hence, this better output could be levered to match or create market changes, as expected by dynamic capabilities [START_REF] Stoel | IT capabilities and firm performance: A contingency analysis of the role of industry and IT capability type[END_REF]. Thus, DDG dynamic capability could potentially create, as follow-up, significant data output. DDG dynamic capability makes the information more accessible, hence easily available for use. As far as, information accessibility is the most important driver for information source selection for use, the quality of the digital data coming out from the DDG are at stake. Otherwise low quality but easily accessible digital data would make the worst combination ([10], [START_REF] O'reilly | Variations in decision makers' use of information sources: The impact of quality and accessibility of information[END_REF], [START_REF] Zimmer | Determinants of the use of relational and nonrelational information sources[END_REF]). Notwithstanding, DDG dynamic capability increases also the accuracy, the completeness and the currency of the digital data. Hence, in synthesis DDG dynamic capability delivers higher quality data. These results have important managerial implications. Companies could successfully exploit their DDG dynamic capability to develop data-based strategic initiatives, comforted by their high data quality and data accessibility. Indeed, managers of firms should become more aware about the potentiality that the usage of digital data can have on the activities that they conduct and should invest more in the capability of using digital data since it increases data accessibility and quality.

Conclusions

The Information Systems literature provided less empirical studies that investigated the relationship between the development of dynamic capabilities based on digital data, and their output in the big data era. By analysing a sample of 125 companies, we find that DDG capability is associated with several outputs as data quality and data accessibility. Specifically, DDG capabilities make digital data more accessible and of higher quality to the organisation's personnel. Specifically, the development of a DDG dynamic capability enable companies to dispose of more accurate data, as fewer errors, of more complete data, since data become more comprehensive and not inconsistent, more current, since thanks to the continuous ability of generate digital data they are recent, up-to-data and not obsolete. They are also more accessible, since digital data are promptly and easily available to sales personnel. In this way, companies have updated data about their customers and can take advantage from timely and qualified information about their customers.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. Research model

Table 1

 1 Survey items for testing the model

	Construct Choosing IT (CIT) CIT1 Our sales personnel have effective methods for DDG choices Item Survey questions	Source [21]
	CIT2 DDG choices make their case for our sales process Integrating IT (IIT) IIT1	[21]

Table 2 Respondent characteristics

 2

	Characteristics Industry type Number of employees Firm age Country Respondent	Traditional manufacturing High-tech manufacturing Material service Information service 1 2 to 9 10 to 49 50 to 199 200 to 499 500 to 1999 2000 and more 1-10 years 11-20 years 21-30 years 31-40 years 41+ years France Italy Sales department director Senior sales managers Mid-level sales managers Business unit managers responsible for sales Others sales employees	Frequency 41 24 32 28 2 12 42 36 10 13 10 21 43 27 18 16 60 40 36 15 15 18 41	Percentage 32.8% 19.2% 22.4% 1.6% 9.6% 33.6% 28.8% 8.0% 10.4% 8.0% 16.8% 34.4% 21.6% 14.4% 12.8% 60.0% 40.0% 29.0% 12.0% 12.0% 14.0% 33.0%

Table 3

 3 Psychometric table of measurements

	Construct Digital Data Genesis dynamic capability (DDG DC) Choosing IT (CIT)	Item Loading CR AVE CA 0.936 0.786 0.909 CIT 0.869 IIT 0.843 MDD 0.948 RIT 0.883 0.908 0.832 0.779
	CIT1 CIT2 IIT1 IIT2 MDD1 0.937 0.914 0.910 0.879 0.799 MDD2 0.917 MDD3 0.900 REC1 0.945 REC2 0.950 AC1 0.605 AC2 0.835 AC2 0.885 CO1 0.669 CO2 0.855 CO3 0.853 CU1 0.836 CU2 0.822 CU3 0.724 AE1 0.906 AE2 0.913 Note: CR = Composite reliability; CA = Cronbach's alpha; AVE = Average variance extracted Integrating IT (IIT) 0.827 0.706 0.728 Managing digital data (MDD) 0.942 0.843 0.879 Reconfiguring IT (REC) 0.946 0.898 0.871 Data accuracy (AC) 0.824 0.615 0.604 Data completeness (CO) 0.838 0.635 0.689 Data currency (CU) 0.837 0.633 0.636 Data accessibility (AE) 0.905 0.827 0.747

Table 4

 4 SmartPLS results

	Independent variable DDG DC DDG DC DDG DC DDG DC	Dependent variable Data accessibility Data accuracy Data completeness Data currency	Path Coefficient 0.385 0.355 0.269 0.366	t-value Significance Hypothesis R-Square 4.654 *** H1 18.10% 3.297 *** H2 12.80% 2.431 ** H2 17.20% 3.958 *** H2 14.80%
	Note: *** denotes p-value < 0.001; ** p < 0.01; * p < 0.05.

The authors acknowledge the support of the European Community through a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship for providing funds to one author of the paper; the authors also acknowledge the support of France's Rhône Alpes region (http://www.rhonealpes.fr/).