second language research Second Language Research 27(3) 361–390 © The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permission: sagepub. co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0267658310395866 slr.sagepub.com Corresponding author: Bryan Donaldson, Department of French and Italian, University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station B7600, Austin, TX 78712-0224, USA Email: bdonaldson@austin.utexas.edu Nativelike right-dislocation in near-native French Bryan Donaldson University of Texas at Austin, USA Abstract Recent research on advanced and near-native second-language (L2) speakers has focused on the acquisition of interface phenomena, for example at the syntax–pragmatics interface. Proponents of the Interface Hypothesis (e.g. Sorace, 2005; Sorace and Filiaci, 2006; Tsimpli and Sorace, 2006; Sorace and Serratrice, 2009) argue that (external) interfaces present difficulties for L2 grammars, resulting in permanent deficits even in near-native grammars. Other research, however, has argued that interfaces are acquirable, albeit with delays (Ivanov, 2009; Rothman, 2009). This study examines right-dislocation (RD) in experimental and production data from near-native French. Right-dislocation marks topic in discourse and thus requires the integration of syntactic and discourse–pragmatic knowledge. Participants were 10 near-native speakers of French who learned French after age 10 and whose grammatical competence was comparable to the near- native speakers of French in Birdsong (1992), and 10 French native speakers. The data come from two experimental tasks and an 8.5-hour corpus of spontaneous informal dyadic conversations. The near-natives demonstrated nativelike judgments, preferences, and use of RD in authentic discourse. Only one near-native displayed evidence of first-language (L1) transfer, which resulted in non-nativelike use of RD. On the whole, the results suggest nativelike acquisition of this area of the syntax–pragmatics interface and fail to provide support for the Interface Hypothesis. Keywords second language acquisition, syntax, dislocations, discourse, information structure, near-nativeness, French language I Information structure This study discusses aspects of information structure (Lambrecht, 1994) and how it is sign- posted syntactically in second-language (L2) near-native French. Information structure, broadly defined, involves the flow of old and new information in discourse and consequent syntactic, phonological, morphological, and lexical choices. The field of inquiry dates to the Prague School (Mathesius, 1939; Firbas, 1964) and has a long functionalist tradition