This study uses a mixed-effects model to examine the acquisition of targetlike patterns of phonological variation by 17 English-speaking learners of French during study abroad in France. Naturalistic speech data provide evidence for the incipient acquisition of a phonological variable showing sociostylistic variation in native speaker speech: the elision of /l/ in third-person subject clitic pronouns ("il vient" [il vj?~] ~ [i vj?~] "he is coming"). Speech data are compared and correlated with the results of a "social network strength scale" designed for the study abroad learning context. Results demonstrate that phonological variation patterns are acquired in a predictable order based on token type and collocation and that social networks with native speakers are statistically significant predictors of phonological variation patterns.