À la recherche de la morphologie silencieuse

LUND UNIVERSITY
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À la recherche de la morphologie silencieuse : sur le développement du pluriel en
francais L2 écrit
Ågren, Malin
Published: 2008-01-01
Link to publication
Citation for published version (APA):
Ågren, M. (2008). À la recherche de la morphologie silencieuse : sur le développement du pluriel en francais L2
écrit Lund University
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ÉTUDES ROMANES DE LUND 84
Malin Ågren
À LA RECHERCHE DE
LA MORPHOLOGIE
SILENCIEUSE
SUR LE DÉVELOPPEMENT DU PLURIEL
EN FRANÇAIS L2 ÉCRIT
Språk- och Litteraturentrum
Franska

ÅGREN, MALIN, À la recherche de la morphologie silencieuse. Sur le développement du pluriel en
français L2 écrit (In search of the silent morphology. On the development of the plural in written L2
French), Études romanes de Lund 84, Lund 2008. 315 pages. Written in French. Monograph.
This dissertation deals with the morphological development in written L2 French by Swedish learners.
The thesis presents a detailed analysis of number marking and agreement in NPs and VPs, focusing
mainly on the production of the morphemes –s (in NP) and the third person plural –nt (in VP). These
agreements are particularly interesting in French where number morphology is often silent in the oral
language and thus potentially difficult to produce in writing.
The aim of the thesis is to describe the developmental sequence of number morphology in
written L2 French, from an initial to a lower advanced level, and to discuss underlying factors that
influence the morphological development in this domain. The results are interpreted through two
different theoretical models: Pienemann’s Processability Theory (1998) and Goldschneider’s and
DeKeyser’s multiple factors approach (2001).
The empirical part of the thesis is based on the CEFLE corpus (Corpus Écrit de Français
Langue Étrangère) which includes approximately 400 texts written in L2 French by instructed
Swedish learners and by a French control group. A cross-sectional and a longitudinal study of this
material are presented.
The cross-sectional study of four groups of learners (N=105) and the French controls (N=30)
demonstrates a clear and gradual development in the L2 production of number morphology. The
following sequence is observed: 1) plural marking on nouns/pronouns and quantifiers, 2) determiner-
noun agreement, 3) subject-verb agreement, and, last of all, 4) noun-adjective agreement.
It is argued that the lack of phonological saliency has a minor influence on the acquisition of
plural morphology in written L2 French in the instructional setting as compared to L1 acquisition. It is
also shown that the semantically motivated plural markers are used initially and that the high
morphological regularity in the plural, and possibly transfer, has an impact on the acquisition process
at initial levels. A multiple factors approach, as proposed by Goldschneider and DeKeyser, is
necessary to understand the very late noun-adjective agreement in written L2 French.
The longitudinal study of fifteen individual learners, framed within the Processability Theory,
shows a similar developmental pattern to that of the cross-sectional study. In general terms, the
morphological development observed in the data can be accounted for by Pienemann’s processing
hierarchy. However, the analysis calls for the notion of intra-stage sequencing in order to explain the
differences within developmental stages, especially at the phrasal level (NP). Other factors than
processing constraints, such as morphological regularity, syntactic status and frequency seem
important to understand the details of the observed development.
In conclusion, the learners show a gradual and rather early morphological development of
plural marking in written L2 French. The two theoretical approaches meet different problems when
applied to the written French L2 data. This observation raises the question of a possible synthesis of
the two models discussed in this thesis.
Språk- och litteraturcentrum
Lunds universitet
Box 201
SE-221 00 LUND, Suède
© Malin Ågren
ISSN 0347-0822
ISBN 979-91-628-7629-6
Imprimé en Suède
Media-Tryck
Lund 2008

À la mémoire de Matthias