PASCALE LECLERCQ
The influence of L1 French on near-native French learners of English: the case of simultaneity
This study on ultimate attainment seeks to discover what kind of linguistic knowledge advanced L2 learners lack to reach the level of native speaker competence. Indeed we notice that L2 verbal production by near-native French speakers of English often maintains some sort of foreign trace. We postulate that this is due to the fact that grammatical encoding influences the speaker of a given language at the conceptual level with regard to the selection of information needed to prepare verbalization (Levelt 1989, Slobin 2003, von Stutterheim 2003). In the current study, we focus on the role of the grammatical concept of ongoingness. This concept is relevant for a contrastive study of French and English because English provides morphological marking of ongoingness (V-ing forms), whereas French relies on lexical means (‘en train de’) to express this concept. Our aim is to analyse and compare the productions of French and English native speakers with those of near-native French learners of English as regards the expression of simultaneity. We want to evaluate the capacity of learners to perform like natives. In a pilot study, we focused on the expression of ongoingness in a film-retelling task based on a stimulus of video clips specially designed to trigger the use of ongoingness (see von Stutterheim 2003). The results of this study indicate that explicit use of ongoingness (‘en train de’, V-ing) frequently appears in the accounts of scenes showing simultaneous events. This effect was observed among native speakers and very advanced learners of French and English. Therefore we set up a second experimental procedure to study how ongoingness is used in a discursive framework by learners and native speakers to express simultaneity.
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This experimental task, based on Schmiedtova 2004, consists of a film-retelling task, that is, a narrative task: the subjects were asked to watch five video commercials1 as many times as needed to memorize the situation and be able to ‘say what happened’. The videos were selected because they trigger the expression of simultaneity. Our database is composed of the oral productions of 12 French native speakers, twenty English native speakers and ten French L2 speakers of English, all certified teachers of English. We are interested in the verbalization of simultaneous events: what discursive strategies are employed to ground the utterances and to express simultaneity? Coirier, Gaonac’h and Passerault 1996 evoke the problems encountered in written production tasks: Comme le note Fayol (1991a), l’un des problèmes majeurs rencontrés par le rédacteur d’un texte, c’est d’exprimer dans une séquence des contenus cognitifs dont les interrelations sont souvent caractérisées par une structure multidimensionnelle. Dans les séquences narratives, par exemple, il peut arriver que certains événements soient simultanés: ils devront pourtant être énoncés l’un à la suite de l’autre dans l’ordre du discours. Comment le lecteur pourra-t-il alors reconstruire la représentation adéquate?
Although we deal with oral and not written production, this analysis seems quite relevant to us and we may therefore raise the following questions: What linguistic means are employed by our three groups of learners (Fr L1, Eng L1, and Fr L1 Eng L2) to express simultaneity? Are preferences similar in all three groups? Does aspectual marking play a structuring role for the expression of simultaneity? We will first present the narratives that constitute our database, then we will focus on the different markers of simultaneity (presentatives, aspectual contrast and temporal adverbials), to answer these questions.
1
The five clips are presented in the Appendix.
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Narratives Our stimuli trigger the production of oral narratives describing the simultaneous events that occur in the commercial. According to Coirier, Ganoac’h and Passerault 1996, texts have a microstructure and a macrostructure: Ainsi, dans un modèle propositionnel du type de celui de Kintsch 1974, la signification de toute unité lexicale correspond en mémoire à une liste de propositions, chaque élément des propositions renvoyant à son tour à une liste de propositions, et ainsi de suite. Et la signification de ce qui est directement explicité par un texte va pouvoir être représentée par un réseau de propositions. Kintsch et van Dijk (1975, 1978) proposent le terme de microstructure pour désigner un tel réseau. Mais la microstructure ne constitue pas une description de l’ensemble de la signification du texte: le sens du texte est aussi représenté à un niveau plus global, celui de la macrostructure, qui peut rendre compte de significations et relations non directement explicitées. Ces deux niveaux de description de l’information du texte, micro et macrostructure, représentent ce qui est qualifié comme la base du texte.
The macrostructure corresponds to the organization of the narrative in different paragraphs, for instance, whereas the microstructure corresponds to an inter-propositional level. Temporal adverbials such as ‘although’, ‘but’, ‘and’ etc. play a major role in macrostructuration. Carroll, Lambert and von Stutterheim have a different approach. For them, the macrostructure of a text answers the Quaestio2 (see von Stutterheim, Klein 1989, von Stutterheim 2003) and corresponds to a specific type of text (here, a narrative, divided in main structure and side structure), while the microstructure corresponds to the linguistic means used to answer the Quaestio. 2
The Quaestio is the implicit question a speaker answers when he produces a text. It is different from the task given in an experiment: the speaker construes his own interpretation of the task and this “establishes a set of constraints, and guides the speaker in selecting and organising information for expression” at macro and micro-structural levels (Von Stutterheim 2003:184). Constraints are language dependent.
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This distinction enables us to analyse different levels of structuration of the narratives of our database: indeed, we are interested in how information is organized throughout the narrative, and how events are mapped (macrostructure) with which linguistic means (microstructure). We postulate that aspect has a crucial structuring role and we will subsequently investigate the way ongoingness, but also temporal adverbials and presentatives are used by our three groups of speakers to express simultaneity. Simultaneity The results of our pilot study suggest that event simultaneity in the stimulus provokes the use of specific linguistic structures to express ongoingness in the narratives. We want to check the validity of this result and see what the use of the progressive entails on a microstructural ground. All the situations in the video clips contain two or more protagonists. We define an event as the actions of a protagonist: the actions of the first protagonist P1 constitute the E1 event, and so on. For example, in the Hotdog clip, E1= ‘a boy licking the poster’ and E2= ‘the elder brother comes in.’ A detailed description of the clips is available in the Appendix. Simultaneity occurs when two events (or more) take place in the same time interval. It is perceivable when these two events occur in a common space (at least in the eyes of the viewer/utterer). These simultaneous events may be linked or not, the prototypical case being a ‘framing’ event disrupted by a ‘framed’ event. In the case of the Hotdog clip, E1 (‘licking the poster’) is disrupted by E2 (the entry of the elder brother).We are interested in the link between the perception of two simultaneous events by speakers of Fr L1, Eng L1 and Fr L1 Eng L2, and the way they verbalize these events according to the various linguistic means at their disposal.
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Structure of the narratives All narratives share the same chronological organization: events are related following their order of appearance in the stimulus. What we wish to analyze is the way the different groups of speakers build the temporal structure of the narratives to express simultaneity. The five clips of our study present two events (E1, framing event, and E2) that occur simultaneously. Some events are homogeneous (for instance E2 ‘woman customer filling up her trolley’ in the clip Supermarket), whereas others are composed of sub-events (in Salmon, E1= ‘prepare the meal’ may be analysed into E1’= ‘wash vegetables, cut herbs, slice the salmon…’). Introduction of the first protagonist (P1)
E1
Description of P1’s actions Introduction of the second group of protagonists (P2) Description of P2’s actions
E2
If relevant, P2’s departure In some clips, E1 and E2 are parallel events and do not interfere with one another. For instance, in the Salmon clip, the cook prepares the meal and the cat takes slices of fish without E2 disrupting E1. There is no event disruption. In other clips, E2 disrupts E1, following which the two events take place in parallel, as is the case in the Canal+ clip where the man keeps watching TV (E1) during and after the mechanics’ intervention (E2). In the Hotdog Clip, E2 disrupts and terminates E1: the young boy licking the poster (E1) is interrupted by the entry of his elder brother (E2). There is an event disruption in these two clips.
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The following table summarizes the different characteristics of the five clips of our database: Canal+ Event disruption E2 // E1
Hotdog
Salmon
Soup
+
+
-
+
+
-
+
+
Super market +
Table 1: Characteristics of the five clips.
We therefore wish to evaluate the impact of these different characteristics on the choices made by our three groups of speakers in their verbalization task. To express simultaneity and structure their narrative, speakers may use presentatives, aspectual contrast and temporal adverbials. After analysing these devices, we will focus on the ‘event disruption’ feature and will attempt to determine whether this feature has an impact on information organisation in French and in English.
Presentatives French speakers use presentatives in order to ground their utterances in discourse and to make it clear that they are speaking about a specific situation.3 (a) C’est un mouton qui broute. (b) Un mouton broute.
The use of the deictic presentative ‘c’est’ indicates that we are dealing with a specific situation, whereas (b) may have a generic reading. Presentatives are therefore used in French to suppress the 3
See Leclercq, P., PhD thesis, Chapter 7, work in progress.
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ambiguity inherent in the use of the present tense. French speakers use deictic presentatives, locating the event relative to the situation (‘c’est’, ‘il y a’) as well as other presentatives locating the event relative to the utterer (‘on voit’, ‘on a’). English speakers on the other hand choose either not to use presentatives, or to use deictic presentatives like ‘there is’: (c) ‘So there is a middle-aged man sitting on a sofa watching televison’ (Eng L1).
The V-ing form has an anchoring function which makes the use of presentatives optional. Advanced learners seem to be influenced by French native speakers’ patterns of usage and use presentatives in a quantitatively similar way. Presentatives have two main functions in discourse: on the one hand, they ground the utterance (and make it clear that it refers to a specific situation), and on the other hand they introduce the protagonist(s) and play a major macrostructuring role. Presentatives like ‘on voit’ are particularly interesting for our study of simultaneity because they operate the opening of the temporal framework of the narrative as defined by the perception of the speaker; these presentatives make it explicit that the time of the situation4 and the time of perception coincide. ‘On voit’ provides a definition of the temporal framework in which E1 and E2 occur. Preferences are different depending on the group of speakers: native French speakers prefer to introduce the first protagonist (P1) locating him relative to the speaker (‘on voit’: 65%), whereas only 10% of native English speakers use that type of location. Learners are in-between: 30% of P1s are located relative to the utterer (‘we see’ or ‘we can see’). Native English speakers use either ‘there is’(43%) or an independent clause (39%) to introduce P1, just like French learners of English.
4
Klein 1994 uses three time intervals to analyse tense and aspect: TU (time of utterance), TT (topic time) and TSit (time of situation).
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P1 Introduction Loc / speaker ‘on voit’ Loc / situation ‘il y a’ No explicit location ‘Ø un homme qui’ Independent clause Other P1 not mentioned
Fr L1 N=12
Eng L1 N=20
Fr L1 Eng L2 N=10
64,8%
10%
28%
21,6%
43%
36%
/
7%
/
8,5% 3,4% 1,7%
39% / 1%
36% / /
Table 2: Presentatives introducing P1
When introducing P2, French speakers locate the event relative to the speaker or relative to the situation in an equal proportion, whereas English natives use independent clauses massively (62%). (d) ‘Il (P1) se met en fait à lécher la moutarde qui a explosé sur le ventre de la fille, et juste à ce moment là en fait il y a un garçon (P2) qui doit être sûrement son grand frère qui rentre dans sa chambre (E2)’ Hotdog Fr L1 (e) ‘He (P1) goes to lick off the ketchup, and the mustard, and while he is doing this, his brother (P2) walks into the room’ Hotdog Eng L1
Once again we observe that French learners of English are inbetween the two groups of natives: they use presentatives less than French speakers, but a lot more than English speakers. Their use of independent clauses (44%) is much higher than French speakers’ (20%). This supports the results of our pilot study: whatever the task, presentatives are almost compulsory for French natives, whereas they are optional for English natives. Presentatives therefore have a macrostructuring role in French, but a discourse grounding role in English. Learners hesitate between the patterns of their mother tongue and those of the target language. P2 Introduction Loc / speaker
Fr L1 N=12 35%
Eng L1 N=20 7,3%
Fr L1 Eng L2 N=10 28%
The influence of L1 French on near-native French learners of English
‘on voit’ Loc / situation ‘il y a’ No explicit location ‘Ø un homme qui’ Independent clause Other P2 not mentioned
34,8%
11,5%
22%
6,8%
/
/
20,1% 3,3% /
61,9% 15,3% 4%
44% 6% /
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Table 3: Presentatives introducing P2
Perception verbs and simultaneity: ‘see’ and ‘hear’ Presentatives obviously structure the narrative since they introduce the protagonists, but they do not all have the same referential value: they may locate the event relative to the situation, or relative to the speaker, which is relevant to our study of simultaneity. Indeed, the use of a perception verb like ‘see’ or ‘hear’ in the first person enables the speaker to open a narrative framework in which he will situate E1 and E2, for instance, relative to his own perception act. The narrator stages his narrative and uses a perception verb in the present tense, which indicates temporal simultaneity between perception and verbalization, although it is an offline task. The use of perception verbs is therefore a narrative strategy that wrongly suggests simultaneity between the time of perception of the stimulus, the time of utterance (TU) and the time of situation (TSit), because there is a gap between the time of perception, TSit and TU.
We see
A man preparing a meal • slicing salmon • washing vegetables • … A cat licking its chops
In the Salmon clip, we see E1 and E2 on screen one after the other, but our world knowledge informs us that these events really
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occur in parallel. We see them on screen successively and in an iterated way, but with the help of temporal adverbs and/or aspectual contrast, we manage to express that these events are actually simultaneous. Fr L1 N=12 Voir / See
7,25 (On voit)
Entendre / Hear
1,1 (On entend)
Eng L1 N=20 1,75 (We see or you see )
Fr L1 Eng L2 N=10 3,8 (We see or we can see)
0,8 (We hear, we can hear)
1,1 (We can hear or we hear)
Table 4: Perception verbs used as presentatives – average number of occurrences per speaker
Using several perception modes (sight, hearing) enables the utterer to indicate simultaneity between various perceived events. This strategy is used much more frequently by French speakers than by English speakers, maybe due to the necessity of grounding the utterance in discourse (a role played by V-ing in English). Narratives are indeed a reconstruction of the perceived events by the utterer who stages his discourse. ‘On voit’ in French, but also ‘we see’ in English L2, although to a lesser extent, play a crucial structuring role in this process. Presentatives therefore contribute to the macrostructuration of the narrative through the introduction of the protagonists, as well as to the temporal and enunciative anchoring of the narrative. However, they cannot express simultaneity alone. Other means of expression of simultaneity have to be employed by speakers, such as aspectual and temporal adverbial marking.
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Aspectual Contrast At a microstructural level, aspectual opposition may play a role in the marking of simultaneity. Indeed, we noticed in our first experiment that ‘en train de,’ expressing ongoingness in French, frequently occurred to render scenes with simultaneous events. We mentioned the fact that the immense majority of narratives in our database are in the present tense; therefore we postulate that aspectual contrast between unmarked, present form and ‘en train de’ or ‘V-ing’ forms participates in the marking of simultaneity through the creation of framing events (marked with ongoingness) and framed events (present tense, unmarked). We wonder to what extent this hypothesis can be verified. We distinguish Aktionsart from the grammatical aspectual marking, which is subdivided into morphological aspectual marking such as V-ing in English, and lexical marking like ‘en train de’ in French. Aktionsart also plays a crucial role: subevents should be marked by two-state verbs, whereas framing events should preferably be marked by one-state verbs. The distinction between punctual and durative process is consequently to be taken into account. Aspectual forms would therefore be associated with a framing function in two strata: -Aktionsart: punctual (framed) or durative (framing) process -Grammatical aspect: simple (framed) or progressive (framing) form. We adopt a classification of verbs based on Klein 1994; however, we recognize that durativity needs be taken into account. We will henceforth use the following terminology5: (1) 0-state verbs (be, love) (2) 1-state verbs (run, eat) (3) 2-state verbs – durative (repair, prepare a meal) 5
The boundaries of the process are not implied in one-state verbs (ex. run, eat); with two-state verbs, whether durative or punctual, the final boundary of the process is included in the predicate itself (ex. eat an apple, enter.)
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(4) 2-state verbs – punctual (enter) We wish to evaluate how Aktionsart contributes to the marking of event simultaneity, then we will see to what extent the use of grammatical aspect is important. We assume that on the one hand, the choice of verb type is intimately linked to the type of situation presented in the stimulus, and on the other hand, that it contributes actively to structuring the narrative. Indeed, whereas 0-state and 1-state verbs do not imply a change of situation and consequently represent stable events, 2-state verbs (whether durative or punctual) stand for unstable situations changing from one state to another. However, (3) has a much greater stability than (4), which makes it apt to represent ‘framing’ events. The use of (4) on the contrary should be restricted to sub-events that cannot be decomposed / analysed. These four verb types may appear in the simple or progressive form. We may suppose that Aktionsart contrast between 1-state, 2state (durative) and 2-state (punctual) verbs, as well as the use of grammatical aspect, has an impact on narrative structure. Simultaneity can therefore be created by the juxtaposition of two predicates: a durative predicate (1-state or 2-state (durative)) and a 2state (punctual) predicate, which indicates that the time interval between the beginning and the end of the event is fairly small. This creates simultaneity through a framing event disrupted by a punctual event. For example, in the Salmon clip, P1 is preparing a meal (2 state (durative) verb) while the cat takes slices of salmon (2 state (punctual) verb). This procedure is observed in both native speaker groups: its use should not be a problem for learners. We postulate after Schmiedtova 2004, but also Hopper 1979 (on Russian)6, Lambert, Carroll, von Stutterheim 2003 and many others, that the contrast between simple forms and aspectual forms contributes to creating framing events (using ongoingness) and framed events (using simple forms). We wish to see whether this also applies to French and English.
6
In Wenzell 1989
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Aktionsart: Results In all the clips, and for the three groups of speakers, E1 (framing event) is always used with durative predicates, whether 1-state or 2state. Subevents (as E1’ in Salmon or E2’ in Canal+) are predominantly expressed by 2-state punctual verbs, which confirms the validity of our assumption. As for E2, it is represented by a 2-state verb (punctual), in all three groups of speakers, in the clips in which it is a disrupting event: Hotdog and Canal+. When E2 is a parallel non-interfering event as in Salmon or Supermarket, E2 is represented by a 1-state verb or by a 2-state (durative) verb: contrast is less clearly marked. Aktionsart therefore obviously plays a major microstructuring role in creating framing and framed events; we may however wonder to what extent the combination of Aktionsart contrast with grammatical aspect contrast entails the expression of simultaneity. Grammatical aspect contrast and event disruption We observe in our database that ‘en train de’ in French is systematically associated with durative predicates, sometimes 1-state but mostly 2-state (durative). On the contrary, V-ing may be used with 1-state or 2-state (durative or punctual) predicates. Learners of English seem to have adopted the patterns of their target language and are not influenced by the restrictions to the expression of ongoingness in French. This suggests that bounded predicates are used in the progressive in French and English to describe framing events that are part of the main structure of the narrative (‘he’s preparing a meal (E1), he slices salmon (E1’)…’). The use of the progressive is therefore not restricted to background utterances, as suggested by Hopper 1979 (in Wenzell 1989). However, we assume that predicates in the progressive (framing events) contrast with predicates in the simple form (framed events) to create simultaneity. Table 5 presents the rate of aspectual contrast in the five clips for native speakers and advanced French learners of English.
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Fr L1 Eng L1 Fr L1 Eng L2
Hotdog 25% 65% 90%
Supermarket 42% 47% 60%
Canal + 42% 72%
Salmon 50% 37%
Soup 58% 55%
70%
40%
40%
Table 5: % of utterances expressing simultaneity with grammatical aspect contrast
French natives use ‘en train de’ quite a lot (>40%) in four out of five clips. Indeed our first study of ‘en train de’ conducted on 50 native French speakers revealed that the average rate of usage of ‘en train de’ did not go beyond 26%7. Among the four clips for which ‘en train de’ is used massively, two do not express event disruption (Salmon, Supermarket). The three clips with event disruption (Hotdog, Soup and Canal+) have diverging patterns of aspectual contrast among French speakers. We may therefore conclude that event disruption in the stimulus is not a good predictor of the use of grammatical aspect contrast in French. On the contrary, having parallel events (interfering or not) as in Supermarket, Canal+, Salmon and Soup, seems to trigger aspectual contrast. Moreover, the fact that the only video clip with a very short E1 (Hotdog) does not entail a massive use of ‘en train de’ supports our previous result that ‘en train de’ is preferably used with durative predicates. In Hotdog, the focus in E1 is on the inceptive phase of the process: ‘le jeune garçon se met à lécher l’affiche’ rather than on the ongoing aspect because this event is very quickly disrupted by the entry of the elder brother in the room. Simultaneity is not created by aspectual contrast between ongoing and simple verb forms. English speakers make different choices. They use aspectual contrast a lot for the two video clips featuring event disruption: Hotdog, Soup and Canal+ (respectively 65, 55 and 72%), but make a rather moderate use of this device for the other two clips. Therefore it seems that clips featuring event disruption (Hotdog, Soup and Canal+) provoke the use of aspectual contrast, whereas clips featuring parallel
7
Leclercq, P., PhD Thesis, chapter 7 (work in progress).
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non-interfering events do not entail the use of aspectual contrast to the same extent. The event disruption feature consequently seems to trigger the use of aspectual contrast among English natives, whereas durativity is what provokes the use of ‘en train de’. As for learners, they are closer to the English pattern than to the French pattern. In the Hotdog and Supermarket narratives, they even surpass the contrast rate of English speakers. At any rate, they strongly diverge from the norm established by our control group of French native speakers. Aktionsart and grammatical aspect contrasts seem to play a major role in the microstructuring of the narrative and the expression of simultaneity. We are now going to analyse the way temporal adverbials are used in Hotdog and Canal+ narratives: we want to check the impact of event disruption in the stimulus on the use of adverbials.
Temporal Adverbials Temporal adverbials contribute to the marking of simultaneity and the macrostructuring of the narrative in indicating temporal rupture (‘tout d’un coup’, ‘suddenly’), the opening of a temporal framework in which a series of events take place (‘pendant que’, ‘while’) or successivity (‘et puis’, ‘then’). In the latter case, the context tells us whether the narrated events are in a sequence or are simultaneous. The results presented in Table 6 show the type of temporal adverbials used in the five clips for our three groups of speakers. This table reveals a clear preference for the expression of sequentiality among English native speakers, while French natives prefer using temporal rupture. As for learners, they predominantly use adverbials expressing sequentiality; however they use adverbials marking the
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opening of two parallel intervals (‘at the same time’, ‘while’) much more than both groups of native speakers. We therefore proceed with an analysis of the way temporal adverbials are used in addition to aspectual marking in clips presenting event disruption (Hotdog, Canal+). Indeed we saw that French speakers rarely use grammatical aspect contrast with Hotdog, whereas they use it at a very high rate with Canal+. We consequently wish to see how adverbials supplement aspectual contrast to express event disruption. Adverbials Temporal rupture (%) Parallel intervals (%) Sequentiality (%) Juxtaposition (%) No simultaneity (%) Iterativity (%)
Fr L1 N=12 33,2 15 23,4 11,7 1,7 8,2
Eng L1 N=20 17,1 18,3 39,4 7,2 / 8,3
Fr L1 Eng L2 N=10 14 28 42 8 / 4
6,7
6,7
4
Others (%)
Table 6: Temporal Adverbials (5 clips)
In Hotdog narratives, French speakers prefer using temporal rupture adverbials (‘et là’, ‘à ce moment-là’, ‘tout à coup’) whereas English speakers use sequentiality (‘then’). Near-native French learners of English use temporal rupture adverbials in the same proportion as French natives: their use of adverbials is not target-like at all. Adverbials Temporal Rupture (%) Parallel intervals (%) Sequentiality (%) Juxtaposition (%)
Fr L1 N=12
Eng L1 N=20
Fr L1 Eng L2 N=10
66,5
20
60
8,5
25
30
40 10
10
25
21
The influence of L1 French on near-native French learners of English
No simultaneity (%)
5 Table 7: Temporal Adverbials, Hotdog
In the Canal+ narratives (Table 8), French speakers also prefer using adverbials expressing temporal rupture (58%), just like English speakers, who nevertheless make abundant use of sequentiality as well (30%). As for learners, they neither follow a source nor a target language pattern and never use temporal rupture adverbials. They either use sequentiality like English natives (40%) or parallel intervals at a much higher rate than the other two groups (30%). Adverbials Temporal rupture (%) Parallel intervals (%) Sequentiality (%) Juxtaposition (%) No simultaneity (%)
Fr L1 N=12
Eng L1 N=20
Fr L1 Eng L2 N=10
58
40
10
16,5
20
30
8,5 8,5
30
40 20
8,5
10
Table 8: Temporal adverbials, Canal+
We observe that French speakers, whether they use aspectual contrast to mark event disruption or not (Canal+, Hotdog), use temporal rupture adverbials at a very high rate (Canal+ 58%, Hotdog 65%). English speakers, who use aspectual contrast a lot in these two clips, do not use temporal rupture adverbials systematically. Sequentiality is their favourite option: they favour sequentiality with strong aspectual contrast. (f) ‘So it is in a supermarket and there is a guy who works there and there is a customer, woman and she is taking all the tins of the same product and putting them into her trolley.’ (Eng L1)
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Finally, learners use their target language pattern for aspectual marking, but are still very much influenced by the French way of using adverbials, even if their use of adverbials is sometimes neither source-like nor target-like (as in the Canal+ clip). To conclude, English speakers mark event disruption above all using aspectual contrast, in combination with adverbials expressing sequentiality. French speakers, however, favour temporal rupture adverbials, with or without grammatical aspect contrast. Aspectual contrast therefore plays a major role in the expression of simultaneity in English, whereas in French the use of adverbials is predominant. Learners have adopted the English use of aspectual contrast, but their achievement in the use of adverbials is less clear-cut: learners sometimes use them like French speakers do (Hotdog), whereas in other cases (Canal+), learners behave differently from the two groups of natives.
Conclusion Presentatives, aspect and temporal adverbials all take part in the structuration of the narrative, but presentatives do not directly express simultaneity between two events. The use of presentatives to ground and structure the narrative is massive among French natives and French learners of English; however, English speakers use them a lot for P1 but not for P2. For English speakers, presentatives have a discourse grounding role rather than a structuration role. Temporal adverbials are used by the three groups of speakers in order to macrostructure the narrative, even if the type of adverbials chosen by French natives, English natives and learners may differ. Presentatives Macrostructure of the narrative
Fr L1 + Eng L1 –
Aktionsart
-
Gram. Aspect -
Temporal Adverbials +
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The influence of L1 French on near-native French learners of English FrL1Eng L2 +
Microstructure of the narrative Simultaneity
-
+
+
-
-
+
+
+
Table 9: Structure of the narrative and simultaneity
Finally, at a microstructural level, the use of aspectual contrast, whether Aktionsart contrast or grammatical aspect contrast, plays a fundamental role for all three groups. Aktionsart contrast is used in a similar way by all speakers and creates a distinction between framing and framed events. However, there are some differences as concerns the use of grammatical aspect contrast: French speakers are sensitive to the durative quality of events when they use ‘en train de’, which is not the case with V-ing in English. This new study therefore confirms the importance of the durative and telic (2 state verbs) dimensions in the use of ‘en train de’ in French, as well as its propension to be used with simultaneous events. Moreover, the use of the progressive does not necessarily change the discursive status of an utterance since it does not always entail backgrounding. Our results therefore contribute to a better definition of the advanced learner variety: very advanced French learners of English perform native-like at a microstructural level, but remain extremely influenced by L1 French at the macrostructural level (presentatives, temporal adverbials). Their use of these two markers suggests that there is some sort of ‘advanced learner variety’ that maintains the macrostructural patterns of their L1, a finding that is in accordance with those of von Stutterheim 2003.
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Appendix – presentation of the five commercials Hotdog clip: A young boy comes home from school, makes himself a hotdog, bites into the sandwich and the mustard splashes onto the poster of a young woman on the wall. The young boy starts licking the poster (E1), and his brother enters the room (E2) and sees him licking the poster (E2’). Canal+ clip: A man is watching Formula 1 on TV on his sofa (E1) when a gang of mechanics come in (E2) and start changing the sides of his sofa as if it were a racing car (E2’), then they go away (E2’). Salmon clip: A man is preparing a meal (E1), washing vegetables, slicing the salmon etc. (E1’), and in the meantime a cat takes slices of salmon (E2), probably to eat them all. Soup clip: A young man is slurping soup noisily while reading a newspaper and watching a tennis game on TV (E1); the umpire says ‘quiet please’ (E2) until the young man stops slurping. Supermarket clip: A salesman walks around in a supermarket (E1), and in the background a woman customer is filling up her trolley with cans of food (E2).
The influence of L1 French on near-native French learners of English
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—— work in progress. Influence de la L1 dans l’organisation des discours chez les apprenants francophones avancés/quasi-natifs de l’anglais. Thèse de doctorat, Paris 8. Schmiedtova, Barbara, 2004. At the same time… The expression of simultaneity in learner varieties, PhD thesis, MPI Series in Psycholinguistics. Slobin, Dan. I., 2003. ‘Language and thought online: Cognitive consequences of linguistic relativity’ in D. Gentner & S. GoldinMeadow (Eds.), Language in mind: Advances in the investigation of language and thought (pp. 157–191). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. von Stutterheim, Christiane, Klein, Wofgang, 1989. ‘Referential Movement in Descriptive and Narrative Discourse’ in Language Processing in Social Context, Rainer Dietrich, Carl F. Grauman (editors). Amsterdam: North Holland. von Stutterheim, Christiane, 2003. ‘Linguistic Structure and information organisation: The case of very advanced learners’ in EUROSLA Yearbook, vol. 3, edited by Susan Foster-Cohen and Simona Pekarek Doehler, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 183–206. Wenzell, Vanessa E., 1989. ‘Transfer of Aspect in the English Oral Narratives of Native Russian Speakers’ in Transfer in Language Production, Dechert, H., Raupach, M., Chapter 5. Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 71–97.
