An analysis of 519 gender errors (out of 9,378 modi®ers) in the advanced French interlanguage of 27 Dutch L1 speakers con®rms earlier ®ndings that gender assignment and/or agreement remain problematic for learners at all levels. A hypothesis derived from Pienemann's Processability Theory (1998a) that accuracy rates would be higher for gender agreement in structures involving no exchange of grammatical information between constituents was not con®rmed. The analysis of interindividual and intra-individual variation in gender accuracy rates revealed effects from avoidance and generalisation strategies, from linguistic variables, sociobiographical variables and psycholinguistic variables. We argue that gender errors can originate at the lemma level, at the gender node level, or at the lexeme level. Different psycholinguistic scenarios are presented to account for intra-individual variation in gender assignment and agreement.

An correlational analysis between accuracy levels of gender agreement ± based on an analysis of 519 gender errors out of 9378 modifiers in the advanced French interlanguage of 27 Flemish L1 speakers-and morphosyntactic and lexical variables, revealed a clear negative relationship between the number of gender errors and fluency variables. No relation was found between gender errors and other types of agreement errors. This suggests that more advanced learners, whose interlanguage speech production process is more automatised or proceduralised, do commit fewer gender errors but that good mastery of gender agreement does not imply an equally good mastery of other types of agreement.

ABSTRACT

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This article describes the development of temporal reference and clause-combining in the acquisition of French L2 by adult Moroccan Arabic L1 speakers. The contribution of iconicity and of transfer from L1 in this development is discussed. The path towards grammaticalisation is less clearly marked in the domain of clause combining than in the domain of temporal reference, where after use of lexical and pragmatic means, inflection on the verb develops. Grammaticalised subordination is rarely used, except for circumstancial clauses. Paratactic devices such as clefting and NP copy tend to be used for discursive functions such as the introduction of background information in narratives, for instance.