Variable future-time reference in French: A comparison of learners in a study-abroad and a foreign-language context

Abstract

This study seeks to advance understanding of second-language (L2) acquisition of future-time reference in French, by comparing the developmental trajectories of learners living in and away from the target-language setting. Study-abroad learners in France (n= 45), foreign-language learners living in the US (n= 37), and native speakers of Hexagonal French (n= 30) participated in this study. They completed a written-contextualized task, a language-proficiency test and a background questionnaire. For each written-contextualized-task item, participants selected from among three responses that differed with respect to the form (inflectional future, periphrastic future, present). Items were designed to test for the influence of three factors on the form selected: presence/absence of a lexical temporal indicator, temporal distance, and (un)certainty. Additionally, two extra-linguistic factors were examined: learning context and proficiency level. The analyses of frequency and the multinomial logistic regressions suggest that, despite developmental similarities between learning contexts, acquisitional paths of study-abroad and foreign-language learners were not identical.

On the role of the present indicative in variable future-time reference in Hexagonal French

“…To our knowledge, the current study is the first to include three separate forms in a single statistical model of variable future-time reference in French oral production (see Edmonds and Gudmestad (2015) and Gudmestad and Edmonds (2016) for written data). We argue that unless the futurate present occurs marginally in a given dataset, an analysis that includes just two of these forms results in an incomplete understanding of variable FTR.…”

Beyond the Present Indicative: Lexical Futures as Indicators of Development in L2 Spanish

“…Namely, this body of work has shown similarities to NS research in that clause type, temporal distance, and temporal adverbials have significantly predicted learner future‐time expression (Gudmestad & Geeslin, , ; Kanwit, ; Kanwit & Solon, ; Solon & Kanwit, ). Similarly, research on L2 French variation has demonstrated that learners begin with high rates of the PI before shifting to the use of additional forms, such as the PF and MF, and that learner use of temporal adverbials is differentially distributed across future‐time forms (Gudmestad & Edmonds, ; Moses, ; Schlyter, ). Additional insights on the L2 acquisition of futurity will be considered in light of lexical futures in the following section.…”