L'accord du participe passé : entre compétition de procédures et récupération en mémoire

Abstract

This article aims at showing that in learning and using the agreement of the French past participle (e.g., mange (eaten), people rely on the same processes as those previously described as concern the number agreement of nouns, adjectives, and verbs (Fayol, Thevenin, Totereau & Jarousse, 1999). Firstly, errors encountered on the past participles employed with have (instead of be or as adjectives) are due to the generalisation of the agreement procedure previously learned with adjectives and with the copule be (e.g., ils ont manges). Secondly, adults have better performances when dealing with the infinitive forms of the verbs which have less frequent past participle homophones than when dealing with other kinds of verbs (i.e., verbs without homophones or verbs having more frequent homophonous past participles), but only when those verbs are included in sentences determining the use of the infinitive mode. This result suggests that adults sometimes retrieve directly from memory inflected forms rather than applying an agreement procedure.