The Second Language Acquisition of French Tense, Aspect, Mood, and Modality par Dalila Ayoun

Abstract

Reviews 285 techniques ou trop détaillées semblent un peu longues, et la dernière partie du roman, qui décrit la création de la confrérie, est souvent invraisemblable (on a du mal à imaginer une trentaine de SDF qui entrent chez des dormeurs sans les réveiller). Pourtant, le roman invite le lecteur à entrer dans le jeu, à s’aventurer hors des confins du texte pour consulter une carte de l’Institut géographique national dont se sert le narrateur, y repérant des “zones blanches”, ou pour examiner les images satellites sur . Le jeu entre vérité et fiction chez Vasset, et ses projets sur les zones blanches (Un livre blanc, récit de 2007 qui décrit des explorations de l’Île-deFrance , et l’Atelier de géographie parallèle, collectif fondé par l’auteur, qui a pour objectif d’établir la géographie de ces zones) font en sorte que le lecteur se demande s’il n’y a pas parmi nous, dans les grandes villes, des promeneurs qui explorent les interstices urbaines, nous observant tout en restant invisibles. Eastern Illinois University Kathryn M. Bulver Linguistics edited by Stacey Katz Bourns Ayoun, Dalila. The Second Language Acquisition of French Tense, Aspect, Mood, and Modality. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2013. ISBN 978-90-272-0526-1. Pp. 252. $143. The intertwined concepts of tense, aspect, and modality (TAM) are perennial topics of investigation in the fields of linguistics and second language acquisition. These ways of communicating the timing of an event and its internal and external structure can differ substantially among languages,and such cross-linguistic differences are likely causes for difficulties in second language (L2) acquisition. The language learning pairing of French and English—the focus of this volume’s investigation—is notorious for confusion stemming from the fact that English tends to contrast perfective and progressive aspect, whereas the key contrast in French is perfective versus imperfective. The volume’s first three chapters introduce and catalog these and other features of TAM in the two languages, providing a background that is both descriptive from a theory-neutral perspective and explanatory within the Minimalist framework. A review of the extant research on L2 TAM acquisition takes a similar tack, first presenting an overview of less theory-dependent work and then shifting to a discussion of the generative research on French and other languages. The main contribution of the volume reports a large-scale study on L2 French, in which a series of elicitation tasks, cloze tests, and grammaticality judgment tasks were used to examine TAM in L2 learners. These tasks revealed that performance improved with increasing proficiency and that learners were capable of acquiring TAM features but did not use them systematically. Following a Minimalist account of TAM in the L2, Ayoun concludes that successful Anglophone learners of L2 French acquire several functional categories (Agreement Phrase, Tense Phrase, Mood Phrase), the appropriate mapping of the [perfective] feature on verbal morphology, the indicative-subjunctive distinction, and other features. The volume concludes with a section on “pedagogical implications” that, unexpectedly, is actually devoted more toward giving a general overview of SLA and pedagogical theories, rather than making specific suggestions for improving learners’ intake with respect to TAM issues. The suggestions that are made, on the other hand, offer common-sense advice to educators: TAM is best taught, Ayoun argues, by giving clear, explicit instruction using appropriate terminology; by relating TAM to universal concepts of time, temporality, and discourse; by relating new content to learners’ existing knowledge of TAM in their L1; and by appealing to metalinguistic knowledge. The volume is of great use on three levels. First, it provides a straightforward, thorough, and systematic rundown of the differences and similarities in TAM between English and French, thereby offering value to educators and linguists interested in reviewing or deepening their familiarity with this area. Second, the original study reported in the volume is impressive in its scope, and the volume handily sidesteps the long-term limitations of chaining itself to a current theoretical model of generative syntax by providing large amounts of descriptive data that are relevant to any syntactic-theory-neutral approach to second language acquisition . Finally...