Resources and obstacles in very advanced L2 French

This study builds on the proposition that there are six developmental stages for spoken L2 French, based on morpho-syntactic criteria (Bartning and Schlyter 2004). In order to investigate developmental stages ‘beyond stage 6’, oral productions of several groups of advanced learners/users and native speakers are analyzed in terms of resources and obstacles. Among the resources, we investigate expected late features such as formulaic language and elaboration of information structure (Forsberg 2008; Hancock 2007). Morpho-syntactic deviances (MSDs), i.e. obstacles are also investigated. MSDs are expected to be almost absent beyond stage 6 (von Stutterheim 2003). Surprisingly, they continue to be present even at these very high levels. The results also show that formulaic language and information structure are promising measures of high levels, although the latter did not yield significant differences compared to lower stages. The study concludes by the proposal of a transitional stage with L2 users called functional bilinguals, which would constitute a stage between the advanced learner and the near-native speaker.