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Article published In: Interactional Linguistics
Vol. 4:1 (2024) ► pp.3–37

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Longitudinal change in linguistic resources for interaction

The case of tu vois (‘you see’) in L2 French

ORCiD logo with link | Stockholm University | University of Neuchâtel
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Stockholm University.

Published online: 23 October 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/il.23001.sko
Abstract
This article presents a longitudinal study of a second language (L2) French speaker’s (Aurelia) use of the construction tu vois (‘you see’) over 15 months. Research on first language (L1) French has shown that tu vois has been subject to grammaticalization, whereby the construction in spoken language frequently serves as a discourse marker rather than a complement-taking predicate construction expressing visual perception. Drawing on longitudinal Conversation Analysis, I qualitatively and quantitatively analyze Aurelia’s use of tu vois in relation to its turn position and interactional purposes. I document a similar change happening in Aurelia’s use of the construction over time as what has been observed in L1 French: While she initially deploys tu vois exclusively in its ‘literal’ sense of visual perception and with a complement (tu vois X, ‘you see X’), she eventually starts using it as a semantically bleached discourse marker for interaction-organizational and interpersonal purposes. A few ‘hybrid’ cases demonstrate the progressive nature of this change, and indicate further similarities between L2 acquisition and L1 grammaticalization processes. I discuss possible reasons for the documented change and address implications of the findings for research on both the development of L2 grammar-for-interaction and language change more generally.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Grammaticalization of tu vois (‘you see’) and other complement-taking predicate constructions
  • 3.The acquisition and changing use of linguistic resources for interaction in the L2
  • 4.Data and method
  • 5.Analysis
    • 5.1Overall tendencies: From low-frequency predicate construction to high-frequency DM
      • Turn/TCU-final tu vois
      • Turn/TCU-initial tu vois
      • TCU-medial tu vois
      • Free-standing tu vois
      • Quantitative distribution
    • 5.2Hybrid cases: Grammaticalization-in-progress?
  • 6.Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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