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Article published In: The Morphological Expression of Temporality on the Verb in French as a Second Language / L’expression morphologique de la temporalité sur le verbe en français langue seconde
Edited by Pascale Leclercq and Martin Howard
[Language, Interaction and Acquisition 6:1] 2015
► pp. 15–41

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What the present can tell us about the future

A variationist analysis of future-time expression in native and nonnative French

 | Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour
 | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Published online: 28 August 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lia.6.1.01edm
This investigation studies the second language (L2) development of variable future-time expression in French. One hundred and eighteen nonnative speakers at four proficiency levels and 30 native speakers completed a written-contextualized task (WCT), a language-proficiency test and a background questionnaire. The verb form (inflectional future, periphrastic future, and present) selected for each item on the WCT was coded for three independent linguistic factors: presence of a lexical temporal indicator, temporal distance and (un)certainty. Multinomial logistic regression tests and a follow-up analysis of high and low frequency of the present demonstrated that this form plays a complex role in native-speaker variability and is acquired late in contexts of future-time reference for nonnative speakers.
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