The Acquisition of the Subjunctive Mood by L2 French Learners

Abstract

The second language (L2) acquisition of tense, aspect, and mood/modality (TAM) has been widely explored as it holds the promise of a better understanding of the L2 learners’ linguistic competences, particularly semantically and morpho-syntactically. This study focuses on the acquisition of the subjunctive mood by L1 English learners of L2 French via the Interface Hypothesis, targeting the morphology-syntax and morphosyntax-semantics interfaces.We sought to address the following research questions: (1) Does the L2 French learners’ interlanguage grammar display a mood contrast between the indicative and the subjunctive at different interfaces? (2) Will there be a syntactic effect? That is, will the participants perform better with some syntactic triggers selecting the subjunctive than others based on their properties located at the morphology-syntax interface? (3) Will there be a semantic effect (i.e. will the participants perform differently with different semantic verb classes) based on their properties at the morphosyntax-semantics interface, or is the selection of the subjunctive in L2 French learners ‘lexically routinized’, as advanced by Poplack et al. (2018)? (4) following the IH, will the participants perform better with subjunctive triggers in obligatory contexts (OCs) (contexts in which only one mood can be selected) located at internal interfaces (the morphology-syntax and the morphosyntax-semantics interfaces) than with triggers in non-obligatory (NOCs) contexts (contexts in which two moods can be selected) located at external interfaces (in our case, the morphosyntax-semantics-pragmatics interface)? (5) How do the different interfaces affect the acquisition of the subjunctive properties? To address these questions, 39 L2 French learners from several major American universities grouped in three different proficiency levels (Low, Intermediate, and Advanced) completed four written tasks: a preference and judgment task, a grammaticality and correction task, a cloze test, and semi-guided production tasks. The results of quantitative analyses showed that the Advanced group’s interlanguage displayed some contrast between the two moods, but with a strong trigger effect. Proficiency, syntactic and semantic effects were also found for all three groups who performed better at the morphology-syntax interface than at the morphosyntax-semantics interface. Finally, and following the Interface Hypothesis, the acquisition of the subjunctive appears to be more difficult for properties situated at external interfaces (the morphosyntax-semantics-pragmatics interface) than at internal interfaces (morphology-syntax and morphosyntax-semantics interfaces).