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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
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- Source: Language, Interaction and Acquisition, Volume 6, Issue 1, Jan 2015, p. 15 - 41
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Abstract
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.