Pragmatic use of temporal adverbs in L1 and L2 French: Functions and syntactic positions of textual markers in a spoken corpus

This paper deals with the functions of a number of frequent temporal adverbs and their placement in the information structure produced by highly advanced L2 speakers of French. The study concerns both structural and pragmatic aspects of learner language that seem relevant for characterizing the highly proficient French L2 user. The pragmaticalization of these adverbs, i.e. the development of different pragmatic functions in L2, is investigated. The adverbs can occupy different positions in the utterance and we expect that the pragmaticalization of the adverbs entails their syntactic isolation in the information structure. The analysis of positions showed that, for two adverbs, argumentative functions in outer positions were absent even in the most advanced speaker group.