Vocabulary aspects of advanced L2 French: Do lexical formulaic sequences and lexical richness develop at the same rate?

In her overview of research on the advanced L2 learner, Bartning (1997) aims at characterizing the advanced learner variety. This characterization is above all based on morphosyntactic traits. The aim of this contribution is to present additional characteristics of the advanced learner as defined by Bartning (1997), as well as to describe even more advanced levels based on recent research concerning spoken L2 French. More specifically, the main issue under investigation is whether two vocabulary measures, viz. lexical richness and lexical formulaic sequences, can be used to distinguish between different advanced levels and thus contribute to the characterization of the advanced learner of French. An additional issue investigated here is whether these two lexical aspects correlate with each other or whether they develop at different rates.