Production et compréhension de la morphologie verbale en FLE : Les difficultés de l'accord sujet-verbe en nombre

Subject-verb agreement in number (3sg - 3pl) in spoken French is a heterogeneous morpho-syntactic domain where number is expressed in some groups of verbs and in some phonological contexts only. The acquisition of this agreement is a long and gradual process (Prévost, 2009). Both children learning French as their first language (L1) and older second language (L2) learners overuse the dominant pattern of the first conjugation (-er verbs) which leads to many omissions of plural verb forms in obligatory contexts (Ågren and van de Weijer, 2013a). This study compares the results of an oral production task with the results of an oral comprehension test eliciting singular and plural verb forms. 40 Swedish L2 learners of French at intermediate and low advanced levels (Bartning and Schlyter, 2004) completed both tasks. The results show that most of the L2 learners comprehend the distinction between singular and plural verb forms even though they do not produce it consistently. Furthermore, the data show an asymmetric pattern where plural verb forms are better comprehended than produced whereas singular verb forms are more correctly produced than comprehended. These differences between production and comprehension in L2 French are discussed from a usage-based perspective (Bybee, 2008; Ellis, 2008).