‘Frapper’ ou ‘jeter sur’, comment choisir ? Apport de l’analyse de corpus expérimentaux

Abstract

Teachers and researchers have shown the heterogeneity of the lexical competence. Recent studies have highlighted didactic proposals involving explicit learning around a single thematic domain, based on linguistic models, notably referring to movement verbs (Garcia-Debanc & Aurnague 2020). We offer a corpus method to study the distribution of verbs of another thematic domain -- namely collision -- and to study the semantic acquisition of L2 verbs. This study opens potentially new ways to study and teach vocabulary in an additional language.

This study involves two corpora in French L1 and L2 of causal chains like "X does an action with an object which touches Y" in which we analyze verbs expressing contact. Our corpora contain oral descriptions of 16 video clips told by 22 French L1 speakers, that we compare to oral descriptions in French L2 told by 29 speakers of Syrian Arabic L1. In our videos, the object used as well as the distance between the two protagonists varies. Like Majid et al. (2008), we did cluster analyses of the verbs to determine whether they shared the same meaning for the two groups.

These analyses first show that the choice of a certain verb depends on the distance, especially in French L1. Qualitative analyses reveal that learners tend to prefer and over-use certain contact verbs (i.e. frapper/ hit) in every situation, including cases in which verbs expressing caused motion of the objet are preferred in French L1 (i.e. jeter sur/ throw on). These results show that the acquisition of verbs meaning in an additional language is a complex process, and that the use of a verbal form does not imply the acquisition of its meaning in context. We draw from this observation to propose didactic perspectives, relying on the observation and meta-linguistic analysis of oral and video corpora in French L1 by learners, involving for instance verb classification activities.