L’acquisition du subjonctif chez les apprenants adultes de français langue seconde
This project aims at understanding the difficulties related to the acquisition of the French subjunctive in second language adult learners. More specifically, we will try to determine the different elements involved in its acquisition.   To begin with, we will present language theories from the 1950s to the present in order to shed light on the various elements affecting second language acquisition in adults. We will then look specifically at the situation of the French subjunctive. The subjunctive mode is generally described in the literature as difficult to acquire because its usages are complex and unique to the French language. However, as we will see, some studies have proven that the subjunctive in oral French is in fact quite simple. We will end this section by describing the subjunctive and its applications. This description will demonstrate the wide theoretical range of these applications which we will later compare with those found in everyday oral French.    In the last two sections of this work, we will analyze and discuss the results of five studies on the use of the subjunctive in French as a first and second language. First, we will demonstrate that, contrary to the received idea in the literature, the complexity of subjunctive applications does not affect its acquisition. We will in fact show that in spoken language, the subjunctive is rarely used, while its applications are relatively simple. We will then show that the main cause of its difficulty lies with the incapacity of learners to notice those verbs in the input due to its low frequency and its relatively slight saliency (in other words, its conspicuousness). We will also see that the acquisition of the subjunctive tends to be delayed in the learning process, largely because that acquisition is dependent on the development of the complex sentences in which it is found.
Acquisition French Subjunctive Frequency Language Acquisition