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Approaches and Methods in French Second Language Acquisition Research
Edited by Martin Howard
[Research Methods in Applied Linguistics 9] 2025
► pp. 128–153

Chapter 6
Methodological considerations in the study of morphology in L2 French

 | Lund University
This chapter focuses on L2 French and offers an overview of research methods used in the domain of French inflectional morphology. More precisely, the chapter describes and exemplifies methodological approaches, study designs, and data collection procedures used in studies on L2 development of French morphology in the noun and verb phrases. Furthermore, the chapter deals with some methodological challenges with specific reference to morphological aspects of French, as compared to other languages. Finally, the complementarity of different methodological approaches, limitations in the literature and implications for future research are discussed.
Keywords: morphology, noun phrase, verb phrase, methods, methodological approaches, study designs, gender, number, tense, mood, aspect
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • The study of morphology in L2 French — Methodological approaches, study designs and data collection procedures
    • Morphology in the noun phrase
    • Gender
    • Number
    • Morphology in the verb phrase
    • Subject-verb agreement in person and number
    • Tense and aspect
    • Modality
  • Observations from the preceding section
  • Methodological challenges in the study of French morphology
    • Operationalization of gender assignment and agreement
    • Transcription and analysis of French verb-final /e/
    • The discrepancy of verb morphology in spoken and written French
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Author queries
  • References
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