In the last thirty years the development of the Cognitive Metaphor Theory (e.g. Lakoff, 1987, 2006; Lakoff and Johnson, 1999) has led to vast research into metaphor. The study of linguistic metaphor was followed by a body of work into pictorial metaphor (Forceville, 1994, 1996) and multimodal metaphor (Forceville, 2007, 2008, 2009). In the present contribution we explore the use of verbo-pictorial metaphors in advertising through a corpus of French print ads. Starting from the claim that adverts serve a persuasive purpose, it will be argued that multimodal metaphor contributes to that purpose. The paper addresses three issues: a) how multimodal metaphors are manifested in the French advertisements; b) how image and text interact in a concrete type of multimodal metaphor in French print advertisements, namely verbo-pictorial metaphor; c) how verbo-pictorial metaphor performs a pragmatic function in advertising.

This cross-sectional study in the acquisition of future temporality by English-speaking L2 French learners presents a descriptive account of the major contrastive features of the expression in futurity in English and French before considering learnability implications. A personal narrative and a cloze task were administered to L2 French learners (n = 34) at three proficiency levels and French native speaker controls (n = 14). Analyses revealed task and proficiency effects, but all learners used a variety of morphological forms to express futurity in their personal narratives, and appear to be acquiring temporal and modal values associated with the future.

L'objectif de ce travail est de déterminer la raison d'être de deux formes passives concurrentes en français, à savoir la passive canonique en être suivi du participe passé, comme: Jean a été renvoyé de son travail et la passive en se faire suivi du verbe à l'infinitif, comme: Jean s'est fait renvoyer de son travail. Ainsi, nous examinerons les contraintes aspectuelles qui pèsent sur le passif canonique et qui peuvent obliger le locuteur à utiliser la passive en se faire, ce qui en fait une construction complémentaire. De plus, nous verrons que l'idée traditionnellement répandue dans la littérature selon laquelle la différence entre les deux constructions se situerait au niveau de la responsabilité du référent du sujet, doit être abandonnée au profit d'une différence sémantique reposant sur l'affectation du référent du sujet.

This paper investigates the alternation of mid-open and mid-close vowels in southern French, a pattern known as the loi de position, and its relation to schwa. I offer a critical survey of the main analyses that have been put forward in the literature, showing how different conceptions of schwa influence the interpretation of the loi de position. I demonstrate that even in varieties where the pattern is considered fully productive, there are a number of exceptional cases that lend themselves to a usage-based approach. I develop an analysis of the phenomenon in the framework of Cognitive Grammar: the loi de position is formalized as the result of the interplay between substantive and symbolic constructions which emerge through usage.

The aim of this study is twofold: first, to find evidence for additional advanced stages in L2 French. The continuum of Bartning and Schlyter (2004) is taken as a point of departure. It is hypothesized that a number of linguistic criteria will account for high-level proficiency. It was earlier found that besides morpho-syntax, formulaic sequences and information structure are interesting phenomena for highly proficient learners (Bartning, Forsberg and Hancock, 2009). Three more measures are now added, i.e. perceived nativelikeness, lexical richness and fluency.

The second aim of this study is to contribute to the debate on the possibility of nativelike attainment. The study shows that several measures are prone to characterise nativelike performance in highly proficient users among whom some attain nativelikeness.

This paper addresses contemporary trends in the use of general extenders in two recent corpora of spontaneous French stratified by age. In these corpora, certain variants (e.g. et tout) are highly prevalent in the speech of young people compared to older speakers, while others are not. Other studies have shown that general extenders’ form as well as frequency tends to vary with respect to speakers’ age, while some extenders may also undergo grammaticalisation. The present study includes a comparison with a late 20th-century corpus of spoken French, and finds that not only age grading but also generational change might be occurring. This conclusion is supported by qualitative and quantitative analysis of the contemporary data, showing that the forms most frequent among young people appear to have acquired new pragmatic functions.