This article deals with constructions such as Jean a fait une promenade or Jean a soif which contain verbs called here ‘support verbs’. These structures are known to pose immense difficulties for the translator (whether human or automatic) and part oif the purpose of this paper is to suggest representations which render their translation easier on the basis of work carried out by the author within the EC Eurotra Machine Translation project. First of all, it is argued on linguistic grounds that support verb constructions behave differently from constructions containing ‘ordinary’ verbs such as lire or ouvrir. In particular, it is claimed that the syntactic and semantic head of Jean a fait une promenade is the noun promenade and not the verb faire which is a mere carrier of tense and aspect. We then raise the question of the representation of support verb constructions for the purposes of machine translation and examine several alternative possibilities. The representations adopted below are shown to lead to simple transfer rules limited to the substitution of lexical items which do not entail complex structural changes between source and target sentences. The linguistic ideas presented here have been implemented in nine languages within the Eurotra project but most of the discussion is based on contrastive evidence between French and English.

Existe-il un lien lexical entre le verbe intransitif dormir, le verbe transitif endormir et le verbe pronominal neutre s'endormir? La réponse positive réside dans la structure cognitive. Du point de vue sémantique, dormir présente un procÈs statif, endormir un procÈs causatif et s'endormir un procÈs inchoatif. La structure congitive du statif correspond au prédicat ETRE, celle du causatif à /CAUSER-ALLER-ETRE/ et celle de l';inchoatif à /ALLER-ETRE/. La sturcture congitive confirme en fait que le verbe endormir est une valence augmentée de dormir et que s'amuser ou remplir – se remplir, de même que des phrases comme Le métal rouille /L'humidité rouille le métal./Le métal se rouille. Une fois saisi le fait que la structure cognitive permet d'établir des liens lexicaux, on expliquera la difféence entre divers types de verbes pronominaux neutres. Ainsi, s'endormir se distingue de se rouiller par la position actantielle du sujet á l'intérieur de la structure lexicale. Celui de s'endormir représente le prédicat /ALLER/, tandis que celui de s'amuser, représente le prédicat /ETRE/. Finalement, l'approche cognitive permet de dépasser le lexÈme et de nouer une relation entre les structures causatives /CAUSE–EFFET/ et les structures résultatives /sultatives /ACTION–RESULTAT/, comme avec Elle se tue au travail.

Proceeding from the dichotomy theme/rheme, we aim to produce a typology of certain syntactical structures of French, recorded from a corpus of oral dialogues gathered in authentic situations. The first group affects statements which present the topicalization of a component: these statements are divided into four types, depending on whether the topicalized component is or is not associated with a lexical marker and with a re–occurrence through a substitute pronoun. The second group includes structures built on the rhematic marker ‘c’est': they are likewise divided into four main types, themselves subdivided into eight variants which appear to play distinct parts in the structuration of dialogues.

This paper presents a hypothesis for the genesis of Creole French by drawing conclusions from an illustrative comparison of Louisiana Creole and Haitian Creole, and by presenting a depiction of the social-historical context in which Louisiana Creole developed.

Bickerton's bioprogram and Baker and Corne's model comparing Mauritian Creole and its Reunionese congener are considered and found to be inadequate descriptions of the genesis of Creole French, since they assume that all parts of colonial Saint-Domingue, the île Bourbon (Reunion) and the île de France (Mauritius) had the same demographic mix and social structure. This paper offers and alternative model which suggests that French planation colonies did not constitute monolithic socio–politico–economic entities. On the contrary, differences in social setting were reflected by variartions in the local form of Creole French. Furthermore, certain structural features were diffused from one territory to another via the focal centres that also diffused the colonial model of social, political and economic organization. These are considered together to account for the range of variation found today in Louisiana Creole, and to explain the striking similarities between Louisiana Cre le and its geographically most proximate Creole French congener, Haitian Creole.

Prior to the late 1960s second language acquisition was thought to be a relatively uninteresting phenomenon; it involved transferring grammatical properties already activated in the first language (L 1) onto second language (L 2) vocabulary. Successful L 2 learners were those who could capitalise on the similarities between the L 1 and the L 2, and eradicate the differences; and successful language teaching involved training learners to overcome the L 1-L 2 differences. Today, perceptions of second language acquisition are more sophisticated and nuanced. Second language acquisition researchers are interested in questions bearing not only on the influence of the L 1, but also on the degree of systematicity in L 2 development, the role that L 1, but also on the degree of systematicity in L 2 development, the role that conscious knowledge plays, the sources of variability in second language speaker performance, the ultimate levels of success achieved by L 2 learners of different ages, and individual differences between learners. The purpose of this article is to present what the authors believe to be some of the key issues which characterise current second language acquisition research, and to consider those issues within the specific context of the acquisition of French as second language.