Cecilia GUNNARSSON

My research mainly concerns the acquisition of written French L2, but also written French L1. In this field of research, I study traditional acquisitionist aspects such as fluency, complexity and accuracy (principally morphology and syntax), as well as aspects more often tied to research in the development of writing in L1, and which relate to the oral/written interface. These aspects are memorized instances and the “liaison”.

Fluency, complexity and accuracy in L2 writing
I am interested in the possible relation between fluency, complexity and accuracy and in how these develop in the L2 learner. As an individual’s cognitive capacity is limited, will a L2 learner writing fluently make more errors or produce a less complex syntax than a learner writing less fluently? The relation between complexity and accuracy is it competitive or complementary?

Oral/written interface
- Retrieved memorized instances: The memorized instances I am looking into is when one linguistic item is produced instead of the expected one. This can take the form of substitution of radicals (nouns, verbs etc.), free morphemes (prepositions, conjunctions etc.) or morphemes tied to a radical. I am above all interested in the comparison between French L1 where this phenomenon is very frequent and will follow during all stages in school, and guided French L2 where retrieved memorized instances are rare and will make surface at a late stage of the acquisition. That is when the writers/learners start using automatisms during their writing.

- The liaison: Oral French is characterized by the natural phenomena of “enchaînement” of the final consonants with the vowel initial of the next word, which gives the impression of a continuous stream of speech. This propensity to tie the words together in speech counts as one of the difficulties of the French orthography: the novice learner has to learn to segment this continuous stream of speech to find the words and the lexical frontiers in order to restore them in writing by using graphic blanks. This ability to segment the words in written production is studied when we focalize on the “liaison” in L1 (see also Christiane Soum Favaro) and in L2.

Expertise/Valorization of research

Member of the scientific committee or the international conference Les troubles du langage écrit : de l’enfance à l’âge adulte, Université Toulouse 2 – le Mirail, 2012.

Member of the scientific committee or the international conference Phonlex 2010 – the liaison and other sandhi phenomena, Université Toulouse 2 - le Mirail. http://phonlex.free.fr

Organizer with Christiane Soum Favaro and Annelise Coquillon (UTM)  of the conference Phonlex 2010 : Liaison and other sandhi phenomena, Université Toulouse 2 Le Mirail, 8-10 septembre
 
Organizer with Emma Auriac-Slusarczyk (Laboratoire PAEDI, IUFM d’Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand) and Irène Fenoglio (ITEM, ENS-CNRS, Paris) of a Conscila workshop, « Plusieurs disciplines, diverses méthodes appliquées à un seul corpus d’écrits scolaires ‘Grenouille’ - copies d’élèves de CE2, CM2, 6ème, 4ème - Qu’apporte le pluridisciplinaire à l’étude de la production verbale écrite ? » Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, 26 mars 2010


Participation in research networks/projects

ANR no. 962 2801 W803 PHONLEX : de la phonologie aux formes lexicales : Liaison et cognition en français contemporain, Directeur de Phonlex : J. Durand, Laboratoire associé : Octogone - Jacques Lordat, Université Toulouse 2 Le Mirail.

GDR-CNRS 2657 APPVE Approche pluridisciplinaire de la Production verbale écrite (Dir. : D. Alamargot,), Pôle 2 - Processus : mises en œuvre et contraintes. (Coord. : L. Chanquoy & Irène Fenoglio)