Les pronoms objets directs de la 3e personne et leur apport aux indices du genre grammatical dans le discours oral des enseignants en immersion

摘要

This study investigates the frequency and distribution of third-person direct object pronouns in French (le, la, les, l’) and the extent to which they indicate grammatical gender in two oral corpora. The primary corpus (37.7 hours) involves six teachers of six different immersion classes in the Montreal area while the secondary corpus (33 hours) involves parent-child interaction. In both contexts, the pronouns were distributed in descending order as follows: le > l’ > les > la. Of all instances of direct object third-person clitic pronouns, 71% of those used by teachers and 54% of those used by parents were not marked for grammatical gender. These results suggest a possible link between classroom input and the difficulties immersion students have in accurately using grammatical gender. By way of conclusion, we call for form-focused instructional techniques that would highlight the relationship between grammatical gender and certain noun endings