PRENDRE EN FRANÇAIS LANGUE SECONDE: ORTHONYMIE ET ORALISATION DES PROCES CHEZ LES ELEVES CAMEROUNAIS DES LYCEES DE YAOUNDE

Tony ONGUENE METE Université de Yaoundé 1/ MODYCO / CREFSCO

Abstract

THE VERB TO TAKE IN FRENCH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE: ORTHONYMY AND ORALISATION OF THE PROCESSES OBSERVED IN CAMEROON STUDENTS IN YAOUNDE HIGH SCHOOLS This reflection focuses on the ability of the Cameroonian college student to select the lexis appropriate to their communicative aim. We are questioning about the role of a polysemic and generic verb such as to take in this process of lexicalization of processes. For that purpose, we group an oral corpus in a plurilinguistic environment, our informants being exposed to an input of 230 to 300 indigenous languages. On the other hand, they only value French. Despite this priority given to French, which is their target language, we note that take is not always orthonymic. Middle school students expand its meaning and reinforce its “object manipulation” verb traits beyond its domain of reference. Take competes in this way with precise, specific verbs, the selection of which could be correct or orthonymic. We come to such conclusions after analysing the immediate context of instantiation of to take to which the situational and pragmatic context is added. All this allows us to make hypotheses about the meaning attributed by young people and to speculate on the process designed to identify orthonyms and non-orthonyms. Keywords: Take, orthonym, granularity, acquisition, French second language.