The conceptualization of passive voice constructions in L2-Dutch and L2-Spanish of French speaking students

In this paper, we compare the realization of agent-defocusing through periphrastic passives by French-speaking students of Dutch and Spanish. French speaking students encounter several difficulties when expressing agent-defocusing in Dutch and Spanish. Even though these three languages have a periphrastic passive (auxiliary + past participle), their form and function vary. Whereas the French periphrastic passive has essentially only one auxiliary, namely être ‘be’ (Gaatone 1998), Dutch has two auxiliaries, worden ‘become’ with a process perspective, and zijn ‘be’, with a state perspective (Cornelis & Verhagen 1995). The Spanish passive can be constructed with ser ‘be’ (process) or estar ‘be’ (end-state), but is rather marked, as the most frequently used defocusing strategy is the reflexive se-passive (Tolchinsky & Rosado 2005). Our study focuses on C1-level argumentative scientific texts, namely master theses written in Dutch/Spanish by French speaking students. The motivation for this selection is threefold: (1) passive constructions are more frequent in advanced language production (Hinkel 2002), (2) periphrastic passives are associated to a more written formal style (Chafe and Danielewicz 1987, Biber 1988), (3) students are being taught that a detached perspective (which can be obtained through the use of passives) is appropriate in scientific texts. In this master theses corpus, we analyze the formal and functional characteristics of L2 periphrastic passives. When French speaking students use passive voice constructions in order to express agent-defocusing in Dutch/Spanish, they have to make several decisions. Formally important issues are: auxiliary selection (worden versus zijn in Dutch, ser versus estar in Spanish), range of main verbs used as past participle, and semantic role configuration. Functionally important issues are: appropriateness, frequency, and argumentative development of the macrostructure of the text. In this respect, we will analyze whether passives are privileged in specific ...