This volume is the published form of Anita Thomas’ doctoral thesis. From the introductory page it is unclear whether the thesis has been edited for publication purposes, or whether it has simply been published in the form in which it was submitted for examination. Full reading of the volume suggests that the latter is more likely to be the case, which has implications for the breadth of readership it might attract.
Thomas considers the L2 oral production of adult beginner learners of French, and the way in which in their production of regular verbs they use both a short form (je parle) and a long form (je parl[e]) in instances where either the present tense or the infinitive is required. Noting that such use is sometimes target-like and sometimes not, Thomas’ main concern is to establish whether there is any systematicity in learners’ use of the two forms. She formulates two hypotheses to explain learners’ use, drawing on studies of past tense morphology development that follow two main lines of argument. The first of these suggests that the lexical aspect of verbs exerts an influence on production, with learners tending to use short forms with static verbs, and long forms with dynamic verbs. The second by contrast argues that usage and frequency of forms in the input to which learners are exposed influence their production more strongly.
These two positions are examined in detail by Thomas in the first section of the book, ‘Partie Théorique’ in relation to the development of past tense morphology. Her discussion provides a useful summary of key theories and studies in this area, which is presented in a clear and accessible manner. Less convincing perhaps is her argument that the two positions might be transferred to non-past tense contexts, and indeed she provides surprisingly few supporting statements in this respect. The section ends with a statement of her hypotheses and a sub-section outlining and justifying her methods for data collection and analyses.
The second main section of the book sets out the results of her data collection and their analyses. Thomas firstly presents data concerning the input to which a group of adult L2 learners of French in Sweden were exposed, in terms of oral production from their teacher and the textbook material they used. Taking a sample of 16 regular –er verbs, she examines the extent to which they appear in the short or the long form in the input, finding that some occur more often in the short form, others in the long form, and that this is also related to lexical aspect. These same verbs and how they are used are then examined in oral data from learners from three sources – a free production task, an elicited imitation task and a recall task. Clear and comprehensive details of these data collection methods, and the subsequent analyses, are given. Thomas also gives a lucid and accessible overview of the theoretical underpinnings of imitation tasks. This section as a whole would therefore be of interest to researchers looking to undertake similar studies.
Thomas’ perhaps unsurprising overall conclusions from her data are, that there is a close relationship between lexical input and input frequency in terms of their influence on learners’ production, with a tendency for input frequency to have a greater influence.
Some of the presentation of the data is rather dense and the multiple sets of data sometimes require the reader to backtrack to previous chapters to gain a clear sense of the emerging overall picture of results. Thomas does, however, provide useful summaries at the end of each chapter, and the concluding chapter, giving an overview of the whole study, facilitates understanding of the author's conclusions to a certain extent.
In sum, this is a volume that would be of interest to those looking to undertake similar studies and would be a useful source of information for research students looking for guidance on structuring a thesis. As a published work, it would possibly have benefited from editing to make it more accessible to a wider audience.
