La Variabilité du pronom de la troisième personne en complément prépositionnel pour exprimer le réfléchi

Sammanfattning: Variability in the use of a linguistic feature is bound to create problems for the acquisition of this feature. Perhaps even more so, where the acquisition of a foreign language is concerned. But native speakers may also be puzzled by the choice they have to make and may not always be able to rely on rules. The following investigation on the different ways both Swedish students and native speakers cope with the variation of French pronouns to express reflexivity and the translation of the Swedish reflexive pronoun sig into French confirms these statements and urges us not only to account for this variation but also to discuss the reasons. Even if the fact that there are more forms to choose from is enough to explain the variation, we would still want to put order into the language or at least know when to use which form. Do native speakers all vary the same way? Is it possible to regulate the distribution of the forms and do speakers respect the rules? Do foreign language students vary like native speakers? Can foreign language students get the hinge of the variations?The choice of contrasting French with Swedish, rather than another language, lies partly in the fact that they are the languages which are best known to me and partly in the fact that both languages exhibit a richer choice between pronouns in the context of reflexivity than, e.g., English. My first premise is necessary, considering that the choice depends largely on pragmatic factors, including psycho-logical aspects, where judgement and “feeling” should be fairly sound and the second fact allows me to draw interesting parallels both between the ways of analysing the variations and the ways of using them. Usage for its part is obviously determined by history. This led me to broaden my analysis of the synchronic data and to consider even some historical facts.Variability is also known to be a pervasive feature of second language acquisition and production, as can be read in all the major works on the topic. Then again, this “acquisitional” kind of variability is not specific to L2 acquisition, though in contrast to the studies of L1 acquisition it is a recurrent theme in L2 studies. Therefore this study will also take into account the variation in reflexive usage between native informants of different ages and raise the question whether there is a common ground for both Swedish and French learners and in what respect.