The use of adjectives in the three positions through an example of a written corpus of allophone students

Šišić, Emir

doi:10.22210/strjez/54-1/2

Foreign languages : a journal of applied linguistics, Vol. 54 No. 1, 2025.

Original scientific paper

https://doi.org/10.22210/strjez/54-1/2

The use of adjectives in the three positions through an example of a written corpus of allophone students

Emir Šišić orcid.org/0000-0003-4013-9691 ; Université de Sarajevo, Sarajevo, Bosnie-Herzégovine

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cite

APA 6th Edition

Šišić, E. (2025). The use of adjectives in the three positions through an example of a written corpus of allophone students. Strani jezici, 54 (1), 35-60. https://doi.org/10.22210/strjez/54-1/2

MLA 8th Edition

Šišić, Emir. "The use of adjectives in the three positions through an example of a written corpus of allophone students." Strani jezici, vol. 54, no. 1, 2025, pp. 35-60. https://doi.org/10.22210/strjez/54-1/2. Accessed 23 Jul. 2026.

Chicago 17th Edition

Šišić, Emir. "The use of adjectives in the three positions through an example of a written corpus of allophone students." Strani jezici 54, no. 1 (2025): 35-60. https://doi.org/10.22210/strjez/54-1/2

Harvard

Šišić, E. (2025). 'The use of adjectives in the three positions through an example of a written corpus of allophone students', Strani jezici, 54(1), pp. 35-60. https://doi.org/10.22210/strjez/54-1/2

Vancouver

Šišić E. The use of adjectives in the three positions through an example of a written corpus of allophone students. Strani jezici [Internet]. 2025 [cited 2026 July 23];54(1):35-60. https://doi.org/10.22210/strjez/54-1/2

IEEE

E. Šišić, "The use of adjectives in the three positions through an example of a written corpus of allophone students", Strani jezici, vol.54, no. 1, pp. 35-60, 2025. [Online]. https://doi.org/10.22210/strjez/54-1/2

Abstract

This study focuses on the acquisition of French (L3) by Bosnian students of French language and literature at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Sarajevo. The main element observed is the acquisition of adjectives in the three positions: preposed, postposed, and attributive, through the written corpus Didacquis, which includes various narrative and argumentative topics: studies, travel, and friendships. Regarding the position of adjectives in the sentence, we follow the theory of Abeillé & Godard (1999), which advocates for the order and weight trait of adjectives. The corpus consists of 156 written productions from 54 university students in the 2nd and 3rd years of their undergraduate studies. The students were divided into several stages established by Swedish linguists Bartning & Schlyter (2004), based on grammatical profiles that reflect the developmental paths of their acquisition trajectories.
Three stages of learners are observed: post-initial (PI), intermediate (INT), and advanced high (AH). We consider four factors influencing the acquisition process: typology, L3 proficiency, recency, and the status of French as L3. We will conclude by identifying the position in which students show the most productive and accurate use of adjectives, as well as the stage of acquisition