APPLYING LINGUISTICS TO TEACH MORPHOLOGY - VERB AND ADJECTIVE INFLECTION IN FRENCH

This paper explores the application of generative morphophonological a nalysis to the teaching of French morphology, proposing a cohesive and systematic presentation of inflection based on the spoken language. I t argues that French verb and adjective stems fall into two classes, v ariable and invariable, and that a single morphological rule accounts succinctly for alternations of the variable forms. The first part of t he paper contrasts typical French textbook descriptions of verb and ad jective paradigms with linguistic analyses of the same data. The secon d part proposes a simplified description which draws on linguistic ana lysis. The conclusion discusses the pedagogical advantages of the simp lified presentation.