Une étude empirique des connaissances implicites et explicites des universitaires ivoiriens et français sur la sémantique de deuxième et second

– This study investigates the implicit and explicit intuitions in 98 native university students of Côte d’Ivoire and France, concerning the semantics of deuxième and second. Our purpose is to observe whether all French-speakers optionally apply deuxième and second or they choose between the two adjectives on the basis of a specific criterion. The results provided by the quali-quantitative method reveal that the principle of optionality is not acceptable to all participants since, within each linguistic community, there seem to be some sub-communities who claim to adopt other rules. From a methodological perspective, this study emphasizes the advantages to take into account the introspective observation along with the empirical analysis in the study of rules underlying linguistic usages.