Quand une grammaire fait sens : appréhension de la valeur modale du conditionnel par les apprenants hébréophones de FLE en contexte universitaire

In line with our previous work on L1 (Hebrew, as the source language)/L2 (French, as the target language) TAM (time-aspect-mood) discrepancies in FFL classes in Israel – for instance, divergences related to the past tense system – the present paper pursues the study of the conditional mood, especially the study of the semantics related to its modalities. If Hebrew-speaking learners of FFL assimilate effectively theoretical aspects relevant to conditional modalities, they struggle to put this knowledge into practice. The reason is that, just like for indicative compound tenses expressing an extra level of completion or anteriority, Hebrew uses lexical denotation (adverbial expressions) instead of morphological devices. While reviewing the discrepancies between L1 and L2 relevant to the use of linguistic modality, this paper aims at rendering accessible – through a metaphorization of modality by means of linguistic approximation – French conditional modalities to Hebrew-speaking students, for whom the most natural option of meaning expression is the use of lexical components instead of verbal morphology.