This thesis describes unexpected constructions based on THIS and THAT by French and Spanishlearners of English. Chapter 1 raises the issue of the study of THIS and THAT as markers in the twomicrosystems of proforms and deictics. Chapter 2 covers different types of analyses of referencewith THIS and THAT in native English and refers to different theoretical frameworks (Cornish,Cotte, Halliday & Hasan, Kleiber, Fraser & Joly, Lapaire & Rotgé). It crossreferencesrepresentations (anaphora/deixis; endophoricity/exophoricity) with an analysis of functionalrealisations. Chapter 3 broaches the issue of interlanguage analysis, and it shows that a dynamicsystemic approach grounded in the functional distinction of the forms is necessary. Chapter 4 givesdetails about existing annotation tagsets for English corpora (Penn Treebank, Claws7, ICEGB). Itshows the need for a finergrained annotation relying on functional tags and for semanticinformation on the positions (subject v. oblique). Chapter 5 describes the multilayer annotationstructure which is implemented for the analysis of different corpora. It also covers the methods usedto automatically annotate functional categories (as well as their evaluation), and it justifies thechoices made to support corpus interoperability. Chapter 6 offers a regression analysis whichprovides evidence on the tendencies of the operationalised variables (the L1, the written or spokenmode of the corpora and the type of reference). Chapter 7 examines the role of the previously codedlinguistic properties of the analysis. With the use of classifiers, it describes a system for automaticerror analysis. Chapter 8 concludes on the methodologies used in the thesis and their implicationsin linguistic analysis.