>I have wondered what the linguistic landscape looks like
w.r.to "relatives" seen (heard!) from a native English speaker's
standpoint. ......perhaps this type of "parametrizing" foreign languages is
not
readily available to them ....
Alas, it is a human phenomenon, and there is some description of it in
English linguistics under "error analysis" or "interference". It is
precisely the "parametrising" that you describe, which leads English
speakers to make mistakes of precisely the kind you describe in all foreign
languages - but the more European the language, the more readily this can
happen.
The precise points at which it will happen vary of course from language to
language, but I am not aware that French is any less affected than German -
perhaps this is where the unique development of English opens up more
opportunities for error!
Peter