Cover not available
Article published In:
Current trends in analyzing syntactic variation
Edited by Ludovic De Cuypere, Clara Vanderschueren and Gert de Sutter
[Belgian Journal of Linguistics 31] 2017
► pp. 76–103

A crowdsourcing approach to the description of regional variation in French object clitic clusters

| FNRS | Université catholique de Louvain |
| Universität Zürich |
Our contribution is dedicated to the empirical testing of alleged regional variants of object clitic clusters in modern French in France, Belgium and Switzerland. We provide some intriguing new insights into the regional distribution of non-standard variants and discuss one hypothesis on their nature and two hypotheses to explain their coming into being: language-contact (with Francoprovençal, Occitan and Oïl dialects, H1) and/or analogical leveling (H2), on the one hand, and their postsyntactic, rather than syntactic, nature, on the other (H3). Our main results reveal that the three non-standard variants where order in object clitic clusters is concerned are not regionally well-distributed, i.e. the observed distribution does not correspond to any cohesive area. In contrast, only one variant where the selection of the form (me vs. moi) is at issue seems to be regionally confined: it is found in French-speaking Switzerland, in Gascony, plus some rare attestations of it in the North of France. All in all, variation in object clitic clusters indicates a genuinely new geographical articulation of regional French that does not coincide with traditional dialectal areas.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.State-of-the-art
    • 2.1Accounts of standard orders in French object clitic clusters
    • 2.2Dialectal variation in Gallo-Romance
  • 3.Hypotheses
  • 4.Method
  • 5.Results
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 23 April 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.00004.ava
References
Adger, David, and Daniel Harbour
2007 “Syntax and Syncretisms of the Person Case Constraint”. Syntax 10/1: 2–37.Google Scholar
Anagnostopoulou, Elena
2003 The Syntax of Ditransitives. Evidence from Clitics. Berlin/New York, Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Aub-Büscher, Gertrud
1962 Le parler rural de Ranrupt. Paris, Klincksieck.Google Scholar
Avanzi, Mathieu, Cécile Barbet, Julie Glikman, and Julie Peuvergne
2015 “Présentation d’une enquête pour l’étude les régionalismes du français”. Actes du cinquième congrès mondial de linguistique française (CMLF), Tours (France), 1–15.Google Scholar
Avanzi, Mathieu, Marie-José Béguelin, and Federica Diémoz
2016 “De l’archive de parole au corpus de référence: la base de données orales du français de Suisse romande (OFROM)”. Corpus 151: 309–342.Google Scholar
Blanche-Benveniste, Claire
2010 Le français. Usages de la langue parlée. Leuven/Paris, Peeters.Google Scholar
Bolly, Catherine, Georges Christodoulides, and Anne Catherine Simon
2016 “Disfluences et vieillissement langagier. De la base de données VALIBEL aux corpus outillés en français parlé”. Corpus 151: 195–212.Google Scholar
Bonami, Olivier, and Gilles Boyé
2007 “French Pronominal Clitics and the Design of Paradigm Function Morphology”. Proceedings of the 5th Mediterranean Morphology Meeting, Fréjus, 291–322.Google Scholar
Bonet, Eulalia
1991 Morphology after Syntax: Pronominal Clitics in Romance. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1995 “Feature Structure of Romance Clitics”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 131: 607–647. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brun-Trigaud, Guylaine
2013 “Les chaînes de clitiques : traitements cartographiques”. In Mémoires du terrain : enquêtes, matériaux, traitement des données, ed. by Francis Manzano, 139–155. Lyon, CEL/Lyon III.Google Scholar
Bürgi, Anne
1999 “Le pronom ‘ça’ en français vaudois”, Vox Romanica 581: 149–171.Google Scholar
Cardinaletti, Anna, and Michal Starke
1999 “The Typology of Structural Deficiency: A Case Study of Three Classes of Pronouns”, In Clitics in the languages of Europe, ed. by Henk van Riemsdijk, 145–233. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clédat, Léon
1887 “Les patois de la région lyonnaise”. Revue des patois 11: 1–10.Google Scholar
1925 “Les pronoms personnels avant et après le verbe”. Revue de philologie française 371: 43–48.Google Scholar
Dagnac, Anne
2012 “La variation régionale des proformes faibles en français”. Ms., Université de Toulouse.Google Scholar
Dalbera, Jean-Philippe
1986 “Les pronoms personnels atones dans les parlers des Alpes-Maritimes. Champ et mécanismes de variation”. In Actes du XVIIIe Congrès International de Linguistique et de Philologie romane, ed. by Dieter Kremer, vol. 31, 599–611. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Dauzat, Albert
1930 Histoire de la langue française. Paris, Payot.Google Scholar
De Kok, Ans
1985 La place du pronom personnel régime conjoint en français: une étude diachronique. Amsterdam: Rodopi Bv Editions.Google Scholar
Dottin, Georges & Jean Langouet
1901 Glossaire du parler de Pléchâtel. Geneva, Slatkine.Google Scholar
Foulet, Lucien
1924 “L’accent tonique et l’ordre des mots: formes faibles du pronom personnel après le verbe”. Romania 501: 54–93. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1958 Petite syntaxe de l’ancien français. Paris: Honoré Champion.Google Scholar
Gilliéron, Jules, and Edmond Edmont
1902–1910 Atlas linguistique de la France. Paris: Champion.Google Scholar
Groupe ICOR
2016 “CLAPI, une base de données multimodale pour la parole en interaction: apports et dilemmes”. Corpus 151: 165–194.Google Scholar
Grévisse, Maurice, and André Goosse
2008 Le bon usage. Bruxelles, Duculot.Google Scholar
Goldbach, Maria
2007 “The Distributed Morphology of Object Clitics in Modern French”. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 261: 41–81. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heap, David, and Sevtlana Kaminskaïa
2001 “Variable Clitic Sequences in Nonstandard French: Feature Geometry or Optimality?”. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 7/31: 101–114.Google Scholar
Heap, David et al.
(2017) “5 Clitic pronouns”. In Manual of Romance Morphosyntax and Syntax, ed. by Andreas Dufter and Elisabeth Stark, 183–229. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hervé, Bernard
1973 Le parler de Plouguenast. Mémoire de maîtrise, Université de Haute Bretagne.Google Scholar
Hirschbühler, Paul, and Marie Labelle
2001 “La position des clitiques par rapport au verbe à l’impératif dans l’évolution du français”. Recherches Linguistiques de Vincennes 301: 13–37.Google Scholar
Kahle, David, and Hadley Wickham
2013 “ggmap: Spatial Visualization with ggplot2”. The R Journal 5/11: 144–161. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kristol, Andrès
2016 “Francoprovençal”. In Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages, ed. by Adam Ledgeway, and Martin Maiden, 350–362. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Laenzlinger, Christopher
1993 “A Syntactic View of Romance Pronominal Sequences”. Probus 5/31: 242–270.Google Scholar
1994 “Enclitic Clustering: The Case of French Positive Imperatives”. Rivista di Grammatica Generativa 191: 71–104.Google Scholar
Lefeuvre, Florence, and Sonia Branca
2016 “Le CFPP2000: constitution, outils et analyses. Le cas des interrogatives indirectes”. Corpus 151: 265–285.Google Scholar
Lepelley, René
1974 Le parler normand du Val de Saire. Caen: Musée de Normandie.Google Scholar
Miller, Philipp, and Ivan A. Sag
1997 “French Clitic Movement without Clitics or Movement”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 15/31: 573–639. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Miller, Philipp, and Paola Monachesi
2003 “Les pronoms clitiques dans les langues romanes”. In Les langues romanes, problèmes de la phrase simple, ed. by Danièle Godard, 67–123. Paris, Editions du CNRS.Google Scholar
Morin, Y.
1979a “More remarks on French clitic order”. Linguistic Analysis 5/31: 293–312.Google Scholar
1979b “La morphophonologie des clitiques en français populaire”. Cahiers de linguistique 91, 1–36.Google Scholar
Oliviéri, Michèle, and Patric Sauzet
2016 “Southern Gallo-Romance (Occitan)”. In Oxford Guide to the Romance languages, ed. by Adam Ledgeway, and Martin Maiden, 319–349. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Perlmutter, David M.
1970 “Surface Structure Constraints in Syntax”. Linguistic Inquiry 11: 187–255.Google Scholar
1971 Deep and Surface Structure Constraints in Syntax. New York et al.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Pescarini, Diego
2014 “Prosodic Restructuring and Morphological Opacity. The Evolution of Italo-Romance Clitic Clusters”. In Diachrony and Dialects: Grammatical Change in the Dialects of Italy, ed. by Paola Benincà, Adam Ledgeway, and Nigel Vincent, 155–176. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
R development core Team
2016 “R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing”.Google Scholar
Remacle, Louis
1937 Le parler de la Gleize. Liège: H. Vaillant-Carmanne.Google Scholar
Reymond, Jules, and Maurice Bossard
1979 Le patois vaudois. Grammaire et vocabulaire. Lausanne: Cabédita Editions.Google Scholar
Rezac, Milan
2010 “Ineffability through Modularity: Gaps in French Clitic Clusters in Defective Paradigms: Missing Forms and What They Tell us”. In Proceedings of the British Academy 1631, ed. by Matthew Baerman, Greville G. Corbett, and Dunstan Brown, 151–180. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rézeau, Pierre
1976 Un patois de Vendée: le parler rural de Vouvant. Paris: Klincksieck.Google Scholar
Riegel, Martin, Jean-Christophe Pellat, and René Rioul
1994 Grammaire méthodique du français. Paris: PUF.Google Scholar
Ronjat, Jules
1937 Essai de syntaxe des parlers provençaux modernes. Mâcon: imp. Protat.Google Scholar
Séguy, Jean
1950 Le français parlé à Toulouse. Toulouse: Privat.Google Scholar
1973 Atlas linguistique et ethnographique de la Gascogne. (vol. 51). Paris: Éditions du CNRS.Google Scholar
Singy, Pascal
1996 L’image du français en Suisse romande. Une enquête sociolinguistique en Pays de Vaud. Paris, L’Harmattan.Google Scholar
Smith, John C.
2016 “French and northern Gallo-Romance”. In Oxford Guide to the Romance languages, ed. by Adam Ledgeway, and Martin Maiden, 292–318. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tuaillon, Gaston
1983 “Régionalismes grammaticaux”. Recherches sur le français parlé 51: 227–240.Google Scholar
Violin-Wigent, Anne
2010 “ Tu lui les as donnés ? Variation dans l’ordre des pronoms multiples en phrases déclaratives”. In Actes du deuxième Congrès Mondial de la Langue Française (CMLF), Nouvelle-Orléans (USA) 2001-2014 DOI logoGoogle Scholar