Article In:
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics: Online-First ArticlesSyntactic position of contrast markers in different registers of French
This paper presents a quantitative corpus analysis of three syntactically mobile contrast markers in different
registers of French: contrastive adverbs, emphatic pronouns, and emphatic pronouns introduced by quant à “as for”.
We show that the preferred syntactic position of the three markers is influenced by their form and discourse function, but that
the degree of this influence varies across registers. In informal written and spoken French, form and discourse function have a greater impact on syntactic position than in formal written French, where the standard word order
subject + verb + other clause elements is favored, and non-neutral (inter)subjective peripheries are avoided. Hence, our
analysis provides evidence for the idea that informal written and spoken French are (becoming) more discourse-configurational.
Keywords: syntactic position, register, discourse, (inter)subjectivity, French
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Syntactic mobility of French contrast markers
- 2.1Contrastive adverbs
- 2.2Emphatic pronouns
- 2.3Emphatic pronouns introduced by quant à
- 3.Methodology
- 3.1Corpora
- 3.2Data extraction
- 3.3Classification of syntactic positions
- 4.Results: Different contrast markers, different preferred positions
- 4.1Contrastive adverbs
- 4.2Emphatic pronouns
- 4.3Emphatic pronouns introduced by quant à
- 5.Discussion: Impact of register
- 6.Conclusion
- Notes
-
References
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