Cover not available
Part of
On Spoken French: An Ashby Reader
William J. Ashby
[Studies in Language Companion Series 226] 2023
► pp. 181–206

The drift of French syntax

Recent speculation about the drift of French syntax is evaluated against data from a socially diverse corpus of modern French. While the data do not support the theory that French is becoming a VSO language, they do suggest that French is developing a ‘topic prominent’ sentence type.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Harris’ theory
    • 2.1The corpus
    • 2.2Results
      • 2.2.1Relative frequency of the corpus
      • 2.2.2Form of coreferential noun phrase
      • 2.2.3Disjunctive pronouns
      • 2.2.4Transitivity
      • 2.2.5Modality
      • 2.2.6Sex
      • 2.2.7Socio-economic class
      • 2.2.8Age
      • 2.2.9Conclusion
  • 3.Lambrecht’s theory
    • 3.1The corpus
    • 3.2Results
    • 3.3Conclusion
  • 4.Summary and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Editor’s/translator’s references
  • Appendix
Published online: 2 March 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.226.c17
References
Ashby, William J.
1977 Clitic inflection in French: an historical perspective. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
1981a The loss of the negative panicle ne in French. A syntactic change in progress. Language 57, 674–687. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1981b French liaison as a sociolinguistic phenomenon. In: William W. Cressey, Donna J. Napoli (eds.), Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, no. 9, 46–57. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown Univ. Press.Google Scholar
2003 La liaison variable en français parlé tourangeau: Une analyse en temps réel. Conference paper presented at Association for French Language Studies. L’Université de Tours. Tours, France, 25 September.
Bailard, Joelle
1981 Le français de demain: VSO ou VOS. Paper presented at Fifth international Congress on Historical Linguistics. Galway, Ireland.
Chafe, Wallace L.
1976 Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and points of view. In: Charles N. Li (ed.), Subject and topic, 25–55. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy
1976 Topic, pronoun. and grammatical agreement. In: Charles N. Li (ed.), Subject and topic, 149–188. New York; Academic Press.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph H.
1966 Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. In: Joseph H. Greenberg (ed.), Universals of language, 73–113. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Harris, Martin
1976 A typological approach to word order change in French. In: Martin Harris (ed.), Romance syntax: synchronic and diachronic perspectives, 33–53. Salford, England: Univ. of Salford.Google Scholar
1978 The evolution of French syntax: a comparative approach. London: Longman.Google Scholar
MSa. On explaining language change. To appear in: A. Alqvist ed. Papers from the International Congress on Historical Linguistics V Amsterdam John Benjamins DOI logo
MSb. On the strengths and weaknesses of a typological approach to historical syntax. To appear in: J. Fisiak ed. Historical syntax Amsterdam John Benjamins DOI logo
Hawkins, John
1979 [mplicational universals as predictors of word order change. Language 55, 618–648. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1980 On implicational and distributional universals of word order. Journal of Linguistics 16, 193–235. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kayne, Richard S.
1975 French syntax: the transformational cycle. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William
1972 Sociolinguistic patterns, Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
1972 Women’s role in linguistic change. Paper presented at LSA Annuel Meeting.
Lambrecht, Knud
1980 Topic, French style: remarks about a basic sentence type of modern non-standard French. Berkeley Linguistic Society 6, 337–360.Google Scholar
, MS. Pronouns, topics and agreement in non-standard French. (Revised and expanded version entitled Topic, Antitopic and verb agreement in non-standard French, Amsterdam: John Benjamins 1981.) DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lehmann, Winfred P.
1974 Proto-Indo-European syntax. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press.Google Scholar
(ed.) 1978 Syntactic typology. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Li, Charles N., Sandra A. Thompson
1976 Subject and topic: a new typology of language. In: Charles N. Li (ed.), Subject and topic, 457–489. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Lightfoot, David
1979a Principles of diachronie syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
1979b Review of: Charles N. Li, Mechanisms of syntactic change. Language 55, 381–395. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Malkiel, Yakov
1981 Drift, slope, and slant. Language 57, 535–570. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roberge, Yves
1986 Subject Doubling, Free Inversion, and Null Argument Languages. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 31: 55–79. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian
1980 Variability and explanation in language and culture: cliticization in New Guinea Tok Pisin. In: Gillian Sankoff (ed.), The social life of language, 257–270. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smith, Nigel V.
1981 Consistency, markedness and language change: on the notion ‘consistent language’. Journal of Linguistics 17, 39–54. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vennemann, Theo
1974 Topics, subjects, and word order: from SXV to SVX via TVX. In: John M. Anderson, Charles Jones (eds.), Historical linguistics, vol. 1, 339–376, Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
1975 An exploration of drift. In: Charles N. Li (ed.), Word order and word order change, 270–305. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press.Google Scholar

Editor’s/translator’s references

Andersen, Henning
1973 Abductive and deductive change. Language 49(4): 765–793. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ashby, William J.
1973 The Rise of Prefixed Inflection in French. PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
1974 Il parle or Iparle? Prefixed inflection in French. This volume.Google Scholar
1975 The rhythmic group, liaison, nouns and verbs of French. This volume. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1976 The Loss of the negative morpheme ne in Parisian French. This volume. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1977a Clitic Inflection: An Historical Perspective. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
1977b Interrogative forms in Parisian French. This volume.Google Scholar
1980 Prefixed inflection in Parisian French. This volume. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1981a The Loss of the negative particle ne in French: A Syntactic change in progress. This volume. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1981b French liaison as a sociolinguistic phenomenon. This volume.Google Scholar
1982 The drift of French syntax. This volume. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1984 The elision of /l/ in Modern French. This volume.Google Scholar
1988a The syntax, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics of left- and right-dislocations in French. This volume. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1988b Français du Canada/français de France: Divergence et convergence. This volume.Google Scholar
1991 When does variation indicate linguistic change in progress? This volume. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1992 The Variable use of on versus tu/vous for indefinite reference in Spoken French. This volume. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1994a An acoustic profile of right-dislocations in French. This volume. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1995 French presentational structures. This volume. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1999 Au sujet de quoi? La fonction du sujet grammatical, du complément d’objet direct, et de la construction présentative en français parlé. This volume.Google Scholar
A new look at ‘ne’ loss in the Spoken French of Tours: A case of change in progress?, a translation of 2001: Un nouveau regard sur la chute du ne en français parlé tourangeau: S’agit-il d’un changement en cours? This volume. DOI logo
2003 La liaison variable en français parlé tourangeau’. paper presented at Association for French Language Studies, L’Université de Tours. Tours, France. September 25, 2003. This volume.Google Scholar
Auger, Julie
1993 More evidence for verbal agreement marking in Colloquial French. In Linguistic Perspectives on the Romance Languages [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 103], William J. Ashby, Marianne Mithun, Giorgio Perissinotto & Eduardo Raposo (eds), 177–198. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1994 Pronominal Clitics in Quebec Colloquial French: A Morphological Analysis. PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
1995 On the history of relative clauses in French and some of its dialects. In Historical Linguistics 1993: Selected Papers from the 11th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Los Angeles, 16–20 August 1993, Henning Andersen (ed.), 19–32. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bahtchevanova, M. & van Gelderen, E.
2016 The interaction between the French subject and object cycles. In Cyclical Change Continued, Elly van Gelderen (ed.), 113–136. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan
2015 Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Culbertson, J.
2010 Convergent evidence for categorial change in French: From subject clitic to agreement marker. Language 86(1): 85–132. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fonseca-Greber, Bonnibeth Beale
2000 The Change from Pronoun to Clitic to Prefix and the Rise of Null Subjects in Spoken Swiss French. PhD dissertation, University of Arizona.
Fonseca-Greber, Bonnie B.
2005 Zero marking in French impersonal verbs: a counter trend to clitic morphologization? In Proceedings of the Thirtieth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, Marc Ettlinger, Nicholas Fleisher & Mischa Park-Doob (eds), 81–92. Berkeley CA: BLS.Google Scholar
2009 The overt pronoun constraint in conversational Swiss French: Implications for classroom learners. The French Review 82(4): 802–820.Google Scholar
2018 A relative verb for Spoken French: The missing link. Lingua 210–211: 1–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fonseca-Greber, Bonnie & Waugh, Linda R.
2003a On the radical difference between the subject personal pronouns in written and spoken European French. In Corpus Analysis: 16 Language Structure and Language Use [Language and Computers: Studies in Practical Linguistics 46], Pepi Leistyna & Charles F. Meyer (eds), 225–240. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
2003b The subject clitics of Conversational European French: Morphologization, grammatical change, semantic change, and change in progress. In A Romance Perspective on Linguistic Knowledge and Use [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 238], Rafael Núñez-Cedeño, Luis López & Richard Cameron (eds), 99–117. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fuß, Eric
2005 The Rise of Agreement: A Formal Approach to the Syntax and Grammaticalization of Verbal Inflection [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 81]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Gelderen, Elly
2011 The Linguistic Cycle: Language Change and the Language Faculty. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Givón, Talmy
1976 Topic, pronoun, and grammatical agreement. In Subject and Topic, Charles N. Li (ed), 149–188. New York NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Harris, Martin
1978 The Evolution of French Syntax: A Comparative Approach. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Jakubowicz, Célia & Rigaut, Catherine
1997 L’acquisition des clitiques nominatifs en français. In Les Pronoms: Morphologie, syntaxe et typologie, Anne Zribi-Hertz (ed.), 57–99. Saint-Denis: Presses Universitaires Vincennes.Google Scholar
Katz, Stacey L.
1997 The Syntactic and Pragmatic Properties of the c’est cleft construction. PhD dissertation, University of Texas, Austin.
Kayne, Richard S.
1975 French Syntax: The Transformational Cycle. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
King, Ruth, Martineau, France & Mougeon, Raymond
2011 The interplay of internal and external factors in grammatical change: First-person plural pronouns in French. Language 87: 470–509. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klausenburger, Jurgen
2000 Grammaticalization: Studies in Latin and Romance Morphosyntax [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 193]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Labov, Willliam
1972 Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William
1994 Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. 1: Internal Factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
2001 Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. 2: Social Factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
2010 Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. 3: Cognitive and Cultural Factors. Hoboken NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lambrecht, Knud
1980 Topic, French style: Remarks about a basic sentence type of modern non-standard French. Berkeley Linguistics Society 6: 337–360. Berkeley CA: University of California.Google Scholar
1981 Topic, Antitopic and Verb Agreement in Non-Standard French [Pragmatics & Beyond II:6]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Langendoen, Terrence
. Personal communication 1998.Google Scholar
Li, Charles N. & Thompson, Sandra A.
1976 Subject and topic: A new typology of language. In Subject and Topic, Charles N. Li (ed.), 457–489. New York NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Nadasdi, Terry
1995 Subject NP doubling, matching, and minority French. Language Variation and Change 7: 1–14. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pierce, Amy E.
1992 Language Acquisition and Syntactic Theory. Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roberge, Yves
1986 Subject Doubling, Free Inversion, and Null Argument Languages. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 31: 55–79. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1990 The Syntactic Recoverability of Null Arguments. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.Google Scholar
von Wartburg, Walther
1946/1988 Évolution et structure de la langue française, 11e édition [Biblioteca Romanica I]. Bern: Éditions Francke.Google Scholar
Zribi-Hertz, Anne
1994 La syntaxe des clitiques nominatifs en français standard et en français avancé. Travaux de inguistique et de philologie 32: 131–147.Google Scholar