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On Spoken French: An Ashby Reader
William J. Ashby
[Studies in Language Companion Series 226] 2023
► pp. 79–94

The loss of the negative morpheme ne in Parisian French

| University of California, Santa Barbara

Data from a corpus of upper-middle class Parisian French demonstrate that the omission of the negative morpheme ne in negative structures is most frequent among certain demographic segments of the population. This finding, together with historical evidence, suggests that the optional deletion of the negative morpheme ne represents a continuing linguistic change, presaging the eventual total loss of ne – or ‘old not’. This change is most advanced in certain syntactic and phonetic contexts and in informal style.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Method
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Ne ‘old not’ alone
    • 3.2Frequency of second negatives
    • 3.3Syntactic variables
      • 3.3.1Second negative
      • 3.3.2Reinforcing adverb
      • 3.3.3Subject
      • 3.3.4Subject pronoun
      • 3.3.5Clause type
      • 3.3.6Verbal mood
      • 3.3.7Formulae
      • 3.3.8Third negative
      • 3.3.9Non ‘No’
      • 3.3.10Syntactic role of verb
    • 3.4Phonetic variables
      • 3.4.1Syllabic rate
      • 3.4.2Intervocalic position
      • 3.4.3Position of ne ‘old not’ in the utterance
      • 3.4.4Pre-consonantal versus pre-vocalic position
    • 3.5Stylistic variables
      • 3.5.1Degree of formality (pronoun of address)
      • 3.5.2Degree of formality (place in conversation)
      • 3.5.3Subject matter
    • 3.6Demographic variables
      • 3.6.1Sex
      • 3.6.2Profession
      • 3.6.3Age
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 March 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.226.c7
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