The French language:
- Some linguists claim it is varied - there are differences within the language in how it's used
- Others describe it as singular or uniform, i.e. there is only one French language, which exists as a homogeneous entity. French doesn't differ that much within the French speaking world
- Homogeneity = a characteristic of language. Examples of homogeneity:
- "Je suis en train de lire le roman." - every French speaker would recognise this and understand it as correct
- "Lire suis je en train de roman le" - no French speaker would produce this
- There are totally incorrect things (wrong gender or number for article, or wrong verb ending for a pronoun) which no French speaker in any part of the world would ever say and this gives French its homogeneity
- Therefore it's clear that homogeneity is structural (to do with grammar). We must ask ourselves what is the same about all French speakers?
- they have the same internal representation/underlying linguistic system of rules/ linguistic competence (universal grammar) which stable/unchanging/fixed/rigid
- competence is the internal representation of the language and it is unvaried over time once learned
- The Noam Chomsky school of thought (generative linguistics) is based around the idea of knowledge in our heads which allows us to generate correct utterances and has no interest in linguistic performance
Linguistic Variation:
- Heterogeneity in language = the opposite of homogeneity
- Variationist linguists view language as highly creative, with a lot of linguistic choice
- Linguistic Performance is the counterpart of competence - how we use language (what we say vs what we know)
- Labov = a pioneer of the variationist approach (the opposite of generativist
- Examples of lexical variation
- voiture vs bagnole (register)
- bourgestre vs maire (Belgium vs metropole)
- le souper vs le dîner (Quebec vs metropole)
- Examples of phonetic variation
- les gens(.) arrivent vs les gens_arrivent (the choice of making the liaison or not)
- il y a vs y a (/l/ deletion)
- Examples of morphological variation
- ne deletion - je comprends pas vs je ne comprend pas
- future - je vais sortir vs je sors demain vs je sortirai
- Language choice goes together with language change
- Examples of syntactic change
- questions - avez-vous fini? vs vous avez fini?
- passive vs active voice
- Examples of Discursive/pragmatic variation
- donc vs par conséquent - filler words
- register
- Variation and Homogeneity coexist in language - how can linguistics reconcile this
- search for systematicity - a system within language
- investigate language change - how the system changes
- search for a linguistic norm, if that exists - is there a standard, correct way of speaking French?
- description vs prescription - linguists don't prescribe the correct way of using a language, they just describe the norms and standards
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