Pragmatics: Tu vs Vous

Historical use of 'tu' and 'vous':

• The original T/V distinction was a reflection of power
• When used non-reciprocally, the person with power used 'tu' and the person without it used 'vous'
• Non reciprocal use 
• e.g. Older -> younger = tu
• e.g. Younger -> older = vous
• e.g. Noble -> Peasant = tu
• e.g. Peasant -> Noble = vous 
• Reciprocal use was for equals in power
• Noble classes used vous for each other
• Common people used tu 
• The choice of pronoun can indicate solidarity, degrees of closeness and intimacy
• These days a reciprocal relationship is reflected in reciprocal pronoun use
• Powerful people with no shared common ground will use 'vous', but with common ground they will use 'tu'

Conflict in choice:

• Sometimes there is a conflict between people's level of solidarity and the power dynamics of their relationship
• e.g. in a parent/child relationship
• this is a solidarity relationship but it is also power bound 
• in the past, they would have had a non reciprocal relationship
• these days solidarity is more important than power displays
• the more powerful individual decides on the use of tu or vous

 Social factors:

•  Politically radical individuals are more likely to use the tu form 
• rural children are more likely to use a non reciprocal vous form with adults
• Urban children are more likely to use a reciprocal tu form with adults
• Gender - familiar male adults will use reciprocal vous with teenage girls, non reciprocal tu with younger girls and non reciprocal tu with boys of all ages

Discourse: Pragmalinguistics

Pragmalinguistics:

• The link between form and function
• form - the linguistic elements/structures used to complete a speech act
• e.g. the imperative is used for command, a negated modal is used for requests

Sociopragmatics: 

•  Mapping form and function of linguistic elements to the appropriate social context
• e.g. donne moi vs donnez moi
• the choice is based on the question of politeness, formality, prestige, age, situation and the number of people

Politeness Theory and Face:

• 'Face' is the positive social value a person effectively claims
• i.e. how you present yourself and how you are perceived 
• Positive Face serves the purposes of:
• Enhancement of positive self image
• Preserving one's own face
• Intimate behaviour - showing social closeness
• Negative Face serves the purpose of: 
• Non imposition on the hearer
• Preserves the hearer's face 
• Achieving distance, in order to demonstrate respect

Face Threatening Act:

•  An act which endangers either one's own image or somebody else's
• e.g. requests - can be viewed as showing weakness, opening oneself up to rejection (Positive Face) or imposing on the hearer (negative Face)
• French and English have similar language use for requests - designed to reduce the threat to face
• the presumption of rejection so as not lose face in the event 
• FTAs are communicative acts that do not respect either the hearer's need for space (negative face) or the speaker's desire to uphold their own self image (Positive face) or both 

Choices in FTA Performance:

• Every time we are confronted with an FTA we face a choice whether or not to perform it

Discourse: Pragmatics

Pragmatics:

• The analysis of the unsaid
• Examining the deeper meaning of language 
• e.g. nous sommes Paris vs Je suis Charlie 
• The change in deitic reference (nous vs je) leads to an entirely different meaning
• from the personal to the universal
• Deitic references are often used in contrast with each other 
• The unsaid - the je/nous are excluding the tu/vous

What is the study of Pragmatics? 

• The study of the relationship between what is said and what is actually meant
• It focuses on the functions of language
• e.g. "you wouldn't pass the salt"
• literal meaning - an accusation - in the past, I asked you to pass the salt and you refused
• however because of our social experience, we know that what is actually meant is a request to pass the salt 

Studies on Pragmatics:

• Morris, 1938, coined the term pragmatics and defined it as the study of the relationship of signs to the user (speaker) and the interpreter (hearer)
• Katz, 1977, described pragmatic phenomena as those in which knowledge of setting and context of an utterance plays a role in its understanding
• Fesold, 1991, described pragmatics as the use of context to make inferences about meaning
• Bach, 2004, defined it as the theory of language use

A Working Definition of Pragmatics: 

A set of internalised rules which tell us how to use language in socio-culturally  appropriate ways, taking into account the participants in a communicative interaction and the features of the context within which the interaction takes place.

Speech Act Theory: 

• Austin and Serl
• Divides language into functions
• e.g. requests, apologies, compliments, advice, complaints, suggestions, insults, etc
• The study of utterances as functions
• They created two categories of language 
• Performatives - whereby saying and doing are conflated to perform an action 
• e.g. "I now pronounce you man and wife" 
• the words make the action happen 
• when the act of speaking changes a situation or physical circumstance
• Characterised by the first person pronoun and a valid speaker, hearer and context
• Constatives - whereby the utterance can be said to be true
• focused on truth values 
• e.g. "The cat is in the house" 

Focus of Pragmatics: 

• What's done with language and how it's accomplished
• The three major concerns of pragmatics
• the difference between literal and intended meaning
• directness vs indirectness
• conventional vs non conventional

Literal vs Intended Meaning:

•  Locutionary Act - the actual utterance
• the physical act of constructing utterance and meaning is determined by the rules of language
• Illocutionary Act - the intended meaning
• e.g. "It's really hot in here" could mean "Please open the window"
• Perlocutionary Act - the effect of the locutionary act and the illocutionary act
• e.g. Locution: "Vous ne pouvez pas m'aider."
• the literal meaning is "You can't help me" as in "you don't have the ability or the possibility of helping me"
• Illocution: a request for help 
• Perlocution: the person will help or refuse
• Therefore it is the illocutionary act which is the key to the success or failure of an exchange
• if the hearer understands the speaker's intention as voiced through the illocution, then it is a successful exchange 
• If the hearer's understanding differs from the speaker's intention then there is a mismatch between locution and illocution

Indirectness vs Directness:

•  With a Direct Act, there is no possibility of a mismatch
• With an Indirect Act, the possibility of a mismatch exists

Conventionalised vs Non-Conventionalised:

• Conventionalised - the normal, universal way of saying something
• e.g. "Vous ne pouvez pas m'aider" is universally recognised as a request for help
• no room for ambiguity
• Non-conventionalised - a personal way of expressing something, which is not universally recognised as having that meaning
• e.g. "T'as pas faim?" could mean "I am hungry and would like to eat."
• personal - depends on context for understanding
• the hearer will need to disambiguate the meaning

 The interpretation of speech acts is highly subjective and depends a lot on context.

Discourse: Text Cohesion and Coherence

Devices of discourse:

• Deixis - shows the way speakers and writers orientate themselves and others in discourse 
• through the use of deitic expressions
• What:
• Demonstratives - ce/cette, ces ... là, celui-là
• Possessives - sa, son, ses etc
• Who:
• Verbs in 1st/2nd/3rd person
• Pronouns - je, tu, il etc
• When: 
• Time adverbs - maintenant, autrefois etc
• Tense of verbs - j'ai donné, je donnerai, etc
• Where:
• Spatial adverbs - ice, là, là-bas
• Deitic expressions are used to point out or indicate something to the speaker or listener

Coherence and Cohesion:

• Coherence - in order to be considered discourse, a text must be coherent
• i.e. it can't be a random sequence of sentences 
• it must tell its audience what is going on 
• Cohesion - how sentences are linked together  
• A text can be cohesive without being coherent  
• i.e. it can be linked together by a topic without having any logical structure
• In order to create coherence, we used subordinating and coordinating clauses
• Coordinating conjunctions - mais, et, ou, ou bien
• Subordinating conjunctions - parce que, si, tandis que, dont, lequel, où, que, qui
• Coordinating clauses can exist independently, are equally important as each other in a sentence
• Subordinating clauses are dependent on the main clause to make sense and cannot exist independently 

Cohesive Ties: 

• Hold discourse together
• e.g. d'abord, ensuite, en plus, enfin, cependant, au contraire d'autre part 
• give the text a logical structure

Endophora:

• An expression which is used to refer to something which has been or which will be said or written in a text
• it can refer to something mentioned earlier or something that will mentioned later 
• e.g. demonstrative pronouns are often used to avoid noun repetition and ambiguity
• Two types of endophora - anaphora and cataphora
• Anaphora - use of pronoun or demonstrative to refer back to something previous mentioned 
• Cataphora - use of pronoun or demonstrative to refer forward in text to something which will be mentioned

Examples:

Je ne vous présente pas un programme, au sens habituel du mot. Je l'ai fait en 1981 alors que j'étais à la tête du Parti socialiste.

Analysis: 

• Deitic expressions in bold, anaphora underlined, cataphora overlined
• je ne vous présente
• je & vous = demonstratives, verb ending = time indication
• je l'ai fait en 1981
• je = demonstrative, fait, en 1981 = time indication, l' = anaphoric reference

Introduction to Discourse

Studying Discourse:

• Discourse is any body of text, written or spoken, which is longer than a sentence
• The study of discourse takes the organisation of texts as a whole into account 
• Taking a broader view of how the composite elements of language work together as a whole, successfully or not
• The study of discourse focuses on language as a social, cultural context
• Texts and discourse:
• compositions of phonetics and phonology, morphology and syntax and lexicology 
• created by identifiable participants
• bearing in mind sociocultural and historic constraints such as time/place/content

Speaking - Dell Hymes: 

• Hymes' model to assist the identification and labeling of components of linguistic interaction
• S - setting (when and where is the interaction taking place)
• P - participants (who's taking part? Speaker? Audience?)
• E - end (what are the goals and outcomes of the interaction)
• A - act sequence (what is the form and order of the message?)
• K - key (what is the tone/manner/spirit of the interaction? Is it serious/humorous/etc?)
• I - instrumentality (forms and styles of the interaction)
• N - norms of interaction in a particular culture (social rules governing the interaction)
• G - genre (what kind of speech act is it? A story? A lecture?)
• A change in any one of these factors would mean a change in discourse 
• This was one of the first attempts made at socially situating language
• Before this, people had always been more interested in discussing the structure of language as an abstract concept
• However language can't survive if not socially situated 

Co-operative Principles - Grice:

• According to Grice, in order for discourse to be successful, the four maxims of the co-operative principle must be followed:
• Quantity - say no more and no less than is necessary
• Quality - be truthful
• Don't say anything you know to be untrue or can't provide adequate evidence of 
• Relation - be relevant to what has been said before
• Manner - be lucid 
• speak in a clear and orderly fashion to avoid ambiguity 
• These maxims are relevant to an idealised interaction
• The correct use of the maxims is entirely context dependent

Lexicology: Linguistic Prescriptivism

History:

• Beginning in 15th century when Louis XII was advised by his counsellor Claude de Seyssel to attempt to unify the various different forms of 'patois'
• so much linguistic disunity could have a potentially destabilising effect
• Until 1490, there was no standard vernacular - the only standard was Latin
• 1539 - Ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts - declared all laws should be in French from then on 
• post 1789 - French was established as the language as France and it was used for all dealings

Linguistic Centralisation:

•  France has 200+ language bodies
• The problem with centralisation is that it involves people in one area trying to define French for everybody in a wider area
• 1958 - the Défense de la langue française was set up - indicative of French mentality that their language is under threat
• 1966 - Haute comité pour la défense et l'expansion de la langue française was set up 
• the committee has gone through multiple evolutions since then but still remains in some form

Future of the French Language: 

• Many language bodies continue to be set up and attempt to govern the language 
• e.g. Haute Conseil de la Francophonie, Organisation Internationale de la francophonie
• Various terminology commissions exist
• e.g. la commission générale de terminologie et de néologie - 1996
• concerned with feminisation of professional titles etc  
• Several laws have been passed in an attempt to regulate the use of French
• Loi Bas Lauriol - 1975
• Made the use of French obligatory in all public bill posting and advertising, banned all use of foreign terms or expressions
• Loi Toubon - 1994
• mandating the use of the French language in official government publications, in all advertisements, in all workplaces, in commercial contracts, in some other commercial communication contexts, in all government-financed schools
• these laws were made in effort to control the impact of English on the French language however they have not been particularly successful
• some fines have been imposed, but the insistence on the complete use of French can be off putting for multi national companies looking to settle in France
• e.g. of failure - English is still largely the language of the scientific world - it is the most commonly used language at scientific conferences and scientific seminars and the governing bodies have concluded that full implementation would not only be too difficult to regulate but also be too damaging for France's reputation in the scientific community

Lexicology: Slang and Youth Language

Language Change:

• vocabulary is an area of language where change is especially rife
• young people are usually the ones who change a language rather than the old

Concept of 'Argot':

• Slang - a specific type of vocabulary used by a social or professional group to express an identity of some sort
• Slang is a reflection of societal and conceptual developments 
• specialised vocabulary is not necessarily informal
• Historical connotations - it originally referred to secret means of communicating in the criminal underworld
• It is now a method of making those who can share in the communication feel included while excluding those who can't 
• creates a sense of identity for a specific group 

Youth Language: 

• Young people play an important role in lexical change, often creating new words
• This is a means of expressing identity/solidarity and excluding undesirables (often adults)
• This also creates a sense of rebellion 
• Creativity is especially high in certain lexical domains - a reflection of the source of the creativity
• e.g. source languages (often those spoken by immigrants) and social milieus (certain areas with a high concentration of youth/immigrants)
• The rapid spread of words through modern media contributes to lexical change

Structural characteristics of youth language: 

•  Foreign/Dialectical borrowing - youth language often uses elements from foreign languages and dialects of French
• e.g. bagnole is from Northern French and la taule (prison) and le frangin (younger brother) are from Lyon 
• A lot of examples from foreign languages - truc (Spanish),schlof (drunk - German), toubib (doctor - Arabic), shooter, sniffer, dope (English)

Semantic Change:

• Pre-existing words can assume informal, slang values
• Certain lexical fields contribute slang more than others 
• e.g. animal vocabulary - les flics, les poulets, les perdreaux, les condors - words for police based on animal imagery
• also shows speakers attitude towards police
• Humour is often used in slang 
• e.g. 'écraser le champignon' (to drive fast, step on it) 
• Food imagery in slang 
• e.g. boîte à ragoût - jam packed, une viande froid (dead person) 
• Slang often offers a wide variety of choice for expressing one common concept
• e.g. fauché, à sec, dans la panade etc = broke
• Slang frequently makes use of pronouns which don't actually refer to anything 
• e.g. J'en ai marre, j'en ras-le-bol
• this meaningless pronoun is referred to as a lexical chunk or lexicalised units 
• could refer to some older lost part of the phrase - e.g. "tu me casses les pieds" becomes "tu me les casses"
• In slang, words sometime assume the opposite of their original meaning 
• e.g. "faire un malheur" can mean something is great

Word Formation:

• Slang consists not just of different use of existing vocabulary but also the formation of new words 
• Often from a change of word category
• e.g. Flingue (gun) derived from 'flinguer' (to shoot)
• e.g. être classe, être galère - nouns used as adjectives

Inflectional Suffixes:

• Certain suffixes are very productive in slang 
• e.g. aille, asse, ard
• soiffard (heavy drinker), la flicaille (cops), vignasse (cheap wine)

Abbreviations:

• Often involve breaking up the word in some way
• e.g. shortening - ciné, apparte, métro
• Or shortening and then adding another ending (iche, oche)
• e.g. fastiche - easy (facile - fac + iche), cinoche - cinema
• Repeating the first syllable is also a possibility 
• e.g. jojo = joli, mimi = mignon, dodo = dormier

Word Games: 

• New words are created by rearranging elements of old words 
• e.g. 'largonji' from 'jargon' - argon + j
• lofoque - louf - fou
• lerche - cher
• Insertion of letters into the middle of words also occurs 
• e.g. gosse + av = gavosse 
• Verlan(isation) - word reversal, a kind of backwards slang
• e.g. chicha = haschich, rebier = bière, féca = café
• this rearrangement of letters and sounds is very Arabic in origin, which reflects the strong Arabic influence in contemporary French society
• Short words are sometimes repeated 
• e.g. foufou = fou

Lexicology: Geographical variation

Geographical Variation: 

• International varieties of French are defined by their vocabularies
• Varieties - Belgian, Swiss, Quebecois, Algerian etc

Belgicismes: 

• kokoteur = colocateur
• aubette = arrêt de bus
• bourgmestre = maire
• Also use prepositions differently
• e.g. derrière le coin vs au coin 
• Michel Francard - le projet Valibel to record Belgicismes

Québécismes:

• à tantôt = à toute à l'heure
• le souper = le dîner
• un breuvage = un boisson
• Many of these words exist in metropolitan French but they're not as common
• Quebecois French is much more advanced in the feminisation of professions - e.g. une femme-ingénieur
• The language has a heavy English influence 
• e.g. nouns - un shop, un record, verbs - checker, afforder, kicker
• loan translations - melon d'eau

Socio-geographical context: 

• Regional varieties of French of have unique words which reflect phenomena specific to that region
• e.g. motoneige (snowmobile), souffleuse (snow blower) érablière (shop for maple syrup) 

 Metropolitan French: 

• Diversity also exists within Metropolitan French
• variation from region to region
• Haute-Marne (NE France) 
• la verne - NW wind
• les chevris - april showers
• West France
• la borderaie - small farm
• Toulouse 
• le Franchiman - Northerner
• le cacarot - immigrant labourer
• la pipine - open air theatre

Semantic differences:

• The meaning of some words differs in some regions from standard French
• West
• Affligé - afflicted (standard)/sick (West)
• S'écarter - distance o.s. (standard)/get lost (West)
• Lyon
• Allée - alley (standard)/footpath (Lyon)
• Tantôt - soon (standard)/afternoon (Lyon)
• Haute-Marne
• Différent - different (standard)/unpleasant (HM)
• Épier - look out (standard)/hesitate (HM)
• St. Etienne
• Peinable vs pénible
• Amiteux vs affecteux
• Regretteux vs difficile

Regionalisms:

• words that have filtered into standard French from regional varieties through language contact
• West
• le chai - liquor store (relates to local produce)
• Provence
• la bouillabaisse
• La pétangue
• Picardie (coal mining region)
• la houille - coal 
• Normandie
• Le homand, la crevette - types of fish 

Standard Lexicalised Norms:

• There is an established 'standard vocabulary' in French, but what linguistic norm is it based on?
• Why is metropolitan French more standard than the regional varieties?

Attitudinal Issues in Identifying Local Standard Norms:

• A negative attitude exists regarding certain language varieties
• e.g. Standard Quebecois French is pejoratively nicknamed 'joual' after their pronunciation of 'cheval'
• Pierre Trudeau (former Prime Minister of Canada) referred to Quebecois French as 'lousy French'

Origins of Quebecois French: 

• French emigrants came to Canada from western ports e.g. Nantes
• 'New France' was annexed by Britain 
• this lead to a very strong English influence and the speakers were increasingly separated from France

Linguistic Prescriptivism:

• Quebecois French is not the standard variety of French for governing bodies in Quebec
• e.g. Radio Canada offered linguistic training to help people comply with the required standard metropolitan French
• The Office de la langue française positively enhanced attitudes regarding Quebecois French by creating a dictionary of Quebecois words and the corresponding words in standard French
• supporting the idea of Quebecois norms 
• Positions regarding language norms: 
• Aménagiste position - accepting for different norms in different places
• Conservative position - only metropolitan French is the standard
• Many dictionary projects in Quebec attempt to define what is and isn't standard - like Francus Project

Lexical Borrowing

Introduction:

• Languages borrow words from the 'open' lexical classes - nouns, verbs and adjectives of other languages
• Word to word translations (calques) borrow the meaning rather than the form (lemma)
• Lexeme - a set of forms that all have the same meaning
• Lemma - particular form chosen by convention to represent that meaning
• Lexical borrowing from English, German and Italian is particular common in French

Reasons for Borrowing:

•  In the case of a new discovery, the word is often taken from language in which the idea originated
• e.g. 'café' from Arabic
• Linguistic contact 
• borrowing between neighbouring countries frequently occurs
• borrowing from the culturally, economically and politically dominant language for that region is also common 
• e.g. English words for technology (bit) and marketing
• Anglicisms often end up being 'in competition' with other French words for some concepts
• e.g. "poster" vs "affiche" or "paneau", "on/off" vs "marche/arrête"
• Fashion - words are often borrowed from whatever language is fashionable at this point in time 

Older Entries:

• Very ancient 'emprunts' (loan words) came from Latin or Greek 
• e.g. 'academie' or 'soldat' 
• More recent examples, e.g. 'baby-boomer'/'body-building' have a Gallic pronunciation but the spelling remains anglicised
• The degree of 'gallicisation' is often dependent on how often the word is used 
• Code switching is not the same as lexical borrowing - this is a phenomenon evidenced by bilingual people who switch from one language to another
• An emprunt on the other hand has passed from one language to another and doesn't indicate that the speaker is fluent in both languages

Typology of emprunts:

• Direct - i.e. unchanged, e.g. body-building
• False etymology - sometimes the meaning of the emprunt in the new language doesn't match its meaning in the original language
• e.g. 'le lifting' means 'face lift'
• Grammatical adaption - how the emprunt should fit in with the French grammatical system
• e.g. pluralisation - for 'rugbyman' follows French rules and not English - 'les rugbymans'
• Phonological and graphical adaption - how the pronunciation changes, how the spelling changes to fit French system 
• e.g. 'faisabilité'

Examples:

•  Direct - 'walkman' (French alternative - balladeur)
• Adaption - 'conteneur' 
• French pronunciation reflected in the spelling - 'e' replaces 'ai' and 'eur' replaces 'er'
• False etymology - 'bronzing' (tanning)
• this word doesn't exist in English but it is based on it
• Semantic 'calques' (loan translations) - réaliser 
• changed from its original French meaning (to achieve or make sth happen) to English (sudden understanding)
• Borrowing of scholarly terminology - e.g. 'uni-dimensionnel'

Translations:

• Direct translations from English
• liberté de la presse, science-fiction, liste noire
• Compound words
• e.g. top-modèle (graphically modified)
• Abbreviations 
• Pull (un pullover), self (self-service, i.e. cafeteria)

Integration Problems

• Phonological problem - these phonemes don't exist in the French phonological system, therefore they are simply pronounced with a French accent
• e.g. show business, weekend, camping, gang
• Grammatical problem 
•  Gender - no easy rule 
• Some English musical terms are feminine e.g. la popmusic, la trash
• Other musical terms are masculine, le folk, le jazz 
• Other confusing issues - English words with different genders from the original French word 
• e.g. le gag vs la blague
• Plural 
• Question of whether to follow the English or French rule - e.g. les rugbymans
• English adjectives don't take the accord e.g. snob/cool
• Semantic
• The meaning of some French words changed by English influence 
• e.g. réaliser, terrible

Impact of the Emprunt:

• The loan word is a product of external processes but once it enters the French language, it undergoes internal processes
• e.g. film - filmer - filmage - filmothèque 
• Experiences suffixation e.g. sponsoriser, squattage 
• Or prefixation e.g. surbooking
• Abbreviation e.g. le trench (coat), le basket (basketball)

Prescriptive reactions: 

• There are many language regulation bodies in France which exist to control, among other things, the entry of new words 
• e.g. l'académie française
• Ministerial commissions of terminology - gather alternatives for technical terms
• Official journal of neologisms
• Prescriptive language laws, e.g. Bas-Lauriol (1975) and Toubon (1994)
• Their aim - to conserve the French linguistic heritage 

Lexicology: Principles of Word Formation

Neologisms:

• Objective neologisms - correspond to new objects entering reality 
• Objects which previously didn't exist - e.g. le portable, la stylistique (design)
• Fashion in neologisms - words fall in and out of fashion 
• e.g. where 'chouette' and 'génial' used to be used, now 'super' or 'boum' are used
• Stylistic (subjective) neologisms - created by authors for style and sometimes enter the vocabulary of French 

Structural characteristics of lexical change: 

•  Internal process - whereby the language changes internally 
• This involves neologisms of form - where the form of a word is modified to create a new word 
• And neologisms of meaning - where the meaning is changed
• External process - lexical borrowing

Social characteristics of linguistic change:

• Neologisms have 'creators' and 'deciders' 
• People who invent words and people who decide whether or not they should be accepted into French vocabulary 
• e.g. people who write dictionaries, the Académie Française etc
• There is also the problem of how to integrate neologisms into the normalised system of the French language
• i.e. how they'll function grammatically etc
• Hence the desire to find French alternatives to external neologisms in order to preserve linguistic purity 

Derivation: 

• The process of creating a new word by adding an affix (a prefix or suffix)
• e.g. porter -> portable (suffix) monter -> remonter (prefix)
• Dérivé (derivative) - created through addition of bound morphemes 
• different morphemes can have different meanings 
• e.g. pleuvoir -> pleuvoter (diminutive - mizzle) -> pleuvasser (pejorative - drizzle) -> pleuviner (diminutive - drizzle)
• Dependent or independent morphemes can be added
• Parasynthesis - simultaneously adding a prefix and a suffix to a word
• e.g. anti-américanisme
• Composé (compound) - opposite of dérivé - formed of words which are both independent

Suffixation - Semantic Aspect:

• ant; oeur; ateur (indicate the actor)
• e.g. imprimeur, créateur
• oir; erie (indicate the locality)
• e.g. abattoir, gendarmerie
• ité; ace; isme; tude; esse (indicates a concept)
• e.g. gentillesse, inquiétude
• et(te); in(e); ot(te); eul(le) (indicates a masculine or feminine diminutive or pejorative)
• e.g. maisonette, vieillot (old fashioned), tablette
• oyer (weak quality) 
• e.g. rougeoyer (glow - weak red)
• ir (becoming - indicates process)
• e.g. blanchir, durcir
• Knowledge of the semantic aspect allows for a more nuanced understanding of the language

Prefixation - Semantic Aspect: 

• a- (sans, negation) e.g. amoral
• pré (before) e.g. pré-cuit
• dé (negation) e.g. démonter
• re (again) e.g. refaire, rappeler
• mal (bad) e.g. malbouffe (junk food)

Frequence and Productivity - Suffixes: 

• which suffixes are most frequently used in neologisms? 
• ation; isme; iste; itude
• isme - very frequent e.g. bilingualisme
• itude - very frequent e.g. bogossitude (fam. handsomeness)
• ation - very frequent - e.g. conscientisation (fact of being in public awareness)
• The French speaking population and media often create words which will never be accepted by the language authorities

Frequence and Productivity - Prefixes: 

• re e.g. reintegrer
• mé e.g. méprise
• co (together) e.g. covoiturage (car pooling)
• in (negation) invapotable
• Derivation allows for a lot of linguistic creativity

Phonetic and Semantic Constraints: 

• Adjectives ending in 'al' take 'ité' to make a noun e.g. socialité
• Adjectives ending in 'ard' and 'and' take 'ise' to make a noun e.g branchouillardise (hipterism)
• Adjectives ending in 'e' take 'sse' to make a noun e.g. noblesse
• Adjectives ending in 'ot' take 'erie' to make a noun e.g. bigoterie

Lexical Conversion - Improper Derivation: 

•  This involves the creation of new words without any affixation 
• the word is just moved to a different word category without any morphological change
• Adverbalisation (adjective to adverb) e.g. fort - un homme fort vs chanter fort
• Nominalisation (adjective to noun) e.g. un homme marginal vs un marginal
• Nominalisation (verb to noun) e.g. savoir vs le savoir

Composition:

• Creation of compound nouns
• Words of the same or of different syntactic categories are put together to form one word
• e.g. porte-monnaie  (V+N), sans-travail (Prep+N), pause-café (N+N) 
• Mots valises - whereby the end of the first word and the start of the second word are 'cut off' to create word play 
• e.g. 'adulte' + 'adolescent' = 'adulescent', i.e. an immature adult

Recomposition:

• Deliberate creation of compound nouns, usually by expert in some field 
• e.g. philogie, génocide
• Used with prefixes of which the meaning is properly known
• e.g. ultra, super, néo, trans, éco
• Usually with a Latin or Greek base
• e.g. néo-nomadisme, éco-terrorisme
• The semantic meaning is more clear here than with other affixes
• However the prefixes are not true independent morphemes

Syntagmation/Composition:

• Creating 'words' out of a combination of separate words which represent a different concept together
• e.g. le développement durable 

Abbreviations:

• Acronyms:
• Lexicalised acronyms - acronyms which are pronounced like words e.g. SMIC
• Non lexicalised acronyms - acronyms in which one just says the letters e.g. SDF, SNCF
• Derivations of acronyms can also create new words, e.g. le smicard - a person who receives the minimum wage
• Apocope - shortening of words
• e.g. prof, impec(cable), appart(ement)
• Often happens with place names - e.g. Boul'Saint-Mich = Boulevard Saint-Michel
• Often also includes adding an 'o' to the end, e.g. resto, hebdo etc
• Very 'familier' register

Integration Problems: 

• How to grammatically integrate acronyms into French language structure?
• There are various rules for pluralisation
• If a noun is formed of an adverb and a noun, only the noun is pluralised 
• e.g. les après-midis
• For an adjective and a noun, both are pluralised
• e.g. les francs-maçons (free mason) 
• Exception: les grand-mères BUT les grands-pères
• For recomposed words, the 'prefixe savant' is invariable
• e.g. les auto-écoles
• For nouns including a preposition, only the first noun is pluralised 
• e.g. 'des arcs-en-ciel'
• For a verb and a noun, the verb is invariabe 
• e.g. les porte-monnaies
• For an unhyphenated compound noun, pluralisation follows normal rules
• e.g. les portemanteaux

Semantic Change:

• Sometimes takes place through metaphor
• e.g. 'banque du sang' 
• Often for a new concept, e.g bretelle d'autoroute (lit. motorway 'strap', meaning 'slip road')
• Or through metonymy
• e.g. chaussure de tennis -> tennis (shoe)
• These are all internal processes 

Morpho-syntactic Change: 'On' vs 'Nous'

'On' vs 'Vous': 

• 'on' seems to dominate over 'nous'
• Syntactic because 'on' and 'nous' express a grammatical function
• Morphological because they can't exist independently of a sentence
• According to prescriptive norms, nous is the prestige form
• 'On' is less formal (when used to replace nous) 

History: 

• In Old French, 'nous' was the predominant form
• Since then, 'on' has emerged in modern French
• The morpheme has been undergoing change for some time 

Sociolinguistic Perspectives: 

• Söll 1969 - in a study that contrasted the variation of 'on' and 'nous' among children and police, children used 'on' categorically, while police officers tended towards 'nous'
• When language is used for professional purposes, prestige forms are used 
• Boutet 1994 - in a study on factory workers, discovered they favoured 'on' over 'nous' by and large
• Thomas 1971 - as a prescriptive grammarian, he emphasised the 'nous' form as correct
• Coveney 2000s - in a study in Picardie, the rate of use for 'nous' was 4.4%
• Meaning the 'nous' form hasn't vanished completely but it isn't common
• Laberge - in a study in Montreal, the rate of use for 'nous' was 1.6%
• Deshaies- in a study in Quebec City the rate of use for 'nous' was 0.5%
• Largely, the nous form is vanishing

Remaining uses:

• Uses which are unlikely to die out 
• Emphasis - e.g. 'c'est nous qui avons fait le travail'
• Imperative - e.g. 'sortons'

Reasons for change: 

• Simplification - with the 'on' form, there is no need to add the longer 'ons' morpheme to the verb
• Dialect contact - early in the 20th century, many different types of French existed, however increasing modernisation has lead to increased contact between dialects
• Redundancy - The 'ons' morpheme means the same thing as 'nous', so with the correct form, no extra meaning is added
• Cacophony - avoids ugly repetition with reflexive verbs, e.g. 'nous nous donnons' vs 'on se donne' 
• To the French ear, the 'nous nous' repetition sounds childish

Morphosyntactic change: Ne deletion

Ne deletion - Variable marking of negation: 

• An example of grammatical change 
• e.g. 'on (ne) vous connaît pas" 
• double negation is unusual cross linguistically 
• communicative redundancy
• l'effacement du 'ne' (ne deletion) has become an option i.e. that simply saying 'pas' is enough to signify negation
• a choice exists, which means change could take place 
• morpho-syntactic change 
• ne = bound morpheme
• negation = grammatical, therefore syntactic 

History:

• The 'ne' is close to Latin, where the negative morpheme 'non' comes before the verb
• In Old/Middle French, the formula 'ne verb (pas)' was common - 'pas' was a choice
• In classical French, 'ne verb pas' became standard
• In modern French, the form has changed to '(ne) verb pas' where the 'ne' is not categorical
• This suggests that in the future the 'ne' could disappear entirely

Descriptive investigations:  

Study	Place	Date	% Use
Ashby	Tours	1976	37
Ashby	Tours	1995	16
Sankoff & Vincent	Montreal	1977	1
Armstrong (adolescents)	Lorraine	1990	2

Observations:

• Data collected on Quebecois French and adolescent Metropolitan French indicates almost categorical ne deletion
• as these are the groups which are generally the most advanced in terms of language change, this indicates that a change is underway
• Ashby's two studies in Tours, 20 years apart also show a significant increase in ne deletion 

Social and Stylistic Constraints: 

• Age 
• Montreal - no great variation exists
• Tours - higher rate of deletion among younger age groups
• Gender
• Montreal - no great variation exists
• Tours - higher rate of deletion among males
• Lorraine - minimal difference
• gender difference found in older speakers has disappeared among adolescents
• Class  
• Montreal - no great variation exists
• Tours - higher rate of deletion among lower classes 

Hyperformal Marker: 

• Current status of 'ne' - use sounds overly formal
• Weak to non-existent ties with social variables 
• Similar to 'nous' 
• nous vs on variation

The Variable Expression of Futurity

Future Time Reference:

• Inflected future (IF)- e.g. je sortirai 
• Adding a future morpheme creates an instantly recognisable future time form
• Periphrastic future (PPF)- e.g. je vais sortir
• Based on the verb 'aller'
• Historical - PPF was used very colloquially at first, then gradually became more neutral
• Present Futurate (PF) - e.g. je sors
• Having 3 possible ways of referring to the future allows for variation

Semantic Differences:

•  According to prescriptive values, choice of future time form is decided by:
• The distance of the event - is it proximal or distal in relation to the present
• Speaker interest and engagement - i.e. are they personally involved in the event
• Degree of certainty - i.e. how likely is it to happen
• Various prescriptive linguists have attempted to assign meaning to the different future forms
• PPF - Prescriptive Reasons for use
• Confais - Immediacy & proximity/intentionality/imminence/conviction 
• Fleischmann - if the speaker is personally involved in the event
• Vet - present preparation
• IF - Opposite meanings attached 
• i.e. distal, no personal involvement, uncertain, no present preparation
• PF 
• Imbs - use for certainty
• Must be used in concurrence with a temporal adverb in order to make sense
• The presence of the adverb is a linguistic constraint

 Descriptive Studies:

• Poplack & Turpin - Quebecois
• Jeanjean - Metropole
• King & Nadaseli - Acadian
• Wales - Metropole - journalistic discourse

Form	Poplack	Jeanjean	King	Wales
PPF	73%	58%	53%	10%
IF	20%	42%	47%	90%
PF	7%	-	-	-

Observations:

• PPF was the most frequently used form in Quebec, which is often more advanced in language change than Metropolitian and Acadian French
• There is little difference between Acadian and Metropolitan French - they often mirror each other
• PPF is hardly used in written language, suggesting it is only acceptable as a spoken form for the moment
• IF is hardly used in Quebec and less frequently used in Acadia and the Metropole
• IF is used almost exclusively by journalists - the prestige form in written language
• PF is minimally used across the board

Findings:

• One could possibly predict the disappearance of other forms in favour of the PPF if the current trends continue 
• As Quebec is more advanced in language change, the Metropole and Acadia will probably eventually catch up
• a case of morphological change
• PPF used irrespective of semantic context in real speech (Quebec)
• Therefore the semantic constraints assigned by prescriptive grammarians did not hold
• No evidence that prescriptive grammarians are correct at all 

Prescriptive values:

• Prescriptive grammarians dislike variation and therefore attempt to assign a meaning to each variant form 
• Poplack's findings discredit this theory
• Proves that one form can be used to express multiple meanings

Lexical vs Grammatical Morphology

The meaning behind our use of morphology

Types of morphology:

• Lexical
• Derivational - changes word class (creates new words)
• e.g. nouvelle -> renouveller (adj -> verb)
• Grammatical 
• Inflectional - does not change word class 
• e.g. nouvelle -> nouvelles, fermer -> fermerai 
• word form changed but no new word created

Types of Morphemes:

•  Bound - can't exist independently
• e.g. donn-ais - 'ais' can't exist independently
• has to be bound to make sense
• Free - can make sense independently
• e.g. - "les sans travail"

Morphological Meaning:

• The underlying meanings of morphology are very universal - e.g. the idea that certain morphemes indicate certain times exists across many languages

Tense - morphemes which indicate tense anchor events in time

• e.g. je donne vs j'ai donné vs je donnerai
• -e = present morpheme, -é= past morpheme, -erai = future morpheme

Aspect - the different ways of presenting an event within one time frame

• e.g. two verbs can be in the past tense, yet present the event in different ways 
• French - passé composé vs imparfait - aka the perfective and imperfective 
• Perfective - implies action completed, once
• Imperfective - implies a habitual, incomplete action
• English examples of aspect - progressive vs non-progressive
• I am speaking English vs I speak English
• Doesn't exist in French
• languages differ in how they mark aspect

Aspectual values:

• Perfective
• Perfect value e.g. j'ai déjà vu le film
• relating to present 
• Aorist e.g. je suis sorti à cinq heures
• completed, not related to the present
• Imperfective 
• Characterising/Continuous 
• e.g. j'habitais dans un appartement quand j'étais à Paris
• characterises the continuous whole of the time in Paris
• Habitual 
• e.g. "je sortais de temps en temps quand j'étais ..."
• refers to several incidents, habits during this time
• Progressive 
• e.g. il quittait quand je suis arrivé"
• expresses a sense of 'was doing', of being in progress during one particular moment

 Modality:

•  expresses possibility or doubt concerning an event 
• e.g. "il est possible qu'il soit en retard"
• soit = may, might

The concepts of Tense, Aspect, Modality are so universal that they are known as TAM

Number and Person:

• Verbs:
• Morphemes can indicate plurality e.g. 'e' vs 'ent'
• And which person the verb is referring to (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
• Nouns 
• Morphemes can indicate plurality of a noun
• e.g. livre-s interessant-s - plural markers on nouns and adjectives
• also on past participles - e.g. les livres que j'ai achetés
• English has less markers of plurality than French
• less differentiation for verb endings
• no adjective endings

Gender:

• Often expressed morphologically, moreso in French than in English
• e.g. le livre vs la langue
• French articles express gender, English articles do not
• e.g. elle est sortie 
• French past participles (verbs) express gender, English do not

Pronominal Reference: 

• Pronouns are used to avoid repeating nouns
• e.g. J'ai vu le film. Il était très intéressant.  
• French and English pronoun use differs, especially under word order
• Can refer to a noun or people 
• e.g. mes amis m'ont accompagné
• Pronouns don't exist independently of sentences, i.e. they're morphemes 

 Conclusions: 

• Are grammatical morphemes a communicative luxury in language?
• it is possible to be comprehensible without morphology 
• however without morphemes, many subtleties of language would be lost
• e.g. Moi hier aller cinéma vs Je suis allé au cinéma hier
• Morphology allows communicative efficiency
• Cross linguistic differences (i.e. between languages) exist
• Is it possible for variation to exist within the grammar of a language when grammatical rules for morphology invariably apply 
• Does morphological homogeneity exist across time/people/space (geographical variation)
• see 'futurity' and 'on' vs 'nous' variation

Syntax & Morphology

Syntax:

• The study of word order patterns 
• Language functions based on systematic patterns 
• French word order generally follows the Subject/Verb/Object pattern
• This is known as its canonical word order, the order which underlies every language and is known by all speakers of a language
• Question forms reverse the canonical pattern, i.e. VSO instead of SVO
• 'Sentences' are used to describe written language, while spoken language has 'utterances' 

Phrase level: 

• Beyond the SVO, sentence level there exists an order within phrases as well
• e.g. Adjective after noun - 'un livre intéressant,' or adverb before adjective - 'peu évident'
• Surface structure, the numerous patterns we can pick out by examining sentences, makes language seem incredibly complex
• However these are determined by rules, known as deep structure - the rule that governs the pattern

4 Phrase Types:

• NP - noun phrase - where the noun is the 'head' (defining linguistic element) of the phrase
•  e.g. 'les enfants' - made up of a specifier (les) and a noun (enfants)

• Specifier to the left of the head is a rule which applies to all phrase types
• VP - Verb phrase - where the verb is the 'head' of the phrase
• E.g. 'Michel lisait'
• Michel is the specifier, and lisait is the head, ergo the rule has been followed 
• AP - Adjectival phrases - where the adjective is the 'head' of the phrase
• e.g. 'très intéressant' 
• très = specifier, intéressant = head, therefore the rule has been followed
• PP - Prepositional Phrase - where the preposition is the 'head' of the phrase
• e.g. presque dans
• presque = specifier, dans = head, therefore the rule has been followed
• The same basic rule is at work for all the examples - therefore the deep structure pattern is the same for all phrase types

 More complex phrases: 

• NP - Mes amis en France 
• The complement adds supplementary information to the NP 
• Specifier = mes, head = amis, en France = complement
• The full rule = specifier to the left of the head, complement to the right
• The same pattern can be observed in other phrase types
• VP - Je parle à mes amis 
• Je = specifier, parle = head, à mes amis = complement
• AP - sûr de la décision
• sûr = head, de la décison = complement
• PP - vers la fenêtre 
• vers = head, la fenêtre = complement

Sentence level: 

• Sentences can contain multiple types of phrases and can be broken down into 'syntactic trees' 
• e.g. "Mes amis à l'étranger sont partis en vacances" 

 Noam Chomsky:

• According to Chomskian theory - native speakers have the innate ability to generate words in the proper speech pattern
• This is known as the generative paradigm - which means that we can generate a limitless number of correct sentences
• X rule - the X bar rule 
• the idea that we have basic syntactic rules that we follow all the time 
• according to this theory language is not as creative as we might think and does not allow for much variation - in the sense that all speakers have the same basic rule in their heads 

Morphology: 

• the study of the shape of a word
• the unit of morphology is the morpheme - the smallest unit of language that a word can be broken down into and still make sense 
• morphology is a grammatical entity  
• Verb morphology e.g. the verb donner
• donn-e/donn-ais/donn-é/donn-erai
• donn has meaning and the endings have meaning, however neither can exist by themselves 
• Nominal morphology 
• much more limited choice of morphemes
• e.g. livre-s, porte-s
• Adjectival morphology 
• e.g. ancien-s, vert-e
• Articles are morphemes
• the don't exist independently as they must go before a noun
• In English, we have no adjectival morphology or different articles and the imperfect tense doesn't have morphological changes the way French does (i.e. we use the same endings in the present and the perfect unlike French)
• Some languages have no morphology at all 

Uses of morphology:

• Grammatical morphology - allows for greater clarity/specificity
• Lexical morphology - creation of words 
• Prefixes, e.g. re + faire = refaire & suffixes e.g. gouverner + ment = gouvernement, can be used to create new words aka neologisms
• Infixes - the insertion of a morpheme into the middle of a word - also exist but not in French or English 

'L' Deletion

Example of linguistic variation:

•  In spoken French, some speakers 'delete' or leave out 'l' sounds in certain places
• e.g. "Il y a" vs "y a" (often in the case of an impersonal 'il')
• e.g. il va [iva]/ils vont [ivɔ̃]/elle voit [evwɔ]/elles regardent [erəgard]
• /l/ in subject pronouns and in 'word final' positions often deleted
• Content words:
• Possible, Exemple (word final)
• Escalier, Millieu (word median)
• La/Le/Les - word initial position - very unusual for the /l/ deletion to occur here but it does occasionally 
• Lui (e.g. 'je lui parle' [ʒi]0

Historical examples of /l/ deletion:

•  Alterum (Latin) - autre
• Altum - haut
• Alba - aube 
• Bellus - beau (exception - belle)
• Falsus - faux

Grammaticalisation: 

• à + le = au (Old French 'als')
• de + les = des (Old French 'dels')
• jes/quis (Old French) - je les/qui les (Modern French)

Synchronic Perspectives:  

• Ashby - 1988 - Tours
• Armstrong - 1994 - Lorraine Dieuze (metropolitan France study)
• Sankoff & Cedergren - 1976 - Montreal 
• Poplak & Walker - 1986 - Ottawa Hull
• Note: Canadian studies older, Metropole studies more recent
• Studies based on real speech recordings 

Study Results:

•  Geographic:
• /l/ deletion is more advanced in Canada than in Metropolitan France 
• The Metropole is lagging behind in terms of language change
• Metropolitan studies are more recent than the Canadian studies, emphasising the lag
• While the difference is not particularly significant in the extremely frequent contexts (eg il) the gulf becomes greater across the infrequent contexts
• e.g. object /l/ deletion is relatively common in Canada but very uncommon in Metropolitan France 
• Definite article /l/ deletion occurs infrequently in Canada but it has not yet spread to the Metropole
• Linguistic:
•  Lexification of 'il' - the rate of deletion 'il' (personal and impersonal) is reaching 100% (in Canada)  
• therefore a new word has been formed ergo linguistic change has occurred
• The effect which word type has on the frequency of /l/ deletion 
• Pronouns evidence /l/ deletion more commonly than articles
• Within the pronoun category, subjects (il/s, elle/s) demonstrate a greater frequency of /l/ deletion than objects (lui, les, la, le, leur, l')
• Phonological context - deletion was affected by the vowel/consonant pattern
•  e.g. 'il voit' vs 'il entre' - speakers will attempt to preserve the CVCV pattern
• i.e. [ivwɔ] vs [ilɛ̃tr]
• Stylistic - deletion = non prestige 
•  Social Factors (not applicable in Canada - /l/ deletion is universal there irrespective of social factors - another sign of their more advanced stage of language change)
•  Age - always important marker of language change 
• Very high rate of deletion in younger age group, lower rate in older group 
• Armstrong's study of French teenagers showed that the deletion rate was at 100% in certain cases 
• Gender 
• Females delete less frequently than males  
• Males tend to lead the process of language change while women lag behind
• Class
• lower class delete more often than higher class

Conclusion:
Linguistic change is in process.