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