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

FR4207 - Key Concepts - Homogeneity vs Variation

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