French subject doubling
This paper revisits the status of subject clitics in Spoken French by studying subject doubling as a sociolinguistic variable. In the literature, two influential analyses have been proposed to account for French subject doubling. Based on new evidence from a corpus study on the large Multicultural...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
2024-12-01
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| Series: | Isogloss |
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| Online Access: | https://revistes.uab.cat/isogloss/article/view/420 |
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| _version_ | 1832583862750806016 |
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| author | Yiming Liang Caterina Donati Heather Burnett |
| author_facet | Yiming Liang Caterina Donati Heather Burnett |
| author_sort | Yiming Liang |
| collection | DOAJ |
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This paper revisits the status of subject clitics in Spoken French by studying subject doubling as a sociolinguistic variable. In the literature, two influential analyses have been proposed to account for French subject doubling. Based on new evidence from a corpus study on the large Multicultural Paris French (MPF) corpus, we argue for an analysis reconciling these two competing views of the construction in Spoken (colloquial) French. On one hand, we provide further support to the morphological approach (Auger, 1994; Culbertson, 2010) in which subject clitics are morphological agreement markers on the verb. On the other hand, we argue based on new evidence that lexical subjects are topicalized, as in the dislocation analysis. Furthermore, we argue that Spoken French is in a diglossia situation where speakers alternate structures provided by both Standard French and Colloquial French grammars. This paper provides further evidence of how quantitative studies of language use can shed light on long-standing theoretical debates.
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| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-b3088d268ced4363b8ad400569ef36ae |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2385-4138 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2024-12-01 |
| publisher | Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Isogloss |
| spelling | doaj-art-b3088d268ced4363b8ad400569ef36ae2025-01-28T03:01:56ZengUniversitat Autònoma de BarcelonaIsogloss2385-41382024-12-0110710.5565/rev/isogloss.420French subject doublingYiming Liang0Caterina Donati1Heather Burnett2Ghent UniversityUniversité Paris Cité ; Laboratoire de linguistique formelleCentre National de la Recherche Scientifique; Laboratoire de Linguistique formelle This paper revisits the status of subject clitics in Spoken French by studying subject doubling as a sociolinguistic variable. In the literature, two influential analyses have been proposed to account for French subject doubling. Based on new evidence from a corpus study on the large Multicultural Paris French (MPF) corpus, we argue for an analysis reconciling these two competing views of the construction in Spoken (colloquial) French. On one hand, we provide further support to the morphological approach (Auger, 1994; Culbertson, 2010) in which subject clitics are morphological agreement markers on the verb. On the other hand, we argue based on new evidence that lexical subjects are topicalized, as in the dislocation analysis. Furthermore, we argue that Spoken French is in a diglossia situation where speakers alternate structures provided by both Standard French and Colloquial French grammars. This paper provides further evidence of how quantitative studies of language use can shed light on long-standing theoretical debates. https://revistes.uab.cat/isogloss/article/view/420subject doublingdislocationnull subjectColloquial Frenchquantitative syntax |
| spellingShingle | Yiming Liang Caterina Donati Heather Burnett French subject doubling Isogloss subject doubling dislocation null subject Colloquial French quantitative syntax |
| title | French subject doubling |
| title_full | French subject doubling |
| title_fullStr | French subject doubling |
| title_full_unstemmed | French subject doubling |
| title_short | French subject doubling |
| title_sort | french subject doubling |
| topic | subject doubling dislocation null subject Colloquial French quantitative syntax |
| url | https://revistes.uab.cat/isogloss/article/view/420 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT yimingliang frenchsubjectdoubling AT caterinadonati frenchsubjectdoubling AT heatherburnett frenchsubjectdoubling |