Histoire d'É ou de la variation des usages graphiques à la différenciation réglée

Abstract

Distinct spellings for the similar sounding [e] in ?é, ?er and ?ez endings of the French verbs in ?er were introduced step by step in the course of history. Present day spelling rules were laid down in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. First, when accents started to be used in the sixteenth century it meant the past participle (chanté) could be distinguished from the third person present singular (chante). Then, after a period of hesitation, the plural endings ?és and ?ez were respectively assigned to nouns, adjectives and past participles (beautés, réputés, chantés) and to the second person plural of verbs (chantez), while the infinitive ending ?er had become homophonous with the other [e] forms. When the rules governing the past participle agreements with avoir prevailed as early as the seventeenth century a grammatical complication was added. The structural development of today’s norm having been made clear, turning to an earlier stage of the language that shows early signs of choice between spellings should prove interesting. The earliest spelling treatises actually attempted to render less ambiguous ?s and ?z (or ?es and ?ez) and, less successfully, ?es and ?er, although a rough equivalence seem often to have remained the rule. Thus the history of written French shows that variation in spelling was systematised early, but not given normative status until several centuries later.