Histoire d’S: ou le participe passé au Rasoir d’Ockham by Fabrice Marsac

Abstract

Reviews 223 to develop their language skills through interactive radio formats like debates and interviews with people in the street, expanding not only their linguistic repertoire but also their cultural integration into the host community (Abgrall). In educational settings, the perception of the French language as an unattainable ideal frustrates the efforts of students and instructors. Several contributions suggest alternate educational methods, such as contextualized instruction in language contact situations such as the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa (Miled), increased focus on vocabulary for young learners (Anctil), and even an overhaul of language education (including orthographic reform) in Francophone contexts (Chartrand). Focus is also drawn to the difficulties inherent in the linguistic system of French, and language reform is a suggestion that arises in several of the contributions (Chartrand; Van Raemdonck). In an early presentation , Bouillon offers advice for those who would undertake spelling reform, based on his experience working on German orthographic reform. Hambye’s conclusion, meticulously drawing from the previous works, offers an excellent overview of the themes that link the various contributions, and his thoughts on the politicization of linguistic policy leave the reader with food for thought. The volume concludes with a convenient list and description of the organizing bodies from each country. On the whole, this collection offers insight into a number of contemporary Francophone situations and internal and external factors relevant to the appropriation of the language. University of Louisiana, Lafayette Tamara Lindner Marsac, Fabrice. Histoire d’S: ou le participe passé au Rasoir d’Ockham. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2016. ISBN 978-2-343-08287-5. Pp. 210. 22 a. The ins and outs of past participle agreement are discussed in this volume, whose overarching goal is to untangle and simplify the current minefield of nearly 50 rules, exceptions, and cas particuliers. Marsac qualifies this current state of affairs as abracadabrantesque , a term that most speakers (and probably all instructors) of French will agree with. Adopting the principle of Occam’s Razor, the author aims to replace these sometimes incoherent accretions resulting from centuries of prescriptive endeavors with a unified, streamlined, and linguistically valid rule. Although the early sections sometimes verge on the alarmist—including a generous list of errors from educated sources, taken as evidence of a general relâchement grammatical—many of Marsac’s later criticisms ring true.Take for example the familiar règle de position: a past participle with avoir as its auxiliary agrees with the direct object when the object precedes the past participle, but not when it follows (les pommes que j’ai mangées but j’ai mangé les pommes). As it turns out, no other agreement relations in French (e.g., subject-verb, noun-adjective) evince this (artificial) sensitivity to position. Marsac emphasizes the inconsistency in proscribing agreement with en (des pommes, j’en ai mangé), even though en pronominalizes a direct object and precedes a past participle auxilié by avoir. Likewise, why does faire causatif block agreement (la maison qu’il a fait faire)? Pronominal verbs are similarly thorny, requiring agreement with direct objects (elles se sont vues) but not indirect objects (elles se sont parlé), despite the strong tendency elsewhere for agreement in the context of être. A further criticism of the règle de position is that, although ostensibly formulated for auxiliary avoir, it is extended to auxiliary être in cases like ils se sont acheté de coquettes maisons (no agreement; direct object follows the past participle) versus ils se les sont données eux-mêmes, la liberté et la démocratie (agreement required; direct object pronoun precedes the past participle). Marsac’s proposal would treat past participle agreement as simple verbal agreement and essentially do away with the règle de position, recommending for example cette visite que j’avais projeté; past participles of pronominal verbs would agree with the subject (rather than the direct object) across the board, thus le premier ministre se les est attribué (masculine singular subject) or les deux premiers ne se sont pas plus (masculine plural subject). Although Marsac’s proposal is elegant in relying only on preexisting principles such as subject-verb agreement, it disregards how past participle agreement arose naturally in French prior to...