Abstract
Any variationist study of Ivory Coast French needs to take into account sociolinguistic considerations and systemic features of other contact languages. For instance, there is a specific usage of pour against which the interference hypothesis can easily be tested: FI: Le kaki que je porte présentement, c'est pour un bachelier qui me l'a laissé avant de partir en fac, cadeau. (Lafage 2003: 676). Avant de te moquer du linge de ta voisine, regarde si pour toi est propre.. In Ivory Coast French, pour (N/Pro) can display a variety of functions: it can be part of associative predications, it can stand for genitive phrases in an anaphoric construction, make reference to an object in relation with another and participate in various idiomatic expressions. This paper has a twofold objective. First, I argue that pour (N/Pro) constructions has to be analysed as an empty headed "associative" noun phrase. Second, I will show the relevance of extra- AND intersystemic factors in accounting for language variation. Incidentally, the use of pour (N/Pro) constructions seems to be conditioned by the availability of similar constructions in other Ivory Coast languages on the one hand, such as baoule (o liε) or dioula (à tá), and, cultural needs on the other.
Highlights
The study of variation requires the study of the language system itself and that of the languages in contact and the sociolinguistic situation
Lafage (2003: XLIX) cites the study by Hattiger (1981) of the causes of language change in "colloquial Abidjan French": the facts of reorganization on the model of the targetlanguage, or independently of the source as well as target-language, are in the majority compared to reorganization on the model of the source languages
There we find, in ways that may be unexpected, one of the conditions of interference: the divergence between the two languages in contact must be tiny so that a model of the source language can be integrated within the system of the "recipient language" (Weinreich 1953: 31)
Summary
The study of variation requires the study of the language system itself and that of the languages in contact and the sociolinguistic situation. Among the inter-systemic factors, interference involves, in the general sense of Weinreich (1953: 1), reorganisation in the most highly structured areas of the system, due to the conjunction of several types of language influences. These are normally observed in contexts of language contact, at the individual or social level, which is the case with the Ivory Coast. A particular use of pour, for which the hypothesis of syntactic interference can be verified If such varieties of French may be explained by inter-systemic factors, it's as a result of other extra-systemic factors. Béatrice Akissi Boutin: Possessive pour in the French Lexicon of the Ivory Coast and Language Contact
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