Variable deletion of French ne: a cross-stylistic perspective

Abstract

This paper considers the socio-stylistic distribution of the French variable morpho-syntactic particle ne. The interspeaker axes of variation in ne are summarised first, prior to a consideration of some intraspeaker data deriving from a corpus of spoken French. As well as presenting group scores, we examine intraspeaker variation in ne by focusing on use of the variable by a single speaker in both speech styles recorded. One principal finding is that the formal speech situation was such as to work against the strong constraint that induces French speakers to produce clitic+verb sequence as perhaps the default form; a constraint that strongly favours ne deletion. In informal style, several examples of retention of ne seem to show that the tone of a stretch of discourse can vary independently of the informality of the speech style. Several of the stylistic effects produced by the informants in conversation style through their use of ne show that the micro-style variation which is present in both of the broad styles is reflected in the use of ne through a reduction in degrees of style shift, since the ‘formal’ episodes in informal style call for the use of ne frequently relative to formal style — albeit within the context of very little use of ne overall.