Standard French Research Articles

MODO-TEMPORAL MICRO-SYSTEMS IN CONTEMPORARY ORAL FRENCH

The ability to use verbal modes and tenses in spoken French differently from standard French is undeniably a phenomenon that is part of social usage, especially among young people. Indeed, faced with a great variety and complexity of modes and tenses in written French, the speaker will tend to use in his speech only grammatical forms strictly necessary for immediate communication. This article is based on a survey carried out over a period from 2005 to 2010, put into understanding with another independent oral corpus, in order to better underline the contrasts. The resulting cross-analysis shows not only the evolution of the language as a sociolect, but also the ability of some speakers to adapt their speech to the minimalist need for interlocution. First, it focuses on the opposition between the modal-temporal organization of written French and of contemporary spoken language. In a second step, it characterizes in this field the differentiation of use in “standard” oral French and in “spontaneous” oral French, to end up delineating the modo-temporal architectonics of the latter. By highlighting the fact that the variations and the trends identified are a social trait and are part of the vitality of the language, thus, this study contributes to a more precise definition of “spontaneous” oral French as a social language and is intended to be an illustration of the contemporary sociopragmatic use of the French language.

Does idiosyncratic risk matter in IPO long-run performance?

This paper studies how firm-level idiosyncratic risk varies over time and affects both initial public offering (IPO) and matched non-IPO firms’ long-run performance. It revisits the traditional approach to compute the long-run performance by conditioning aftermarket performance on idiosyncratic risk with a generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity GARCH-M extension of the standard three-factor Fama and French (3FF) model. Our findings show a positive long-run relationship between idiosyncratic risk and expected returns for almost all IPOs and matched non-IPO firms. We find that, in general, IPOs do not underperform their peers when we adjust long-run abnormal returns for firm-level idiosyncratic risk. We also note that the idiosyncratic risk exposure depends on the IPO profile; it is more important for firms going public in hot-issue markets, undervalued IPOs and high idiosyncratic-risk issues. Thus, this paper suggests that a part of abnormal returns in specific IPOs long-run performance is derived from firm idiosyncratic risk.

Grenzüberschreitende Identitäten im badischen Oberrheingebiet: Unterschiede in der Konstruktion sprachlicher und regionaler Verbundenheit mit dem Elsass

Based on a qualitative analysis of 127 sociolinguistic interviews with speakers of Alemannic from 22 villages and towns along the Franco-German border at the Upper Rhine in Baden (Germany), this contribution investigates the construction of trans-border identities. The paper explores how Badeners perceive the relationship with Alsace (France) with regard to three thematic fields: 1) regional ties with Alsace, 2) language choice in communication across the border, and 3) comprehension of the Alsatian dialect.
 Two factors are shown to play a major role for the construction of trans-border identities. First, identities vary between regions, which can be explained by historical differences, especially with respect to political circumstances. The closer the historical relationship between the respective region and Alsace, the stronger the trans-border identity. Second, there is an influence of the geographical distance to the border. The closer a village is located to the border (the Rhine), the stronger the (self- and other-)ascription of linguistic and regional ties to Alsace.
 Furthermore, analysis reveals a correlation between the perception of regional ties to Alsace and language choice in trans-border communication: Persons who construct a shared regional cohesiveness across the border tend to use the Alemannic dialect when interacting with Alsatians, whereas persons who do not perceive such a cohesiveness mainly use Standard German or French.

Systematic Interpretation and the Re-systematization of Law: The Problem, Co-requisites, a Solution, Use

A renewed search for legal certainty is a reaction to the preponderance of judge made law, which has been in turn prompted by the democratic deficit of the EU and the impact of Anglo-American law. The problem is that the search is oblivious to both systematic interpretation and the need of re-systematization of law. The paper defines systematic interpretation, relates the definition to standard French and German conceptions, indicates the room for systematic interpretation in Anglo-American laws, and states prima facie reasons for a re-systematization of law as a prerequisite of systematic interpretation. The problem cannot be appreciated outside its proper context. It is a disregard for causation and evaluation. Hence the paper outlines Aristotle’s understanding of causation and evaluation in his presentation of phronesis, reconsiders continental European legal thought in the light of Aristotle’s presentation, and offers policy-oriented jurisprudence as a remedy to the deficit of evaluation and causation in European legal thought. A solution to the problem offers a typology of criteria and clarifies positive and fundamental legal concepts, positive and fundamental criteria of systematization, and the place of criteria in knowledge of law. The usefulness of the criteria is demonstrated by a common approach to the systematization of law and an alternative diagnosis of a defect of systematization diagnosed by an authority in history and philosophy of law rather than legal theory.

Semi-specialized corpora of written French as a resource in language teaching and learning

This study is based on data provided by a corpus 1,144,668 words of contemporary written standard French of a semi-specialized nature, consisting of journalistic texts relating to the introduction of the Euro. The aim is to investigate the potential of a corpus such as this as a resource for language teachers and learners in an area such as French for business, where competence in the expression of quantitative may be required. Through an analysis of the verbs and prepositions used in conjunction with the percentage symbol, the aim is twofold: firstly to show how the information obtained from the corpus can complement the contribution of the grammar and the coursebook, providing a resource with a variety of examples of actual use; and secondly to raise the question of how information such as this can be made available to teachers and learners in an environment which fosters inductive learning and learner autonomy.

Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen (2016): The Structure of Modern Standard French. A Student Grammar

Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen (2016): <i>The Structure of Modern Standard French. A Student Grammar</i>

ЯЗЫКОВЫЕ КОНТАКТЫ В КАНАДЕ И ИХ ЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКИЕ ПОСЛЕДСТВИЯ

The article examines one of the examples of how the English language influences French in the Canadian province of New Brunswick, where due to intensive language contacts with the local French language there has appeared a special code named chiac. This linguistic structure becomes a distinctive marker of francophones at the south-east of the province, a kind of symbol of their resistance to both the English language and standard French. By the example of chiac the author examines the convergence of Canada’s two major languages through the lenses of the south-eastern residence area of New Brunswick francophones. The analysis of linguistic material has allowed the author to conclude about the considerable level of Anglicisation of the French language, in particular, at the lexical level, and to identify three ways to assimilate borrowings by the recipient language: adaptation, non-assimilation and semantic assimilation.

Etude d’écarts de la langue française par les occurrences « ça », « là » et « ça là » dans le français populaire ivoirien

Parmi les usages langagiers attribués au français populaire ivoirien, ceux relatifs au pronom démonstratif « ça » et à l’adverbe de lieu « là » sont remarquables. La présence récurrente, voire abusive de ces deux morphèmes est symptomatique d’une forme langagière locale qui donne l’illusion d’emplois normatifs. Cet article se propose de marquer un arrêt sur les distributions syntaxiques et sémantiques différentielles dont font l’objet les unités grammaticales « ça » et « là » en français standard et en français populaire. Et d’en évaluer les enjeux rhétoriques.

The processing of dialectal variants: Further insight from French

ABSTRACTIn two semantic priming experiments, this study examined how southern French speakers process the standard French [o] variant in closed syllables in comparison to their own variant [ɔ]. In Experiment 1, southern French speakers showed facilitation in the processing of the associated target word VIOLET whether the word prime mauve was pronounced by a standard French speaker ([mov]) or a southern French speaker ([mɔv]). More importantly, Experiment 1 has also revealed that words of type mauve, which are subject to dialectal variation, behave exactly in the same way as words of type gomme, which are pronounced with [ɔ] by both southern and standard French speakers, and for which we also found no modulation in the magnitude of the priming effect as a function of the dialect of the speaker. Experiment 2 replicated the priming effect found with the standard French variant [mov], and failed to show a priming effect with nonwords such as [mœv] that also differ from the southern French variant [mɔv] by only one phonetic feature. Our study thus provides further evidence for efficient processing of dialectal variants during spoken word recognition, even if these variants are not part of the speaker’s own productions.

Low vowel variation in three French-speaking countries

AbstractIt is commonly noted that standard French is losing the contrast between its two low vowels /a/ and /ɑ/, due to the fronting of the back vowel. The difference in length, which accompanied the qualitative difference of this pair, is affected as well. In mainland France, this tendency can be found to various degrees across the country, and is spreading throughout the speech community. This article further develops the picture of the current status of the low vowel contrast by investigating Belgian and Swiss French, where length is known to play overall a far more prominent role in the vowel inventories than it does in standard French. Are Belgian and Swiss French also affected by the merger of the two low vowels? To what extent can a difference in length and/or timbre still be found? And how do the patterns of contrast neutralisation/preservation relate to the developments in France?

On negative indefinites in Gallo

Abstract This paper brings to bear primary fieldwork data from Gallo on negation and polarity related issues. We defend two correlated proposals. (i) The negative markers pas/pouint in Gallo are not inherently negative, but rather merely signal the presence of abstract semantic negation in their clause. (ii) In (at least) the Morbihan dialect of Gallo, the negative markers pas/pouint come in two variants: a plain and a scalar variant, both of which enter into a Negative Concord relation with abstract semantic negation. The scalar NPI variant corresponding to aoqhun across other Gallo dialects, or to aucun in Standard French, is pas/pouint aoqhun and it is the negator (minimizer) pas/pouint that provides the necessary scalarity component characteristic of N(P)Is (formally the scalar feature [+σ]) to the plain indefinite aoqhun. As a corollary, adapting Labelle &amp; Espinal (2014), the shift from indefinite to (N)PI involves transfer of a scalar feature from a minimizer to an indefinite.

Contact-induced change in Francoprovençal phonological systems caused by standard French

AbstractThe phoneme or sound inventories of different Francoprovençal varieties are presented and compared. Typical Francoprovençal sounds are identified. This serves as a basis to study contact-induced sound change. Language contact and the influence of French on the phonological systems are examined in more detail. Changes are illustrated by corpus data from theMonts du Lyonnaisarea and compared with other sources, focusing on consonants. Dialectometric analysis ofALF-data confirms heavy French influence on Francoprovençal phonology, which cannot be recent. In the last hundred years, probably only minor changes in unstressed vowels occurred in the area studied.

Chamoiseau’s Literary Creolization: The Stylistic Potential of a Vernacular

In his novels and theoretical works, Martiniquan writer Édouard Glissant favors a process of creolization that entails a creative mixing of languages rather than a reinforcement of linguistic hierarchical binaries. For Glissant, creolization does not produce direct synthesis but resultants, a sort of polylingualism within. Patrick Chamoiseau, Glissant’s protégé, also seeks to bridge the gap between standard and nonstandard language through a stylized hybrid. Intended to be self-glossing, the work of Chamoiseau is infused with Creole in sophisticated, didactic ways so as not to alienate the uninitiated reader. In this way, Chamoiseau solicits readers’ active participation in his display of the literary beauty and inventiveness of Creole and, thus, ultimately portrays the vernacular not as an inferior form of speech or simply as other but rather as a language capable of being elevated above standard French. Moreover, Chamoiseau upends traditional methods of incorporating nonstandard language in literary texts by treating the standard form of language as if it were a dialect or patois. Not only does standard French appear in italics, but the intonations of stilted, conventional academic speak are typographically represented in a way that parodies pejorative, humorous representations of the vernacular and other forms of marginalized language. By focusing primarily on diglossic situations involving French and Creole in the works of Chamoiseau, this article explores the ways in which “creolization”—the stylistic representation of a nonstandard form of language—captures the becoming of all languages through its celebration of relational interactions and distinctiveness rather than isolation and hegemony.

Laughing at the victims: the function of popular jokes during Algeria’s ‘Dark Decade,’ 1991–2002

ABSTRACTA decade-long civil conflict that leaves an estimated 200,000 people dead is no laughing matter. Yet, throughout Algeria’s ‘dark decade’ of the 1990s residents of the war-torn North African country told jokes. Previous scholarship on humour during this period has asserted that Algerians overwhelmingly used comedy to shore up resistance against the political agents, namely the military, government, and armed rebels whose actions arguably incited the violence. However, a survey of the nearly one hundred jokes in Algerian or Modern Standard Arabic, French, and Tamazight that circulated around the country during this period showed that Algerian civilians primarily used jokes to laugh at themselves, the victims of horrendous violence, and not the military or armed ‘Islamist’ groups responsible for the crisis. By portraying civilians as powerless these jokes inadvertently attributed a strength to the belligerents that often exceeded their actual prowess. This myth-propounding about the war’s major actors was not without consequence. Paul Silverstein has asserted that Algerian conspiracy theories regarding which side of the conflict committed its worst atrocities served the purposes of both the military as well as the armed ‘Islamist’ organisations (Interview with Zineb Sedira). I argue that jokes did much the same, proving that humour in times of conflict can have devastating results. This finding challenges the notion of war-time humour in the context of ‘the dark decade’ operating mainly as a Scottsian ‘weapon of the weak,’ a tool of the disenfranchised and downtrodden to lambast powerful figures.

L’élaboration du lexique français médiéval – variation diatopique, sélection et changement lexicaux

The article examines some basic questions about the diatopic varia-tion, the lexical selection and lexical change in Old French. In particular, therole,statusandquantitativedimensionoflexicalregionalismsandlexicalchangeis discussed. The selection processes in vocabulary, which in the different regionsand political contexts of thelangue d’oilare carried out with varying speed andintensity, are exemplified by a lexical analysis of two texts, a donation-documentwritten in a Lorrain monastery in 1234 and a marriage contract established in theFrench Royal Chancery in 1301. While nearly a third of the vocabulary of the Lor-raine document is no longer part of today’s standard French, the vocabulary ofthe record of the Royal Chancery is in the 13thcentury already very close to thatwhat will become the vocabulary of the future (and today’s) standard.

The Structure of Modern Standard French: A Student Grammar by Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen

The Structure of Modern Standard French: A Student Grammar by Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen

Contact de langues en Guadeloupe et acquisition du français standard

This paper deals with the great level of linguistic variation in Guadeloupe and its educational implications, especially relating to the acquisition of standard French. Among all the forms of linguistic variation, we will focus in particular on the phenomena of language contact. One of the aims of this paper is to examine how the different school actors perceive non-standard forms of French, especially when these forms are resulting from the contact with Creole. Moreover, in order to illustrate the difficulties of teaching standard French in such a situation, we will describe the lesson of a teacher, focusing on linguistic interferences. By analyzing this lesson, we will also address the uses of different norms of French by pupils and highlight some didactic proposals.

Stranger Tongues

Stranger Tongues

Shaping an agenda through experience(s)

After finishing a B.A. degree in History and Political Sciences from Valparaiso University, I began my post-undergraduate life going into the U. S. Peace Corps and spending three years as an English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher in lycees in Morocco. After all, in 1973, agreeing to a free summer vacation in Morocco for Peace Corps training, if nothing else, seemed like a good deal. Little did I know that an EFL/ESL (English as a second language)/applied linguistics life would begin at that point. I did learn that I liked teaching (which surprised me a bit) and the opportunities for creativity it provided (even if teaching with ‘Martin and Jillian’ (Broughton 1968) and First things first (Alexander 1972) (for those who remember). As a young teacher, I vividly remember, as a break from the routine, teaching my senior students the lyrics to ‘All Along the Watchtower,’ first the Bob Dylan version, then the Jimi Hendricks version. Sometimes we just have to take some chances. Morocco was also a great place to be in the middle of multilingualism in action: Moroccan Arabic, Berber, Modern Standard Arabic, French, Spanish, and English. For many of my students, English was their fifth language.

French in early modern Norwich

ABSTRACTMuch has been written about the use of French in medieval England. However, with one or two exceptions, relatively little has been written about the language in early modern England. This article aims to provide an account of the use of French as an emigrant language in one of the leading provincial cities in early modern England, Norwich. From 1565 onwards thousands of people from the French-language area migrated to England as a result of economic necessity and religious persecution. Many of them settled in Norwich. As well as these immigrants and their descendants, there were Dutch immigrants in Norwich who spoke French as well as several well-educated individuals from the local English population such as Sir Thomas Browne. This article describes the varieties of French used in Norwich, including Picard, the emerging standard French and Law French. It then discusses how French operated in the multilingual environment of early modern Norwich under the headings of language competition, language contact, bilingualism, code switching, translation, and finally, language shift and recession. It adds not only to our understanding of French in early modern England but also to the literature on French as an emigrant language.