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On Spoken French: An Ashby Reader
William J. Ashby
[Studies in Language Companion Series 226] 2023
► pp. 181–206

The drift of French syntax

 | University of California, Santa Barbara
Recent speculation about the drift of French syntax is evaluated against data from a socially diverse corpus of modern French. While the data do not support the theory that French is becoming a VSO language, they do suggest that French is developing a ‘topic prominent’ sentence type.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Harris’ theory
    • 2.1The corpus
    • 2.2Results
      • 2.2.1Relative frequency of the corpus
      • 2.2.2Form of coreferential noun phrase
      • 2.2.3Disjunctive pronouns
      • 2.2.4Transitivity
      • 2.2.5Modality
      • 2.2.6Sex
      • 2.2.7Socio-economic class
      • 2.2.8Age
      • 2.2.9Conclusion
  • 3.Lambrecht’s theory
    • 3.1The corpus
    • 3.2Results
    • 3.3Conclusion
  • 4.Summary and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Editor’s/translator’s references
  • Appendix
Published online: 2 March 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.226.c17
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