The drift of French syntax
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
References (86)
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