ON THE HISTORY OF THE STUDY OF SYNTAX IN FRENCH

ABSTRACT

French is a syntactically interesting language, with aspects of is word order and clause structure triggering a variety of important developments in syntactic theory. This is a concise and accessible guide to the syntax of Modern French, providing a clear overview of those aspects of the language that are of particular interest to linguists.

АННОТАЦИЯ

Французский язык — синтаксически интересный язык, аспекты порядка слов и структуры предложений положили начало множеству важных разработок в синтаксической теории. Это краткое и доступное руководство по синтаксису современного французского языка, дающее четкий обзор тех аспектов языка, которые представляют особый интерес для лингвистов.

Keywords: French language, syntax, adjectives, evolution, assumption.

Ключевые слова: Французский язык, синтаксис, прилагательные, эволюция, предположение.

Counting the number of French speakers in the world today isn’t easy. There are two reasons for this, and neither is specific to French. First, in most places around the planet, people aren’t actually asked which language they speak; few countries – not even France! [1] – include questions on language use and proficiency in their censuses. Second, even when people are asked which language(s) they speak, their answers aren’t always straightforward. Certainly, is difficult to define the notion of ‘a French speaker’ in any meaningful way.

In France, is true that 82% of the population are monolingual French speakers with native speaker competence. Elsewhere in the Francophone world, however, this is the exception rather than the rule. Often speakers don’t have native-speaker competence, and might more usefully be called French users rather than French speakers. Significantly, the status and function of French vary widely from one place to another: it may be an official language, vehicular language, or vernacular language.

So, while French may well be used in numerous countries, is often one of many languages within a multilingual setting, and often not even the dominant language. Thus, the notion ‘Francophone country’ is doubly problematic. On the one hand, what on the surface might look like a French speaker might in truth have a rudimentary competence in the language, only. On the other hand, is not even the case that everyone living in a ‘Francophone country’ has any competence in French at all: there are some 500 million people living in the fifty or so member states (and six observers) of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), some three times the size of the world’s French-speaking population. The use of the notion ‘Francophone country’ in estimating the size of the world’s French-speaking population isn’t therefore as straightforward as it might seem. Despite the difficulty inherent in the enterprise, estimates of the number of French speakers in the world have been produced. The most recent edition of the report La rancophonie dans le monde [2] speaks of 175 million francophones worldwide of whom sixty million are francophones partiels. Gadet catalogues 142 million francophone réels and a further sixty-three million francophone parties. Between 100 and 110 million people are learning French as a foreign language. French is thus the tenth or eleventh most widely spoken language in the world.

Within international organizations like the United Nations (14% of speeches delivered to the General Assembly in 2001) and the European Union (30% of original documents produced by the European Commission), French is second only to English.

The history of thinking about and describing syntax goes back thousands of years. But from the perspective of theorizing about syntax, which is our concern here, a critical point of departure is Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures henceforth SS. I begin with some general observations about the goals of contemporary syntactic theory. Then, after briefly summarizing the main ideas of SS, and discussing methodology, I review some of the more important extensions, with an eye towards understanding where we are today, and how we got here. I touch on some of the more prominent branch points later in the chapter, in order to preserve as much as possible a sense of the historical flow. For convenience, I refer to the direct line of development from SS as “mainstream” generative grammar (MGG) [3].

The important position of the French language in all of Europe was due to the fact that the French monarchy was very powerful and rich. The spread of the French language to America and Africa happened as a result of demography. Today, French is used as a mother tongue by 82.5% of French, 22.1% of Canadians, 41% of Belgians, 18.4% of Swiss, and 58% of Moroccans [4].

As we have already mentioned, the French language was important in the Middle Ages due to the power of the French monarchy. For this reason, various scientific and artistic works were written in this language.

ModF (Massot’s 2003 français classique tardif, Bernstein’s 1991 literary French), the conservative variety taught in schools, is distinguished from ConF (Frei’s 1929 and Zribi-Hertz’s 1994 français avancé, Raymond Queneau’s néo-français, Massot’s 2003 français démotique contemporain, Bernstein’s colloquial French), the more innovative vernacular learnt in the home.

Gadet characterises ConF in terms of a séquence progressive, fixed word order, analyticity, invariability, but not simplification. Some linguists have gone so far as to suggest that the degree of innovation which has occurred in the vernacular is such that ModF is no longer a coherent or psychologically real variety.

In French linguistics, the most common term is “phrase”, which gradually replaced the term “sentence” (proposition) [2], [3], which was widely used used until the 18th century [4].

In Russian grammar, the terms “sentence” and “statement” are more common. A sentence is contrasted with a statement as:

1) unit of language – unit of speech [5];

2) a unit of the system of linguistic signs - a segment of speech that performs a communicative function [6];

3) structural language unit - communicative speech unit [7];

4) potential state – realization of a potential state [8];

5) structural model, scheme – for a specific speech unit [9], [10]. Sometimes the term “sentence” is used in both cases: both to denote the sentence itself and to denote a statement, write French language experts, for example, [9], [10].

The study of substantive sentences and related controversial issues begins with a discussion of the problems of two-part and one-part sentences, as evidenced by a number of special works. Such studies help to identify the characteristics of the phenomenon being studied.

Let us immediately make a reservation that due to the insufficient development of the issue of one-part sentences in the French language, we are forced to resort to a theory developed on the material of other languages, mostly Russian, which, despite the different structure of languages, in some cases can be applied to French language.

In traditional grammar of the 19th century. the sentence as a syntactic unit was considered as a two-part structure consisting of a subject and a predicate.

Within the framework of the logical (logical-grammatical) direction, a sentence was equated to a judgment, which presupposed a mandatory two-part structure. In this regard, one-part sentences were considered incomplete.

So, for example, A. Kh. Vostokov believed that every sentence must have a verb [6], and F.I. Buslaev expressed the point of view that if there is no verb, then this is an abbreviation or omission [7]. However, in his work there are hints of single-member nominal sentences - the ability of verbal nouns to form a whole sentence [8].

Later, when considering the relationship between single-component sentences and judgments, scientists were conditionally divided into three camps.

Some argue that a judgment is always two-part and consists of a subject and a predicate. Another thing is that one of the components may not have a verbal expression for various reasons. Usually this is the subject, since the predicate is an obligatory component of the sentence, otherwise its meaning is lost.

For example, A. Delacroix writes that the subject may not be expressed, but implied, if a person knows who or what is being discussed [10].

A.V. Savinov says that a subject can be indefinite in its form if it is not clearly expressed in a judgment [9], and S.V. Saidakhmedova writes about the implicit subject [8]. P. V. Tavanets believes that in such cases the predicate is the content, and the subject is knowledge about the subject [10]. A.D. Gulyaev believes that a thought can be expressed in one word in the form of a noun and even a proper name [9].

V.V. Babaytseva writes that the basis of nominative sentences is a logical-psychological judgment, where the subject is a visual-sensory image (psychological category), and the predicate is a verbalized concept (logical category) [9].

M.V. Kurovskaya also criticizes the point of view of V.V. Babaytseva, believing that it unites units of different levels: visual image and logical.

In addition, adds M.V. Kurovskaya, a sentence can contain concepts, representations and presuppositions, accumulated knowledge, experience [10].

The predicate may also not have a verbal expression. Then they talk about predicate-free judgments or judgments of existence (existential judgments).

Representatives of the psychological school considered the predicate to be the most important part, the basis of a sentence, from which it follows that substantive sentences are incomplete. A. A. Potebnya, considering sentences like Fire, believed that these are two-part incomplete sentences (part of a compound predicate with an invented subject and a verbal connective) [8]. D. N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky in the sentence Moroz saw a subject with a predicate that is not expressed, but is mentally felt [9].

F. F. Fortunatov (formal-grammatical direction) noted the connection between the psychological subject and the predicate as parts of one whole thought, but one of their parts may not be expressed verbally, then we are talking about an incomplete sentence [7]. For example, in the sentence Fire, the psychological subject is the representation of flame, smoke, and the psychological predicate is the word itself [6].

Here lies a significant difference between Russian and French syntax. If in the Russian language monocomponentism causes a lot of controversy, since sentences consisting of only one member of the sentence are typical for this language, then in the French language there are no such disputes. In French, a predicate cannot be used without a subject. However, the constructions we study consist of only one main member, which we define as the subject, which proves the existence of one-part sentences in the French language.

Consequently, we can conclude that the substantive sentence is one-part, where any verb is missing, including the copula, the restoration of which is not required for the semantic completeness of the sentence.

Conclusions

In this article, by researching the syntax of the French language, we got to know the opinions of the linguists of the French language and came to the following conclusions during the typological examination of verb bindings:

1. French inflectional. Inflection is manifested by changing the roots of words, and unlike Azerbaijani, prepositions are used instead of suffixes. It is known that there is no pure language. Thus, in agglutinative language, there are signs of inflection, and in inflectional language, there are signs of agglutinativeness, even if only a little.

2. In French, the verb binding (gérondif) is formed by adding the verb of the preposition "en" to the present tense form of the adjective (participe présent). In French, the verb conjugation is invariable, stable, and does not agree in person or quantity. Even in the French works of the 15th century, verb bindings can be found.

3. In French, the verb closure (gérondif) clarifies the action it expresses in 5 aspects, time, manner-movement, condition, cause, contradiction.

4. The semantic meaning of the sentence changes when the closing verb (gérondif) is directly replaced by an adjective in the syntax of the French language. Thus, the binding of the verb belongs to the verb by expressing one of the two actions that the preacher performs at the same time.

5. When we take a typological look at the verb bindings in the literary texts of the French language, we see that the semantic function of the verb bindings in both languages is approximately the same.

Reference:

1. Bouchard, Denis. 2002. Adjectives, number and interfaces: why languages vary. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
2. Brown, Keith (ed.). 2006. Encyclopaedia of language and linguistics, 2nd edn. Oxford: Elsevier
3.  Cinque, Guglielmo and Richard Kayne (eds.). 2005. The Oxford handbook of comparative syntax. Oxford University Press.
4. Dikken, Marcel den and Pornsiri Singhapreecha. 2004. ‘Complex noun phrases and linkers’ Syntax 7, 1–54.
5. Doetjes, Jenny and Johan Rooryck. 2003. ‘Generalizing over quantitative and qualitative constructions’ in Coene and D’Hulst (eds.), vol. 1, 277–95.
6. 2004. ‘Prepositions as probes’ in Belletti (ed.), 192–212. Kayne, Richard and Jean-Yves Pollock. 1978. ‘Stylistic inversion, successive cyclicity and Move NP in French’ Linguistic Inquiry 9, 595–622.
7. Saint-Dizier, Patrick (ed.). 2004. Linguistic dimensions of prepositions. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
8. Shlonsky, Ur. 2004. ‘Enclisis and proclisis’ in Rizzi (ed.), 329–53.
9. Starke, Michal. 2004. ‘On the inexistence of specifiers and the nature of heads’ in Belletti (ed.), 252–68.
10. Tallerman, Maggie. 2005. Understanding syntax, 2nd edn. London: Arnold.