Variation and change in French morphosyntax : the case of collective nouns / Anna Tristram.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tristram, Anna, author.

Series:

Research monographs in French studies ; 40.

Research monographs in French studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

French language--Grammar--Collective nouns.

French language.

French language--Semantics.

Grammar, Comparative and general--Collective nouns.

Grammar, Comparative and general.

French language--Grammar.

Physical Description:

ix, 178 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm.

Place of Publication:

London : Legenda, an imprint of the Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing, 2014.

Contents:

1 Research Context and Questions 5

1.1 Variation and Change in Morphosyntax 5

1.2 French and Sociolinguistics 7

1.3 The Case Study: Variation in Agreement with Collective Nouns 8

1.4 Research Questions 13

2 Theoretical Issues 15

2.1 Some Definitions 15

2.1.1 What is Agreement? 15

2.1.2 The Definition of Collective Nouns 17

3.2 Performance Error or Variation? 20

2.2 Delimiting the Research Project 21

2.3 Agreement with Collective-type Nouns: Linguistic Factors 23

2.4.1 Syntactic Factors 24

The Post-modifying NP and Attraction or Proximity Concord 24

Linear and Syntactic Distance 28

The Agreement Hierarchy 30

2.4.2 Semantic and Lexical Factors 31

Individual Noun 31

Conceptualisation of the Referent 36

Animacy 38

Semantic Factors Relating to the Predicate 41

2.4.3 Linguistic Factors: Summary 42

3 Methodological Issues 45

3.1 Investigating Morphosyntactic Variation: Challenges 45

3.2 Apparent Time 47

3.3 Sampling 49

3.4 Sociolinguistic Study Methodology 51

3.4.1 Primary Social and Situational Factors for Quantitative Analysis 51

Age 51

Young Speakers, Age 15-17 52

Adult Speakers, Age 30-45 53

Older Speakers, Age 60 and Over 54

Education 55

Gender 56

3.4.2 Secondary Social and Situational Factors for Qualitative Analysis 58

Social Class 58

Stylistic Variation 59

Written and Spoken Language 60

3.4.3 Other Factors (Excluded from Analysis) 61

3.4.4 Field work 61

The Guided Interview 62

The Cloze Test 64

4 Variation and Change in Contemporary French 69

4.1 Introduction 69

4.2 Variation in Contemporary French 69

4.2.1 Cloze Tests 70

Overall Results 70

Animacy 71

Post-modifying NP 73

4.2.2 Interviews 74

Overall Results 74

Animacy 78

Post-modifying NP 78

A Note on il y a...qui 79

4.2.3 Comparison of Post-modifying NP in Cloze Test and Interview Data 80

4.3 Change in Contemporary French 82

4.3.1 Change in Apparent Time: Analysis by Age 83

4.3.2 Gender and Language Change 84

4.3.3 Patterns of Change for Individual Nouns 86

La minorité and la majorite 87

La moitié and le reste 88

Une partie 89

Une minorité 91

La Joule and une foule 92

4.4 Variation and Change: Some Conclusions 93

5 Diachronic Perspectives 97

5.1 Diachronic Corpus Study 97

5.1.1 Methodology 97

5.1.2 Overall Results 98

5.1.3 Results for Individual Nouns 100

Majorité 100

Minorité 101

Une partie 104

La foule and une foule 108

5.1.4 The Role of the Post-modifying NP in Variation and Change 113

5.1.5 Diachronic Corpus Study: Summary of Findings 120

5.2 Diachronic Perspectives on Agreement in Grammars of French 121

6 Explorations of Education 125

6.1 Diachronic Survey of School Grammars 125

6.2 Qualitative Analysis of Sociolinguistic Study Data 127

6.3 Qualitative Follow-up Study 133

6.3.1 Aims and Methodology 133

6.3.2 Results and Discussion 133

Y₁F₃ 133

A₃F₁ 134

O₃F₂ 135

6.4 Explorations of Education: Summary 136

7 Discussion, Conclusions, and Further Questions 139

7.1 Findings 139

7.2 Investigating Morphosyntactic Variation: Methodological Solutions 144

7.3 The Definition of Collective Nouns in a Cross-linguistic Perspective 145.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 165-175) and indexes.

ISBN:

9781907975950

1907975950

OCLC:

893179194