15. The Alternation Between the Auxiliaries avoir and être in Montréal French

Sankoff, Gillian; Thibault, Pierrette

doi:10.9783/9781512809589-019

Cited by 22 publications

(26 citation statements)

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“…descendre), almost uniquely so. Indeed, Willis (2000) showed that proportions of avoir selection with the 21 verbs she found to co-occur with both auxiliaries range from 8% to 98% in spoken Ottawa-Hull French (echoing Sankoff and Thibault's [1980] findings for Montreal). This means that avoir is the usual auxiliary for two thirds of the "être" verbs.…”

Section: Salience Of Variabilitymentioning

confidence: 77%

Searching for standard French: The construction and mining of the Recueil historique des grammaires du français

Poplack

Jarmasz²,

Dion

et al. 2015

Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics

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This paper describes a massive project to characterize "Standard French" by constructing and mining the Recueil historique des grammaires du français (RHGF), a corpus of grammars whose prescriptive dictates we interpret as representing the evolution of the standard over five centuries. Its originality lies in the possibility it affords to ascertain the existence of prior variability, date it, and determine the conditions under which grammarians accept or condemn variant uses. Systematic meta-analyses of the RHGF reveal that grammarians rarely acknowledge the existence of alternate ways of expressing the same thing. Instead, they adopt three major strategies to establish form-function symmetry. All involve partitioning competing variants across distinct social, semantic or linguistic contexts, despite pervasive disagreement over which variant to associate with which. This effectively factors out variability. In contrast, systematic analysis of actual language use, as instantiated in the spontaneous speech of 323 speakers of Quebec French over an apparent-time period of a century and a half, reveals robust variability, regularly conditioned by contextual elements which have never been acknowledged by grammarians. This conditioning has remained largely stable since at least the mid-nineteenth century. Taken together, these results indicate that the "rules" for variant selection promulgated by grammarians do not inform the spoken language, nor do grammars take account of the variable rules structuring spontaneous speech. As a result, grammar and usage are evolving independently.

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Section: Salience Of Variabilitymentioning

confidence: 77%

Searching for standard French: The construction and mining of the Recueil historique des grammaires du français

Poplack

Jarmasz²,

Dion

et al. 2015

Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics

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show abstract

“…-En Acadie (Haden 1973 ;King & Nadasdi 2000, 2005Balcom 2008 ;Giancarli 2011 ;Roussel 2016) -En Ontario (Canale, Mougeon & Bélanger 1977Béniak & Mougeon 1989 ; Willis 2000) -Dans l'Ouest canadien (Hallion 2000(Hallion , 2006Papen 2016) -Au Saguenay, Québec (Renaud & Villeneuve 2008) -Dans la ville de Québec (Canale, Mougeon & Bélanger 1977) -En Nouvelle-Angleterre, États-Unis (Russo & Roberts 1999 ;Stelling 2011) -En Louisiane, États-Unis (Brown 1988 ;Papen & Rottet 1997 La comparaison des résultats préliminaires de 2014 avec ceux de Sankoff et Thibault (1977, 1980 montre que l'alternance d'auxiliaire dans les verbes intransitifs a globalement diminué depuis 1971.…”

Section: Revue De La Littératureunclassified

“…Avec les pronominaux, la première personne du singulier semble avoir un impact sur le choix de l'auxiliaire avoir 2 Sankoff & Thibault (1977, 1980 Cette étude examine aussi de façon préliminaire et heuristique l'état de cette variation dans les verbes pronominaux, puisqu'il ne fait aucun doute que le français parlé au Québec présente certaines irrégularités à cet égard (ex. Je m'ai fait mal) et puisque Sankoff et Thibault (1977) …”

Section: Revue De La Littératureunclassified

Le retour d’un « être » cher ? Étude sociolinguistique de l’alternance des auxiliaires dans le français de Montréal (1971-2016)

Rea

2018

SHS Web Conf.

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“…Decades later, Russo and Roberts (1999) found that there was no social meaning associated with the non-standard use of avoir by twenty-two informants from Vermont and that its spread in their speech was promoted by main verbs which occur infrequently in conversation (e.g., revenir, descendre, arrêter) and by main verbs which have a transitive homonym (e.g., Je suis rentré à cinq heures 'I came home at five o'clock' vs J'ai rentré les foins 'I brought in the hay.') Sankoff and Thibault (1980) reported that variability carried social meaning in Montreal. Use of être was specifically associated with higher socioeconomic status and use of avoir was especially frequent among men.…”

Section: Previous Research On the Passé Composé In North American Frenchmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of grammatical proscription on morphosyntactic change: Auxiliary variation in Franco-American French

Stelling

2011

arbo

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The author explores the influence of grammatical proscription on morphosyntactic change (or lack thereof) in two Franco-American communities, based on data gathered through sociolinguistic interviews with French-English bilinguals from Southbridge, Massachusetts and Woonsocket, Rhode Island. A study of the use of passé composé shows that although a great deal of variation exists within the communities, language shift does not appear to be causing rapid linguistic change. The author also finds that, with the exception of community of residence, every social constraint considered was found to exercise a significant influence on variation. The analysis thus indicates that despite the sociolinguistic situation of language shift, the passé composé shows a high degree of resistance to grammatical simplification in both Southbridge and Woonsocket.L’auteur examine l’influence de la proscription grammaticale sur la variation et la stabilité morphosyntaxiques dans deux communautés franco-américaines, à partir des données recueillies par des interviews sociolinguistiques avec des locuteurs bilingues (français-anglais) de Southbridge au Massachusetts et de Woonsocket au Rhode Island. Une étude de l’emploi du passé composé révèle qu’en dépit d’un taux élevé de variation à l’intérieur des communautés, transfert linguistique vers l’anglais ne semble pas provoquer des changements linguistiques rapides. De plus, l’auteur a découvert qu’à l’exception de la communauté de résidence, chaque contrainte sociale observée exerce une influence significative sur la variation. Ainsi, l’analyse démontre que malgré la tendance sociolinguistique au transfert, le passé composé, tout autant à Southbridge et qu’à Woonsocket, fait preuve d’un grand degré de résistance envers la simplification grammaticale

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15. The Alternation Between the Auxiliaries avoir and être in Montréal French

Cited by 22 publications

References 0 publications

Searching for standard French: The construction and mining of the Recueil historique des grammaires du français

Searching for standard French: The construction and mining of the Recueil historique des grammaires du français

Le retour d’un « être » cher ? Étude sociolinguistique de l’alternance des auxiliaires dans le français de Montréal (1971-2016)

The effects of grammatical proscription on morphosyntactic change: Auxiliary variation in Franco-American French

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