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Do French speakers really have two grammars?1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2013

PAUL ROWLETT
PAUL ROWLETT*
Affiliation:
University of Salford
*
Address for correspondence: Paul Rowlett, School of Humanities, Languages & Social Sciences, University of Salford, Salford M5 4WT, United Kingdom e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

I consider variation within French and its status in speakers’ mental grammars. I start with Massot's (2008) claim that, within relevant grammatical units, speakers in contemporary metropolitan France do not combine socio-stylistically marked L and H features, and his explanation of this in terms of diglossia (Ferguson, 1959), that is, the idea that speakers possess two (in this case massively overlapping but not identical) ‘French’ grammars which co-exist in their minds: one (français démotique, FD: acquired early, well, and in a naturalistic environment) comprises one set of grammatical features which generate unmarked forms and the marked L forms; the other (français classique tardif, FCT: learnt later, often unreliably, in a more formal context and under the influence of literacy) comprises a (partially) different set of grammatical features which generate the same unmarked forms as well as the marked H forms. Speakers switch between FD and FCT but do not use them both simultaneously, at least not within the context of an individual clause. While Massot's claim is controversial (see Coveney, 2011), I provisionally accept that it is correct, and move on to consider his explanation. I review instances of variation for which I suggest Massot's model needs to be revised in order to account for the phenomenon of surface forms which can be generated by both putative grammars, and which are therefore superficially part of the overlap, but which have a different linguistic status in each and underlyingly are not therefore part of any overlap. I then reconsider Massot's two-grammar hypothesis, raising issues surrounding the extent of the overlap between them, the nature of the differences between them, and their respective statuses in the minds of speakers. I suggest that in view of their massive overlap, their non-random differences, and their contrasting cognitive statuses, it does not make sense to view both FD and FCT as autonomous grammars. Rather, I suggest that only FD is an autonomous grammar. Since the differences between FD and FCT are instantiations of naturally occurring developments usually conceptualised in terms of cyclic grammaticalisation and renewal (the L features of FD are innovations with respect to the H features of FCT), I suggest that FCT should be seen as a dependent grammatical ‘bolt on’ which encodes its conservatism in an abstract and economical way.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of French Language Studies , Volume 23 , Special Issue 1: L'hypothèse d'une diglossie en France , March 2013 , pp. 37 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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Footnotes

1

Acknowledgements: This article has developed from plenary lectures I was invited to deliver to the 19th Manchester–Salford Postgraduate Linguistics Conference, held in September 2010, and the colloquium Du Français et de l'Anglais aux langues du monde: Variation, Structure et Théorie du langage, held at Montpellier–Paul Valéry in June 2012. Some of the ideas in the first sections of this article initially appeared in a working paper in 2011. I am grateful to the organisers of the conferences for their kind invitations, to the audiences for their engagement with my topic, and to the reviewers of the working paper and the present article for detailed and useful feedback. My thanks also to Benjamin Massot for the opportunity to discuss these issues. I appreciate that our views differ on various points; all errors are my own.

Abbreviations used: neg = negative marker; ind = indicative; sub = subjunctive; cond = conditional; imp = imperfect; Q = interrogative feature; PLD = primary linguistic data; LAD = language acquisition device.

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