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The use of the QU-final interrogative structure in spoken French*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2008

Aidan Coveney
Aidan Coveney
Affiliation:
Faculty of Languages and European Studies, University of the West of England, Bristol, Bristol Bs16 1QY, England
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Abstract

The contextual and pragmatic motivations for the use of the QU-final interrogative structure are explored in a substantial corpus of spoken French, employing a variationist methodology. A number of categorical, or invariant, contexts, are identified, and the effect of several variable contextual and pragmatic constraints is examined. QU elements of three or more syllables and copulas are found to strongly favour the use of the QU-final structure, whereas rhetorical questions and monosyllabic QU elements disfavour its use. Certain discourse contexts effectively rule out the QU-final structure, and, except for a few categorical contexts, its use is always optional.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of French Language Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , September 1995 , pp. 143 - 171
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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