This study explores the diachronic variation of mid-vowel aperture (/e, ɛ, o, ɔ/) in word-final and penultimate-syllable positions in vowel harmony (VH) contexts in declamatory/journalistic French from 1925 to 2023.

Our corpora include two pre-existing corpora – the INA broadcast archives corpus (1940–1999) and the ESTER corpus (2000–2004) – as well as two novel corpora, which include recordings from the Archives de la Parole by Hubert Pernot (1925–1929) and a selection from Radio France and YouTube spanning 2020 to 2023.

Our results suggest a general tendency of VH weakening over the last century. Additionally, we found a significant acoustic convergence in terms of aperture between vowels /o/ and /ɔ/, but no convergence between /e/ and /ɛ/ in word-final position, contrary to prior research.

An auxiliary imitation experiment was designed to investigate the correlation between the loud/projected voice in older recordings and the F1 of mid-vowels in VH contexts. The imitation experiment reveals a significant increase in F1 in loud declamatory speech. However, no effect of speech style on VH was observed, supporting the diachronic process of VH reduction.

French is a typical verb-framed language, in which manner verbs cannot freely combine with result-denoting constituents in a single VP. Drawing on experimentally elicited production data on Hexagonal French, this study examines how the syntactic (in)flexibility of manner-of-creation verbs influences the lexicalization of the event result. As for result lexicalization within the VP headed by the manner verb, the study explores the occurrence of effected objects and resultative PPs. Thus, it addresses the availability of the material/product alternation (sculpter une poupée à partir du bois/sculpter le bois en (une) poupée) as a type of argument alternation, whose existence has been questioned for the Romance languages. Furthermore, it is explored how the verbs’ syntactic flexibility influences whether manner and result are lexicalized within a single VP at all or distributed onto different VPs. The results show that the material/product alternation does occur, but that only a limited set of verbs has the syntactic flexibility required for it. Additionally, it is shown that syntactic flexibility favors a denser packaging of conceptual components, since with verbs that admit an effected object, the result is realized more often in the VP than with verbs that do not.

Intensifiers are known for their dynamic nature, due in part to the expressive function they serve. However, while the quantitative patterning of English intensifiers has been studied extensively, the intensifier system of French has yet to be well documented. This study therefore examines intensifier use from a variationist sociolinguistic perspective in the ESLO corpus of spoken Hexagonal French. The quantitative distributions of adjective intensifiers are compared across two corpora collected in 1970 and 2010. Results show a significant decrease in intensification rate over time. Analysis of individual intensifiers show some to have decreased in use over time (e.g. très, tellement), others to have increased (e.g. vraiment, tout), and others to appear only in the later sample (e.g. super, hyper). Longitudinal change is also found in the adjectival function (predicative vs. attributive) and collocational width of intensifiers. Relating to social factors, no significant gender difference is found between female and male speakers’ intensification rate over time. Furthermore, très dominates as the preferred intensifier among older generations, while younger speakers favour more varied intensifiers. Analyzing such changes in the use of intensifiers over the past half century contributes to a better understanding of the structure and development of the French intensifier system.

The aim of this study is to track the evolution in the use of the markers nenny, non + verb (non fait ‘no, it doesn’t’) and non in its absolute use between the middle of the 15th century and the end of the 18th. In Middle French, non already covers all the uses of the old markers nenny and non fait, but it remains in the minority. In Pre-Classical French (1550–1650), the frequency of nenny and non fait decreases considerably and, in Classical French (1650–1789), they become archaic. In the mid-17th century, non definitively assumes the functions of the medieval markers, which disappeared. The analysis of the temporal distribution of these markers helps to date the transition from ancient to modern uses. Several studies of phonetic, morphological and syntactic phenomena have also aimed to date the turning point between the medieval and the “classical” language, which occurs during the so-called “pre-classical” period. This research also seeks to contribute to the debate on the position of the boundary between Pre-Classical and Classical French on the basis of pragmatic criteria. The results support placing this boundary within the decade 1620–1630, as other studies did for morphosyntactic phenomena.

Dans le présent article, nous proposons une analyse de la mise en scènes de la (non-)réalisation du ne de négation et du il impersonnel dans un corpus de onze bandes dessinées de l’auteur franco-syrien Riad Sattouf. Notre objectif est double: d’une part, il s’agit de confronter cette mise en scène aux résultats des études de corpus oraux et, d’autre part, nous voulons la situer par rapport aux résultats d’autres études sur la mise en scène de l’oralité dans la bande dessinée. Pour ce faire, nous examinons des variables internes (p. ex. le type du forclusif ou les verbes impersonnels) et externes (p. ex. l’âge du personnage) et catégorisons nos résultats selon le modèle de proximité et de distance communicatives de Koch/Oesterreicher (22011). Le corpus utilisé se compose de toutes les bandes dessinées hors-série et d’une bande dessinée par série de Sattouf publiées entre 2003 et 2021. Notre article montre qu’il existe des similitudes entre la mise en scène sattoufienne et les pratiques orales au niveau des variables internes. Nous constatons cependant de grandes différences en ce qui concerne la variation de la (non-)réalisation du ne et du il en fonction des variables externes.

This research focuses on the dissidence of Michif French, an endangered variety of Laurentian French spoken by a number of Métis in Western Canada. We examine the vernacular use of [tʊt] (tout/tous ‘all, every’) in a corpus of around 50 interviews collected in the Métis community of St. Laurent, Manitoba, in the 1980s. On the one hand, the internal analysis supports the hypothesis that it is related to the other varieties of Laurentian French. On the other hand, the external data reveal that [tʊt] is widely used, confirming the highly vernacular character of Michif French compared to the other varieties. Finally, the analysis of several interview extracts illustrates that the intensive use of vernacular variants acts as an identity marker, enabling speakers to lay claim not only to their culture, but also to a language they consider distinct from that of other French speakers.

This article investigates the evolution of bare nouns, used without a determiner, through the history of the French language. The loss of bare nouns is charted through calibrated corpora of non-fictional prose texts from the same genres and region, ranging from the 12th to the 19th century. The change is first completed with nouns in subject function, significantly advances with direct objects, and progresses with obliques. The extensive quantitative documentation demonstrates that the change is impacted by the syntactic function of the noun, along the Accessibility Hierarchy. The speculation is examined that the more accessible functions encourage expression of (definite) determiners, thus explaining the pattern of change.

This article examines the semantic value of the infinitive in the ingressive constructions se mettre à (SMA) and commencer à (COMA) using a distinctive collexeme analysis. We find that the collexemes significant for the construction SMA are fairly homogeneous across the different corpora and can be grouped into the general category of expressive collexemes. The collexemes significant for COMA are more heterogeneous and belong to the category of cognitive collexemes and to semantic fields of sensory and creative acts. The results are compatible with the hypothesis put forward by Verroens and De Cuypere (2023) stating that the overall meaning of the SMA construction is intrinsically punctual. The punctual value of SMA is not only compatible with expressive collexemes, but, moreover, emphasizes their unforeseen and unintentional meaning. Conversely, the incremental value of COMA is consistent with the gradual onset of cognitive and sensory collexemes.