Peter Sipes Ling 401 Class Project: French

Technical note: many IPA symbols did not combine with the diacritics. That's life.

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Background Facts
History
French is a language with a long history. Depending on the stage of its development, we may refer to it by one of several names. Under the name Old Latin, it is traceable to the 6th Century BCE, where it first appears in central Italy as one of the languages on the Italic branch of the Indo-European family. Once the Romans gained control of the Italian peninsula, they started to spread their military influence and language, Latinacross the Mediterranean basin. In the 1st Century BCE under the leadership of Julius Caesar, the Roman army invaded and conquered Transalpine Gaul, which roughly corresponds to modern France. Over the next centuries spoken Latin gained linguistic ground on the native Celtic languages to the point that the only Celtic language spoken today in France (Breton) finds its origins in Insular Celtic and not the previously existing Continental branch of the Celtic languages. (Latin likewise supplants the non-Latin Italic languages of modern Italy and all languages of Spain, except for the Basque-speaking areas near the Spain-France border.) Over the following centuries the Roman Empire rose and fell.

Latin's grip on the western part of the Empire never waned. It continued to be spoken despite waves of Germanic invaders across Western Europe. Though they conquered the political portion of life, their influence on the spoken language, called Romance at this stage, was mostly in the realm of vocabulary particularly vocabulary having to do with war. As Romance broke up, it broke in to far more languages than one might suspect given a cursory knowledge of the languages of Europe. One stage of this development in France is called Old French.

With the welter of dialects across France, political leadersfirst royal, later republican and imperial

Sipes 3 wanted to standardise the French language. The first step was the foundation of the French Academy. Later the Parisian dialect was used as the exclusive language of instruction of schools in France, which in turn led to the spread of Parisian French as the standard variety. (My informant confirmed that this was still the case while her mother was in school in the 1960s.) Throughout the 19th Century and into the 20th, French was a worldwide language of diplomacy, and even today many English speakers consider it to be a prestigious language to know rather than merely useful like Spanish.

The vitality of modern French can also be seen in its literature (e.g. The Little Prince), journalism (e.g. Le Monde), grapic novels (e.g. The Airtight Garage), cinema (e.g. Jean de Florette) and websites (e.g. fr.wikipedia.org).

Further reading Caesar, Gaius Julius. (1917). Caesar: The Gallic War (Loeb Classical Library). (H. J. Edwards, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nadeau, Jean-Benoit & Barlow, Julie. (2008). The story of French. New York: St. Martin's Press. Ostler, Nicholas. (2007). Ad infinitum: A biography of Latin. New York: Walker Publishing Company.

History with English

French has a complex relation to English. After the Norman invasion of 1066, French became a prestige language since the new kings and noblility spoke French. Many words in English have both a French derived and Anglo-Saxon derived synonym (e.g. royal/kingly, pig/pork). In other cases, French derived words completely supplanted the native words (e.g. malignant/yfelcund).

Sipes 4 Even after the English kings resumed speaking Enligsh, French maintained its place. Kings of England either ruled large portions of France or attempted to assume the French crown outright. This led to many English soldiers spending time in France over the course of the Hundred Year War. Additionally after the Reformation the many French Protestants (Huguenots) settled in England bringing their language with them.

As French came to assume its role as a diplomatic language, it maintained its prestige in the minds of English speakers. Directly borrowed terms in this area include coup [d'etat] and detente. Since France was also an innovator in cooking, art and fashion, many English terms in these areas were borrowed from French as well (e.g. restaurant, trompe l'oeil and couture). Even now, when a company wants to brand itself as being exceptional in these areas, French words come in to use. A sandwich shop can differentiate itself by chosing the name Pret A Manger instead of Burger King. Where would be makeup be better? Lancme or Mabelline?

With this place of prestige, English speakers are familiar with the accent of French speakersahem, Francophonesusing English. Or at least familiar enough that a characters in cartoons and movies may use French accents as a shorthand for being romantic (e.g. Miss Piggy), or for comic effect (e.g. Inspector Clouseau).

Further reading McWhorter, John. (2009). Our magnificent bastard tongue: The untold history of English. New York: Gotham Press.

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Distribution
There are about 53 million native speakers of French in France and a further 15 million native speakers in other countries. French is an official language in many countries of the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia. Their distribution is a reflection of French colonialism. There are an estimated 55 million second language speakers of French worldwide (Lewis, 2009).

French is a commonly taught language in secondary and post-secondary schools throughout the Chicago area. While there is a branch of Alliance Franaise in Chicago, I neither am aware of a large French-speaking community nor have heard French spoken in the Chicago area.

On the other hand I can vouch for a strong presence of French speakers in other parts of North America, as I have heard people speak Frenchpresumably nativelyin the Canadian provinces of Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and the Northwest Territories as well as the US state of Maine.

Further Reading Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/.

Informant
My informant is a 37 year-old woman, who is English/French bilingual. She is a native of San Francisco, CA, whose mother spoke French and father spoke English with her from infancy. Interestingly Ms Stark does not know how to read or write French despite a full command of the spoken language. She assumes she speaks Norman French, since her mother is from Normandy. I cannot comment on what differences there may be between Norman French and Standard French.

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Lexicon
Each word will be presented in the following order: English word, IPA transcription of informant's response, dictionary entry as found in WordReference.com's Enlgish-French dictionary, Latin word. I include the Latin word to give an idea of the continuity of French from its Latin origin, though I have one caveat. Latin, as received, is a literary language related to spoken Latin. French is a spoken language derived from spoken Latin. French words do not necessarily derive from literary Latin.

It is interesting to see how the spelling of French words is less divergent from Latin than the pronunciation in some cases. Some words do not seem to have anything to do with the Latin word. Body parts English word finger hand arm head nose eyes mouth ear neck leg foot toe tongue teeth Family and people mother father mom m p mm mre pre maman mater pater mama French IPA l dw l m l b la tt l ne lz ju l bu l ej l gz l m l pie l dw (d pie) l lg l d French written le doigt la main le bras la tte le nez les yeux la bouche la oreille la ganse la jambe le pied le doigt (de pied) la langue les dents Latin digitus manus bracchium caput nasus oculi os auris collum crus pes digitus pedis lingua dentes

Sipes 7 English word dad sister brother son daughter aunt uncle grandmother grandfather girl boy man woman Everyday nature sun moon sky cloud rain snow water hot cold winter spring summer fall day night l solel* l lun l siel nej l plui l n lo o f liv pt lte ltm u l nui le soleil la lune le ciel nuage la pluie la neige l'eau chaud froid l'hiver printemps l'ete l'automne jour la nuit sol luna caelum nubis pluvium nix aqua caldus frigidus hiems ver aestas autumnus dies nox French IPA pp s f fis fi tnt nc gm gp fi gs lum l fm French written papa sur frre fils fille tante oncle grand-mre grand-pre fille garon l'homme la femme Latin papa soror frater filius filia amita (m's sister) avunculus (m's brother) avus avia puella puer vir femina

*informant insisted there was something at the end of this word, but I could not tell what it was. I put /l/.

Sipes 8 English word river ocean lake mountain hill Animals dog cat mouse wolf bird cow horse Actions sit stand walk talk run cook read love be born die Numbers one two three d t un deux trois unus duo tres sw dbu me ple kui fe l kwizin kwizine li me ness mui asseoir debout marcher parler courir faire la cusine cuisinier lire aimer natre mourir coquere legere amare nasci moriri sedere stare ambulare loqui currere i sui lu wzo v vl chien chat souris loup oiseau vache cheval canis felis mus lupus avis vacca equus French IPA ivj l m l lc mt klin French written rivire la mer lake montagne colline Latin fluvius oceanus l lc mons collis

Sipes 9 English word four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty thirty forty fifty sixty seventy eighty ninety hundred two hundred thousand two thousand French IPA kt snk sis st uit nf dis z dz tz ktz knz sz dist dizuit diznf v tnt knt snknt swsnt swsnt diz kt v kt vdiz s d s mil d mil French written quatre cinq six sept huit neuf dix onze douze treize quatorze quinze seize dix-sept dix-huit dix-neuf vingt trente quarante cinquante soixante soixante-dix quatre-vingts quatre-vingt-dix cent deux cents mille deux mille Latin quattuor quinque sex septem octo novem decem undecim duodecim tredecim quattuordecim quindecim sedecim septendecim duodeviginti undeviginti viginti triginta quadraginta quinquaginta sexaginta septuaginta octoginta nonaginta centum ducenti mille duo mille

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Phonology
This area presented some difficulties for me. The first of which is that French and English have different inventories of phonemes.

This caused three sorts of problems. It was at times difficult to distinguish /Vn/ and /V [+nasal]/. The biggest problem of this nature was //. In my variety of English we have // and we have nasalized vowelsthough they aren't phonemicbut we don't have // (that I can easily think of). Then there were sounds that I could hear and distinguish, but not effectively reproduce to my informant's satisfaction. The biggest offender in this category was //. Finally there were sounds I was not at all familiar with, such as // and //. I did my best with those.

The other difficulty is that different sources indicate different inventories of phonemes. As the French might say: c'est la vie. Vowels i+y--------------+---+u \ | | \ | | \ | | e+----------+---+o \ | | \ | \ | | +------+---+ \ | | \ | | \ | | a+---+--+ There is also a phonemic distinction between several nasal and non-nasal vowels. The are: // and //; // and //; // and //; and // and //. There are also several diphthongs: /aj/, /j/, /j/ and /ij/. (At least diphthongs as we indicated them in this class.)

Sipes 11 Vowels not present in English /y/ high, front rounded vowel like /i/ but with rounded lips (Note: easy to distinguish, not too difficult to produce) // mid, front rounded vowel like /e/ but with rounded lips (Note: hard to distinguish) // mid, front rounded vowel like // but with rounded lips (Note: hard to distinguish, but I didn't hear it in the lexicon list.) /a/ low, front unrounded vowel (Note: not too tricky to distinguish, not too tricky to produce. I'd be hard pressed to tell you that I heard this sound.) Vowel frequency Vowel Count o u i y e 33 9 8 8 4 14 1 29 0 13 1 7 18 3 0 Note: after the first appearance, I no longer counted the vowel sounds in the article. None of the vowels seem to be overly dominant in the way that English has the when it doubt schwa it out rule of thumb. That said, // and /i/ stand out as much more frequent than the other vowels. This distribution is not too surprising since they are in opposite corners of the vowel grid, which makes them sound distinct. Had I included the vowels in the article in the count // and // would have had much higher counts. In no case does a nasalized vowel occur more often than its nonnasalized counterpart. // and // have the same number, but ths could be because I was struggling to differentiate between // and // even with multiple repititions. I figured if I couldn't tell the difference (as we do have // in English, even if it isn't phonemic), it must not be //.

2 Source for vowels http://www.ciltplus.org.uk/phonology/?q=content/phonemes

Sipes 12 Consonants Labial Stop Fricative Nasal Glides Approximant Lateral Approximant Consonants not present in English l j m w p b f v Labiodental Alveolar t d s z n Palatal Velar k g * Uvular

// voiced uvular fricative, distinctly an r sound. (Note: easy to distinguishperhaps a stereotypical French sound, difficult to produce to my informant's satisfaction.) // voiced palatal nasal like in Spanish caon. (Note: easy to distinguish, easy to produce) Note: My informant told me her mother said that the r-sound in French is trilled like /r/ or //. Many online sources indicated //, which is a fricative and not a trill. I'm going with //, since I didn't hear what I thought was a trill. If the Phonology class tell me I'm wrong about what I heard, I'll write an apology note. Source for consonants http://www.nou.edu.ng/noun/NOUN_OCL/pdf/edited_pdf3/FRE%20231%20Introduction%20to %20French%20Phonology%201.pdf Sound combinations not allowed in Enlgish French may start a word with // French phonology, while different from English, is amenable to lending words to English. CCVCC is the maximum syllable structure in my lexicon. English, as mentioned in class, has a maximum of CCCVCCCC. The limit of English is below French's. // might need to g to // or // might get unrounded to /e/, but there is no need for an epenthetic // when English borrows from French.

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Morphology
Present and Past tense verb conjugation
The verb /ft/ make, do Present Singular 1st Person 2nd Person 2nd Person alternate 3rd Person masculine 3rd Person feminine f ty f vu fze il f l f il fz il fz f vu fze Plural fe ty a fe vu zave fe il a fe l a fe il z fe il z fe Singular fe vuz ave fe Past Plural

Before choosing this verb for inclusion as my example, I verified with my informant that this verb was regular in its conjugation. That is to say that it was more like the English verb type smack/smacked/smacked than sing/sang/sung and certainly not like the viciously irregular go/went/gone.

In the past tense, a French verb conjugation book, Barron's French Verbs (2011), confirmed what I was told. The typical past tense is more like the English I have made and less like I made. In French, there is a tense that more or less corresponds with I made, but it is not used in spoken French. To reiterate, this information agrees with the data points my informant related.

Noun compounds
police car clown car idiot car /vwatu d polis/ car of police /vwatu d clun/ car of clown /vwatu d id/ car of idiot This is an actual compound This one is made up. So is this one.

Sipes 14 French would not seem to be able to make N-N compounds the way English does. French would prefer to make compounds this way: head /d/ modifier. Note: I needed to grease the skids by suggesting a pre-existing compound (police car) to get the juices flowing. For whatever reason, this section stumped my informant, though she knew how to do this in both English and French.

Do-er compounds
gateau maker /l ps ki fe l gat/ a man gets /l/ det person who makes det gateau /l ps ki fe l gat/ a woman gets /l/ det person who makes det gateau I asked for a few other data points about various-thing-makers, but they were all prefaced with /l ps ki fe/. It seems that while French may have simple words that correspond to butcher or baker, there is no easy way to generalize to candlestick maker.

Adjective comparison
Positive /m vwtu u/ my car is red My car is red. /ma vwtu plu u/ my car is more red My car is redder. /ma vwtu plu u k vot/ my car is more red than yours.fml yours.pl My car is redder than yours. /ma vwtu l plu u/ my care is the more red. My car is the reddest. Word for word same as English This is different

Comparative

than yours

Showing how to add a compared thing

Superlative

French, despite its highly-inflected Latin origin, seems to completely lack any inflection in adjective comparison. Instead it relies on /plu/ to form the comparative degree and /l plu/ to form the superlative degree. Presumably, a noun that had the article /l/ would use that in place of /l/.

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Syntax
The article
French has an article. Two actually. It seems to be much more tightly bound to the noun than the English article. Nearly every vocabulary term in the lexicon was givenand recorded where givenwith a definite article. I heard several forms of the definite article: /l/, /l/, /l/ and /lz/. There seems to be some sort of sandhi (or maybe crassis, I'm not quite sure on the technical term) going on between /l/ /l/ and /l/. So far as I can tell, words that begin with consonants get /l/ and /l/. Words that begin with vowels get /l/. I cannot generalize about /lz/ as it only occurred oncethough with a plural noun. On the other hand, another plural noun had /l/ as its article. There is also an indefinite article /un/. I was not careful enough to elicit a plural. Given what I know about Spanish, I would assume that the /l/ /l/ difference is gender. If so, French would appear to have two genders, though /lz/ could be a 3rd gender (but I doubt it). The article always comes before the noun, and any pre-noun adjectives.

Verbs
Verbs inflect for person and number in writing. In speech there looks to be three distinct the present tense verb forms: 2nd person plural, 3rd person plural and everything else. Since four combinations require the same verb form, it is no surprise that pronouns are required. Masculine and femine agents use the same pronouns until third person. Then gender is distinguished. There is an informal 2nd person singular /ty/ and formal 2nd person singular /vu/. The formal /vu/ is the same as the 2nd person plural pronoun and inflects in the same way. This is different from Spanish where /usted/ takes 3rd person singular verb inflection. There is also no formal 2nd person, which is also different from Spanish, which has /ustedes/.

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Other items
For the most part, word order is on par with English in terms of flexibility. I tried to stay well away from pronouns as I know that they are a bear in Spanish, and I know they share the same source.

Sample sentences
Basic declarative sentence / vw l / I see.1s det cat I see the cat. /il vw l / he sees.3s det cat He sees the cat. Basic question /sku vw l / do I see.1s det cat Do I see the cat? /ki vw l / who sees.3s det cat Who sees the cat? /ksku vw/ what I see.1s What do I see? Preparing to embed / di/ I said.1s I said. / di s/ I said.1s it I said it. Embedding / di ku vw l / I said that I see.1s det cat I said that I see the cat. /l vu/ det cat is.3s seen The cat is seen. / ne p vu l / I did not see.1s det cat I didn't see the cat. / vw p l / I see.1s not det cat I didn't see the cat. Lit: I see not the cat. SVO order relatively inflexible order No case marking with subject as pronoun some sort of subject seems to be required (like English) seems to require a question word, like English does, for yes/no questions No wh-move needed

Wh-question

What do I see? Wh-movement.

Apparently you can say this without an NP after V. Another SVO sentence Checking to see if /s/ hangs around after the embed. (No.) /ku/ is the C Everything after /ku/ is the IP compliment to C This looks a lot like English. Copula and a passive participle. Negative is two words. Seems to affect the pronunciation of the main verb. Two ways to negate. This time with only one negating word.

Passive

Negative sentence

Sipes 17 Adjective / un gn mez/ I.have det big house. I have a big house. Somehow the words corresponding to I and have are fused into //. Some adjectives take their position in front of the noun big and small were the culprits I ran across. But usually adjectives come after the noun they modify. Unmarked order. Preposition, not postposition Moving the prepositional phrase here seemed odd, but acceptable. Maybe a little non-native sounding, in the same way the corresponding English sentence sounds a bit off to a native speaker. PP passes the move test, so it is a component on its own This was deemed to be irreparably wrong. This V has NP as compliment and not adjunct. Word for word the same as English. Again.

/ un vwtu u/ I.have det car red I have a red car. Prepositions / vw l d l u/ I see.1s det cat in det street I see the cat in the street. /d l u vw l / in det street I see.1s det cat In the street, I see the cat.

*/ vw d l u l / I see.1s in det street det cat I see in the street a cat. Causative sentences / f l un vwtu/ I make det cat det car I make the cat a car. /l sole f l o/ det sun makes det cat hot The sun makes the cat hot. /l sole l o/ det sun makes det cat hot The sun makes the cat hot.

/f/ and // seem to be synonyms here.