Montreal French: Periphrastic Future

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Questions and Answers

The study examines the use of periphrastic future (PF) and inflected future (IF) in which dialect of French?

  • Québécois French (correct)
  • Swiss French
  • Acadian French
  • Parisian French

What historical trend regarding future tense usage in Québécois French does the study reference?

  • The equal distribution of PF and IF
  • The rise of IF at the expense of PF
  • The rise of PF at the expense of IF (correct)
  • The decrease of PF in favor of IF

In the context of the study, what does 'age grading' refer to?

  • Changes in language use correlated with age (correct)
  • A formal assessment of language skills based on age
  • The education level achieved by speakers of different ages
  • Consistent language use across all age groups

What research method was primarily used in this study?

<p>A panel study involving re-interviewing speakers (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

According to previous sociolinguistic research, which group tends to use PF more frequently?

<p>Younger speakers (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

The panel study revealed what trend in IF use as speakers aged?

<p>An increase in their frequency of IF use (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

The increase in IF use as speakers aged was heightened for which group?

<p>Members of higher socioprofessional groups (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the potential impact of increased IF use by older speakers?

<p>It may retard the historical shift to PF (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

How might age grading, acting in a retrograde direction, affect the interpretation of language change?

<p>The rate of change may be slightly overestimated (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Over the past 120 years in Canadian French, what linguistic change has occurred?

<p>The inflected future (IF) has been steadily giving way to the periphrastic future (PF) (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

In the 19th-century Récits du français québécois d'autrefois corpus, what percentage of future instances were accounted for by PF?

<p>56% (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

In the late 20th-century Ottawa-Hull corpus, what percentage of future instances were accounted for by PF?

<p>73% (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What did the study aim to explore regarding language change?

<p>The micro-trajectory of slow change across individual speakers' lifespans (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What term is used to describe the group of speakers who were reinterviewed in the study?

<p>Panel (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

According to previous research, how is age related to the use of IF?

<p>Younger speakers prefer PF (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What perspective on grammar is suggested if people's grammars are stable after L1 acquisition?

<p>Successive cohorts of young people are in the vanguard of change (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What third possibility was revealed regarding change in IF/PF usage?

<p>Retrograde change in lifespans (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What was the primary focus when analyzing socioeconomic and linguistic effects?

<p>Focusing on the social matrix in which speakers live (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What was the main rationale for concentrating on the IF/PF alternation in the paper?

<p>IF/PF alternation is the most important future temporal reference (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What was the primary goal for the structural and semantic categories defined in the analysis?

<p>To give a very explicit statement of the structural and semantic categories (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Fleischman observed that reference to the future is rarely a simple matter of?

<p>Marking events (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What does the future always represent?

<p>Irrealis modality (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Poplack and Dion stated that their quantitative methodology extracted?

<p>Unambiguous references (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What did previous studies include to be certain that any given present tense form actually expresses the future?

<p>Temporal expressions (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the reported frequency of present tense in future contexts?

<p>Less than 10% of tokens (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What was specified to be excluded if a token did not unambiguously refer to future time?

<p>Modal usages (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which action constituted the largest number of exclusions?

<p>Habitual actions (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Instances of IF appeared how many times, representing 9% of the total of 2900 habituals?

<p>269 cases (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Sentences where the futurate form refers not to future time but timeless truth consisted of a how many examples that were excluded?

<p>n = 487 (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

How did Emirkanian and Sankoff describe defining the gnomic?

<p>A conjectural tone (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What type of description will a speaker be giving to an audience invoking general truths?

<p>Hypothetical exemplars (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

A further type of exclusion involved the use of [aller + infinitive] as expressing?

<p>Movement (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Occurrences of the verb s'en aller + infinitive, when were they excluded?

<p>Motion contexts (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What other nontemporal occurrences were excluded from the dataset?

<p>Volitional usages (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What forms were excluded as being genuinely futurate but?

<p>Frozen (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

How many tokens were retained for quantitative analysis after setting aside the excluded cases?

<p>4246 tokens (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What was the linguistic constraint that required the attention of polarity constraint?

<p>The envelope of variation (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

IF was virtually categorical, what percentage was indicated to be in negative polarity environments for the panel speakers?

<p>99.7% (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

According to this study's parameters for coding independent variables, what was not included?

<p>Temporal distance (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Deshaies & Laforge have suggested that IF was associated with which future eventualities?

<p>Less certain future (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

For values in the contingency factor, what clause do we use?

<p>Apodosis of a si 'if clause (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Grammatical person has which commentators that suggest PF is associated with first-person subjects?

<p>Blanche-Benveniste (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What does the study reveal about the use of IF as speakers of Montréal French age?

<p>IF use increases with age, particularly among higher socioprofessional groups. (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

By what percentage did IF account for future instances in the 19th-century Récits du français québécois d'autrefois corpus?

<p>56% (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the established trend in Québécois French regarding the use of periphrastic future (PF) and inflected future (IF) over the past 150 years?

<p>PF use has increased at the expense of IF use. (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the term used to describe speakers continually changing towards the evolving community norm?

<p>Lifetime change (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Flashcards

PF vs. IF in Québécois French

The rise of the periphrastic future (PF) while inflected future (IF) declines, an established historical trend in Québécois French over the last 150 years.

Montréal speakers study (1971–1984)

A study of 60 Montréal speakers from 1971–1984 shows as they aged, two-thirds increased their use of IF, especially those in higher socioprofessional groups.

Future tense trend in Canadian French

Canadian French has been steadily giving way to the periphrastic future (PF), which has become the default for expressing the future.

Wagner & Sankoff study goal

Study aims to explore the micro-trajectory of the change from IF to PF. The study tracks speakers over time, linking age grading and apparent time.

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Age and future tense preference

Age is a factor in conditioning the use of the inflected future (IF). Younger speakers prefer PF.

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Retrograde Change

Retrograde change is where speakers increase using IF.

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IF/PF Study scope

Focuses on expressions speakers use to indicate the future, rather than functions that can be expressed by morphological future forms.

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Future tenses in French

Represent an irrealis modality and also express other tenses and modalities. There is lack of simple form/function isomorphism.

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Futurate forms

They are a subset of irrealis predications, tokens excluded from data sets if do not unambiguously refer to a future time.

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Habitual actions

The largest number of exclusions, are those action that encode characteristic or habitual actions.

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Sentences excluded

Timeless truths or hypothetical possibilities are excluded or not about a future time.

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Motion expression exclusion

A nontemporal usage excluded where there was a use of [aller + infinitive] used as literal meaning to describe movement.

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Volitional usage of excluded

Occurrences where a volitional usage is used like imperatives or pseudo-imperatives are nontemporal.

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Frozen forms

Genuinely futurate, whether categorically IF like 'come what may' or PF phrases that have frozen and became invariant.

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IF frequency

4246 tokens from both 1971 and 1984 were qualified and of these, IF accounted for 1085, or 25.6%.

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Polarity constraint

That the presence of a negative marker is the strongest predictor of IF selection in every quantitative study of Québécois and Ontarian French to date

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Negative polarity indicator

IF was virtually categorical (99.7%) in negative polarity environments for panel speakers and the rest involves hesitations.

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Original linguistic measuring factors

Two linguistic factors that were originally being measured were temporal distance and adverbial Specification.

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Less certain future

It is suggested that IF is associated with less certain future eventualities, whereas PF is not associated with greater certainty.

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Type 5 tokens

Tokens with no clear indication of contingency classify as being default of this form of Type 5.

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Dramatic difference

It reported a dramatic difference between written/spoken Canadian French. written was expressed in IF, and only 3.4% in PF.

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1971 sociolinguistic survey

The study of the sociolinguistic survey used a random stratified sampling method to arrive at 120 speaker sample.

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Follow-up study

It was added in 1984 , a new group of 12 younger speakers 15-25 years (2 male, 2 female in three groups) and relocated 60 originals.

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Social mobility

There can be used and was defined as upwardly mobile and downwardly mobile.

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Data to parse

Large spoken corpus of 118 socio interviews and approximately 2.5 million words.

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IF as a marker

IF was a marker of adult speech in the study appropriate to the more formal aspect of late stage of life.

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Significant influence

Contingent has a significant influence of the choice between IF and PF. When using quand to make decision, the decision is five times then with noncontingent context.

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Use of IF

In the study, two-thirds of panelists, or 38 out of 59, increased their use of IF as they aged.

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Alternative explanations

The surprise of increase IF leads studies to reconsider alternate Explanations to help give rise in this study.

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Mechanism slowing IF

The study indicates that age grading can acts as the breaking-in that change was, what mechanism involve reverting conservative linguistic patterns as they age.

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Study Notes

Overview

  • The study focuses on the use of periphrastic future (PF) and inflected future (IF) in Montréal French
  • It aims to understand the connection between age grading and apparent time in language change
  • Researchers analyzed data from 60 speakers in 1971 and 1984

Background

  • The shift from IF to PF is an established historical trend in Québécois French for at least 150 years
  • Prior studies indicate younger speakers use PF more often.
  • Many younger speakers use PF exclusively in affirmative sentences
  • The study challenges the assumption of speaker stability across the lifespan due to synchronic data fitting the historical record

Key Findings

  • Panel study of 60 Montreal speakers between 1971-1984 reveals age grading in a retrograde direction
  • As speakers aged, two-thirds increased their use of IF
  • Heightened effect for members with higher socioprofessional status
  • Rise in IF use by older speakers might slow down the historical change and sustain IF input for child L1 acquisition
  • The observed rate of change could be overestimated due to this age grading effect

Data Analysis

  • Data was gathered from 60 speakers of the 1971 Sankoff-Cedergren corpus of Montreal French re-interviewed in 1984.
  • The research explores the micro-trajectory of language change throughout individual speakers' lives
  • Longitudinal research categorizes the selected speakers as a consistent cohort, referred to as panelists or panel members

Future Temporal Reference

  • Examines the variations in forms expressing future temporal reference instead of all functions of future forms
  • Observed that “reference to the future is rarely, if ever, a simple matter of marking an event as subsequent to the moment of speech”
  • The future embodies irrealis modality, separated from past or present events
  • The category of future is traditionally connected with varieties of irrealis or nonfactive modalities
  • Isolating tokens correctly belonging to this subset was the first task
  • The expression of future temporal reference uses both inflected and periphrastic forms

Variable Context:

  • Tokens not unambiguously referring to future time were removed
  • These represented instances of modal or aspectual usage of futurate forms
  • The largest number of exclusions, constituting 2900, encoded characteristic or habitual actions, marked by adverbials like souvent or (de) temps en temps

Gnomics

  • Non temporal sentences because they are assumed to hold at all times
  • Cases imply a preceding 'You will see that...'
  • A large proportion of the tokens in the gnomics category appeared in contingent contexts, such as the apodosis of si clauses, or in clauses where the si does not appear explicitly but is implied
  • Cases refer to hypothetical situations without a specific temporal reference

Exclusions

  • 4246 tokens from 1971 and 1984 were retained for quantitative analysis
  • IF accounted for 1085 or 25.6%
  • Occurrences of the verb s'en aller + infinitive were also excluded as they appeared exclusively in habitual and motion contexts, or sometimes both

Linguistic Factors

  • Prescriptive grammars have traditionally associated PF with proximal events
  • Acadian French is to date the only French variety in which this semantic distribution has been demonstrated by quantitative analysis
  • The influence of this factor has more to do with stylistic differences than with grammatical person per se

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