French wh-questions: Crossing diglossia and topicality

French wh-questions: Crossing diglossia and topicality
Richard Faure, Katerina Palasis (Univ. Nice Sophia Antipolis, CNRS, BCL, UMR 7320)
This paper investigates the long-standing problem of variation in wh-questions in
Metropolitan French. We examine new child data (12,969 utterances by 19 children between
3;6 and 4;10) in the light of the recent diglossic studies built on adult data (Massot and
Rowlett, 2013, following Ferguson, 1959). We attempt to show that variation is much more
restrained than at first sight and that, where it survives, it authorizes no optionality and is
syntactically and interpretively motivated.
Variation in French interrogatives is well-documented in adult speech (overview in Myers,
2007). It displays at least the six patterns in (1).
(1) a. il va où ? ‘he goes where’
b. c’est où qu’il va ? ‘it is where that he goes’
c. où il va ? ‘where he goes’
d. où c’est qu’il va ? ‘where is it that he goes’
e. où est-ce qu’il va ? ‘where is it that he goes’ f. où va-t-il ?
‘where goes he’
The formalization of this variation is widely debated. Our claim is that it is better captured in
the frame of diglossia, which hypothesizes the existence of two different grammars than
variationism, which considers French to be one grammar with internal variation (e.g.
Coveney, 2011) or in combinations thereof (Villeneuve and Auger, 2013).
The diglossic approach makes the strong prediction that a speaker activates only one grammar
per utterance. Applied to language acquisition, diglossia implies that French children acquire
two different grammars (henceforth G1 and G2). Grammatical consistency has also been
observed in child data between the morpho-syntactic status of subject clitics and the form of
negation (Palasis, 2013), as illustrated in (2) with new data. Note that at this stage G2 barely
appears in child speech.
(2) a.
G1 (agreement marker + simple negation): mais i voulait pas. (Lou, 4;9)
b.
G2 (argument + discontinuous negation): mais lui il ne voulait pas. (Lou, 4;9)
‘but he did not want to’
We hypothesize that grammatical consistency extends to wh-questions, and make the
prediction that the G1 and G2 sets of features will each emerge within a subset of whstructures only. According to our corpus, this prediction is borne out, as illustrated in (3).
First, the agreement markers (G1) show up in wh-fronted (3b) and wh-in situ (3c) questions,
while clitic-verb inversion (G2), which is very rare in child speech, appears only in fronted
wh-questions (3a). Crucially, wh-in situ is precluded with clitic-verb inversion (3d), thus
making wh-in situ a feature of G1 only. The absence of clitic-verb inversion in G1 also
explains the rarity of wh+est-ce que forms in child speech (Strik 2008; our data), since est-ce
is a verb-clitic sequence that belongs to G2. Est-ce que only cooccurs with que in our data, but
we do not take these occurrences as counterexamples, since we consider the entire form as an
unanalyzed chunk (in line with Hulk 1996).
(3) Distribution of the wh-questions in our corpus
G1 G2
a. où es-tu Maman Ours ? (Carla, 3;5) ‘where are you Mummy Bear’
*
b. les cochons d’Inde où i[z] habitent ? (Liza, 4;2) ‘Guinea pigs where they live’
*
c. i va où l’éléphant ? (Massimo, 2;9) ‘he goes where the elephant’
*
d. *est-elle où la tortue ? ‘is she where the tortoise’
* *
e. *Où est-ce qu’il est ? ‘where is it that he is’
*
This first part of our account based on diglossia places (1e) and (1f) in G2. We are left with
four possible patterns in G1, whose distribution we propose to explain on the basis of topic
switching vs. continuity. Wh-items spread over two subgroups. On the one hand, où,
quoi/qu’est-ce que and comment display (1a) and (1c) patterns (wh-in situ vs. fronted wh-). On
the other hand, quand and qui show (1b) and (1d) patterns (c’est wh- que vs. wh- c’est que).
Despite their formal differences wh-in situ and c’est wh- on the one hand, and fronted wh- and
wh- c’est que on the other hand are related to same type of topicality, respectively.
As for (1a/b) structures, we assume Reinhart’s 1997 view that the movement approaches
(reviewed in Cheng 2009) are misguided and that the wh- is bound in situ by a choice
function. On the other hand, we show that in (1c/d) structures, wh-fronting is driven by a
feature on C that, crucially, also triggers T+clitic+V head-movement to C, contrary to
appearances. Recall that the clitic is an agreement marker on V. Moreover, nothing can ever
squeeze in between the whP and the sequence clitic+V. The presence of this feature on C is
responsible for the difference in interpretation between 1a/b. and 1c/d. structures.
In fact, the distribution of (1a/b) and (1c/d) structures is highly constrained in our corpus as
shown by the minimal pair (4a/b). In (4a), et+DP mark a topic switching and the wh remains
in situ, while (4b), a case of topic continuity (the referent of le gros is still active), displays a
fronted wh-. This alternation is systematic in our corpus. Note also that the positions of the
DPs at the beginning and at the end of the sentence are consistent with their topical status.
(4)
a.
Ah
oui
et
le
gros i s’appelle
comment? (Elena 4;10)
ptc
yes
and
the
fat.guy he=is called how
b.
Comment
i s’appelle
le
gros? (Elena 4;10)
‘What’s the fat guy’s name?’
Put otherwise, whereas (4a) is at the same time a request for information and a creation/
reactivation of a discourse referent, (4b) is a request for information on a still-active referent,
so that the focalization is on the question and the wh- is endowed with another feature [Foc],
which makes it rise to the focus projection which arguably hosts fronted whPs (Rizzi 1997).
This account captures and reconciles the different and argued as contradictory effects reported
in the previous literature. In our view, the high variation in judgments shows that
presupposition for wh-in situ/non presupposition for fronted wh- (Chang 1997, Myers 2007)
and non-specificity for wh-in situ/specificity for fronted wh- (Mathieu 2004) are rather sideeffects of the more clear-cut distinction in our corpus between topic switching vs. continuity.
Selected references
Chang, L. 1997. Wh-in-situ phenomena in French, Univ. of British Columbia: MA thesis.
Cheng, L. 2009. Wh-in-situ, from the 1980s to Now. Language and Linguistics Compass
3:767-791.
Coveney, A. 2011. A language divided against itself? Diglossia, code-switching and variation
in French, in: Martineau, F., Nadasdi, T. (Eds.), Le français en contact. Presses de
l'Université de Laval, Québec, p. 51-85.
Ferguson, C.A. 1959. Diglossia. Word 15:325-340.
Hulk, A. 1996. The Syntax of Wh-Questions in Child French. in Amsterdam Series in Child
Language Development, vol. 5, p. 129-172.
Massot, B., Rowlett, P. (Eds.), 2013. L'hypothèse d'une diglossie en France. JFLS, 23.
Mathieu, E. 2004. The mapping of form and interpretation: the case of optional WHmovement in French. Lingua 114:1090-1132.
Myers, L. 2007. WH-interrogatives in Spoken French: a Corpus-Based Analysis of their Form
and Function, Univ. of Texas at Austin: Doctoral dissertation.
Palasis, K. 2013. The case for diglossia: Describing the emergence of two grammars in the
early acquisition of metropolitan French. JFLS 23:17-35.
Reinhart, T. 1998. Wh-in-situ in the framework of the minimalist program. NLS 6:26-56.
Rizzi, L. 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. In Elements of grammar, ed.
Strik, N. 2008. Syntaxe et acquisition des phrases interrogatives en français et en néerlandais:
une étude contrastive, Univ. Paris 8 – Saint Denis: Doctoral dissertation.
Villeneuve, A.-J., Auger, J. 2013. 'chtileu qu'i m'freumereu m'bouque i n'est point coér au
monne': Grammatical variation and diglossia in Picardie. JFLS 23:109-133.