A friend of mine who is a translator (but not a linguist) had this response:
"Those ones under "A" I mostly associate with children speaking - but B and C are definitely widespread in spoken French - not for the highly educated except tongue in cheek?"
Lisa GalvinSeattle, USA
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2013 21:20:50 +0100
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [VAR-L] "Je vois pas c'est qui" (embedded questions in colloquial French)
To: [log in to unmask]
Standard or non-standard, I have never
ever come across A or B as features of "colloquial" Parisian L1
French.
I couldn't say about other varieties.
M.
On 17/12/2013 21:02, Daniel Ezra Johnson wrote:
It's odd when someone reports on a non-standard
construction and the response of another linguist - on the
Variationist List, no less - is to say "it doesn't exist".
But if you take what is likely to be a common example
sentence, let's say, "je sais pas c'est qui", while this is
utterly unacceptable in standard French, there are indeed
thousands and thousands of Google hits for it.
That is to say, I never came across these constructions
before either, but so what? They do seem to exist.
On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 6:59 PM, Marc
FRYD <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
Dear Maria,
Are the labels of "Colloquial" and "spoken" not applied
a bit loosely here?
I ask because examples (A) and (B) if assumed to be
genuine embedded questions --and not (at least for some
of them) sequences of two independent sentences (#je ne
me souviens plus# #j'avais dit quoi?#-- strike me as
doubtful, save in L2 French. (I know nothing about
Reunion French.) I certainly have ever come across any
of these from L1 speakers of French. Now the case of (C)
is altogether different, and is a well-known feature of
substandard French all across France, where QUE may be
favoured over standard DONT, in "le magasin que je te
parlais" (= the shop that I was telling you about). This
feature strikes me as somewhat comparable, in terms of
register, to that of relative WHAT in London English, as
in 'the shop what I was telling you about'.
Best,
Marc
On 17/12/2013 15:25, Maria Secova wrote:
Dear all,
Could anyone point me to any literature on
embedded Qs in spoken French (or anything else
that might be relevant)?
There seem to be 3 types of such constructions
in our data from the Multicultural London
English - Multicultural Paris French project:
(A) forms with 'quoi' instead of 'ce que':
- je me souviens plus j'avais dit quoi
- je sais pas si vous savez ça veut dire quoi
- donc les parents ils savent ça veut dire quoi
- tu sais ils ont dit quoi
(B) forms with clause-final 'qui', 'comment',
'combien' etc.):
- je vois pas c'est qui
- lui tu sais on l'appelle comment ?
- je sais même pas c'est où
- est-ce que tu vois c'est qui (..) ?
- on comprend direct c'est quel personnage
- lui tu sais on l'appelle comment ?
- je sais plus c'était combien ..
And (C) forms with 'qu'est-ce que' instead of
'ce que':
- t'as vu qu'est-ce que tu fais là ?
- des fois on- juste à se regarder on comprend
qu'est-ce qu'on a dit et voilà ..
- mais ça se fait pas qu'est-ce qu'ils nous font
aussi !
Any comments and suggestions are welcome ...
merci beaucoup !
Best wishes, and Merry Christmas to all,
Maria
--------------------------------
Maria Secova
Post-doctoral researcher
Multicultural London English - Multicultural
Paris French
http://www.mle-mpf.bbk.ac.uk/Home.html
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--
Dr. Marc FRYD (HDR)
http://ll.univ-poitiers.fr/etudes-anglophones/spip.php?article121&lang=fr
Faculté des Lettres et des Langues
Université de Poitiers
1 rue Raymond Cantel
86022, Poitiers, France
Tel. [33](0)5 49 45 48 11
Mob. [33](0)6 40 31 21 43
The Variationist List - discussion of everything related to variationist sociolinguistics.
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