FW: Borrowed word order in phrases

Marie-Lucie Tarpent mltarpent at hotmail.com
Sun Dec 15 22:03:16 UTC 2013


Dr Ramat,

Thank you for your comments on my answer to Paul Hopper.  Geoffrey Nathan sent a subsequent email and I responded, but I did not mean to send it to him alone, so below I am forwarding my exchange with him.  

I am glad to learn the origin of "avec", which I did not know. 

m-l
 


From: mltarpent at hotmail.com
To: geoffnathan at wayne.edu
Subject: RE: [Histling-l] Borrowed word order in phrases
Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2013 13:26:35 -0400




Thank you, Geoff Nathan!  

"Je suis là pour" sounds much more authentic than the previously reported "J'y suis pour", where "y" would refer to a known location, or at least of something previously mentioned or understood.  I have no doubt that you reported the sentence correctly, since I have must have heard the structure many times in France, with various Subject pronouns.  

Your waiter would not have needed to know English to adopt a widespread phrase modelled on English structure, but as examples accumulate I think that at least here the preposition-last structure here is not a case of preposition-stranding on the English model but more generally a case of omission of final ÇA, not only in

- Je suis là pour (ça)!  'That's what I am here for!'

but for instance in

- Les films japonais, j'adore!  'I love Japanese movies!'

where the Object is at least understood if not actually stated as Topic.  In my youth such sentences sounded pretentious.  They were (at least in my experience) associated with a certain type of upper- or almost-upper-class young women, but they must have become more widespread, rejoining the "popular speech" examples quoted by Paul Hopper. 

The omission of ÇA 'that, it' may be due to the fact that it still has a negative connotation.  As a "popular" abbreviation of CELA - still used by only in a high register - it was long frowned upon even in speech.  I hardly ever use "cela" except if I need to adopt a formal tone (such as in academic writing), but for instance when Le Monde translates "X (number of) readers recommend this" as "X lecteurs recommandent ça", "ça" here sounds to me as inappropriately derogatory, not neutral like English "this".  But my point of view is probably very old-fashioned (I am retired).   

Going back to:

- Je suis là pour (ça)!  'That's what I am here for!'

what about the (recent?) "that's-less" structure in English:

- X (writes a comment on a blog). 
- Y (commenting on X's comment):  What X said!  (= I agree, I could have said the same thing). 

marie-lucie
       


Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2013 11:17:26 -0500
From: geoffnathan at wayne.edu
To: mltarpent at hotmail.com
CC: hopper at cmu.edu; histling-l at mailman.rice.edu
Subject: Re: [Histling-l] Borrowed word order in phrases

As the person reporting the stranded preposition to this list several years ago, let me clarify.

We were having dinner in a medium-sized provincial town in central France about fifteen or so years ago when Margaret (Winters--some of you know her..) asked the waiter:

Si je peux vous poser une question?

The waiter replied:

Je suis là pour.

I would judge it very unlikely that the waiter was fluent in English, and Margaret's French doesn't sound non-native (just vaguely 'not from around here...'). I suspect there are lots of these in colloquial contemporary French (français avancé as they like to say...)

Geoff

Geoffrey S. Nathan
Faculty Liaison, C&IT
and Professor, Linguistics Program
http://blogs.wayne.edu/proftech/
+1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)

Nobody at Wayne State will EVER ask you for your password. Never send it to anyone in an email, no matter how authentic the email looks.


From: "Marie-Lucie Tarpent" <mltarpent at hotmail.com>
To: hopper at cmu.edu, etnolinguistica at yahoogrupos.com.br, histling-l at mailman.rice.edu
Sent: Sunday, December 15, 2013 10:59:37 AM
Subject: Re: [Histling-l] Borrowed word order in phrases




Paul Hopper:

About Bauche's examples:

(1) les femmes qu'il a couché avec 'the women he slept with' (= ... that he slept with)

This is a very common structure in uneducated speech, with "que" used as a single, ubiquitous relative pronoun for functions other than Subject.  The formal equivalent "les femmes avec lesquelles il a couché" is not only much more difficult to use (because of the gender/number agreement) but similar in tone and register to English "the women with whom he slept" (itself a calque of French).  An intermediate form would be "les femmes avec qui il a couché", common in casual educated speech but frowned upon by purists, especially in writing.

(2) je lui ai couru après 'I ran after him'

Although (1) here was not intended as a context for (2), the French sentence immediately called to my mind 'I (a man) chased after her' or 'I (a woman) chased after him' (= trying to start a relationship)("lui" as an oblique pronoun preceding the verb is the same for both genders).  For 'I ran after him/her',  "j'ai couru après lui/elle" would be less likely to be interpreted as above, although possibly so depending on the context.  

(3) tu n'as pas travaillé pour 'you didn't work for it'

A person using the preposition-last structure would be unlikely to use "ne ... pas" (and this was certainly true in 1928 and much earlier).  "T'as pas travaillé pour" is more likely, although I am not familiar with this usage of "pour".  Possibly, it arises from the usage with relative clauses (as in (1)):  so perhaps 
a) T'as pas travaillé pour ÇA.  ("ça" here is the topie). 'You didn't work for THAT'
b) C'est pas ça que t'as travaillé pour.  'THAT is not what you worked for.'
c) - ... ÇA...  - T'as pas travaillé pour.  (omitting the topic, which was mentioned in a previous sentence) 'You didn't work for IT'

The origin of the preposition-last construction in "popular" (= uneducated) speech rules out recent calques from English, and is more likely to be found in extensions of popular syntax.

As for the next and most recent example:

(4) j'y suis pour

it sounds very strange to me,  Unlike the other examples, it is most likely to be a literal translation from English '(That's what) I am here for', but cross-influenced by the already existing popular structure.  (Or the opposite could be true).   
 
marie-lucie

> Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2013 07:46:42 -0500
> From: hopper at cmu.edu
> To: peter.e.hook at gmail.com
> CC: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu; etnolinguistica at yahoogrupos.com.br
> Subject: Re: [Histling-l] Borrowed word order in phrases
> 
> The following examples are from Henri Bauche's book Le langage populaire.
> Grammaire, syntaxe et dictionnaire du français tel qu’on le parle
> dans le peuple de Paris, avec tous les termes d’argot usuel. Paris: Payot,
> 1928.
> 
> les femmes qu’il a couché avec “the women he’s slept with”
> je lui ai couru après “I ran after him”
> tu n’as pas travaillé pour "You didn't work for it"
> 
> A few years ago Geoff Nathan (perhaps on HistLing) reported a waiter as
> saying "J'y suis pour", presumably "that's what I'm here for".
> 
> Bauche comments that these forms are often attributed to a Germanic
> substratum, but says they are also found in Italian. True?
> 
> Paul
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > Hi Eduardo,
> >
> > An example of a stranded preposition in French [but no idea of where the
> > writer is from]:
> >
> > www.leforum.bistrophilo.fr/.../viewtopic.php?f...t...
> > Mar 3, 2009 - 10 posts - 6 authors
> > Mmmm c'est délicieux ; on la mettait de côté et à la fin de la semaine il
> > y
> > en avait assez *pour faire une tarte avec* !
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Peter Hook
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 5:59 AM, Koka <lachicadelgorro at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Dear Eduardo,
> >>
> >> A recent account of the word order "Nada sé" (as opposed to "No sé
> >> nada")
> >> in Spanish by Octavio de Toledo attributes this word order to Latin
> >> influence. You can check the paper (in Spanish) out here (
> >> https://www.academia.edu/2552836/Entre_gramaticalizacion_estructura_informativa_y_tradiciones_discursivas_algo_mas_sobre_nada_).
> >>
> >>
> >> Hope it helps!
> >>
> >> Carlota
> >>
> >> > Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2013 01:09:15 -0500
> >> > From: kariri at gmail.com
> >> > To: etnolinguistica at yahoogrupos.com.br; histling-l at mailman.rice.edu;
> >> LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org
> >> > Subject: [Histling-l] Borrowed word order in phrases
> >>
> >> >
> >> > [apologies for cross-posting]
> >> >
> >> > Dear colleagues,
> >> >
> >> > I'm looking for examples of languages where certain (types of) phrases
> >> > present a different, borrowed word order when compared to a more
> >> > common, inherited type. Well-known examples are, in English, legal
> >> > terms in which the adjective follows the noun, preserving the original
> >> > Norman French order: "attorney general", "court martial", etc.
> >> > (Jespersen 1912:87-88).
> >> >
> >> > Are you aware of similar examples from other languages? And of cases
> >> > in which the borrowed order, originally limited to borrowed lexemes,
> >> > ended up becoming the default usage?
> >> >
> >> > I would appreciate any insights and bibliographic references on this
> >> topic.
> >> >
> >> > Obrigado,
> >> >
> >> > Eduardo
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > --
> >> > Eduardo Rivail Ribeiro, lingüista
> >> > http://etnolinguistica.org/perfil:9
> >> > _______________________________________________
> >> > Histling-l mailing list
> >> > Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu
> >> > https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l
> >>
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> >>
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> >
> 
> 
> -- 
> Paul J. Hopper,
> Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of Humanities Emeritus,
> Department of English,
> Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences,
> Carnegie Mellon University,
> Pittsburgh, PA 15213,
> 
> Adjunct Professor of Linguistics,
> University of Pittsburgh
> 
> Senior External Fellow,
> School of Linguistics and Literature,
> Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS),
> Freiburg i.Br., Germany
> 
> Publications: <http://carnegie-mellon.academia.edu/PaulHopper>
>               <http://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=n2e7ANUAAAAJ
> 
> 
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