New books: French Linguistics

890003149593 LINCOM.EUROPA at t-online.de
Wed Oct 10 13:05:01 UTC 2001


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Introduction to French Linguistics

CLAUDE VANDELOISE & FRANK A. ANSELMO
Louisiana State University

This textbook targets advanced undergraduate students and graduate students in
French Departments in the United States. Most of the time, this introductory
course is the first contact of the students with linguistics.
        Therefore, the book will provide, through the study of French
linguistics,  the main concepts of general linguistics. Very often, linguistic
textbooks are at pain to contrast linguistics with normative grammar and to
provide the best formal criterion, morphological or distributional, as opposed
to the notional criteria of school grammars, to define the grammatical
categories of noun, word or subject. Written in the framework of Cognitive
Grammar, a more recent approach to linguistics, this book takes a more
conciliatory position.
        Indeed, according to Cognitive Grammar, linguistic categories are not
defined by one necessary and sufficient condition like mathematical categories
but by a set of characteristic features. Prototypical members share all the
characteristics while marginal members may violate some properties and are
connected to the category by a family resemblance. Therefore, notional and
formal criteria contribute to the definition of the main concepts in
linguistics. Thus, the student learns all the criteria advocated by the
different linguistic schools without having the painful impression of entering a
battlefield where her/his first task is to forget what (s)he had been taught
before.
        In the first lessons, French will be located in space, compared to the
typology of other languages, and in time, compared to Latin and to the different
phases of its evolution. The student will realize that French, typically
described as an agglutinative language with a subject-verb-object word order,
shares, in its less canonical aspects, characteristics with different types of
languages. For example, in contrast to the typical word order in 'Ferdinand
mange sa soupe', the sentence 'Ferdinand la mange' illustrates a
subject-object-verb word order. Afterwards, the main steps in the history of
French linguistics will be presented: the French Academy, Vaugelas, Port-Royal
(XVIIth century), the Encyclopedia (XVIIIth century) and Ferdinand de Saussure
(beginning of the XXth century).
        Rather than a shallow exhaustive presentation of the structures of
French, the main part of the book will select a few "causes cilhbres" in French
linguistics. In phonology, particular attention will be paid to nasal vowels,
schwa  or 'e' caduc and liaison. In morphology, the book will focus on the
feminine of adjectives and on compound nouns and synapsies. The syntax section
will delve on the place of adjectives, before or behind the noun; on the syntax
of the pronouns y and en and on the syntax of presentatives in 'il y a un
arbre/c'est un arbre'. In contrast with most textbooks, a fourth section will be
devoted to the semantic study of French. As an illustration of polysemy, the
students will be presented with the case of the preposition 'de'. As a partitive
article, 'de' may also introduce mass terms. The book will finish with an
analysis of the conjonction 'mais', which will introduce the students to
pragmatics and  the analysis of discourse.

ISBN 3 89586 780 2.
LINCOM Studies in Romance Linguistics 21.
Ca. 320pp. USD 44 / EUR 46.70 / # 28.





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