Borrowed word order in phrases

Sun Dec 15 13:58:12 UTC 2013

Peter Hook, Eduardo:

Background:  I am an older speaker of European French, living in Eastern Canada (mostly in an English-speaking environment but also in contact with local French).  My impression is that European French is nowadays very much influenced by *written* English (as seen in newspaper articles, etc hastily translated from American ones), while Canadian French has long been influenced by *spoken* North American English, which Canadian francophones hear (and often speak) a lot of.  

Your example:
"Il y en avait assez pour faire une tarte AVEC" 'There was enough to make a pie WITH'

This seems to be a calque of spoken English structure, so probably from Canada.  I would probably say

"Il y en avait assez pour faire une tarte" 'There was enough to make a pie' (no preposition)

or more idiomatically 

"Il en restait DE quoi faire une tarte" 'There was enough left to make a pie'.  (Note preposition DE, not AVEC)

Nevertheless I don't find the sentence totally strange because AVEC (unlike other prepositions) can occur at the end of a sentence, but in places where English would not place a preposition alone:  

Example: 

- Il reste beaucoup de pâte.  Qu'est-ce qu'on fait AVEC? 'There's a lot of dough left.  What do we do WITH IT?'
(- On pourrait faire une tarte. 'We could make a pie.').  

Note the contrast with
- Qu'est-ce qu'on fait AVEC ÇA? 'What do you/we do WITH THIS?' 

An unrelated example with WITH:

In some parts of Canada with a large population of German origin, people say:
- Are you coming WITH?  (not "... WITH ME/US") 'Are you coming along?'
a calque of German
- Kommst du MIT?  (verb mit(-)kommen)

Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2013 14:03:43 +0900
From: peter.e.hook at gmail.com
To: kariri at gmail.com
CC: etnolinguistica at yahoogrupos.com.br; histling-l at mailman.rice.edu
Subject: Re: [Histling-l] Borrowed word order in phrases

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 authorsMmmm 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
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> Histling-l mailing list
> Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu

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