Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T01:29:56.464Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Future of Ontario French

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2010

RICK GRIMM  and
TERRY NADASDI
RICK GRIMM*
Affiliation:
York University
TERRY NADASDI*
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
*
Addresses for correspondence: D. Rick Grimm, Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M3J 1P3 e-mail: [email protected]
Terry Nadasdi, Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T6G 2E6 e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The present study is a Labovian sociolinguistic analysis of forms used to express the future tense in the spoken French of adolescents residing in Ontario, Canada. Two primary variants are examined: a) the periphrastic future (e.g. elle va partir); and b) the inflected future (e.g. elle partira). The general trend that emerges is that distribution rates of the periphrastic future are markedly higher than previous accounts of the variable and that many speakers are in fact categorical users of the periphrastic form in certain contexts. Note, too, that negation is not a strong predictor for all speakers with respect to the choice of the inflected future, a finding that is in strong contrast to previous analyses of the variable in Laurentian varieties of spoken French in Canada. After presenting the general results, we provide an in-depth analysis of the linguistic and social factors that condition variant use.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of French Language Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , July 2011 , pp. 173 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bauche, H. (1929). Le Langage populaire. Paris: Payot.Google Scholar
Blondeau, H. (2006). La trajectoire de l'emploi du futur chez une cohorte de Montréalais francophones entre 1971 et 1995. Revue de l'Université de Moncton, 37 (2): 73–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chevalier, G. (1996). L'emploi des formes du futur dans le parler acadien du sud-est du Nouveau-Brunswick. In: Boudreau, A. and Dubois, L. (eds), Les Acadiens et leur(s) langue(s): quand le français est minoritaire (pp. 75–89). Moncton: CRLA.Google Scholar
Deshaies, D. and Laforge, E. (1981). Le futur simple et le futur proche dans le français parlé dans la ville de Québec. Langues et liguistiques, 7: 23–37.Google Scholar
Emirkanian, L. and Sankoff, D. (1985). Le futur ‘simple’ et le futur ‘proche’. In: Lemieux, M. and Cedergren, H. (eds), Les tendances dynamiques du français parlé à Montréal (vol. 1). Québec: Office de la langue française, pp. 189–204.Google Scholar
Fleischman, S. (1982). The Future in Thought and Language: Diachronic Evidence from Romance. Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 35, Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Franckel, J.-J. (1984). Futur simple et futur proche. Le Français dans le monde, 182: 65–70.Google Scholar
Frontier, A. (ed.). (1997). Grammaire de français. Paris: Belin.Google Scholar
Gougenheim, G. (1929). Étude sur les périphrases verbales de la langue française. Paris: Nizet.Google Scholar
Grevisse, M. and Goose, A. (2008). Le Bon usage (14th ed.). Brussels: De Boeck-Duculot.Google Scholar
Grevisse, M. (1964). Le Bon usage (8th ed.). Paris: Duculot.Google Scholar
Jeanjean, C. (1988). Le futur simple et le futur périphrastique en français parlé. In Blanche-Benveniste, C., Chervel, A. and Gross, M. (eds.), Grammaire et histoire de la grammaire: Hommage à la mémoire de Jean Stefanini (pp. 235–237). Aix-en-Provence: Publication de l'Université de Provence.Google Scholar
King, R. and Nadasdi, T. (2003). Back to the Future in Acadian French. Journal of French Language Studies, 13 (3): 323–337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, W. (2001). Principles of Linguistic Change: Social Factors. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Le Goffic, P. (ed.) (2001). Le Présent en français. Cahiers Chronos 7. Amsterdam: Rodopi.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lesage, R., and Gagnon, S. (1992). Futur simple et futur périphrastique dans la presse québécoise. In: Crochetière, A., Boulanger, J.-C. and Ouellon, C. (eds), Actes du XVème Congrès International des Linguistes. Québec: Presses de l'Université Laval, pp. 367–370.Google Scholar
Lorenz, B. (1989). Die Konkurrenz zwischen dem futur simple und dem futur périphrastique im gesprochenen Französisch der Gegenwart. Munich: Kleinheinrich.Google Scholar
Mougeon, R., Nadasdi, T., Rehner, K., and Uritescu, D. (2002). Acquisition of the internal and external constrains of variable schwa deletion by French immersion students. Paper presented at Sociolinguistics Symposium 14, Ghent, Belgium.Google Scholar
Mougeon, R. and Nadasdi, T. (1998). Sociolinguistic discontinuity in minority language communities. Language, 74 (1): 40–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mougeon, R. and Beniak, , É. (1991). Linguistic Consequences of Language Contact and Restriction: The Case of French in Ontario. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nadasdi, T., Mougeon, R. and Rehner, K. (2003). Emploi du ‘futur’ dans le français parlé des élèves d'immersion française. Journal of French Language Studies, 13: 195–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nadasdi, T. (2000). Variation grammaticale et langue minoritaire: Le cas des pronoms clitiques en français ontarien. Munich: LINCOM Europa.Google Scholar
Parmentier, M. (1993). Mise au point. Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Poplack, S. and Dion, N. (2009). Prescription vs praxis: The evolution of future temporal reference in French. Language, 83 (5): 557–587.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poplack, S. and Turpin, D. (1999). Does the FUTUR have a future in (Canadian) French? Probus, 11 (1): 134–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rehner, K. and Mougeon, R. (1998). Use of restrictive expressions juste, seulement, and rien que in Ontario French. Journal of the Canadian Association of Applied Linguistics, 1 (1): 89–110.Google Scholar
Sandhu, M. (1995). Grammaire fonctionnelle du français. Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Sankoff, D., Tagliamonte, S. and Smith, E. (2005). Goldvarb X: A variable rule application for Macintosh and Windows. Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto.Google Scholar
Söll, L. (1983). De la concurrence du futur simple et du futur proche en français moderne. In: Hausmann, F.-J., (ed.), Etudes de grammaire française descriptive. Heidelberg: Julius Groos Verlag, pp. 16–24.Google Scholar
Tennant, J. (1995). Variation morphonologique dans le français parlé de North Bay (Ontario). Doctoral thesis, University of Toronto, Ontario.Google Scholar
Zimmer, D. (1994). Le future simple et le future périphrastique dans le français parlé à Montréal. Langue et linguistique, 20: 213–225.Google Scholar