Author:

Keywords:

French, Prosody, Syntax

Abstract:

Prosodic analysis of Topicalization Markers (TMs) in French 1. Introduction. Topicalization Markers (TMs) in French, like en ce qui concerne (1), lexically indicate that the element following the TM has to be interpreted as the topic or the frame of the utterance, in contrast with clitic left dislocation (2), where the dislocated constituent is co-referent with the pronoun il and where the topic marking is implicit. (1) Difficile de s'y retrouver, tant les divers statuts des fonctionnaires sont nombreux. Mais en ce qui concerne les fonctionnaires "d'état", ils devraient être tous alignés sur le statut des militaires. [So numerous are the different statuses of public servants that it is difficult to make sense out of them all. As far as public servants working for state government are concerned, however, they should be treated as soldiers are.] (2) - Et après, on est tous les deux chez notre père. Mon père, il va être moins seul en fait et il y aura toujours quelqu'un chez lui. [And afterwards, we both stay with our father. My father, he's going to be less lonely and there'll always be someone with him.] In contrast with most studies about TMs in French, which are limited to their syntactic and discourse properties in written (mostly formal) language (Choi-Jonin 2003 – Fløttum 1999, 2003 – Lagae 2003, 2007, 2011 – Porhiel 2004, 2005), we investigate the interaction between discourse and prosody in spontaneous speech (in several corpora of oral French, a.o. C-Prom, ESLO and Rhapsodie). The general claim of this paper is that, contrary to what is put forward in Martin (2009: 163), left dislocation constructions with and without TM are marked by a strong and obligatory prosodic boundary. 2. Background. Our prosodic analysis is based on Mertens' (2006) predictive model of French unmarked default intonation, which is based on syntactic structure and which specifies the prosodic boundary of the stressed syllable of each intonation group (IG). Mertens (2006) states that peripheral constituents like clitic left dislocations are followed by a major boundary. We will show that TMs indeed are separated from its verbal kernel by a major boundary. 3. Details. We will first present the results of our analysis of the pitch contour of the stressed syllable in different types of constructions involving a left detached constituent, a.o. left dislocation with TM (ex. 1), clitic left dislocation (ex. 2), left detached spatio-temporal constituents (ex. 3) and universe-of-discourse introducers (4) (referring to mental spaces - Fauconnier 1994). (3) En Espagne, le gouvernement s'attaque à la fraude fiscale. [In Spain, the government is dealing with fraud.] (4) Dans le domaine de l'économie, il était jusqu'à présent difficile de mettre d'accord les pays très libéraux. In economic policy, it has so far been very difficult to reconcile the ultra-liberal countries.] We will show that all these left detached constituents are separated from the verbal kernel by an important pitch interval, rather than by a clear-cut pause. The stressed syllable of the left detached constituent reaches a high level tone. References: Choi-Jonin, I. 2003. Ordre syntaxique et ordre référentiel: emplois de la locution prépositive Quant à. In: B. Combettes, C. Schnedecker & A. Theissen (eds). Ordre et distinction dans la langue et le discours. Paris: Champion. 133-147. Fløttum, K. 1999. Quant à: thématisateur et focalisateur. In: Claude Guimier (ed). La thématisation dans les langues. Berne: P. Lang. 135-149. Fauconnier, G. 1994. Mental Spaces - Aspects of Meaning Construction in Natural Language. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Fløttum, K. 2003. A propos de quant à et en ce qui concerne. In: B. Combettes, C. Schnedecker, & A. Theissen, S (eds). Ordre et distinction dans la langue et le discours. Paris: Champion. 185-202. Lagae, V. 2003. Quant aux livres/ De livre, il n’en a lu aucun. Étude syntaxique de deux constructions détachées. Linguisticae Investigationes 26 (2): 237-260. Lagae, V. 2007. Left-detachment and topic-marking in French: the case of quant à and en fait de. Folia linguistica 41: 327-355. Lagae, V. 2011. À propos de: un marqueur thématique très particulier. In: D. Amiot, W. De Mulder, E. Moline & D. Stosic (eds) Ars Grammatica. Hommages à Nelly Flau. Berne: Peter Lang. 273-288. Martin, P. 2009. Intonation du français. Paris: Armand Collin. Mertens, P. 2006. A Predictive Approach to the Analysis of Intonation in Discourse in French. In: Y. Kawaguchi, I. Fonagy, T. Moriguchi (eds) Prosody and Syntax. Series "Usage-Based Linguistic Informatics" 3. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 64-101. Mertens, P. 2008. Syntaxe, prosodie et structure informationnelle: une approche prédictive pour l'analyse de l'intonation dans le discours. Travaux de Linguistique: 56(1): 87-124. Porhiel, S. 2004. Linguistic controls that are used to assess a reader's understanding. Journal of Pragmatics 36: 1009-1035. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Porhiel, S. 2005. Les marqueurs de thématisation: des thèmes phrastiques et textuels. Travaux de linguistique 51: 55-84. Tesnière, L. 1969. Éléments de syntaxe structurale. Paris: Klinksieck.