Les parents ont totalement démissionné de leur rôle, et ce depuis bien longtemps ! Les formes détachées par et ce en français oral et écrit : étude sur corpus

• Main Authors: Fanny Lafontaine, Frédéric Sabio
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Editura Universitatii din Oradea 2020-12-01
• Series: Studii de Lingvistica
• Subjects: french; syntax; macrosyntax; corpus; ce pronoun; detachment; focalization
• Online Access: http://studiidelingvistica.uoradea.ro/docs/10-2020/pdf-uri/Lafontaine_Sabio.pdf

Our study deals with the use of et ce, et cela, et ceci or et ça sequences, in utterances where they convey an effect of segmentation, e.g. “L’atome a d’abord joué ce rôle, et ce dès l’antiquité” [lit.: “the atom served that function in the first place, and that since antiquity”]. On a basis of a 12.256.582 word corpus of contemporary written and spoken French, the paper provides a syntactic and semantic description of such detached elements. For this purpose, two different grammatical roles were distinguished on formal grounds: that of Adjuncts (i.e. sequences which are governed by a verb) and that of ungoverned elements. Regarding Adjuncts (which amount to 77% of the detached structures), we focus mainly on temporal and spatial complements, with the observation that the detached elements seem to present quite specific semantic and syntactic properties. Regarding the ungoverned sequences (which represent the remaining 23%), the typology which is developed shows the prevalence of sequences carrying a concessive meaning.