This article investigates the development of wh-in-situ questions in French by examining a three-year kindergarten dataset of spontaneous productions with 16 children between 2;5 and 5;11. The distribution of the wh-phrases is statistically examined in relation to age, verb form (Fixed be form c’est ‘it is’ vs. Free be forms vs. Free lexical verbs), and grammatical category of the wh-word (Pronoun vs. Adverb). Results show that wh-in-situ remains prevalent throughout the period despite a steady increase in wh-ex-situ. Verb form (Fixed vs. All free forms) is a discriminating variable for the wh-position in all three years, and it interacts with the category of the wh-word. The Fixed be form c’est favours in-situ wh-pronouns (c’est qui Taz ?), whereas the Free forms favour wh-ex-situ questions, and massively co-occur with wh-adverbs (combien ça coûte ?). The emergence of the ex-situ qu’est-ce que ‘what is it that’, as opposed to the in-situ quoi ‘what’, is identified as a factor accounting for the gradual increase in wh-ex-situ. Finally, most outliers (wh-in-situ with Free forms) are shown to belong to the same paradigm as c’est in-situ questions: non-presuppositional questions, which are visible from the frequent use of là ‘there’, like c’est, a deictic item.

Partant de l’hypothèse de Coveney (1995) que la structure informationnelle influence la sélection de l’interrogative in situ ‘Tu fais quoi ?’ (SVQ), ce travail s’appuie sur les données du Corpus suisse de SMS (2009-2015) pour évaluer l’incidence des principes dits ‘End-Weight’ et ‘End-Focus’. En suivant l’étude de Coveney (1995), nous analyserons l’incidence des paramètres suivants : (i) longueur de la proforme Q et (ii) celle de la partie SVC; paramètres du (iii) Sujet, (iv) Verbe, (v) Complément; et (vi) identité du mot Q. Suite à l’analyse de 217 occurrences de SVQ (sur 425 QU), nos résultats corroborent, fût-ce avec quelques nuances, plusieurs tendances observées par Coveney (1995). En même temps, notre étude révèle que les tendances en cause, telles qu’elles s’observent dans le Corpus de SMS, prennent la forme plus extrême et tendent à fonctionner comme des environnements morphosyntaxiques à variabilité faible : en débouchant régulièrement sur l’emploi de SVQ, elles réduisent drastiquement les chances d’apparition d’autres variantes ex situ. Ces tendances s’expliqueraient par le fait qu’en français informel l’usage de SVQ est en train d’évincer d’autres variantes, principalement dans ces contextes linguistiques qui se sont avérés initialement propices à sa rapide propagation au 20e siècle (Farmer 2015).

In this article, we explored the pitch contour patterns of the French discourse marker donc in realizing different pragmatic functions from native and non-native oral corpora in French. Statistical analyses using generalized additive mixed modeling revealed that even though Mandarin Chinese L1 speakers learning French also used the pitch cue to realize pragmatic functions, their prosodic pattern is different from the native pattern. Their L1 Chinese seemed to influence their usage of the pitch cue significantly. In addition, women were shown to be better than men in using the pitch cue in conveying pragmatic functions with a closer pattern to the native pattern. Overall, our study sheds new light on the relationship between speakers’ L1 and L2 regarding the interaction between pragmatic and prosodic features. It also provides new reflections on the acquisition of socio-pragmatic competence.

This article examines the progression of the counter-clockwise nasal vowel chain shift in Parisian French, investigating in particular the influence of biological sex and of sexuality on the propagation of this change from below. The research presented forms part of a study on the participation of sexual minorities in ongoing sound change; this study aims to address the continued exclusion of sexual minorities from sociolinguistic studies, which not only invisibilizes queer people, but underlines their behaviour, linguistic or otherwise, as gender-deviant. Using a sociophonetic methodology, an analysis of nasal vowel quality provides evidence for sex- and sexuality-differential linguistic behaviour in the advancement of the nasal vowel chain shift. The results confirm the progressive but non-conformative linguistic behaviour of women, both straight and queer, as outlined by Labov (1990) and numerous other sociolinguistic studies, but also indicate that queer men are centre-stage in driving the change forward. This research is a first step in formalizing data-driven principles about the linguistic behaviour of sexual minorities and their role in language change, akin to the principles advanced to account for the behaviour of women.

The present study reports on the effect of study abroad on the choice of request perspectives in formal and informal situations using the intermediary of an open role play test. The study is a longitudinal one involving 24 Ghanaian L2 French learners. At least 12 out of the 24 did a study abroad in France and the other 12 in Benin. Both groups studied for a duration of 10 months in their respective contexts. Additional data included learner’s self-reported volume of interaction in French per day. The main results show that the effect of formality of the context on the choice of request perspectives is only observed after study abroad. This seems to be as a result of their interaction with L1 speakers during study abroad leading to the adoption of native-like use of request perspectives in formal and informal situations.