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Programme: accepted abstracts

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Abstract ID: 1189

Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)

A trend study of subordinating conjunctions in Acadian French: 1975 - 1990

Authors: Cichocki, Wladyslaw (1); Beaulieu, Louise (2)
Submitted by: Beaulieu, Louise (Université de Moncton, Canada)

This paper reports the results of a cross-sectional – or trend – study of subordinating conjunction variation in a variety of Acadian French spoken in New Brunswick (Canada).  The authors' initial analysis (2005) of this variation was based on a corpus collected in 1990 and showed both stability and age-grading in the use of subordinating conjunctions.  In this follow-up study, data from a corpus recorded in 1975 serve as a benchmark for the 1990 corpus.  This research underscores the role of social network in structuring language variation and change in a non-urban setting.

 

In referential French, almost all subordinating conjunctions that introduce finite adverbial clauses occur with que 'that' (for example, parce que 'because' in 1a).  The only exceptions are comme 'like', quand 'when' and si 'if' (see 1b and 1c), which do not have the que complementizer.  In Acadian French, by contrast, the forms comme que, quand que and si que are considered to be traditional variants and occur in both formal and informal contexts.

 

            (1a)      C'est [[parce qu’] on n'a pas voulu le faire].

                        'It's because we didn't want to do it.'

            (1b)     Il a fait ça [[comme / comme qu'] il voulait].

                        'He did that in the manner that he wanted to.'

            (1c)      Il viendra [[si / si que] tu l'exiges].

                        'He will come if you require him to do so.'

 

Data from the 1990 corpus are 16 speakers born between 1936 and 1968.  The earlier (1975) corpus contains recordings with 20 speakers born between 1882 and 1909.  All speakers are natives of the same rural community in the northeastern region of New Brunswick.  Speakers in both corpora were divided into two age groups, two genders and two social network types.  About 9,400 tokens of the three subordinating conjunctions – comme, quand, si – and a comparison subordinating conjunction – parce que – were analyzed.

 

Results show similar differences in the use of que with each of the three subordinating conjunctions: in both corpora, que occurs most often with quand, followed by comme and then by si.  A rise in the use of que with quand and si (but not comme) between 1975 and 1990 is associated primarily with social networks.  Speakers with strong social network ties – and few or no weak ties – make greatest use of the traditional variants.  This trend effect is studied with respect to several internal factors, including the following phonological context and the [interrogative] feature on comme, quand, si and parce que.  Separate trajectories are discussed for each subordinating conjunction. 

 

Reference

Beaulieu, L. and W. Cichocki. (2005) "Innovation et maintien dans une communauté linguistique du nord-est du Nouveau-Brunswick." Francophonies d'Amérique 19: 155-175.