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In:On Spoken French: An Ashby Reader
William J. Ashby
[Studies in Language Companion Series 226] 2023
► pp. 293–320

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When does variation indicate linguistic change in progress

Published online: 2 March 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.226.c23
It is argued that two variables of Modern French (the negative particle ne ‘old not’ and the consonant l of clitic pronouns such as il ‘(he); 3sg.m.nom-; 3.nom-; iprs-’) are indeed indices of ongoing linguistic change, even though this change appears to be of long duration. This conclusion is based not only on the distribution of the variables in a corpus of natural French discourse, but also on independent linguistic evidence, together with the available historical record. In the absence of adequate ‘real-time’ data, variationist analysis yielding synchronic, ‘apparent-time’ data provides a useful means of charting the drift of the language.
Article outline
  • 1.The variationist thesis: Change in apparent time
  • 2.Antithesis
  • 3.Synthesis
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
References (48)
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