Re: Subordinate clauses

--- Jonathan Knibb <j_knibb@...> wrote:
> Philippe Caquant wrote:
> >Le type que j'ai vu, son chien était vert.
> >J'ai vu un type, son chien était vert.
> >Le type que j'ai vu, là, vert qu'il était, son
> chien.
>
> Wonderful -- this is exactly the sort of natlang
> behaviour
> (or should I say natlang *speaker* behaviour?) that
> I'd love
> to get far enough with a conlang to emulate.
>
> At the risk of starting YA-French-syntax-T, may I
> ask how
> our resident French experts would analyse the third
> example?  If one interprets the "qu'" five words
> back from
> the end as signalling a relative clause (as in 'que
> j'ai vu'),
> then 'vert qu'il etait' appears to be an adjective
> phrase
> putting itself forward as a sentence ... an odd
> situation.
IMO, one could glose it like: [c'est] vert qu'il
était, so:
The guy I saw, there, 'twas green it was, his dog !

In spoken French, you often can hear sentences like:
"Vert qu'il était, le mec !" ([twas] green he was, the
guy !) (from fear, or jealousy, or disappointment, or
whatever). This is a way to emphasize the adjective
"green".

In literary language, on would rather say:
"Vert était le chien de l'homme que je vis".
If you add a small word at the begin of it, you even
can a perfect alexandrin:

Or vert était le chien de l'homme que je vis.
Car vert était le chien de l'homme que je vis.
Tout vert était le chien de l'homme que je vis.

Such small words (usually monosyllabic) are known as
"chevilles" (pegs), their role being mainly to get to
the right number of syllables in the verse.


=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)


		
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