Re: Standard Average European

Selon ROGER MILLS <rfmilly@...>:

> Tim Smith wrote:
>
> >If I understand correctly what Christophe said (and remember that we're
> >talking about colloquial, spoken French, not the kind of French that one
> >learns in school or in a "Teach Yourself" book), the word order is
> >determined solely by pragmatics (topic-comment), not by grammatical roles.
> >Thus, "L'agent de police, le bandit, il l'a vu" could mean either "the
> >policeman saw the gangster" or "the gangster saw the policeman".
> >
> Word order might be relevant in your example.
>
As I wrote in my previous post, it is. Word order in the *comment*, the
remainder of the sentence when you remove the fronted topic, is not completely
free.

> I think the problem might arise if there is only one noun mentioned:
> "l'agent de police, il l'a vu" could perhaps mean either : The policeman saw
> him OR he saw the policeman.
>
Exactly! And in this case, only context can disambiguate this sentence.

> It may be that only one role/constituent (subj or obj?) can be
> fronted/topicalized ?? Moi, sais pas. (How's that for colloq. French???)
>
Indeed. There can only be one topic (or rather: the topic can only have a single
grammatical function, subject, object, adverbial, etc...).

Your sentence, by the way, is nearly perfect Spoken French (with a topicalised
subject). It still feels incomplete though. Although if you'd pronounce it /'mwa
SE'pa/ or /'mwa SsE'pa/ (the /S/ represents the first person singular subject
prefix, which often replaces a following /s/ sound, sometimes with slight
lengthening), then you'd have a perfect Spoken French sentence.

> I recall seeing a bill-board in Paris (advertising a soup IIRC) with a
> grinning African and the caption "y a bon"  Everyone said that was atrocious
> French. Rather like "mm mm good"(TM)
>
Memories...
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.

http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl

It takes a straight mind to create a twisted conlang.