Re: THEORY: Ergativity and polypersonalism

Henrik Theiling wrote:

> > >   Moi j'l'aime bien ce film.
> > >       --------
> > >       ^
> > >        \_ verb with subject & object agreement
> > >
> >
> > That is not the same thing that's a contraction of 2 pronouns
>
>Please read Christoph's explanations in the archives, he's French and
>he's a linguist and he's surely more competent on this matter than I
>am.
>
>Arguing with me is futile. :-)
With me too :-P

I'd like to know where is that archive, could you give me the website where
it is?

I'm also a native french speaker so I know what I'm talking about, even if
i'm not a linguist


Roger Mills worte:
>Christophe's point, as I recall, was always about _spoken_ French, in
>which
>"je l'aime" is indeed a phonological unit or "word", /ZlEm/. Note too
>that
>the various parts never occur as independent words: /Z/ /l/ (one could
>say
>that the schwas are predictable, thus non-phonemic!) /Em/ etc. Also, of
>course, I like to think he was being only semi-serious :-))))))))
yes these part [Z] and [l] occur in independant words, before a vowel

the schwas are simply dropped before a vowel

so it is usual to reduce these words so in "j'l'aime bien ce film" the real
form is " je l'aime bien ce film", "le" is already contracted and is an
independant word but the "j'" is simply a faster way to say "je" by reducing
it in a way it can but somewhere it doesn't



a lot of usual words in frensh are only a consonant with a schwa, wich will
be jumped in front of a word beggining with a vowel

je (I)

je mange [Z@ma~Z] (I eat) -> in front of a word beggining with a consonant
j'aime [ZEm] (I love) -> in front of a word beggining with a vowel


te (you, accusative)

je te mange [Z@t@ma~Z] (I eat you) -> consonant
je t'aime [Z@tEm] (I love you) -> vowel


and also: me[m@](me), se[s@](third person pronominal =~
himself/herself/themself), le[l@](him/it, as object in sentence)


So these reductions don't make them a part of the next word but only a
shorter word




In a more general way schwas are always dropped in usual talking, not only
in these words so it is something usual...

probably that, if there were less alphabetisation and
concervatism(concervativeness?) about the orthography and pronounciaciation,
the rule that schwas come to be unpronounced could be added in the phonemic
evolution of french

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