Searching for standard French: The construction and mining of the Recueil historique des grammaires du français

Abstract

This paper describes a massive project to characterize "Standard French" by constructing and mining the Recueil historique des grammaires du français (RHGF), a corpus of grammars whose prescriptive dictates we interpret as representing the evolution of the standard over five centuries. Its originality lies in the possibility it affords to ascertain the existence of prior variability, date it, and determine the conditions under which grammarians accept or condemn variant uses. Systematic meta-analyses of the RHGF reveal that grammarians rarely acknowledge the existence of alternate ways of expressing the same thing. Instead, they adopt three major strategies to establish form-function symmetry. All involve partitioning competing variants across distinct social, semantic or linguistic contexts, despite pervasive disagreement over which variant to associate with which. This effectively factors out variability. In contrast, systematic analysis of actual language use, as instantiated in the spontaneous speech of 323 speakers of Quebec French over an apparent-time period of a century and a half, reveals robust variability, regularly conditioned by contextual elements which have never been acknowledged by grammarians. This conditioning has remained largely stable since at least the mid-nineteenth century. Taken together, these results indicate that the "rules" for variant selection promulgated by grammarians do not inform the spoken language, nor do grammars take account of the variable rules structuring spontaneous speech. As a result, grammar and usage are evolving independently.

Dialect, language, nation: 50 years on

“…Often, metalinguistic traditions are not as homogeneous as suggested by a linear focus on selection and codification. In fact, the variation found in metalinguistic texts can be of great help in reconstructing the sociolinguistic value of historical language forms (Ayres-Bennett 2004;Poplack et al 2015).…”

Implementation and acceptance of national language policy: the case of Dutch (1750–1850)

“…Historical analyses of the influence of normative discourse on the wider language community have only become possible after the compilation of historical-sociolinguistic corpora with representative samples of language data from various groups of society. In recent years, the intricate relationships between prescription and historical patterns of language use have attracted quite some attention Poplack et al 2015;Anderwald 2016). Here, we report on a case study based on a corpus specifically designed to measure the effects of prescriptivism in the history of Dutch ("Acceptance in language use" section).…”

Historicizing diaglossia

“…Poplack et al. ). Grammarians and other language commentators proposed different systems of prescription, these varying prescriptions were often in competition with each other, and where prescriptions are in competition, there can be no consensus about what is right and what is wrong.…”

“…A first crucial observationperhaps a commonplace to many but all too often too easily passed overis that the norms and prescriptions laid down in orthographies and grammar books were usually far from uniform (e.g. Poplack et al 2015). Grammarians and other language commentators proposed different systems of prescription, these varying prescriptions were often in competition with each other, and where prescriptions are in competition, there can be no consensus about what is right and what is wrong.…”