A Grammar of Spoken and Written French offers a new and authentic approach to French grammar. Based on a .... âcolloquial register. âliterary register.
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General introduction A Grammar of Spoken and Written French offers a new and authentic approach to French grammar. Based on a representative collection of texts (usually called a ‘corpus’) it covers the full breadth and depth of present-day French. This means that it never considers grammatical phenomena in isolation, but rather takes full account of the ways in which they combine with lexical items and are used in real text. Special attention is paid to the questions of which forms speakers use with particular frequency and how these forms are distributed across the spoken and the written language or across a variety of genres. A Grammar of Spoken and Written French is a stand-alone grammar for learning, reference and practice1 and is intended for students whose command of the language has reached level B1 of the Common European Framework. It takes the tried and tested model of a grammar that provides examples and rules and supplements it with a lexical component. For most grammar patterns, it starts by covering the set(s) of lexical items found in each pattern, sometimes grouping items by topic; this is usually followed by examples illustrating the interplay of vocabulary and grammar; finally, where appropriate, a rule is formulated that follows logically from the examples given. The following is an example taken from Volume Five (prepositions):
en + condition être, rester (depending on construction, also: mettre, placer) en + colère, rogne, admiration, curiosité, … + fièvre, floraison, … + voyage, balade, tournée, … + cure, thérapie, … + accord, adéquation, désaccord, interconnexion, … + combat, révolte, … Je suis en admiration devant votre explication.
I admire your explanation.
… tu as intérêt à surveiller qu'ils se couchent tôt! Il faut être en condition physique.
Make sure they go to bed early. They have to be in shape.
Le patient va rester en observation.
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The patient will remain under observation.
An exercise book is in preparation.
A Grammar of Spoken and Written French
|2 En + NP is used with nouns expressing an emotion (en colère, en curiosité), a natural state (en fièvre, en floraison), an increase or decrease (en hausse, en perte, en progression), a journey (en voyage, en balade, en tournée), a medical treatment (en cure, en thérapie), agreement or disagreement (en accord, en adéquation, en désaccord, en interconnexion) or conflict (en combat, en révolte). All the French examples come from the corpus, a practice which breaks with the tradition of all previous French grammars for learners which contrive examples for the purpose of teaching the language rather than using carefully selected specimens of contemporary usage. For ease of comprehension, most examples have been translated into English. In addition, translation is regularly used to compare English and French patterns with a view to highlighting interlingual difference and preventing interference – an extra benefit of translation being that users of this grammar will acquire a great deal of new vocabulary en passant. Although designed as a learner’s grammar, A Grammar of Spoken and Written French also breaks some new ground in the linguistic description of French. There can be no grammar without a norm. Without norms, individual variation in language use would increase to such an extent that mutual comprehension would be impaired or rendered impossible. A Grammar of Spoken and Written French relies on an empirical norm which encompasses the selections attested in a representative corpus over a considerable length of time. It thus departs somewhat from the traditional French view that only the best authors can serve as normative models. As Meißner (2006: 248-249) has argued, in an attempt to answer the question ‘quel français enseigner?’ (‘what kind of French should we teach?’), television has long provided the uncontested statistical norm for spoken French by bringing numerous idiolects and linguistic varieties to the eyes and ears of a mass audience, while at the same time presenting them in such a way that they can be understood by the vast majority of viewers and listeners. With regard to the written language, the corpus used draws on fiction, newspapers and magazines, academic and popular scientific works as well as miscellaneous texts in everyday use. The establishment of this new norm has entailed numerous revisions of earlier work; thus, to take just one small example, the use of espérer with the subjunctive is portrayed as normconforming since it occurs in around half of all cases. The grammar divides into eight volumes, which will appear at intervals of six to twelve months, in the following projected sequence: - prepositional phrases - noun phrases - adjective phrases - verb phrases - adverb phrases - paragraphs and texts - lexical bundles in speech and writing - simple and complex sentences
A Grammar of Spoken and Written French
|3 We are indebted to Professor Serge Gouazé (Valenciennes) and Professor Peter Blumenthal (Cologne) for providing useful comments and suggestions at various stages in the gestation of this grammar. All remaining errors of fact or judgment are solely our own. Prof. Dr. Dirk Siepmann, Osnabrück Prof. Dr. Christoph Bürgel, Paderborn October 2018
Symbols We use the following symbols in this grammar:
▼alternative construction that is at least three times less common ▼▼alternative construction that is at least ten times less common ↓colloquial register ↑literary register (en dessous de la table) flawed construction (in a given context) (dans l’) avenue criticized usage Phras. phraseology (fixed expression) contrast with English
A Grammar of Spoken and Written French
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Introduction to volume five
Sois sympa avec lui, tu vois bien qu'il est malade.
Be kind to him, you can see that he is sick.
Je suis à Paris pour des entretiens.
I’m in Paris for talks.
To begin, we will use the above sentences to demonstrate what this volume is about. The words avec, à and pour, used in both of them to establish connections between other words or phrases, in technical language are called prepositions, from the Latin prae (before) and ponere (to place), because they are normally put before the word or phrase they relate to. In the first sentence, use of the preposition avec is dependent on the adjective sympa; after sympa, a speaker of French has no choice but to use avec. We say that the adjective sympa governs the preposition avec or the prepositional phrase avec + lui; clearly, avec has no meaning of its own here but merely establishes a connection between sympa and lui. Contrast this with the second sentence: in this construction, the prepositions à and pour, which have their own meaning, are governed by the nouns Paris und entretien; à serves to indicate a place (where?) and pour specifies a purpose (to what end?). In this volume, we are only interested in the latter type of preposition (the former type, which also occurs in combination with verbs and nouns, is covered in detail in the volumes on noun phrases and verb phrases.) Now consider the following examples:
Mets tout ça dans le lait. Verse tout cela dedans.
Add it all to the milk. Pour it all in there.
Notre cerveau est fait pour la curiosité.
Our brain is made to be curious.
Notre cerveau est fait pour.
Our brain is made for it.
These examples show that there can be substitutes for prepositions that by tradition are categorized as “adverbs.” However, since they can be derived from prepositions (dedans = “dans cela”), we will also cover them in this volume. The volume is divided into three sections: 1. Indicating location and direction (Je suis à Paris. / Je vais à Paris.) 2. Indicating time (J’arrive à 16 heures). 3. Abstract relationships (Je suis là pour un entretien.) Unlike other texts on prepositions, for many prepositions we will cite words that the latter typically govern (their subsequent context or ‘postcontext’ for short); for some prepositions, we also show the typical preceding context (‘precontext’), like this:
A Grammar of Spoken and Written French
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Precontext
Preposition
Postcontext
île, rocher; naufrage, piraterie; tempête
au large de
la Floride, Brest, des côtes bretonnes
In what follows, preceding or precontexts are marked by dotted underlines and subsequent or postcontexts by dashed underlines. Distinguishing them in this way helps to imprint the meaning and helps in building correct sentences. Vous avez vu ce naufrage au large de la Sicile ?
Did you see this shipwreck off Sicily?
- Quelle île au large de la pointe du Raz fut recouverte par la mer en 1868, 1896 ? – L’île de Sein.
- Which island off Point Raz was inundated by the sea between 1868 and 1896 ? – (The island of) Sein.
Il coula après avoir heurté des rochers au large de l'Écosse.
It sank after hitting rocks off the Scottish coast.
5.1. Indicating location
Sought object L’île
Reference object est située au large de
la pointe du Raz.
As the example here shows, we use prepositions to localize objects in relation to one another. Usually, a smaller object (such as an island) is located with reference to a larger object (a coast, for example). In what follows, we will call the smaller object to be pinpointed the “sought object” and the larger one the “reference object”.
A Grammar of Spoken and Written French
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5.1.1 The most common spatial prepositions The French language has 24 simple prepositions for indicating location. Of these, 17 are followed by a direct object: à, après, avant, chez, contre, dans, de, depuis, derrière, devant, en, entre, par, parmi, sous, sur, vers The following seven prepositions, on the other hand, take de or à: auprès, autour, hors, loin, près (de NP) ; face, jusqu’(à NP) In addition, numerous complex forms can be found among the most frequently used prepositions of location. In colloquial language, the most common are: à côté (de), à gauche/droite, à travers, en direction de, au niveau de, à partir de, à l’intérieur de, du côté de, en face de, vis-à-vis de, auprès de, au cœur de, au fond de, à bord de, en dehors de, à proximité de, le long de, au-dessus de/en dessous de, en haut/bas de, au pied de, au sommet de, à l’écart (de), au sud/nord de, à l’ouest/l’est de, au coin de, à portée de, à l’extérieur de, par derrière, en bordure de, au bout de, au bord de, de l’autre côté de, à hauteur de, au contact de
5.1.2 Space, area, or point? The prepositions à / en / dans / sur
Interlingual contrast J’ai rendez-vous à la bibliothèque.
I have a date in the library / at the library.
The preposition à is the most commonly used for indicating location and frequently leaves open where exactly the speaker is located: à la bibliothèque (3) can mean “in the library building,” but also “in front of the library,” “near the library” and so on. Here, the speaker imagines the designated place as a unidimensional point, that is, as a point on a map or a station during a trip. When referring to buildings, the meaning of à is not always completely unequivocal, given that it leaves open whether the person is in, in front of, next to, or behind the building. The farther removed a speaker is from a location, i.e., the smaller it seems, the more compulsory à becomes, as in
Christelle, who is married to Francis, is talking with a neighbor:
Francis, talking on the phone at the same time:
Mon mari est à l‘aéroport.
Figure-toi, Marc, j’ai rencontré Léon ici dans l’aéroport (or: à l’aéroport).
A Grammar of Spoken and Written French
