LINGUIST List 11.2557

Mon Nov 27 2000

Qs: French Interrogative/Varieties, "Phone Text"

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen, Interrogatives in varieties of French outside of France
2. feargal murphy, text messages on mobile phones

Dear colleagues,
One of my students will be taking an oral exam on the syntax, semantics,
and pragmatics of French interrogative structures. The problem is that
- for reasons having nothing to do with the topic as such -
he needs to include some material on 'la francophonie', i.e. varieties of
French outside of France.
While I know the literature on interrogatives in metropolitan French
quite well, I'm not aware of any relevant work on Canadian, Belgian,
Swiss,... etc. varieties. Perhaps some of the members of the list might
be able to help?
Do other varieties of French have interrogative structures that are
not found in metropolitan French? To the extent that the same syntactic
structures are used as in metropolitan French, are they used in exactly the
same way (i.e. with the same distribution across registers and pragmatic
contexts)? It doesn't matter if the data are confined to more narrowly
circumscribed regional varieties, as long as these are used outside of
France itself. Any references you can come up with will be most
welcome!
Actually, I'd be interested to know about any work on interrogatives
dealing with 'la francophonie', whether or not it points to any differences
with respect to 'standard' French.
Please reply to me directly, at the address below.
Thanks in advance! I'll post a summary of the answers I get.


________________________________________________________________
Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of French linguistics
Dept. of Romance Studies, University of Copenhagen
Njalsgade 80, 2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark
Tel.: (+45) 35.32.84.54, Fax: (+45) 35.32.84.08
E-mail: majhum.ku.dk
Website: http://www.hum.ku.dk/romansk/inst/
________________________________________________________________

dear linguists,

here's a query that has come my way a few times now from students
and seems ideal for the list ....

is there anyone out there working on or compiling a list of
the shortened spellings that are being used by people sending
text messages on their mobile phones?

please!

feargal murphy
dept of linguistics
ucd
dublin 4
ireland

http://www.ucd.ie/~artspgs/gogs.html