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Inverted French verbs | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4890 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 1 of 24 10 May 2012 at 4:32am | IP Logged | ||
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Assimil Using French uses inverted verb-pronoun phrases that aren't questions, and I can't find an
explanation for why. Nor do I think I've ever seen this before. Example: Laurent aime-t-il se plaindre for 'Laurent likes to complain " They're using this construction a lot, so it's not one single poor translation. Anyone have any idea what this is? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 2 of 24 10 May 2012 at 6:21am | IP Logged | ||
That IS a question. Does the confusion come from the fact that the subject stays in place but a duplicate pronoun pops up after the verb? Inversion only occurs with pronouns, so in the third person, the nouns stays in place but a subject pronoun is used for inversion. Edited by Arekkusu on 10 May 2012 at 6:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4890 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 3 of 24 10 May 2012 at 8:26am | IP Logged | ||
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Right. But there have been about a dozen sentences where inversion most definitely was not a question.
Hence my confusion. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 4 of 24 10 May 2012 at 9:59am | IP Logged | ||
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If it is not a question, (haven't seen the context but if you tell me which lessons
contain this, I might find it), it might be a sentence including both the meaning and the speaker's opinion. Like "Laurent, he really can complain!" (I hope the English example is good enough to make understand what I mean. In spoken language, the intonation would multiply it a hundred times to make known he gets on your nerves with his complaints) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 24 10 May 2012 at 10:10am | IP Logged | ||
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It may not be a question, but exclamations can be formed as questions, and at least "Laurent aime-t-il se plaindre!" definitely looks like an exclamation - just without the essential exclamation point.
Apart from that there is another case of inversion, mostly in literary language, namely in connection with words like "aussi" and "ainsi": "Ainsi est-il que...". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4679 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 6 of 24 10 May 2012 at 11:46am | IP Logged | ||
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I'd further Inversen's point: the form of exclamation based on an inverted verb-subject also sounds literary, or old-fashioned.. or both.
If Assimil teaches that, then they're wasting a bit the student's energy I believe. @kanewai: could you say which edition it is (the year)? And provide some more example or context? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4950 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 7 of 24 10 May 2012 at 3:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think the suggestions of exclamation inversion are the correct guess.
It's the same effect one sees with "c'est" as a stresser, which in fact is how most French is spoken in that case: Le gâteau est très bon / Le gâteau, c'est très bon(!). (the latter which can be used with or without exclamation marks). As far as I understand it, the first one without "c'est" is grammatically correct, but most people will use the 2nd which de facto is duplicating the subject (c'est standing for gâteau). The only firm uses of inversion are questions and in more formal speech with peut-être, du moins, aussi, à peine. In writing you will see it when a sentence has a very short descriptive clause assigning responsibibility of an act or fact to someone, that makes no sense on its own: "Avez-vous des frères?", a-t-elle demandé. (the descriptive clause a-t-elle demandé makes completely no sense or meaning on its own without the first part). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 8 of 24 10 May 2012 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | ||
I think you mean "le gâteau, il est bon". 1 person has voted this message useful |
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