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Can pronouns be optional? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| LeadZeppelin Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5022 days ago 59 posts - 85 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 10 17 June 2011 at 4:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Having come from a Spanish background (though my native language is English), I'm curious if French is similar with pronoun use. In Spanish, you could often times leave off the pronoun entirely. There was no need to say "yo estoy" because it was redundant and could simply be said "estoy." You don't ever hear people say "como tu estas?" because it's quicker to just say "como estas?"
So far I haven't noticed people leaving off pronouns in French. Is it not really done in this language? 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 10 17 June 2011 at 5:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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I suppose you are referring to subject pronouns.
In French, they can't be left off. In fact, some have suggested that they are really clitics, some kind of prefix if you will. Before a verb, nothing can come between the subject pronoun and the verb (just like between "pre" and "fix"), other than object pronouns or "ne". Actually, the French equivalent to "yo estoy" is "moi, je suis", where "moi" is a strong pronoun and "je" acts as a prefix attached to the verb. Edited by Arekkusu on 17 June 2011 at 5:35pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5697 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 3 of 10 17 June 2011 at 5:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Nope, unlike most of the other romance languages, French is not pro-drop/null subject,
and generally requires the pronoun. edit: posted before I saw Arekkusu's much better answer. Edited by egill on 17 June 2011 at 5:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Witproduct Triglot Newbie Belgium Joined 5680 days ago 19 posts - 20 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German Studies: French | Message 4 of 10 26 June 2011 at 4:19am | IP Logged | ||
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In Germanic languages you actually can. People sometimes don't use pronouns in
spoken language, but it's rather exceptional really. I wonder whether this is also the case with French. I have never seen it used though. In German, English and Dutch it sometimes happens. It doesn't sound well in Molière's language, in my opinion. Very peculiar. Never thought about this. Edited by Witproduct on 26 June 2011 at 4:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5600 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 5 of 10 26 June 2011 at 9:16am | IP Logged | ||
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I think, more radically put, French has a prefix conjugation:
/ʒəpaʁl/, /typaʁl/, /ilpaʁl/ are the first three persons in the present of "speak". /ilpaʁl/ is the French equivalent of Spanish "habla". You may add persona pronouns like "moi" or "lui" etc. You cannot substract anything from /typaʁl/ in the same way, as you cannot substract the "s" of "hablas". These verb prefexis bear never any stress and are never seperated from their verb stem. That is the difference to words like "ik" "ich" or "I". Edited by Cabaire on 26 June 2011 at 9:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 6 of 10 26 June 2011 at 11:19am | IP Logged | ||
In this model, how would you explain a sentence like "le policier parle" or "Paula est belle"? These seem to me to be quite basic sentences … EDIT: By the way, the impersonal pronoun "il" is sometimes dropped in colloquial French, in certain expressions such as "Il faut" or "Il y a". "Faut bien rire". "Y a (or 'ya') des gens qui …". Edited by Ari on 26 June 2011 at 11:26am 3 persons have 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 7 of 10 26 June 2011 at 11:45am | IP Logged | ||
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I can see convincing arguments for claiming that the unstressed pronouns in French have become mere clitics, and this means that in principle you could speak about 'beginnings' in the same way you speak about 'endings'. It is not an absolute requirement that the flective element always is there. For instance there is sometimes congruence in the participle part of the compound verbal forms, but we still accept the different markers for feminine and plural as flective elements when they are there and accept the lack of a corresponding masculine marker.
The big question is whether it would make the description simpler if we had to speak about verbal forms of different kinds (marked vs. unmarked). I don't think so, but it is still worth pointing out that those unstressed or weak pronouns actually behave more like flective elements than as free words in French. And apart from the subject pronouns (which mostly are omitted) the weak pronouns in French roughly follow similar rules as in the other Romance languages, so it is logical to assume that the difference concerning the subject pronouns has something to do with the partial loss of audible differences between the endings of verbs in different persons. Edited by Iversen on 27 July 2011 at 5:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5600 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 8 of 10 26 June 2011 at 11:52am | IP Logged | ||
Gorblimey, my model crashed in the third person :-( I have to think of something new ... PS. I think, Iverson put it, how I meant it. PPS. ne like in "je ne parle pas" would be something like an infix ;-) Edited by Cabaire on 26 June 2011 at 11:56am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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