FRENCH LINGUISTICS

This course aims at providing students with the basic tools for understanding French syntax in a comparative perspective with Italian and other languages, with the ultimate aim of improving their competence of French as a foreign language and to make them acquire tools to teach French.

1. Knowledge and understanding
The student knows the recent formal analyses of the grammar of French.
The student knows the parametric differences between the grammar of French and Italian and other languages.
The student has full understanding of the technical terminology and the main methodologies that allow to do research on French data in a comparative perspective.

2. Applying knowledge and understanding
The student knows how to use the hypotheses of formal linguistics to describe and understand aspects of the syntax of French.
The student knows how to use the technical terminology in all stages of application, e.g. when analysing new data or teaching French.
The student knows how to individuate and reflect upon differences between the syntax of French and Italian, also in comparative perspective with other languages.
The student knows how to apply the acquired knowledge to gather new language data.
The student is able to solve simple problems of analysis of the French syntactic data.

3. Making judgements
The student is able to formulate empirically and theoretically grounded hypotheses on French data.
The student is able to provide relevant French linguistic data in favour or against different syntactic hypotheses.

4. Communication skills
The student is able to write with sound argumentation and appropriate terminology about the topics discussed during the course.
The student is able to elaborate on one of the topics discussed during the course.
During class, the student is able to ask questions and discuss with peers and professors in a critical and respectful manner.

5. Learning skills
The student is able to develop critical thinking.
The student is able to share information, hypotheses, linguistic problems and solutions.
The student is able to look for and select bibliographical resources to study French syntactic phenomena.

Basic knowledge of linguistic theory and syntax.

The course will provide basic tools of descriptive and generative syntax of French:
1. The structure of phrases, clauses, and sentences.
2. Verb movement, verbal agreement, and the position of negation and adverbs.
3. Types of sentences; the different types of interrogative sentences.
4. Thematic theory; verb classes; the unaccusative hypothesis.
5. Auxiliaries.
6. The pronominal system: strong, weak and clitic subject and object pronouns.
7. Constituent order and sentences with marked word order.

Mara Manente, 2008, L’ASPECT, LES AUXILIAIRES ‘ÊTRE’ ET ‘AVOIR’ ET L’HYPOTHÈSE INACCUSATIVE DANS UNE PERSPECTIVE COMPARATIVE FRANÇAIS/ITALIEN, Tesi di dottorato, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia (pp. 24-29, 37-41, 47-50, 56-59, 61-63, 66-75, 83-85, 86-94, 95-97, 98-102, 104-105, 137-139, 188-190, 197, 199-201, 214-218, 224).
Jean-Yves Pollock, 1989, Verb Movement, Universal Grammar, and the Structure of IP, Linguistic Inquiry, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 365-424.
Luigi Rizzi, 1996, On the Status of Subject Clitics in Romance, in Osvaldo Jaeggli and Carmen Silva-Corvalan (eds.), Studies in Romance Linguistics, pp. 391-419.
Ur Shlonsky, 2012, Notes on wh in situ in French, in L. Brugè et al. (eds.), Functional Heads. The Cartography of Syntactic Structures Volume 7, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 242-252.
Anne Zribi-Hertz, 1994, La syntaxe des clitiques nominatifs en français standard et en français avancé, Travaux de Linguistique et de Philologie 32, pp.131-148.
Other readings may be provided in class.

Written exam, consisting of 10 questions (2 hours) with the aim of verifying the acquisition of abilities to analyze French syntactic structures and to compare them with those of Italian and other languages.

- face-to-face lessons
- collaborative learning with peers

Italian

written