Questions tagged [french]
Romance language, official in 29 states, including France, Belgium and Côte d'Ivoire. For non-linguistic questions about the French language, visit our sister site French Language Stack Exchange.
27
questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
6
votes
0
answers
173
views
Just how silent is the French e muet?
I know the e muet is usually considered silent. That being said, it is still often pronounced in songs and poetry (famously, in the Marseillaise). This is completely contrary to the situation in ...
- 161
6
votes
0
answers
145
views
Term for non-homograph homophone synonyms?
In Japanese, 熱い and 暑い are both read atsui and both mean 'hot'. The former pertains to an object (e.g. hot coffee) and the latter to weather.
In French 'cuissot' and 'cuisseau' have the same ...
- 497
5
votes
0
answers
113
views
Why in the world are French "Paul" and "Paule" distinguished by vowel openness?
Wikipedia lists
Paul [pɔl] ('Paul', masculine), vs. Paule [pol] ('Paule', feminine),
as a minimal pair of the two mid rounded back vowels of French.
What I wonder is, how did it happen that the two ...
- 59
4
votes
0
answers
148
views
Why French Adjectives Uses BAGS
In French, most adjectives are positioned behind the noun e.g.
vache bleue
médecin étrange
orange énevrant
But sometimes you have an adjective following BAGS -- the adjective describes beauty, age,
...
4
votes
0
answers
467
views
Past participle agreement in French
Background (skip if you know French)
In French, to generate the past tense, you use the past participle of the verb, attaching in front a conjugated form of avoir or être. For example:
J'ai mangé. (I ...
- 661
3
votes
0
answers
99
views
How did "y" come to represent the semi-vowel yod /j/ in French orthography?
I went down a bit of a rabbit hole trying to work out where the different sounds of the "y" in English came from. I quickly established that the semi-vowel was originally written with a yogh,...
- 141
3
votes
0
answers
56
views
Looking for a thorough comparison of French and Spanish
Either in English, Spanish or French.
I haven't found a comparative grammar but I got pretty excited with this monograph:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Portuguese_and_Spanish
I'm ...
- 41
3
votes
0
answers
284
views
Specifics about the impact of natural gender on pronunciation?
What is the difference in pronunciation between women and men when speaking a language, as opposed to the difference in the voice of men and women? The context for the question arises from my looking ...
user5119
2
votes
0
answers
75
views
Are there any more optimal tactile alphabets than Braille?
Sorry if this is the wrong stackexchange to ask this.
Consider how QWERTY was the first keyboard layout, but isn't nearly optimal (e.g. Dvorak is much better and used overwhelmingly by top speed-...
- 121
2
votes
0
answers
55
views
How much of a difference does vowel mergers make to perception of fluency?
Listening to some example French conversations between an experienced, fluent speaker and an inexperienced learner, I noticed by chance that the experienced speaker differentiates between similar ...
2
votes
0
answers
103
views
graphical representation that exemplifies the different between stressed-timed and syllable-timed languages
A student asked why English and French have different rhythms. luckily, I had an answer on hand:
English is a stressed-timed language - rhythmic beats align with stressed syllables
French is a ...
- 2,701
2
votes
0
answers
74
views
French Auxiliary Selection. Theoretical explanations?
I've heard that Generative Approaches trying to explain Auxiliary Selection are mostly focused in Italian, because its a language which intransitive verbs respond pretty well to unaccusativity ...
- 49
2
votes
0
answers
68
views
As of July 2016, is there any new improved research on predicting French grammatical gender?
Please advise me if there are better research methods; I only searched for Related Articles on Google Scholar to the only 2 recent papers that I know:
Cited Articles of French gender assignment ...
user5306
2
votes
0
answers
163
views
Does Japanese have as many English-derived words as English has French-derived words?
According to current corpora and other tools used by language researchers, does the current vocabulary of Japanese already contain as many words borrowed/derived from English as the number of English ...
- 21
2
votes
0
answers
725
views
How do you articulate the uvular trill, when you can already articulate the uvular fricative?
Key Assumptions:
1. My uncle speaks only General American English
(so he cannot resort to other languages' phonetic inventories).
Whenever he tries to phonate the uvular trill [ʀ], he fails and ...
user5306
2
votes
0
answers
1k
views
'penance' vs 'penitence'
penance (n.) [←]
late 13c., "religious discipline or self-mortification as a token of repentance and as atonement for some sin," from Anglo-French penaunce, Old French peneance (12c.), from ...
user5306
2
votes
0
answers
190
views
'dispose' vs 'dispose of' & « disposer » vs « disposer de »
[Source:] [D1.] dispose (v.) - (a) to arrange in order; (b) to lean toward or incline (typically used as a past participle). ...
[D2.] dispose of (phrasal v.) - (a) to throw away or discard; (b) to ...
user5306
1
vote
0
answers
47
views
Request for research papers on the definite article systems of French and Italian
Extrapolating from this survey of article systems throughout world languages, the only languages which brought the article system which originated in Ancient Greek to its fullest logical generality ...
- 461
1
vote
0
answers
88
views
Do we have evidence of the transition from -mentum to -ment?
Several English words end in -ment: augment, document, movement, moment, segment, etc.
According to several dictionaries, the English -ment suffix is in many cases traced to the French -ment, which in ...
- 111
1
vote
0
answers
85
views
How common are indefinite pronouns in creole languages?
I understand that creole languages from all parts of the world share many disparate features. Amongst them, how common are third–person, singular, indefinite pronouns (like the French “on”) in creole ...
- 667
1
vote
0
answers
170
views
Why were prefixes repeated as postverbal prepositions?
French: s'abstenir de Spanish: abstenerse de English: abstain [from] (v.)
[<--]
late 14c., "to withhold oneself," from Old French abstenir (14c.), earlier astenir (13c.) "hold (...
user5306
1
vote
0
answers
202
views
Methods to dissect or parse long, difficult sentences
TL;DR: Only English and French can I manage and so ask for. Instead of repeating 'long, difficult' hereafter, denote it mazy. Mazy sentences still stifle my reading comprehension; so I was gladdened ...
user5306
0
votes
0
answers
133
views
French V-to-T movement and modifier
I am struggling with this question that concerns the location of a modifier in a French sentence. How would you account for the last sentence?
Thank you in advance.
0
votes
0
answers
103
views
Why did the Latin word marmor became French marbre (which is in present day English marble)?
I would like to know what process suffered the Latin word marmor when it was borrowed in French and became marbre. I know that the process from French marbre to English marble is dissimilation, i.e. ...
user36925
0
votes
0
answers
89
views
Adoption of another language by a community
I am interested in conditions under which a community adopts (or does not adopt) another language, even though this community is sufficiently isolated to be able to continue the use of its previous ...
- 970
0
votes
0
answers
99
views
Examples of languages with complex "formules de politesse"
French uses complex word arrangements to say "best regards" and "yours sincerely" to finish well written letters, i.e.:
Nous vous prions d’agréer, Monsieur, l’expression de nos sentiments respectueux ...
- 205
0
votes
0
answers
258
views
French letter closings in English?
When I first learned about the Closing Formula for French business letters, I had found them affected and foreign, especially since I haven't seen them in modern English (though I'm unversed in ...
user5306