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Subject-verb agreement in Newfoundland French

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Ruth King
Ruth King
Affiliation:
York University
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Abstract

In Newfoundland French the verb does not agree in number with a plural subject in one particular construction–subject relative clauses–but rather displays default singular marking. Agreement is made with the subject relative pronoun, which does not have a morphological feature for number associated with it. This absence of a number feature results in a form consistently spelled out as homophonous with the third-person singular. Gender agreement transmitted in subject relatives containing a predicate adjective is evidence that number marking is at issue, not agreement in general. An exception to this pattern is the (variable) marking of plural agreement in the il y en a construction, explained in terms that are independent from the analysis of the default singular. Newfoundland French agreement is then compared with data from other French varieties, and the approach taken in this study is compared with those of other studies of grammatical variation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , October 1994 , pp. 239 - 253
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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