Strong pronouns in modern spoken French: Cliticization, constructionalization, grammaticalization?

Abstract

AbstractIn this article, I show that in spoken French 1smoi, unlike 3slui, has undergone both semantic bleaching and heavy prosodic erosion and has therefore progressed along Lehmann’s parameters of grammaticalization. As will be argued, this person-asymmetry is rooted in the fact thatmoi, unlikelui, is largely used as a discourse-structuring device. Based on a phonetic analysis, I show that the main factor underlying the prosodic weakening of left-detachedmoiis string frequency, i.e., the degree of predictability of the element immediately followingmoi. The erosion ofmoiin spoken French is particularly strong when it is followed by the clitic 1sje; it is even stronger in those cases wheremoiintroduces a stance-verb expression of the typemoi je trouve que… ‘I think that …’. However, despite the massive effects produced by string frequency, the prosodic, distributional and discourse-pragmatic data presented here do not support the view that the prosodically weakened variants ofmoiinstantiate a construction that is distinct from non-cliticmoi.