Chapter 3. Impersonal existence in the weather domain

Abstract

This contribution examines the co-existence in French of two impersonal constructions with a light verb and a weather noun, as in il y a / il fait du vent ‘it’s windy’ (lit. there is / it makes wind). Our starting point stems from Bauer’s (2000) observations on Vulgar Latin postulating that facere ‘do, make’ with weather nouns appears to compensate for the diminishing use of intransitive weather verbs. Based on a diachronic and synchronic corpus study of weather sentences extracted from Frantext, we argue that Bauer’s hypothesis can apply at best to Middle French. For Modern and Contemporary French, our analysis reveals that both constructions are existential with il fait+N specializing in expressing ambient states and the il y a-construction in expressing atmospheric events or substances.