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  • Clitic doubling (in French)

    From HenHanna@21:1/5 to All on Wed May 28 05:08:07 2025
    XPost: sci.lang, alt.usage.english

    What's-his-name's car

    "[The man I met yesterday]'s car"


    __________________

    Stacked clitics in rapid speech:

    "He'd've thought that.........."

    "They'll've finished by now."

    "The boys'll've been playing football."


    ____________________________

    (dislocation or) clitic doubling (in French)


    Elle, je l’aime. (“Her, I love [her].”)

    Lui, je l’ai vu. (“Him, I saw [him].”)


    _______________________

    The book offers many reasons to recommend it.



    Yes, the last “it” in “The book offers many reasons to recommend it” functions similarly to a French clitic in a doubling construction.

    In French, you might say, Le livre offre beaucoup de raisons de le
    recommander (“The book offers many reasons to recommend it”), where le
    is a clitic pronoun doubling the object already implied by “the book.”

    In both English and French, the pronoun is used for clarity and to avoid ambiguity, even though the referent (“the book”) is already clear from context.

    This is a good example of how English sometimes mirrors the clitic
    doubling pattern found in French.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Ruud Harmsen@21:1/5 to All on Wed May 28 07:37:18 2025
    XPost: sci.lang, alt.usage.english

    Wed, 28 May 2025 05:08:07 +0000: HenHanna <[email protected]>
    scribeva:

    What's-his-name's car

    "[The man I met yesterday]'s car"


    __________________

    [Why all those extra empty lines? Do you not see them yourself, so you
    could edit them out?]

    I wouldn't think those are correct in English, but I 'm not a native
    speaker.


    Stacked clitics in rapid speech:

    "He'd've thought that.........."

    Possible.

    "They'll've finished by now."

    Not possible. They'll have ...

    "The boys'll've been playing football."

    Same. Have is ncessary.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Hibou@21:1/5 to All on Wed May 28 07:04:37 2025
    XPost: sci.lang, alt.usage.english

    Le 28/05/2025 à 06:08, HenHanna a écrit :

    The book offers many reasons to recommend it.

    I think dogs would bark at that sentence as it halted by them.

    There are many reasons to recommend the book.

    The book itself suggests many reasons to recommend it.

    The 'it' is required for the sentence to make sense.

    Yes, the last “it” in “The book offers many reasons to recommend it” functions similarly to a French clitic in a doubling construction.

    In French, you might say, Le livre offre beaucoup de raisons de le recommander (“The book offers many reasons to recommend it”), where le
    is a clitic pronoun doubling the object already implied by “the book.”

    I don't think I'd say that in French, either.

    In both English and French, the pronoun is used for clarity and to avoid ambiguity, even though the referent (“the book”) is already clear from context.

    This is a good example of how English sometimes mirrors the clitic
    doubling pattern found in French.

    Sans creuser davantage (ça ne vaut pas la peine, et j'ai d'autres chats
    à fouetter), j'ai l'impression que c'est du n'importe quoi.

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