Ne voilà-t-il pas ...

Would anyone like to analyse the syntax of the expression "ne voilà-t-il pas"?

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on May 10, 2013 at 10:15pm

Hi Jean--

As far as I'm aware, it's actually not odd that Maupassant used it -- actually, quite the opposite: this use was more common the 19th century than it is today. As I recall, you'll find other occasional uses in dialogue of other major 19th century authors.

The reference I mention is Price, G., "The French Language: Present And Past", Chapter 21. The original book is from the 1970s but Grant & Cutler did a reprint recently, so with a bit of luck you should be able to pick it up. Price refers to a work by H. Renchon, "Etudes de syntaxe descriptive" (1967) which I confess I don't have; it might provide more clues if you're specifically interested in this issue and there seem to be one or two second hand copies knocking around on Amazon.

I'm not sure if this use with "voilà" is necessarily restricted to the negative, but if it is, that could also be for essentially pragmatic reasons (essentially, that when there is a need to form an interrogative with the need covered by "voilà", that in practice tends to be negative).