Tenses

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on April 23, 2013 at 6:01pm

Hi Sally --

As you might have guessed from the difference of opinion you've already seen on this thread, there's actually a whole discussion you can have around this issue.

Until something like the mid 1800s, speakers appear to have naturally made a difference between e.g. "donnerai" vs " donnerais": they basically followed the pattern mentioned by Devas, that the first had a 'close' e, as through written é, while the second had an 'open' e, as though written è. It's hard to be certain at what point speakers began not to make this distinction any more, but it was probably some time from the mid 1800s onwards (if you look in grammar books before about 1850, this distinction is mentioned in passing, but nobody seems to make a big fuss about it -- as though it was a distinction that people just boringly, naturally made without really thinking about it).

Nowadays, these pronunciations have to all intents and purposes been blurred. For either "donnerai" or "donnerais", you will hear people use either an open or a close e depending on their accent and ideolect. What distinguishes these forms is essentially context. (If, say, in dictation you need to distinguish between them then you can always spell out the ending: "donnerais, A-I" vs "donnerais, A-I-S".)

Now... as in many cases with language change, this is a change that has not gone unnoticed. For a variety of reasons, you will find teachers and grammar/pronunciation guides claiming that there is still a difference in the pronunciation of these forms-- possibly because older descriptions of these pronunciations, accurate in the 1800s but sadly not today, are simply assumed to still hold. And you will find prescriptivists (as Devas in this thread) still advocating the difference, e.g. because they are worried that without their intervention the language will somehow evolve so that nobody can distinguish between these two meanings, or possibly just because their junior school teacher told them that they "must" pronounce these words differently and they've never really thought about it much.

But the fact of the matter is that the merger of these two forms has really already happened to all intents and purposes. There is no significant percentage of the population that reliably distinguishes these forms in pronunciation, and conversely, you cannot generally use the pronunciation of the final vowel to reliably distinguish which form a speaker intended (and so must distinguish by context).

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Permalink Reply by Sally mills on April 23, 2013 at 7:07pm

Ummm interesting. I think Chantal may have my vote on that. But thanks for explaining it.

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EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on April 23, 2013 at 7:18pm

What about if "je donnerais " is followed by a vowel at the beginning of the next word  ?

Is the final "s"  always silent?

eg "s'il etait un peu plus aimable,  je lui donnerais une réponse...."

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Permalink Reply by Chantal Savignat on April 23, 2013 at 8:25pm

In your exemple George,  we (Parisians in any case) don't do "la liaison" (I don't know the word in english) : the final "s" of "donnerais" is silent. 

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EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on April 23, 2013 at 8:41pm

But  would I be right to think   that in other examples of the past conditional ,  such as "s'il etait un peu plus aimable, j'aurais eu plutôt   envie  ....  etc. "  , that the liaison would be more likely to be made?

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Permalink Reply by Vedas on April 23, 2013 at 9:11pm

This is an optional liaison, it would depend on the context and who is speaking.

Liaisons in French can be mandatory, optional or forbidden.

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Permalink Reply by Chantal Savignat on April 23, 2013 at 9:41pm

personally I don't either pronounce this one, but you're right, this one is easier. It's an habit I think.

The first one is weird. The second is more heard.

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EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on April 24, 2013 at 12:12am

thanks. To correct your English (again!) it would be better to say "personally I don't  pronounce this one either...".

As you have written it the "either" could ,in a  slightly different context refer to  the "I"  in the sentence  ("I don't either" is more or less the same as "neither/nor do I" ) 

 

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on April 23, 2013 at 9:51pm

Hi George --

You raise a very interesting question -- theoretically, presence/absence of liaison could be an indicator. But, it turns out that in reality it will rarely be so.

In the case of e.g. "donnerais-z-un verre", you could theoretically get liaison in e.g. song or poetry or a formal reading of a speech. But in everyday speech or relaxed reading, it would be extremely are.

Between an auxiliary and pas participle (e.g. your "aurais-z-eu" example), it may be a little more common. But still, in everyday speech and reading, liaison would usually not occur here.

So in the end, absence of liaison cannot reliably indicate "-ai", and presence of liaison will be too rare to be much of an indicator of "-ais". It may even be that the rate of false liaisons (where people add a liaison that isn't theoretically there, e.g. "deux mille-z-hommes") is actually higher than the rate of 'legitimate' laisions in this case, so that not even the presence of liaison is a reliable indicator!

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