Hey les enfants, it's time for another round of French They Never Taught Me in School (if you missed part 1, it's here). Now, I don't mean to malign my French teachers. Not at all. They were very good. Still, they were teaching us perfect textbook French, and in any language you're going to have differences between the textbook and actual conversation. (French actually has some issues that can make the textbook even farther from actual conversation than for some languages, but more on that in a later post.) And as we saw last time, a lot of things that occur in spoken language don't occur in written language.
So without further ado... here are some more little bits of French that I had to learn on the ground.
1. tout à fait
2. [adjective] comme tout
3. plein de [plural noun] (not the 'full of Xs' meaning)
4. Qu'est-ce que c'est [adjective]!
5. beaucoup de monde
Ready for the answers?
1. tout à fait, 'indeed, absolutely'
Okay, you might have learned this one in your class. I really don't think I did. I came to France and kept hearing it, and I thought, "I know what all the parts mean, but obviously I don't know what the whole thing means..." (for what it's worth, this situation is what linguists would call a non-compositional meaning: a meaning that can't be known from knowing the meaning of its parts). Tout à fait is used often as an affirmative response to a question or an agreement with something someone is saying, but I think I've heard it in things like Je suis pas tout à fait prête, 'I'm not exactly ready.' (Francofriends, care to comment?) I think it is somewhat colloquial but I'm not 100% sure it couldn't be used in writing.
2. [adjective] comme tout, 'totally [adjective]
Another non-compositional meaning. This one is pretty colloquial as far as I know. The first time I heard this was when someone told me I was mignonne comme tout, and I thought, "What? I'm cute like everything? Hardly a compliment!" But no, actually it was a compliment after all. It's prolly not unrelated to something or someone being tout mignonne 'totally/very cute' or tout petit, 'totally/very small'... actually, francophones, I've been wondering about the difference between tout and très in this context, because I've been told you can't say très petit. So when do you use tout versus très? I have a hunch, but I need more data.
3. plein de [plural noun], 'lots of [noun]s'
Also non-compositional and colloquial. This one comes up all the time in the phrase plein de bisous, 'lots of kisses.' If you're thinking of plein as 'full,' which is what it normally means, it's easy to get confused. In this case it's more like 'plenty'.
4. Qu'est-ce que c'est [adjective], 'How [adjective] it is!'
This one is not colloquial as far as I know. It initially looks non-compositional, but then again, the use of question terms (like que or how) in exclamations is widespread (if not universal?) cross-linguistically. So I bet in the end that it makes perfect sense, if we really understand what the question terms mean. Anyway, I do think we learned the more English-like Comment c'est [adjective]!, but we never learned this one, and I hear it a lot more frequently.
5. beaucoup de monde, 'a lot of people'
You might have been able to guess this one, even if you didn't know it, from the fact that tout le monde is 'everyone'. (We all learned THAT one in French class, bien sûr.) The cute thing is that not only does beaucoup fit there, but you also get:
trop de monde 'too many people'
peu de monde 'not very many people'
assez de monde 'enough/a pretty large number of people'
plein de monde 'lots of people'
So it seems that monde here really has lost any sense of 'world' and instead is a mass term for people.
Okay, that's my 5¢. Now let's hear from the native speakers...
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
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5 comments:
OK, this time I can say it: your teachers were not good.
It's a shame you haven't learned these in school, especially "tout à fait", "plein de" et "beaucoup de monde".
1. "tout à fait", you're right on the meanings, but it's not colloquial, it's standard French (both written and oral).
2. "[adjective] comme tout, 'totally [adjective]"
You got the meaning...
This one is kinda old-fashioned in my opinion (but maybe not, not sure... thing is I have the feeling that only old people use it)
Concerning "tout" vs "très", I'd say it depends.
For example "toute mignonne" (you have to agree 'tout' by the way) is somewhat colloquial, "tout petit" is much less and closer to standard French. No rules, here, just use of language.
Concerning the difference between "tout" and "très", as just said, "tout" can be familiar language, but it's definitely subjective whereas "très" is more objective.
If I say "c'est très petit" (and you definitely can say it), I imply that it's a fact, it is very small indeed (regardless whether it's actually very small or not).
If I say "c'est tout petit", I imply that I think it's very small, but you might disagree... Also, here "tout" also implies that it's not only very small, but also too small.
3. "plein de [plural noun], 'lots of [noun]s'"
Yeah, it's definitely related to "plenty".
4. Qu'est-ce que c'est [adjective], 'How [adjective] it is!'
This one is definitely oral and colloquial.
(be careful with finding "universal" things with languages though, I don't think there are any)
"Comment c'est [adjective]!"
It's "Comme c'est" + adj, which is less colloquial, but much less used too.
5. "beaucoup de monde"
The first meaning of "monde" is still "world", and the secondary one is -as you mentioned- "people", and yep, you can use it in a bunch of expressions.
:-)
Thanks David!
>No rules, here, just use of language.
Well, as a linguist I'm interested in figuring out the rules that govern the use. :) So thanks!
>(be careful with finding "universal"
>things with languages though, I >don't think there are any)
There are, actually. In fact, it's one of the goals of linguistics to find out what is universal about language and what is particular to specific languages.
For example, did you know that there are only a handful of different ways to make yes-no questions out of statements? In all the languages of the world. You either move the verb (or a helping verb of some kind) to the front, use rising intonation, or use a special little question particle that is either at the beginning or end of the sentence (possibly in the second position slot, too, I forget). Or you can use some combination of these. But that's it. Pretty remarkable, huh? And semanticists have an idea about what these three things have in common, so that there really does seem to be something universal going on.
So that's one example, of the form "meaning X is universally expressed by forms Y1, Y2, Y3..., where Y1, Y2, Y3 are a natural class". That's the kind of thing I had in mind with the exclamative/question marking issue in number 4. There are other kinds of universals... those of the kind "If a language has X, it has Y" for instance. Also there are universals that have to do with sounds, with structure, you name it.
Which is not to say that everything can be shoehorned into a universal... some things really are just idiosyncratic!
I see what you mean about the rules that govern the use.
Thing is, I'm really not sure there are any rules here. I think it's quite random, some expressions went to standard language (as "tout petit") some didn't (as "toute mignonne"). The only things I can think of would be either that some uses of tout + adj are more common than others, and the more common ones have more chances to go into the standard language. But why are those ones more common than these ones? No idea. Latin could help... or not...
Concerning the "universality" of language, I tend to agree with you.
But I meant the universality of languages...
I don't know how you English speaking linguists deal with this lack of difference between "langue" and "langage"...
;-)
Ah, langue vs. langage... not to mention parole! Yes, I don't know how we get along without having that distinction lexicalized. When I used to teach, I had a lecture called "What is language?" and another one called "What is a language?" But French does it better.
As far as rules... well, I see we pretty much agree on that, and so then it's worth figuring out whether the tout/très thing is idiosyncratic or not.
My hunch at first was that it might be a difference between adjectives that are essentially yes-or-no or "categorical" (you are it or you aren't) and adjectives that are "gradable" (you can be a little bit of it). The idea would be that only gradable adjectives are happy with très 'very'.
Petit would have to be categorical (unlike in English). And it would have to be possible to coerce normally categorical adjectives into being gradable (cf. having something be "very red" for instance in English), whence très petit.
I think the subjective/objective intuition you mentioned could be made to work here too. Making an adjective gradable means making it available to variation with context. So you can have a small elephant and a small dog and they aren't the same size even though they're both small: the small elephant is "small for an elephant" and the dog is "small for a dog". So the appeal to general context that comes with gradability could be responsible for your intuition that très petit is more objective.
So, that's my hunch.
One trouble with my hunch is that I bet you can't say someone is "tout mort"... (literally 'all dead')... can you?
Another trouble is that I have trouble believing that petit is not gradable at heart, that it has to be nudged a little to be gradable.
Another issue is that we'd really need to look at a larger set of adjectives... for example, my examples of petit and mignonne are sort of in the same semantic area, and it's not wise on my part to generalize based on these two examples.
Hello,
I think "tout" can't be used with every adjectives. And it don't always work the same.
"toute verte" means completly green
which isn't the same as "très verte" which means very green.
As for toute petite vs très petite, I fell that "toute petite" as some positive meaning.
If I say "elle est toute petite" wether I talk about either a small car or a little girl, it would carry the meaning than it/she is small and cute.
On the otherhand if I say "ta voiture est très petite". It's more a fact that would be followed by something like "our luggage won't fit in it" or "we shouldn't have problem to park".
For a girl "elle est très petite" is more "she's very small... for her age".
I don't know if that helps.
I could say "il est tout mort" but that would be really colloquial, but maybe not for a dead human being. For a dead animal or maybe with "mort" as for "really tired".
On the other subjects
"pas grand monde" is more used than "peu de monde" at least in spoken language.
Yet you can say "il n'y avait pas grand monde" (there weren't a lot of people) but I wouldn't say "il y avait grand monde" sounds too formal...
I think I'll end up confusing myself.
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