French for Specific Purposes: The Case for Spoken Corpora€¦ · · 2015-07-29approach might argue that the best way is to teach students the grammar of the ... Swales takes a

French for Specific Purposes: The Case forSpoken Corpora

KATE BEECHINGUniversity of the West of England, Bristol

This paper argues that the increasing number of non-specialist students ofFrench in British universities requires us to investigate with some urgency theadequacy of'generalpurpose' syllabi, grammars, and methodologies Drawingon the work of researchers of ESP, of corpus-based approaches, of autonomouslearning, and of the exploitation of authentic text, the paper illustrates its thesisby reference to the detailed analysis of a small corpus of spontaneous spokenFrench video-recorded at a horticultural research station in Normandy Thisserves to highlight not only the lexical features associated with a particular fieldbut also the syntactic features which characterize spoken French. Two diffi-culties of analysis are raised, relating to the indeterminacy of language and thenon-discreteness of grammatical categories A 'fuzzy' approach is recom-mended to the attribution of functional descriptors to syntactic elements andto the categorization of grammatical forms The conclusion is reached that theeffective design of syllabi and methodologies for Specific Purposes students issubstantially enhanced through the detailed analysis of a spoken corpus whichshould be examined as a communicative event, not solely as an assemblage oflinguistic items

1 INTRODUCTIONWhilst research has been conducted to characterize professional vaneties ofEnglish (Swales 1990, Bhatia 1993), less work has been conducted for French(see Parker and Reuben 1994, Scott and Muhlhaus 1994) and, to my know-ledge, none in the specific field of Amenity Horticulture The aim of theanalysis of particular vaneties of English for Speafic Purposes (henceforthESP) in the early days was

to provide (within their limitations) a descriptively adequate account of distributionalfrequencies in the target language variety and thus offer a basis for prioritizingteaching items in specialized ESL (English as a Second Language) materials (Swales1990 2)

Widdowson (1979 38) argues that a purely structural approach which takessamples of actual discourse and breaks them down into their constituentlinguistic elements may bnng little information concerning their functionalsignificance He concludes

a register analysis which atomizes discourse into linguistic elements characterizes asample of language quantitatively as a manifestation of the language system What itdoes not do is to show how the language system is realized qualitatively in particular

Applied Linguistics, Vol 18, No 3 © Oxford University Press 1997

KATE BEECHING 375

instances as communicative activity It accounts for samples of languages as instancesof linguistic usage but not as instances of communicative use (Widdowson 1979 39)

The quantitative/qualitative, linguistic elements/communicative functiondichotomies reflect in some ways the competence/performance debate Thedilemma of whether to teach students competence or performance is nowheremore intense than in the Specific Purposes (SP) field where students wish to'waste no time' (Johns and Dudley-Evans 1991 298) Widdowson appears toargue for a performance-based approach, one which takes each communicationsituation on its own merits, the speaker or writer making linguistic choiceswithin the constraints of that situation A proponent of a competence-basedapproach might argue that the best way is to teach students the grammar of thelanguage, thus equipping them with the tools they need to 'perform' in acommunicative situation Performance-based models, however, may alsoinclude a strong lexical component and current thinking suggests that muchof spoken language is composed of fixed routine forms which we learn as ready-made 'chunks' Weinert (1995) goes some way to explicate the role of formulaiclanguage in SLA The approach to language learning espoused by mosttextbooks appears to me to be limited when applied to French for SpecificPurposes (henceforth FSP) as taught to students of other disciplines inuniversities in Britain Many students now opt to include a language modulealong with their five other modules across the year and some courses include awork placement for 6 months or a year in France Generalist courses or coursesdevised for specialist linguists do not fully meet the needs of these students andfor the following reasons

1 Apart from the welcome increase in courses in French for Business, fewstudents will find published courses which cater for their specialist require-ments

2 N o account is made of the crucial difference between comprehension andproduction or between the spoken and the written language (see Ghsan andDrescher (1993) and Carter and McCarthy (1995) on 'spoken grammars ' ,and Thompson (1994) on cohesion in monologues)

3 N o account is made of the level of existing linguistic knowledge (a rustyGCSE 1 pass), lack of grammatical awareness and degree of motivation ofmost FSP learners in Great Britain

ESP educators are insistent that students' ability be judged in real commun-ication situations

The real test of success of any EAP (English for Academic Purposes) course should bebased on the performance of learners in actual target-situations, academic orprofessional, for which they have been trained (Bhau'a 1993 193)

Whilst this does not imply that language input data be denved from realcommunication situations (students could, for example, have a good know-ledge of basic grammar and 'infer* the rest), SP tutors are at a serious

376 FRENCH SPOKEN CORPORA

disadvantage if they have no knowledge of the communication situationsstudents are likely to encounter

Increasingly, British students are taking up work placements in France—tutors of these students are in urgent need of raw data derived from 'actualtarget-situations, academic or professional' on which to base their tuition, priorto students' departure

As most academic papers are written in English, there has been an overridingneed to learn how to write scientific and technical articles I would argue thatthe first need of British students going to France is to understand the spokenlanguage in non-academic contexts

Swales takes a rhetorical/discourse approach to the analysis of academicresearch papers, 1 e he investigates how the academic confrene structures itsarguments and how students may be assisted to form part of this academicdiscourse community Bhatia's study, too, focuses on 'moves' such as present-ing the case, offering the argument, reaching the verdict, recommending actionBhatia misleads, however, when he says (1993 206) that 'the present level ofresearch in contrastive rhetorical analysis indicates that academic and profes-sional genres appear not to vary systematically cross-culturally '

Whilst there may currently be little evidence that moves within genres varycross-culturally, there is substantial evidence that the linguistic realization ofthese moves vanes from one language to another and that this may be a sourceof negative transfer if students are not presented with models drawn fromactual target situations

In addition, it is certainly the case that, for mainstream students ofhorticulture at a beginner or post-GCSE level of French, a priority lies, notwith an analysis of genres, but with a characterization of the lexis and syntaxparticular to their field It will be interesting for the tutor, and possibly also forthe student, to analyse why a particular syntactic choice is made, \ e whatcommunicative function it has, but it seems that we must follow the develop-ment stages evolved by ESP—the linguistic building blocks first, whilst notlosing sight of the larger rhetorical structures or genres which these linguisticstructures flesh out

Swales is at pains to emphasize that terms like 'medical English1 can bemisleading

They overpnvilege a homogeneity of content at the expense of variation in commun-icative purpose, addresser-addressee relationships and genre conventions (Swales1990 3)

Biber (1986), on the other hand, in investigating the similarities and differencesamong spoken/wntten text types in English uses a multivanate approach totrack the relations among multiple linguistic features m multiple texts He usesfactor analysis

for empirical identificauon of groups of linguistic features which co-occur with a highfrequency in texts, indicating a communicative function shared by the features (Biber1986 385 emphasis added)

KATE BEECHING 377

To ray knowledge, no study has indicated such a link between form andfunction or the systematicity of such a link indeed, to cite but one area ofresearch of this kind, Hansen's (1995 54) findings concerning puts in spokenFrench reveal that puts is used as an additive conjunct in the spoken languagebut may retain its function as a time adjunct in the written language Schiffnn(1987 252) makes similar remarks concerning 'then' in English but these do notinclude the usage of puts which is described by Hansen This seems to indicatethat we must consider the communicative function of each occurrence of eachword in context

2 METHODOLOGICAL PRELIMINARIES

2 1 Functional interpretation of syntactic elementsWhilst the listing of the distributional frequencies of lexical and grammaticalitems may be of interest m aiding tutors to prioritize teaching items, it is oflimited value when the items are unrelated to their functional or communicativeuse It is, then, necessary but not sufficient In explicating syntactic items infunctional terms, however, we run into grave problems of analysis These maybe summarized as

1 what methodology to use to attribute communicative value to syntacticterms,

2 the difference between values attributable to written standard French andthat of the spoken variety

These problems are elucidated more fully below and a modus operandi proposedbefore moving on to the detailed analysis of the horticultural data

2 2 Methodology used in attributing communicative value to syntactic termsWhilst existing taxonomies of communicative function (Leech and Svartvik1994; Wilkins 1976, Munby 1978) may give some clues as to how to categorizesyntactic features, the relationship between form and function is not static,being subject to the indeterminacy of the underlying performative The mean-ing or function is denvable or lnterpretable only in the context in which it isspoken on a particular occasion in a particular setting. Interestingly, Francisand Sinclair (1994 192) also reach this conclusion regarding the meaning ofwords The 'communicative syllabus' school of thought has remained staunchlylntra-lraguistic Halhday's (1973. 101) pictorial representation of the intercon-nection between language use and its formal system is informative in thisrespect Linguists have traditionally concerned themselves with the relationshipbetween what Halliday calls 'macrofunctions', formal potential and gramma-tical structures This is precisely the area which Special Purposes tutors mightwish to leap-frog, their concern being the uses of language and the syntacticmeans of implementing such uses within social contexts and settings. AsHalliday (ibid.. 101) remarks, 'an "interface" of more specific features is


needed to bridge the gap from the generalizations of sociology to those oflinguistics'

We are driven to examine each occurrence of a syntactic item on its ownmerits This does not, however, lead us to the undesirable conclusion thatform-function relationships are ungenerahzable but rather that we must beaware that form and function are not in a one-to-one relationship and weshould be wary of extrapolating too readily from one context to another Theattribution of function to a particular form m a context remains subjective—apersonal interpretation or reading based on one's own understanding as amember of a 'discourse community' However, if the input to the semantics is'social and specific', its output is 'linguistic and general' (Halhday 1973 100)and it might be expected that form and function may coalesce more generallythan simply within a particular discourse community

2 3 Spoken and written FrenchIn recent years, a substantial and rapidly expanding literature relating tospoken French has developed Ambrose (1996) provides a welcome bibliogra-phy and the work of Claire Blanche- Benvemste (e g 1990 and 1993) and theG A R S researchers and of Francoise Gadet (e g 1989) are recommendedreading for those unfamiliar with the literature for French along with journalssuch as Recherches sur le francais parle, LINX, and the Journal of FrenchLanguage Studies Many of the features highlighted in the spoken corpusanalysed have been studied by other researchers in the field but often the focusis a syntactic rather than a functional one

3 EMPIRICAL DATA

The analysis presented below of a section of spontaneous speech recorded aspart of the students' field course may be considered, then, as a case study in theemergent fields of FSP and corpus-based analysis As many problems may beraised as are solved The essential fact is that the language data is derived froman actual target situation Students are expected to be able to understand whatthe guide is telling them as they move around the experimental station Thismay lead us to certain limited conclusions but not to a characterization of'French for Horticulturahsts'

Hypothesis < .

The hypothesis to be tested is that the lexical and syntactic elements which arefound m a specific sample of Horticultural French do not correspond to thosewhich students encounter in their course-book The appropnacy of thegrammatical elements included in course-books has already been explored inO'Connor di Vito (1991) with relation to object pronouns, relative clauses, andquestion formation m French, and in Glisan and Drescher (1993) with relationto double object pronouns, nominalization with lo, demonstrative adjectives/pronouns, and possessive adjectives/pronouns for Spanish

KATE BEECHING 379

MethodSample collection—the corpusIn order to obtain samples of target situation language data, students wereaccompanied on their field-trip to France and sample language was recordedusing a video-recorder Blasco and Cappeau (1991), Biber, Conrad, andReppen (1994) and Carter and McCarthy (1995) provide cogent argumentsfor the advisability of an empirically-based corpus approach of this sort

The recorded material was viewed and a 40-minute section selected fordetailed analysis The section was felt to be most 'central' to students' concernsThe recording was made at SILEBAN, an experimental horticultural stationwhere differential rates of growth in plants—mainly cut flowers and beddingplants—are plotted against variables such as dates of planting, temperature,humidity (soil and air), lighting conditions, and so on There was somediscussion, also, of the commercial aspects of plant-growing This is animportant part of the students' course in England, commercial factors out-weighing technical motivations in many cases M Bonissent, who conductedthe tour was considered to be typical of a scientist working on an experimentalstation of this type and to provide sample data

The section selected was transferred to audio tape and transcribed Variousconcordancing programmes were investigated (Tnbble and Jones 1990) TheWordperfect 5 'do-it-yourself concordance^ mentioned (Tnbble and Jones1990 84) is not recommended to those who are software-illiterate (or even tothe software-literate) Despite the authors' admonishments to pay particularattention to tildes and to copy the text exactly (ibid 86), the tildes appear tohave been omitted in their text

As a computer cannot say that a specific element falls into a particularcategory—e g subject-specific vocabulary item, verb in present tense, relativepronoun etc —one is obliged to mark each one of the items in a particular way(e g V for verb or H for Horticultural term) so that the computer can pick it upand one can make a frequency count In the event, it was decided that thejudicious use of highlighter pens was a workable solution to some of theanalytical requirements and that the Oxford Concordance Program (Jones1995) might be used for some word-counts and concordances, where these wereuseful In addition, an analysis was made of the communicative function ofparticular syntactic forms

Analysis3 1 LexisA full list of subject-specific lexical items was drawn up 2 A term was consideredto be 'technical' or 'subject-specific' if it was felt to be unlikely to appear instudents' generalist language course-book and useful in the field These wordswere generally monoseraous (e g aster, botritis) but could be polysemous with arestricted meaning in the context (e g cellule, clanat, irrigation) Benson and


Greaves (1981) provide a stimulating discussion of field of discourse andsuggest the term 'clustering' as a means of defining words pertaining to asubject-specific field They claim (Benson and Greaves 1981 49)

The principle signalling of field is achieved through collocation, the patternedrecurrence of lexical items in relatively close proximity with each other Theseitems, being common to the general lexicon, do not individually signal field, buttheir clustering does

Whilst words like aster and carrot, cell and climate appear m the generallexicon, they are defined here as 'technical' because they are clustered togetherIf carottes (rdpees) were mentioned along with crime caramel and laptnchasseur, they would also become technical terms—but in a different fieldthat of la cuisine francaise1

In the 3,027 word transcription, 270 technical terms appear with approxi-mately 470 occurrences These terms might be sub-divided into.

— names of plants and sections of plants,— processes applied to plants, equipment required including computer admin-

istration;— growth conditions;— commercial terminology

Most of the flower and some of the plant names are cognates of English wordsaster, astromeria, carotte, chrysanthemes, escarole, frisee, fresia, geranium,gerbera, orchidee, pelargonium, romuncule, stance In addition, a number ofsemi-techmcal words could be guessed from a knowledge of English e g bulbe,botntis, cellule, climat, comparttment, CO2, concentration, cutting, evaporation,humidite, injecter, irrigation, monopole, modem, periodisme, PPM, programmer,qualite, quantite, temperature (ambtante), tester, variete, vegetation.

However, often the French pronunciation of words in mid-flow can renderthem unrecognizable to learners who need practice m developing this skill (e g.CO2, PPM, cutting, with French pronunciation). Also there is no guaranteethat students are as familiar with their own subject-matter as we (mere languagetutors) might assume them to be As they are still students of their own subjectarea, they may not be able to draw sufficiently on their background of thesubject to help them mfer the meaning of the French It may be useful to groupword families such as

fleur, fleur coupee, double flew, simple fleur, mise a flew, floraison, date dejloratson, fleuron, fleurir

or

plant, plante, plante a massifs, plantation, planter

to help students remember the terms and to distinguish between those whichlook similar, either to each other or to English—plant (seedling), plante (plant),plant a massifs (bedding plant), plantation (planting)

KATE BEECHING 381

The main section of M Bomssent's talk moves from one coherent vocabu-lary set to another In the first section, he talks of the vegetable production,gives examples of vegetables, in particular varieties of lettuce. It is probablymost appropriate in classroom exploitation to elicit hyponyms from thesuperordinate term

Legumes (production legumiere) carotte, chou-fleur, persilLaitue escarole, friseeFlews coupees aster, astromeruj, chrysantheme, fresia, glaieul, stancePlantes a massifs geranium, pelargonium etc

Next, on to gladioli and the calendrier de production, involving planting andflowering dates. The next section continues in this vein, showing how thestation operates mdoor periodicity in controlling the supply of certain flowersso as to meet market demands

The semantic grouping of the variables which affect plant growth may alsobe possible to elicit from the students temperature, light, heat, humidity Thenon to the commercial side of things with an appropriate lexical set la grandedistribution, monopole, centrate d'acnat, client, acheteur, consommateur, four-nisseur, gagner, revendre, requint

In the final section, the variables to be manipulated are drawn together{temperature ambiante, aeration, concentration de CO2, pourcentage d'ouverture,humidite, la courbe de I'hydrometrie) along with computer terminology (infor-matique, ordtnateur, decentralise, donnees, code de gestion, programmer, Minttel,modem)

It is important for L2 students to know which words collocate with whichothers The current corpus is unfortunately too small to be informative in thismanner Indeed, one might mention this as being a limitation of the smallspoken corpus—the quickest way to discover such collocations might be toappeal to the intuitions of the native speaker or speciahst-in-the-field Orindeed perhaps to scan written texts in to a computer (quicker than transcrib-ing) and analyse those

3 2 Salient functional and syntactic features

Groupings of syntactic items under functional headings The nature of thecommunicative event—an on-site exposition of the activities undertaken at ahorticultural experimental station—gives nse to particular lexis and to arange of extra- and lntra-linguistic macro-functions realized m syntacticalexponents in a manner summarized in Appendix A

32 \ OnThe large number of occurrences of on (93 occurrences) reflects both the factthat M Bomssent is representing a group of employees under his direction andthat he is describing what is being done and, to a lesser extent, what has beendone or will be done at the station On is also used to describe processes oncultive, on voit, on le garde, on met le chauffage etc. This might be considered to


be a covert instruction or piece of advice The extensive use of on in French (notleast where English might use a passive construction) is well-documented(Byrne and Churchill 1986 203 and 286, Viollet 1988, Ashby 1992) but theneed to present and practise this feature with horticulturalists is suggested Thenatural translation equivalent of On les plante in English is

They are plantedWe plant themYou plant them

There is a functional ambiguity in the French which is perhaps captured in thepassive in English On les plante gives no indication of whether this is adescription of a process which occurs at SILEBAN {We plant them /Theyare planted) or a generally well-known fact or invitation or instruction (Youplant them )

On a occurs 51 times, being the principle manner in which information aboutthe experimental station is introduced Vous avez is used in a similar way 31 times

3 2 2 TenseThe vast majority of the verbs are in the present tense with 56 occurrences ofc'est, 31 occurrences of vous avez, 51 occurrences of on a, and 169 otheroccurrences of the present tense in the indicative This reflects the descriptiveinformation delivery mode adopted by the speaker The information-transferfunction also explains most of the 15 occurrences of aller + infinitive, the 4occurrences of the imperfect tense and the 17 occurrences of the passe compose,all of which bar 3 (Je vais faire, vous allez voir, nous avons vu) are in the 3rdperson singular and 19 are with on Where other persons are used (vous avez vu/nous allons voir)\ this is in the quasi-deictic sense of pointing backwards orforwards to other parts of the tour The passive voice is employed rarely withonly 10 examples recorded, some of which could be interpreted as adjectivalsrather than participles Where the passive is used, it is used to describeprocesses

Le CO2 est recupereLe CO2 est injecteQa a ete rechercheQa nous a ete conseille

3 2 3 DeixisThe 'on-site' aspect of the extract is reflected in the use of a number of pointer-words

ici (24 occurrences)la (48 occurrences, including 9 occurrences of la-bas)ca (65 occurrences, including 4 occurrences of ca, c'est )

as well as individual occurrences of celui-ldlcelle-ld, cette cellule-la, ce pelargo-mum-la, ces deux produits-ld

KATE BEECHING 383

3 2 4 Cause and effectAn essential node of discussion in an experimental station is that of cause andeffect and many of the on statements might be said to express cause and effectparatactically (see Tyler (1994) for a definition and interesting discussion)

Le C02 est recupere est mjecte, on injecte on aim tauxde C02de320PPMet ce taux, on le monte a 800PPM

A large number of hypotactic constructions and adverbials (ce qui notispermetde, fa permet de, defacon a ce que, ce gut fait que, si, ou, des que, quand, pour, en-ant) are introduced with the same function to indicate that a certain action hasa predicted effect Interestingly, despite their traditional allocation as expres-sions of time, place, condition, or purpose, they function as expressions ofcondition or cause and effect, with or without an agentCondition/Cause

on met le chauffage 60 degres, > Effect > ca permet de chauffer le coeur> Effect defacon a ce que I'air ne reste pas stagnant

Quand c'est sur le terrain, > Effect > ca vient et ca reportA partir du moment ou on coupe la salade > Effect > la tdche resteSi on plante au mois d'avnl un cutting dans le sol, > Effect > il ne vapasfleunr(Les ecorces de pin), > Effect >' ca permet d'ahmenter la structure, c'est-a-dire achaque rotation on fait une couverture et ensuite > Effect > ca permet de maintemrVhumidite-surface, ca evite I'ivaporatton

> Effect > Parce que ca permet defaire des economies de chauffageIci ou vous avez une forte luminosite, > Effect > vous avez une chute unportante deI'hydrometrie

Condition

Done, sutvant les cultures, si c'est en debut de culture en fin de culture > Action > onchoisit le type d'engrais et on modtfie le PHSi on descend en dessous de 15 5 > Effect > on a chauffage Si ca depasse 16 5 >Effect > on a aeration ,

Usually the underlying condition, the 'cause' is mentioned first and the 'effect'or action required second except in this solitary example with en -ant

Effect Cause/Action

cafait travailler la plante < Effect < en chauffant le coeur

Occasionally, we see an enchainement or embedding of cause and effect

Cause J

Les sols, c'est du lunon, beaucoup de limon et du sable tresfin, > Effect > ce qui faitqu'on a des sols qui,

Contributory cause

des qu'on fait de I'arrosage, des qu'on arrose, > Effect > se tassent enormement


3 2 5 Features of spoken FrenchI would like to suggest that many of the distinguishing features of the passageunder examination share characteristics with other samples of spontaneousspoken French These are

1 Foregrounding of topic via clefting and c'est with or without a relativepronoun

Un des gros problemes ici, c'est le ventUn des gros problemes qu'on a sur I'escarole notamment, c'estLa majonte de la production, c'est que du chrysanthhneDone ce qu'on a fait, c'est qu'on a mis un ecran manuel au milieu-laC'est le commerce qut est le maitre-mot mamtenantC'est les glafeuls qut ont etiplantis fin-mars sue le mime systime que ceux qu'on a vus

la-basC'est un chauffage qu'on met au coeur de la vegetation.C'est le systeme de double-vttrage qu'on a sur les maisonsC'est Vair qut fait I'isolant entre les 2 bachesC'est des varieteS qui sont assez porteusesLe probleme, c'est combien ca coute derri&reLe seul grand marche que I'on a ict, c'est RungisLes restes des marches comme Floralco, la structure commercwle que I'on a, c'est un

petit marche, c'est du marche local

2 Foregrounding of topic using cleftmg, relative pronouns, on a, or other'semi-empty' verb particle (ilfaut, on travatlle), not c'est

On travaille pour plusieurs producteurs qui ont de la quatneme gammeOn a une tache qui sefatt, qui est translucideIlfaut un minimum qui est IS a 20 centimetresDone on a deuxfois 4 500 plants qut amvent en mime tempsMamtenant on a trois, quatre centrales d'achat qui ecrasent les producteurs

3 Foregrounding of topic using cleftmg and object pronouns anaphoncally

Ce taux, on le monte

4 Backtracking, hesitation, redundancy introduced using e'est-d-dtre (que), cequ'on appelle, disons (que)

Je me sers du referencement-fourntssew, c'est-a-dire que je prends I'ensemble desfoumisseurs que je connais et leur demande defournir des varietes

Le systeme mformatujue, c'est un systime ce qu'on appelle dicentralisi, c'est-a-direqu'on a des petits ordmateurs qui sont dans le couloir la-base

Vous avez ce qu'on appelle les ouvrants c'est-a-dire vous avez un ouvrant de chaque cotedans les chapelles

On n'arrtve pas a trouver disons les causes exactesOn lesplante dans un sillon de disons que cafait a peu pres 8 a 10 centimetres de terre, de

so! au dessous du bulbe

KATE BEECHING 385

5 The use of on, the greater use of'analytic' tenses m particular for the future,the use of clitic ca for generic referents These aspects are included inLambrecht's (1981 6-7) 'grammatical features of non-standard French'

Interestingly, of the 21 occurrences of negatives with pas, only 6 exhibit nedeletion This may reflect the semi-rehearsed nature of the talk, a 'spiel' perhapsfrequently delivered by M Bonissent, a semi-formal group delivery rather thanan informal one-to-one chat

3 2 6 A note concerning cleftingLerot (1991) suggests that the traditional view that a simple sentence iscomposed of subject + verb does not hold for spontaneous speech andconcludes (1991 145)

La phrase orale se compose d'un constituant obbgatoire le noyau et d'un constituantfacultatif l'arnere-plan

Clefting is a form often used in the spoken language to introduce a topicHeilenmann and McDonald (1993) provide a fuller discussion and review of theliterature relevant to the broad theme of dislocation, including the question ofclefting, whilst clefting itself is more fully treated m Lambrecht (1988) Blasco(1995), too, discusses the relation between dislocation and thematization It isarguable that the use of clefting (c'est + NP + relative clause) is a form of leftdetachment which is not, as in Larssen's observation 'motivated' by thepreceding context or situation (see Barnes 1985 111-12) Clefting is a formof foregrounding which is charactenstic of (though far from exclusive to)spontaneous spoken language where redundant elements may serve a time-lapse function signalling the arnval of new information and allowing a listenerin real time the opportunity to cue in In this respect, the construction c'est +NP + relative pronoun serves as a discourse marker This might be felt to bestretching Schiffnn's (1987 31) definition of discourse marker to include, notjust elements which 'bracket units of talk', but which may also pervade them—the elements we are concerned with invade the units of talk themselves and arenot simply initial or terminal Their role in information management is never-theless not in doubt and echoes that of the 'less invasive' discourse markersdiscussed by Schiffnn A number of expressions with ce qui and ce que appearto function as discourse markers in a similar way c'qu'y a, c'est que isdescribed by Barnes (1985 112) as being able to occur (unlike any detachment)'in the absence of any cohesive links with the preceding context' The presentcorpus, like Lambrecht's (1981), suggests that ca may replace ce qui as areferent

On met le chauffage a 60 degres, fa permet de chauffer le coeur,

that ce qui and ce que are undergoing degrammaticalization and, like qui andque, function as discourse markers rather than as pronouns with full gramma-tical referential powers A number of the examples of relative pronouns withon, vous avez, c'est, and il y a illustrate this function as a discourse marker


Le seul grande marche que Von a ici, c'est Rungis11 y a une usine qui s'est construiteUn des gros problhnes qu'on a sur I'escarole notamment, c'est les t&ches translucidesOn a une tache qia sefait qta est transluadeOn a deux fois 4 500 plants qtd arnvent en mime tempsOn a la temperature qui reste beaucoup moms importanteOn a des ordinateurs qtd sont dans les couloirsVous avez la game qta gonfleC'est des vanites qtd sont assez porteusesCest le systeme de doubte-vttrage qu'on a sur les matsonsC'est le commerce qui est le maitre-mot mamtenantC'est I'air qui fait I'isolant entre les deux b&chesCest un systeme ce qu'on appeUe decentraliseC'est la meme chose que ce qu'on avail dans les serres la-bas

In spontaneous spoken French, it appears then that the relative pronounsfunction primarily pragmatically as discourse markers in their role as cleftingdevices This has implications for the way in which they are taught

Gulich (1970) explores the function of et alors and et puis as discoursemarkers in spontaneous French Interestingly, the two examples of et puis inthis corpus corroborate Hansen's (1995) claim that puis is no longer a tuneadverb—indeed, it is here accompanied by what would be a redundant apres—but directs the hearer to look for two elements to be connected In both theexamples given here, the connection is a contrastive one

Caproduit toute I'annee mats beaucoup en avnl-mai, debut-jum et puis apres ca descend

enormement

Alors les corns montent pendant les periodes ou on a quasiment pas et puts aprks tlschutent

Does et puis function as time adjunct or an additive conjunct (to adoptHansen's (1995) terms) in these two examples' I should like to posit onceagain a terrain vague or duality in which the function of puts as an additive—orin this case, contrastive^—conjunct, reinforced through its articulation ofconjunctive clauses containing the contrastive pairs avril-mai, debut-juinlapresand montentlchutent, is permeated with the savour of a tune adjunct through itsproximity to apres

The role of the relative pronouns merits detailed investigation as does thestatus of the expressions ce qui fait que, ce qui permet de, and tout ce qui estThis is not the place for an exhaustive study It should be noted en passant,however, that, m addition to c'estlil y a/on a + NP + relative, there are other,rarer, examples of 'less empty' verb forms also conforming to the cleftingpattern

On travaille pour plusieurs producteurs qui ont de la quatneme gammeDone ce qu'on a fait, c'est qu'on a mis un ecran manuel

It has been suggested that 'the boundaries between word classes may be fluid'(Hansen 1995 37) and that the description of grammaticahzation relates to the

KATE BEECHING 387

'relative indeterminacy in language and of the basic non-discreteness ofcategories' (Hopper and Traugott 1993 2) Ail other evidence from thiscorpus suggests that the relative pronouns have to an extent lost theirpronominal function which is subsumed under the pragmatic discourse require-ments of clefting In the two examples quoted above, the verbs travailler,fatre,and mettre are not 'empty' as in the cases of on a, c'est, vous avez and thepronominal function of qui and ce qu is more strongly felt Pressure from thehigh incidence of c'est, on, vous avez + NP + quiique and of coalescedexpressions such as ce qui fait que, ce qui permet de, tout ce qui est, however,encourage a reinterpretation of the pronominal function of qui, que, ce qui, andce que even in those phrases where their pronominal function is more obviousThe data presented here reflects the chtic + co-referential NP pattern descnbedby Ashby (1982) and provides support for his assertion (1982 38) that non-standard French is changing to a type in which 'the topic notion (is) integratedinto the basic sentence structure topic and subject are distinct' There appearsto be mounting evidence, too, that, as qui and que, ce qui and ce que are usedextensively as discourse markers in cleft constructions they are substantiallydegrammaticalized, losing their pronominal function In turn, ce qui and ce que,having lost their pronominal function, team up with other verb particles toform the grammaticalized new forms ce qui fait que, ce qui permet de, tout ceqm est It is suggested that these are in a process of coalescence, functioning asindependent grammatical elements—as a conjunction, preposition, and deter-miner respectively

4 RECOMMENDATIONS

4 1 The syllabusThe analysis of the functional lexical and syntactic characteristics of this smallsample of authentic data has thrown up unexpected findings regarding theappropnacy of the language syllabus contained in the students' current course-book (which takes a fairly traditional approach with a good mix of situationallanguage and basic grammar) Syntactic priorities dictated by the analysis aretabulated in Appendix B Not only does the textbook not provide subject-specific lexis but, as noted by O'Connor di Vito (1991) and Ghsan and Drescher(1993), the grammar points presented do not reflect the distributional frequen-cies of grammatical items in spoken authentic language, giving equal weighting,for example, to items which are relatively rare as to those which are verycommon

4 1 1 LexisThe students' generalist course-book gives them none of the lexis they requirefor their specialist subject Whilst some specialist items may be inferred fromEnglish or from the context and there is a danger that specialist vocabulary canbecome over-specific, some sessions should be devoted to the acquisition ofspecialist vocabulary and to developing strategies (recognizing English words


pronounced the French way, astromeria, CO2 etc , inference) which will helpstudents to cope with comprehension in the real world

4 12 TensesAs far as syntax goes, it appears that a concentration on the present tense andon the future with alter is both necessary and, contrary to expectation,sufficient, given that the overwhelming majority of verbs are in this tense mthe sample Whilst it would be foolish to neglect the other persons of the verb(students may also wish to have interpersonal conversation, usingye and tu orvous), the study indicates that there should be a greater emphasis on on—and aconcentration on on used in two functions

1 in the sense of 'we', describing habitual action (students could practisetalking about customs or practices at their college),

2 in the sense of 'youV'one', to give instructions or prescriptions (studentsmight for example be asked to produce instructions using on)

4 13 DeixisThe prevalence of deictic expressions argues for substantial exploitation ofactivity ra the classroom, certainly the habitual use of the target language andvisual aids to which one points and/or for the use of video to facilitate theintroduction of icifld, vous voyez, on a, il y a, the demonstrative and relativepronouns The importance of the visual aspect of language teaching is high-lighted by Kellerman (1990) and by the students themselves, the vast majorityof whom claimed on feedback questionnaires (administered at UWE in 1995) toprefer video to audio as it was 'more realistic' and 'gave more clues' AsKellerman remarks this is an area requiring more research

4 1 4 Cause and effectThis is an area neglected by the students' current course-book, which is vital fortheir understanding of their subject area and which may be expressed para-tactically or hypotactically, involving subordination Subordination is gener-ally a linguistic area not tackled in beginners/intermediate courses as it involvesa degree of complex clausal embedding Schleppegrell (1992 118-19) arguesconvincingly that many subordinate clauses in the spoken language are notembedded but are rather 'simple parallel structures' She outlines the educa-tional implications of this and includes references to the literature concerningthe discourse function that different clause types represent As far as horticul-tural French is concerned* a number of different subordinating conjunctionsare employed in the data, all of which served, however, a similar function—toexpress cause and effect—as exemplified above On the basis of the pnontiza-tion given to the functional areas required by the communication situations inwhich students may have to operate, it is recommended that this area ispresented to students such that they are able to interpret the uses to whichlanguage may be put within their subject area

4 1 5 Features of spoken FrenchSpontaneous spoken French and the features associated with it do not feature

KATE BEECHING 389

in the students' course-book and students in the field are more likely toencounter it than scripted or formal lectures (I'ecnt oralise) It is imperativeto include some exposure to this in their course The foregrounding of topic,using clefting, c'est, on a, or vous avez + NP + a relative pronoun reflectsEnglish usage It is recommended that students are introduced to this featurefor comprehension purposes without over-emphasis on the distinction betweenthe subject and object pronouns qui and que/qu' which students of traditionalintermediate/advanced courses might be expected to manipulate productivelyO'Connor di Vito (1991) notes the overriding importance of quifce qui and quelce que over dont and '-quel pronouns

The use of c'est-a-dire (que), disons (que), and ce qu'on appelle to define oradd further information is widespread in spoken French These items may beintroduced naturally in the classroom The common grammaticahzed relativeclauses ce qui fait que, ce qui (me/nous) permet de, tout ce qui est may also beintroduced formulaically as lexical or functional discourse-marking itemsStudents will perhaps then 'recognize' these items—which are commonlyused in spoken French—and not be fazed by them

4 2 MethodologyThe development of a methodology aimed at presenting and practising subject-specific listening comprehension in general or, indeed, the new features of thesyllabus recommended above in particular is too large a subject to cover in thisarticle The use of authentic documents is discussed by Chalon (1970), Duda,Esch, and Laurens (1972), Beeching (1980), Besse (1981), and by Little, Devitt,and Singleton (in Swarbnck 1994) Whether the authentic text is used as text orpre-text (see Ruddell 1978, Riggenbach 1991), and the kinds of task (Hutch-mson and Waters 1987, Nunan 1989, Crookes and Gass 1993), employed topromote students' comprehension—appropriate development of lexis (seeKelly 1991), the development of listening comprehension (Ur 1984) andlistening comprehension strategies (see O'Malley, Chamot, and Kupper1989)—will depend on the nature of the text and the students One generalprinciple, however, emerges if we wish students to understand and/or speakspontaneous spoken French as opposed to I'ecnt oralise, we need to worktowards creating pedagogic grammars which are appropriate, I e based on thespoken, not the written, language As research on spoken French continues, aclearer picture will enable us to do so The use of video may help surmount theproblems inherent in the context-bound and inexplicit nature of some spon-taneous speech

5 CONCLUSIONSThe analysis of specialist corpora as a means of establishing distributionalfrequencies of linguistic and functional items, thereby identifying 'gaps' insyllabuses designed for students of Languages for Special Purposes has beententatively revealed as valid by this study The gathenng of a restncted corpusin a genuine communication situation, its transcription and analysis, both


quantitatively for lexical and syntactic features and qualitatively to investigaterelevant functions and how form and function interrelate, has led to recom-mendations regarding syllabus design and methodology It is posited that therelationship between function and form may be dual or indeterminate and thatgrammatical categories are non-discrete The following items have beenidentified as being key elements for students' comprehension dunng a tour ofan experimental horticultural station

— subject-specific lexis,— transfer of information, description of processes and the expression of cause

and effect, using on, the present tense, extra-linguistic deixis,— features of spontaneous spoken French foregrounding by means of cleft-

mg backtracking using definitional discourse markers, the use of setphrases containing grammaticahzed ce quilce quelce qu',

Recommendations for methodology include

— the use of authentic audio/video texts as text or pre-text,— the use of lexical sets, superordinates, and hyponyms,— the use of visual aids, including video, for the presentation of deixis

In conclusion, the study confirms the value of detailed analysis as a piece ofaction research, in which tutors acquaint themselves in detail with the func-tions, lexis, and syntax required by their clientele Detailed linguistic investiga-tions of this sort also bnng insights into the linguistic system—in this case thatof spontaneous spoken French—which may be of interest, not only to appliedbut also to theoretical linguists

NOTES1 The examinations leading to the award of the Genera] Certificate of Secondary

Education are taken at age 16 after 5 years of study of the language Language study isoften dropped at this stage as, in general, only 3 A level subjects are pursued There istherefore a gap between school and university language study

2 Detailed numerical data are available on application to the author

REFERENCESAmbrose, J. 1996 Biblwgraphie des Etudes sur le Francais Parte Didier EruditionAshby, W. J. 1982 'The drift of French syntax' Ltngua 57 29-41Ashby, W. J. 1992 'The variable of "on" versus "tu/vous" for indefinite reference in

spoken French ' Journal of French Language Studies 2/2 135-7Barnes, B. K. 1985 Left Detachment in Spoken Standard French Amsterdam John

BenjaminsBeecfaing, C M. 1980 Authentic Resource Materials An Empirical Investigation

Unpublished MA dissertation, U C N W , BangorBenson, J D. and W. S. Greaves. 1981 'Field of discourse Theory and application '

Applied Linguistics 2 45-55Besse, H 1981 'The pedagogic authenticity of a text' in The Teaching of Listening

Comprehension London The British Council

KATE BEECHING 391

Bhatia, V. 1993 Analysing Genre London LongmanBiber, D 1986 'Spoken and written textual dimensions in English Resolving the

contradictory findings ' Language 62/2 384-414Biber, D., S. Conrad, and R. Reppen. 1994 'Corpus-based approaches' Applied

Linguistics 15/2 169-89Blanche-Benveniste, C. 1990 Le Francois Parle CNRSBlanche-BcDveoiste, C. 1993 'Repetitions de lexique et ghssement vers la gauche1

Recherches sur le Francais Parle 12 9-34Blasco, M. and P. Cappeau. 1991 'Probleme dcs donnees Sujct postpose et double

marquage ' Recherches sur le Franfais Parle 11 11-30Blasco, M 1995 'Dislocation et thematisation en francais parle' Recherches sur le

Francois Parli 13 45-65Byrne, L. S R. and E. L. Churchill. 1986 A Comprehensive French Grammar Oxford

Basil BlackwellCarter, R. and M McCarthy. 1995 'Grammar and the spoken language' Applied

Linguistics 16/2 141-58Chalon, Y 1970 'Vers une pedagogie sauvage' CRAPEL. Melanges Pedagogtques,

1970Crookes, G. and S Gass(eds) 1993 Tasks in a Pedagogical Context Clevedon, Avon

Multilingual MattersDuda, R., E Esch, and J. P. Laurens. 1972 'Documents non didactiques et formation en

langues ' CRAPEL Melanges Pedagogiques, 1972Francis, G. and J. Sinclair. 1994 '"I bet he drinks Carhng Black Label " A riposte to

Owen on corpus-based grammar ' Applied Linguistics 15/2 190-200Gadet, F 1989 Le Francais Ordmatre Armand ColinGlisan, E. and V. Drescher. 1993 'Textbook grammar Does it reflect native speaker

speech?' The Modern Language Journal 77/1 23-33Gulich, E. 1970 Makrosyntax des Ghederungssignate tm gesprochenen Franzdsisch

Munchen Fink VerlagHaHiday, M. A. K. 1973 Explorations in the Functions of Language London Edward

Arnold <Hansen, M.-B. 1995 'Pius in spoken French ' Journal of French Language Studies 5/1

31-56Heflenmann, L K. and J . L McDonald. 1993 'Dislocated sequences and word order '

Journal of French Language Studies 3/2 165-90Hopper, P. J. and E. C. Traugott. 1993 Grammaticahzatwn Cambridge Cambridge

University PressHutchinson, T. and A Waters. 1987 English for Specific Purposes A Learning-centred

Approach Cambridge Cambridge University PressJohns, A. and T. Dudley-Evans. 1991 'English for Specific Purposes International in

scope, specific in purpose ' TESOL Quarterly 25/2 297-314Jones, S 1995 77M Oxford Concordance Programme Oxford Oxford University

Computing ServicesKellennan, S. 1990 'Lip service The contribution of the visual modality to speech

perception and its relevance to the teaching and testing of foreign language listeningcomprehension ' Applied Linguistics 11/3 272-90

Kelly, P 1991 'Lexical ignorance The main obstacle to listening comprehension withadvanced foreign language learners ' IRAL XXIXI2 135-47


Lambrecht, K. 1981 Topic, Antitopic and Verb Agreement in Non-standard FrenchAmsterdam John Benjamins

Lambrecht, K. 1988 'Presentational cleft constructions m spoken French' in J Haimanand S Thompson (eds) Clause Combining in Grammar and Discourse AmsterdamJohn Benjamins

Leech, G. and J. Svartvik. 1994 A Communicative Grammar of English LondonLongman

Lerot, J 1991 'Les constituants de base de la phrase parlee ' Le Langage et I'HommeXXVI/2-3 141-9

Little, D , S. Devitt and D. Singleton. 1994 'The communicative approach and authentictexts' in A Swarbnck (ed ) 1994. Teaching Modern Languages Milton Keynes OpenUniversity Press

Munby, J 1978 Communicative Syllabus Design Cambridge Cambridge UniversityPress

Nunan, D 1989 Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

O'Connor di Vito, N 1991 'Incorporating native speaker norms m second languagematerials ' Applied Linguistics 12/4 383-96

O'Malley, J., A. Charmot, and L. Kflpper. 1989 'Listening comprehension strategies insecond language acquisition ' Applied Linguistics 10/4 418-37

Parker, G and C. Reuben, (eds) 1994 Languages and the International ScientistLondon CILT

Riggenbach, H 1991 'Discourse analysis and spoken language instruction' AnnualReview of Applied Linguistics 11 152-63

Ruddell, R. 1978 Text or Pretext Unpublished MA dissertation University of Lan-caster, UK

Schiffrin, D. 1987 Discourse Markers Cambridge Cambridge University PressSchleppegreD, M. 1992 'Subordination and linguistic complexity ' Discourse Processes

15 117-31Scott, W. and S. Muhlhaus (eds ) 1994 Languages for Specific Purposes London CILT/

Kingston UniversitySwales, J. 1990 Genre Analysis Cambridge Cambridge University PressThompson, S. 1994 'Aspectsof cohesion in monologue ' Applied Linguistics 15/1 58-76Tribble, C. and G. Jones. 1990 Concordances in the Classroom Harlow LongmanTyler, A 1994 "The role of syntactic structure m discourse structure Signalling logical

and prominence relations * Applied Linguistics 15/3 243-62Ur, P. 1984 Teaching Listening Comprehension Cambridge Cambridge University

PressViollet, C. 1988 'Mais qui est "on"? Jitude hnguistique des valeurs de "on" dans un

corpus oral ' LINX 18 67-75Weinert, R. 1995 'The role of formulaic language in second language acquisition A

review' Applied Linguistics 16/2 180-205Widdowson, H G 1979 Explorations m Applied Linguistics Oxford Oxford University

PressWilkins, D. A. 1976 Notional Syllabuses Oxford Oxford University Press

KATE BEECHING 393

APPENDIX A

Extra-linguistic macro-function Syntactic realization

On-sitc information

Processes

Condition/Cause - result

Hypothesis

On (93)Dems (55)Present tense of verbs (257)Future tense with after (15)Passe compose (17)On + present tense (55)Passive (13)Si

Des queA partir du moment ouquandce qut nous permet dece qut fait quepouren + present participleConditional (1)

Intratinguistic macro-function Syntactic realization

Discourse markers— attracting attention— signalling definition

— foregrounding

— textual deixisanaphora/cataphora

Done, bon, ensuitee'est'ifrdtre (que)disons (que)ce qu'on appellecleft constructions C'esilvousavezlon alii y a + NP + relative clausesubject and objectpronouns

APPENDDC B

Syllabus prioritiesIt is not recommended that students abandon their generalist course, as theirneeds are social as well as professional However, their professional require-ments for comprehension of on-site explanations of processes might lead us topnontize the following items in their first year of university study at a (false-)beginner or post-GCSE level

A Verbs1 Present tense of -er verbs in the third person singular with on.

Introduce as examples of such verbs the following planter, cultiver, pousser, vaner,couper, commencer, tester, siparer, chercher, rester, arrtver (a), modifier, proposer,mesurer, programmer, gerer, butter, btner, se tasser, ajouter, garder.


2 Present tense of the following irregular verbs in the persons indicatedetre c'estavoir on alvous avezl/ailil y aaller on vapermettre ca permet depouvoir on peut/vous pouvezvoir vous voyezappeller appellefalloir ilfautfaire faitprendre onprendmettre on met

3. The following analytical forms or expressions followed by the infinitiveFuture with allerca (me/nous) permet deon (n')amve (pas) apouvotrpouron a besom deilfaut

4, Passe compostFor recognition—avoir verbs only

B Pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, and adverbs

1 Linking wordset, done, mats, ensutte, pour

2 Deictic expressionsca, vous voyez, ici, la, la-bas, -cil-la

3 Expressions signalling definitione'est-a-dire (que), disons (que), ce qu'on appelle

4 Cleft constructions, using relative pronounsNP, c'est NPC'est NP quilqu POn alvous avezhl y alilfaut NP qui P

5 Cause and effectFormulaic expressionsce qui (c'qui) fait quece qui (c'qui) (me/nous) permet deca permet de

Otherspour, parce que, puisque, quand, si, d$s que, a partir du moment que