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2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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of the 20th century may well be the earliest study ofvariation within a single speech community.

While geographical variation continues to play animportant role in distinguishing speakers from differ-ent parts of the French-speaking world or even fromdifferent regions, this article will focus on social vari-ation. However, the geographic dimension will beevoked through the comparison of variation studiesin different communities. Rather than attempt to super-ficially describe a large number of variables, this arti-cle will examine a few variables that have beeninvestigated in numerous speech communities and

in situations of change in progress, women tend to be

Be ar alva ti eLe bv ( 1 i f phonological vari-

(20 variation in the Frenchof t o excep-

va the study of variablesab and morphophonology.Cl embers of her

tha cttha u n b w /l/

wo er-na m-

Variation in French 355ahead of men and use larger proportions of innova-tive variants, while in stable variation, women tend touse more prestigious forms than men.will discuss their significance for a better understand-ing of the links between language use and socialstructure.

Social Variation

Many linguists consider that variation within a singlecommunity must be a reflection of contact withneighboring communities, incomplete acquisition ofa certain dialect, or some other irregularity that dis-rupts the homogeneity that is considered to be nor-mal. Because most communities have regular contactswith their neighbors and include members who grewup elsewhere, dialect contact can be plausibly in-voked as an explanation for many variable patterns.However, the early work of Gauchat (1905) estab-lishes that linguistic homogeneity may very well neverexist. Gauchat investigated the speech of the Swissvillage of Charmey precisely because this isolatedvillage could be expected to provide a prime exampleof an invariant and unified language. Based on hisinvestigation of the speech of women and men of allages and from the different sections of the village,Gauchat concluded that there was no such uniform-ity. Even after excluding some forms of variation thatcould be attributed to language or dialect contact,Gauchat identified five phonetic variables for whichno such explanation was available. For instance,he noticed that there was a tendency among somespeakers to monophthongize /ao/ or, on the otherhand, to diphthongize /e/. He also noted a tendencyto pronounce /y/ as [h]. For these variables, hereported that younger speakers used innovative vari-ants more often than older speakers and that mem-bers of the middle generation used both older andinnovative forms. He also noted a tendency forwomen to use the innovative pronunciations moreoften than men. Gauchat, who attributed the socialdistribution of these pronunciations to change in pro-gress, saw his analysis largely confirmed by Hermann(1929), who revisited the same village years later andobserved that many variables had progressed in thedirection predicted by Gauchat. Very interestingly,though, Hermann also established that not all vari-ation is a reflection of change in progress, because onevariable, the aspiration of /y/, had remained stable inthe community. The contrast between this stable vari-able and the others provided an early illustration ofan important generalization made by Labov (1990)concerning the linguistic behavior of women and men:pound verbs, as in (1), or the choice of mood insubordinate clauses, as in (2).

(1a) Parce quon a parti nous-autres, le 29 avril

because one has left us others, the 29 April

Because we left, us, on April 29 (Sankoff &

Thibault 1977: 86)

(1b) On est parti a` 11heures du matin

one is left at 11 oclock of-the morning

We left at 11 in the morning (Sankoff & Thibault

1977: 86)

(2a) faudrait que jen

would-be-necessary that I of-it

enle`verais

remove. CONDITIONAL

I should remove some (Auger 1990: 87)

(2b) faudrait que l professeur

would-be-necessary that the teacher

sache ce

know.SUBJUNCTIVE that

que l enfant a besoin

that the child has need

the teacher should know what the child needs

(Auger 1990: 88)

The rest of this article will show that variationistsociolinguistics has found a much more fertile groundin French-speaking Canada and among American,British, and other foreign scholars who do researchon French, as well as with French scholars living inNorth America.tions such as the choice of the auxiliary in co

rd,s not change the linguistic meaning of tthe same assumption does not hold for altor pe`re father with an apical, a velar, or a uvular/R/ doe het prono nci g ta le ith or without a final

t wolleagues in other parts of France, have arguhile they have no difficulty accepting the faGroupe aixois de recherche en syntaxe, as well asmany c edaire Blanche-Benveniste and the m

ove the levels of phonology

riationist methodology for

ce on the part of French linguists agaitions. On the other hand, there has been much resis-tan nst the use ofMons in Belgium constitu e n teworthy

02) study of phonologicalon in the French of Lilleati , and Cecile Bauvois

fe res 199 ) invest gation o

ria on i th speech of Paris

rntudies of phonetic or phonological variatiod Laks (1977, 1983) work on phonologic

n e ian teenagers, AnnDespite the pioneering work of Gauchat, wemust note that variationist sociolinguistics has nothad a very strong impact in France, Belgium, andSwitzerland (Armstrong, 2001: 2; Bauvois, 2002: 9;Gadet, 2003). On the one hand, very few continentallinguists have adopted the Labovian approach intheir s n.

ers one s in

nit i a w hough /l/

wo n ords like table

pr w c isco it e t ct

ra / deletion inM a t H example of

356 Variation in Frenchtable, these contexts constitute variables of theirown and are consequently studied separately fromthe grammatical words listed in (3). (Unless otherwisespecified, the phonetic transcriptions provided for allexamples correspond to colloquial Quebec French.)

(3a) Il mange [ilmaZ] [imaZ]he eatsHe eats

(3b) Je les vois [Zlevwa] [Zevwa]I them seeI see them

(3c) Tu vois la fenetre [tsyvwalafnE:t] [tsyvwaafnE:t]

you.sg see the.fem windowYou see the window

All communities in which this variable has beeninvestigated (e.g., Montreal, Sankoff and Cedergren,1971; Tours, Ashby, 1984; Ottawa-Hull, Poplack andWalker 1986; Lorraine, Armstrong, 1996) share thefollowing characteristics. First, /l/ deletion is not apurely phonological phenomenon. As shown bySankoff and Cedergren (1971), in phonologicallyidentical environments, /l/ deletion can affect pro-nouns and determiners, but never an /l/ that is partof a lexical word; cf. (4). Similarly, while /l/ deletion ispossible in the weak subject pronoun elle she, it isnot allowed in the corresponding strong pronoun, asseen in (5). Second, deletion is most frequent in sub-ject pronouns, less so in object pronouns, and leastfrequent in determiners. Among subject pronouns,rd-final consona t clusters in w

words plus anymore and quelqcan also be deleted in other environments, such as inthe ue some or ine determ ners, s sho n in (3)b,c. Even t

, /l/-deletion can affect object pronouns asentences such as (3)a. In addition, for many speak-ers nd defi-n subject pronoun

, it iver ds difficeletesult t/l/ ino imagine a French speaker wthird persories across linguistic contexts and groups of speakhPhonological Variation

While regional and social varieties of French are char-acterized by specific features that distinguish themfrom other varieties (e.g., palatalization in wordslike quai [tSE] wharf in Acadian French or voweldevoicing in words like depite [depi

te] greatly

vexed in Quebec French), numerous variable phe-nomena are commonly found in many, if not all,communities. The investigation of such variables hasrevealed that, even though frequency of use and somedetails in the favoring factors vary across commu-nities, many aspects of the variation are shared byall French speakers.

It is probably safe to say that /l/-deletion charac-terizes every variety of French. While its frequencyva -stable variation. In France, however, Ashby (1984)reports that young speakers delete /l/ in subject andobject clitics more often than older speakers, as canbe seen in Table 1, and he has attributed this patternto a change in progress.ontreal nd O tawa- ull French is an

tes of /l/ eleti n, whi h suggests that /ld o calso differs. In Canada, all age groups exhibit similar

e Atlanti ocean The age distributionclitics developed independently on the two sides ofth c . of /l/ deletionnsistent w h th idea

litics, a difference that

hat /l/ deletion in objepreceecedidingng voonsoel inant faobjectors deletion more thanc n vil(s) favors deletion more than elle(s), and impersonalil it most favors deletion. Finally, deletion in subjectpronouns is favored before consonants more thanbefore vowels.

(4a) a` la veille [alavEj] [a:vEj]to the vergeon the verge

(4b) a` laver [alave]/*[aave]/*[ave]to wash

(5) Elle, elle prie [ElapRi]/*[EapRi]/*[aapRi]

she she praysSHE prays

The fact that so many communities share the pat-tern of /l/ deletion just described can be attributed tothe history of /l/ deletion in French. We know that /l/deletion in il(s) before a consonant is attested at leastsince the 16th century and that it affected elle(s) onlylater, due to the fact that a word-final schwa used toprotect the /l/ in that word. /l/ deletion in determinersand object pronouns appears to have started later,because this phenomenon is not mentioned in studiesof colloquial European French and Ol languagesconsulted by Bougaeff and Cardinal (1980: 94).

While all communities investigated share thebasic pattern described here, interesting differencesdistinguish individual communities. For instance, /l/deletion is so frequent in il(s) in Canadian French thatPoplack and Walker (1986: 182) posited that thesepronouns have been relexicalized as [i], and that anyrealizations of [l] in them are cases of reinsertion. InEuropean French, on the other hand, the phonologi-cal pattern that favors /l/ absence before consonantsmore than before vowels makes a deletion analysisplausible (Ashby, 1984: 8). Another difference con-cerns the phonological context that favors deletion inobject clitics and determiners. While this phenom-enon is essentially intervocalic in Canadian French(Sankoff and Cedergren, 1971: 1110 and Poplackand Walker 1986: 175), Ashby (1984: 8) found thata a

Mo

W h trying toeli l ele-

thasu l a rdeq h n-sta la s f,

futtha lv f t m or degreesof

jvas

Table 1 rs French

Fac

ncy

Varbrul

probability

Variation in French 357speakers frequently use the conditional mood insteadof the prescribed imperfect tense, as illustrated in (6).Similarly, in subordinate clauses introduced by a mainverb in the conditional, the prescribed subjunctiveis often replaced by a concordant conditional verb,as we saw in (2). Another such alternation is thatbetween avoir to have and etre to be as auxiliarieswith verbs that, according to French grammars,require the etre auxiliary, as in (1).

(6a) Cest comme si jdirais

it is as if I say.CONDITIONAL

Jespe`re qu i a ben faite.

I hope that he has well done.

Its as if I said I hope he did the right thing (Lepage

1988: 112)

(6b) cest comme si i venait fou ou

it is as if he came crazy or

ben euh tse i avait peur

well uh you-know he had fear

its as if he became crazy or was afraid (LepagethearetheinfphgoOthFreconex

lectrast fol

(7a)1988: 1

er variabnch-spesidered

pressioned futuric constrlowed by

On sone sWe wo

(Popl12)

le patteaking wgrammof fu

e tenseuctionan inf

e melf wnt get mack & Trns torld

aticature, ascon

initiv

arieraill-ma

arriurpihat arinvo

l in Ftenseshowsistinge verb

rryedn 1999nce, in conditional c use introduced by si i

uivalents in the speec of many speakers. For i

ch condemned forms a tern te with their standa

t, ation of any corpus of spoken French revealst best, their efforts manage to ensure thate common throughoutlve two elements thatrench. One example is. French possesses ann in (7)a, and a peri-

of the verb aller to, as illustrated in (7)b.

pas.not

: 141)ments from the speech of their students, a quick ex-aminaminate what they consider ungrammatica

hile teac ers spend considerable timerphosyntactic VariationSubject clitics1421 years 1506/1792 84% .687

5164 years 1322/1951 68% .313

Object clitics1421 years 30/103 29% .676

5164 years 17/187 9% .324

Based on Tables 4 and 5 in Ashby, 1984.frequetor N RelativThe effect of age on /l/ deletion in Tou

eeve vored

for expressing events predicted to take place in a moredistant future. However, this result does not mean thatnts t

rms are slightly favored for verbs exprhat will soon take place and slightly disfalreprendre ou si jlehim take-back or if I himreprendrai pas.will-take-back notI ask myself the question. Whether I will take him back or

not. (Deshaies and Laforge 1981: 28)

Poplack and Turpin (1999) investigated the varia-tion between the two future tenses in the French ofOttawa-Hull, an urban area at the border of Ontarioand Quebec. Like previous studies of future expressionin spoken Quebec French (Deshaies and Laforge, 1981and Emirkanian and Sankoff, 1985), Poplack andTurpin found that the periphrastic future is by far theform used most often to encode future events, with73% of all tokens, compared to 20% of tokens in theinflected future and 7% for the present. Their studyalso revealed that while both futures can be used toexpress the same meaning, their distribution acrosscontexts is quite unequal. Table 2 summarizes theresults of their study. It shows that, contrary to whatmight be expected on the basis of the meaning differ-ences commonly prescribed for the two future tenses,the choice between inflected and periphrastic futuredoes not differ much with distal and proximal futures:both fo essingI me ask the question. If I go

(8) Jme pose la question. Sicertainty.

t does not invo e dif eren time fra es

uren in an example like (8) where both forms of therefer to a choice that the speaker must make(7b) quand tu vas te marierwhen you.sg go yourself marrywhen you get married

(Poplack & Turpin 1999: 141)

According to traditional grammars and many lin-guists, the inflected and the periphrastic forms bothexist in French for the purpose of expressing differentviews of future events. The periphrastic form is oftensaid to refer to events that will take place in the nearfuture, that are certain to take place, or that resultfrom current preparations, while the inflected futureencodes events that are more distant or less certain.Jeanjean (1988) analyzed 450 tokens of both forms ofthe future in hexagonal French and proposed that anumber of morphological criteria determine whichfuture form is appropriate in any given occurrence.However, many variationists who have investigatedthe use of both verbal forms in corpora of naturalspeech have found that while some contexts requireone or the other future, there are many contexts inwhich both the inflected and the periphrastic formscan be used without any change in meaning. This isshow

358 Variation in Frenchthis meaning difference has entirely disappeared fromthe French spoken in Ottawa-Hull; instead, the strongfavoring effect of nonspecific adverbial complementssuch as tot ou tard sooner or later or un jour someday for the inflected future and the concomitant dis-favoring effect for the periphrastic future indicate thatsuch an association still influences the choice of futuretense. The most powerful factor influencing tensechoice is whether the clause is affirmative or negative;a negative clause strongly favors the inflected future,

Table 2 Probabilistic analysis of future tense expression inOttawa-Hull

Inflected future Periphrastic future

Total N for each variant 725 2627

Temporal distance

Proximal .52 .56

Distal .48 .43

Type of adverbial

specification

Nonspecific .85 .19

No adverbial .47 .56

Specific .37 .23

Contingency

Contingent .51 not significant

Assumed .45

Grammatical person

Formal vous .81 .22

Other .49 .51

Negation

Negative .99 .01

Affirmative .36 .65

Based on Table 3 from Poplack & Turpin 1999: 149.while an affirmative clause strongly favors the peri-phrastic future, as is illustrated in (8). Finally, the moreformal status of the inflected form can be seen in thefact that the formal pronoun of address vous, used toaddress a single person to whom we must show re-spect, is the only grammatical person that favors theinflected future.

While no quantitative studies of the future tenses inEuropean French allow us to compare future tenseusage on the two sides of the Atlantic ocean, a recentstudy of future expression in Acadian French by Kingand Nadasdi (2003) revealed that the two tenseshave evolved quite differently in the two varieties ofCanadian French. The inflected and periphrasticfutures are used with almost equal frequencies in thethree Acadian communities investigated by King &Nadasdi: 53% for the inflected future and 47% forthe periphrastic future. It thus appears that the strongdecline in use of the inflected future observed forQuebec French cannot be considered to be a generalcharacteristic of Canadian French. In addition, theresults of the variable rule analysis presented inTable 3 indicate that negation, which is the mostpowerful factor in favoring use of the inflected futurein Quebec French, plays no significant role in Acadi-an French. Similarly, type of adverbial specification,contingency, and grammatical person, which all playa significant role in Poplack and Turpins study, donot significantly affect variant choice in AcadianFrench. Instead, temporal reference, which plays arelatively minor role in tense choice in Ottawa-HullFrench, most significantly affects the choice betweenthe two future tenses in Acadia: the periphrastic fu-ture is favored for events that will take place withinthe near future but its probability of use decreaseswith more distal and continual events such as Ilsfumeront jusqua` leur mort They will smoke untiltheir death. The fact that degree of certainty that anevent will take place and presence of a subordinateclause introduced by quand also influence choice oftense suggests that the two future tenses retain themeanings described in many grammar books.Table 3 Periphrastic future usage in Acadian French

Factor Factor weight % N

Temporal referencewithin hour .689 78% 70/90

within day .644 72% 36/50

within week .678 71% 35/49

longer than week .479 40% 176/442

continual .135 11% 6/54

Certaintycertain .695 72% 178/246

uncertain .387 33% 145/439

Presence of subordinate clause with quandno .511 48% 321/669

yes .132 13% 2/16

Based on Table 2 in King & Nadasdi 2003: 334.Variation and Change

One of the major contributions of variationist socio-linguistics has been the tools it has developed to ex-amine the gradual progression of innovative linguisticforms in a speech community. The concept of appar-ent time, which attributes differences across genera-tions to the fact that their speakers have acquiredtheir linguistic competence at different times andassumes that their speech continues to reflect thelinguistic system to which they were exposed andwhich served as input for their own grammar, hasallowed sociolinguists to identify many instances ofchange in progress. Research in real time, that is,using corpora recorded at different times, has con-firmed the validity of the apparent-time concept.

los stem of verbal ne-

mu f V not think

ers eirco t us s al

only difference being that the maintenance rates areconsistently lower in 1995 than in 1976, as we can seein Table 5. While older speakers continue to use nemore frequently than younger speakers, the fact thattheir rate of usage in 1995 is half of what it was in1976 does not support Blanche-Benveniste and Jean-jeans hypothesis that the generational difference ob-served in Ashbys initial study must be attributed toage grading. Ashbys conclusion is further strength-ened by a comparison of the speech of 11 speakers

Variation in French 359topics, they propose that ne constitutes a syntacticresource available to all speakers that continues toplay an important stylistic role; consequently, they donot predict that it will completely disappear fromMontreal French.

Ashby (1981) investigated the possible loss of ne inthe French city of Tours. Based on a sample of 35speakers representing two age groups (1421 yearsand 5164 years) and three socioeconomic classes,Ashby found a deletion rate of 63%. Like Sankoffand Vincent, his sample contained no speakers whonever deleted ne; however, contrary to their study,only one speaker categorically deleted ne (45 out ofrpus are associa ed with disc sion of form

. Based o the fa that mo inst nces f ne in th

t ne has become a foreign element for Montre

n ct st a o

tha al-nities. However, Sanko f and incent do

ment, Montreal appears to be ahead of other comgation that relies exclusively on a post-verbal negativeele -ing ne and moving toward a sy

ropean French. If the French lanResearch on variation in French has greatly contri-buted to improving our understanding of the progres-sion of innovative forms.

Loss of Negative ne

Verbal negation in standard French is doubly marked:the verb is preceded by the particle ne and followedby a negative adverb (most often pas not, but alsoplus anymore, jamais never, etc.) or quantifier (riennothing, personne nobody), as can be seen in (9).However, in spontaneous speech the ne is often ab-sent, as illustrated in (10).

(9a) Je ne connais pas la reponseI NEG know not the answerI dont know the answer

(9b) Vous n avez vu personneyou.pl.NEG have seen nobodyYou havent seen anyone

(10a) Je connais pas la reponse(10b) Vous avez vu personne

The first variationist analysis of ne, that of Ashby(1976), investigated ne deletion in the speech of 50speakers from the Parisian upper-middle class. Itrevealed that ne is deleted almost as often as it isuttered, with a deletion rate of 44.1%, a rather shock-ing finding for speakers assumed to speak standardFrench. Sankoff and Vincents (1977) study of nedeletion in Montreal French, revealed an even lowerrate of ne usage, because they found only 46 unequiv-ocal cases of ne in a sample of 10 000 negative sen-tences, or a 99.5% deletion rate. This rate of omissionfor ne far exceeds the omission rates varying between25% and 86% that had previously been reported forEu guage is currently60 categorically deleted ne in Sankoff and Vincentsstudy). Ashby also showed that ne-deletion is morefrequent in informal style and thus carries a stylisticmeaning similar to that uncovered by Sankoff andVincent in Montreal.

Ashbys investigation of age, socioeconomic status,and gender reveals that not all speakers are equallylikely to delete ne. Based on the fact that deletion ismore frequent among young speakers and that theage difference is visible within each socio economicclass and each gender, Ashby (1981: 683) concludesthat the relative distribution between the two agestrata strongly suggests that the particle is being lostin contemporary spoken French and that this is aprobable case of change from below led by working-class women. Blanche-Benveniste and Jeanjean (1987)challenged Ashbys conclusion, pointing out that nedeletion was already attested during the 17th centuryand attributing the linguistic behavior of the twogenerations of speakers instead to the fact thatyoung people use colloquial speech more easily thanolder persons, who tend to use their Sunday French.

In response to the challenge posed by Blanche-Benveniste and Jeanjean, Ashby returned to Tours in1995 and collected a new corpus (Ashby, 2001). Inorder to ensure that his new data were comparableto his early data, Ashby used the same interviewmethodology and recorded 25 speakers belonging tothe same age ranges. He also sought speakers whosesocial profiles corresponded as closely as possible tothose of his first subjects. As Table 4 shows, theoverall rate of ne usage greatly decreased during the19 years that separate Ashbys two corpora: 37% in1976 vs. 18% in 1995. The social differences ob-served in the 1976 data are replicated in 1995, the

Table 4 ne usage in Tours French in 1976 and 1995

Date Relative frequency of

ne usage

Absolute frequency of

ne usage

1976 37% 1031/2818

1995 18% 346/1891

Based on Ashby (2001: 9).

360 Variation in Frenchwho were interviewed both in 1976 and in 1995;these data show that, apart from two speakers whohave experienced significant social mobility andincreased their use of ne, all subjects have eitherretained similar rates of ne usage or decreased theirusage.

Many studies have investigated ne deletion in vari-ous communities of French speakers and report pat-terns of linguistic and social conditioning similar tothose uncovered by Ashby and Sankoff and Vincent(e.g., Coveney, 1996; Pooley, 1996). Additional evi-dence in favor of change in progress comes fromArmstrong and Smiths (2002) study of real-timechange in radio speech. Their analysis comparespatterns of ne deletion in excerpts drawn fromjournalists, writers, and politicians who were re-corded in 196061 and in 1997. Not surprisingly, neis deleted in radio speech much less frequently than incorpora of sociolinguistic conversations. Interesting-ly, though, their data reveal that radio speech is alsoaffected by the change that appears to be taking placein France. Indeed, while they recorded a rate of nedeletion of 7.4% in the 196061 corpus, this rateincreased to 27.5% in the 1997 corpus, a differencethat is very highly statistically significant.Table 5 Social distribution of ne usage in Tours French in 1976and 1995

1976 1995

Socioeconomic status

A 45% 26%

B 47% 17%

C 15% 9%

Gender

Men 42% 20%

Women 30% 17%

Age

5164 52% 25%

1422 19% 14%

Based on Tables 5, 6, and 7 in Ashby (2001).Conclusion

Space constraints have forced us to focus on a fewvariables that illustrate both the intricate patterns oflinguistic and social conditioning that govern vari-ation in specific communities and across communitiesand the similarities and differences that characterizethe different speech communities. However, interest-ed readers should be aware that many more variableshave been investigated (e.g., schwa deletion, liaison,first person plural subject pronouns, pronouns usedfor indefinite reference, strong plural pronouns, sub-ject doubling, auxiliary, discourse markers, etc.). Wewould like to now point to other research programsin which scholars studying French have played centralroles.

Most of the studies reviewed in this article havefocused on urban communities in which French is thelanguage spoken by the majority of the population.Many francophone communities in North Americaare located in rural areas and/or in regions in whichEnglish is the language of a majority of speakers.Obviously, such communities must be approacheddifferently. For instance, in many rural communities,socio economic class is too uniform across speakers tobe expected to influence the linguistic choices ofspeakers. In communities of this type, social networksand attitudes toward ones community often play acentral role, as shown, for instance, in the work ofLouise Beaulieu on Acadian French. In minority com-munities, the amount of French used by native speak-ers varies greatly, another factor that we can expectto influence their linguistic production. RaymondMougeon and his colleagues, who have investigatedthe French used by teenage native speakers in fivedifferent towns in Ontario, have confirmed that, formany variables, degree of restriction of language useclosely correlates with the language patterns of differ-ent speakers. Their analyses show, for instance, thatsome variants typical of colloquial speech are under-used by teenagers who make very limited use ofFrench outside of school, while other variants, absentor rare in the speech of speakers who regularlyuse French but frequent in the speech of restrictedspeakers, reflect a less than perfect mastery of theirmother tongue.

Another area in which research on French hasmade a great contribution is second-language acqui-sition. In recent years, many scholars have turnedtheir attention to the acquisition of variable patterns.After years of studying patterns of variation in nativespeakers of French in Montreal, Gillian Sankoff andPierrette Thibault have shifted their attention to thestudy of bilingual English speakers from the same cityto determine whether these speakers share the samepatterns as native speakers. Other researchers (e.g.,Raymond Mougeon working on French-immersionstudents in Ontario, Vera Regan focusing on Irishlearners of French, and Kelly Sax looking at Americanstudents from a Midwest university) have shown thatwhile learners acquire some aspects of the variablepatterns characteristic of native speakers, experienceliving among them better helps learners master theintricate patterns of linguistic and social conditioningbetter than extended classroom learning.

In the chapter Is there a French theory of vari-ation? Gadet (2003: 35) concludes: Those linguistswho do not see themselves specifically as variationistsare in fact the ones who have most furthered the study

of variation. This article challenges that position.While it is true that few French linguists have adoptedthe variationist framework in their study of variation,the detailed investigations of an international team of

le francais populaire du Quebec. La linguistique 16, 91102.

proche dans le francais parle dans la ville de Quebec.

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Gadet F (2003). Is there a French theory of variation?International Journal of the Sociology of Language 160,1740.

Variation in French 361Langues et linguistique 7, 2137.Emirkanian L & Sankoff D (1985). Le futur simple et le futur

periphrastique. In Lemieux M & Cedergren H J (eds.) LesCoveney A (1996). Variability in spoken French: a sociolin-guistic study of interrogation and negation. Exeter: ElmBank.

Deshaies D & Laforge E` (1981). Le futur simple et le futurresearchers have greatly contributed to advancing ourknowledge of the variable patterns that characterizethe French language in many of its communities.

See also: Age: Apparent Time and Real Time; Gender;

Gender, Grammatical; Interlanguage; Language Change

and Cultural Change; Spatial Variation (Geolinguistics).

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Variation in FrenchIntroductionSocial VariationPhonological VariationMorphosyntactic Variation

Variation and ChangeLoss of Negative ne

ConclusionBibliography