Why Do the French Give Their Nouns Gender?Author(s): Diana L. Ranson and Siri CarlisleReviewed work(s):Source: The French Review, Vol. 70, No. 1 (Oct., 1996), pp. 1-12Published by: American Association of Teachers of FrenchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/396417 .Accessed: 29/11/2011 16:20

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

American Association of Teachers of French is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to The French Review.

http://www.jstor.org

THE FRENCH REVIEW, Vol. 70, No. 1, October 1996 Printed in U.S.A.

Why Do the French Give Their Nouns Gender?

by Diana L. Ranson and Siri Carlisle

IT INEVITABLY HAPPENS IN A LANGUAGE CLASS THAT SOME STUDENTS, rather than proceeding directly and intuitively toward proficiency, will stop to ask the "why" question: "Why do the French give their nouns gender?" or "Why do the adjectives come after the nouns?' Quite often these ques- tions are really thinly-veiled complaints, so that "Why are there so many irregular verbs in French?" may mean simply that the student does not want to have to learn them. Accordingly, many teachers view these ques- tions as distracting and counterproductive and discourage them by tell-

ing students just to accept French as it is. Instead of discouraging such questions, though, teachers could use

them to foster healthy linguistic curiosity in their students by accepting and discussing these issues in a way appropriate to their own classroom setting. Often it happens, though, that teachers are not trained in the his- tory of the language and so do not have the answers at hand. The pur- pose of this article, therefore, is to provide teachers with answers to ques- tions frequently asked by beginning French students.

The eight questions presented here were asked by first-year French stu- dents at the University of Georgia on a written questionnaire attached as a separate page of the final exams for French 101, 102, and 103 in Spring quarter 1990.2 A total of 163 students (about one-fourth of the 662 stu- dents taking the final exam) wrote down a total of 249 questions about the French language.

1. "Why do the French give their nouns gender?"

The question asked by the largest number of students, almost a third of those who asked a question, concerned grammatical gender in French. This question was popular no doubt because there is no grammatical gender in English, because the gender of a noun in French rarely con- tributes to the message, and because it is difficult to predict the gender of

1

2 FRENCH REVIEW

a French noun based on its form. French is what has been called a "gen- der-difficult language" (Teschner 85).

Since French nouns inherited gender from Latin nouns which in turn inherited gender from Proto-Indo-European nouns, the answer goes back to the origin of grammatical gender in Proto-Indo-European, the most distant linguistic ancestor of French and of most Western languages, including English. It is tempting to believe that the Indo-Europeans per- sonified even inanimate objects and for this reason assigned gender to them. According to Ibrahim (16), however, this assumption is utterly false and reflects our tendency to view primitive people as childish. Ibrahim believes instead that grammatical gender was a formal category, essen-

tially a system of agreements among articles, adjectives, and nouns, which never had any direct relationship with natural gender (Vendryes 111). Gender thus began when speakers first grouped nouns into differ- ent categories according to their form and then made agreements based on these categories.

From the point of view of our students who would like to see gender disappear, its evolution from Latin to French brought both good and bad news. The good news is that the three genders of Latin have been re- duced to only two in Modern French. The Latin neuter gender was lost

through the reassignment of neuter nouns as either masculine or femi- nine. For example, the Latin neuter noun meaning 'seed' gives both a masculine and feminine noun in Modern French. The singular granum becomes the masculine grain and while the plural grana becomes the fem- inine graine.

The bad news, on the other hand, is that the noun endings which indi- cated gender were for the most part lost in French through regular sound changes in the final vowels. For example, whereas Latin librum and li- bram were easily identifiable as masculine and feminine by their endings, they have both become livre in French. The greatest difficulty in predict- ing the gender of French nouns comes from the final mute -e which not only developed from the feminine -a ending in Latin, but also appeared on masculine words following a consonant cluster. In Spanish, by con- trast, where the final vowels remain distinct, libro and libra can be identi- fied as masculine and feminine solely by the -o and -a endings. Thus, Spanish, which maintained the vocalic distinctions from Latin, is a gen- der-easy language, while French, which lost these distinctions, is gender- difficult.

As for teaching gender, we can give our students a list of suffixes to predict the gender of French nouns, such as those found in Byrne and Churchill (41-66) and Luce (570-74), but the only sure method is for stu- dents to memorize the gender of every noun. Another way to predict gender in French is first to learn another gender-easy Romance lan- guage, such as Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish, and then assign the same gender to French cognates. In fact, Teschner (95) estimates that a Span-

GENDER IN FRENCH NOUNS 3

ish-speaker will be able to predict the gender of approximately 70% of French nouns.

2. "Why do you have de plus infinitive and a plus infinitive for some verbs and not the rest?"

This question obviously reflects the disgruntlement students feel when faced with learning verbs which take a (continuer a jouer), de (cesser de par- ler), or no preposition (aimer chanter) before an infinitive. This distinction contributes nothing to meaning in French and has no exact equivalent in English. It may help, though, to point out to students that in English cer- tain verbs arbitrarily keep or delete the preposition to before infinitives, as in I want to go or I can go.

The current French usage evolved in two stages; the first was the exten- sion of the prepositions ad and de with the infinitive in Latin, and the sec- ond was the standardization of French by seventeenth-century grammar- ians. In Latin the prepositions ad and de were used to convey direction much as they still do in modem French, as in Je vais au cinema and Je sors du caft, but they were not used between a conjugated verb and an infini- tive. However, another verbal construction using the gerund did include the prepositions ad and de, so that one could say aggredior dicere 'I try to speak' or aggredior ad dicendum 'I try speaking' and cogito resistere 'I think to resist' or de resistendo cogito 'I think of resisting'. It is likely that in spo- ken Latin confusion between the two constructions led to the use of ad and de before the infinitive, as in *aggredior ad dicere and *cogito de re- sistere. Rare examples of these constructions are found occasionally in late Latin works (Bourciez 111).3

If the current situation seems arbitrary, it is partly because the relation- ship of a given verb to a following infinitive has fluctuated over time: "Au cours des siecles, cette construction a souvent change. Tel verbe qui, en a.f. [ancien franqais] etait suivi immediatement d'un infinitif, prend aujourd'hui une preposition, ou inversement" (Brunot Pensee 337). The present division of modem French verbs dates back to the seventeenth century when grammarians and writers discussed the varying uses of i, de or no preposition before infinitives (Brunot Histoire 967-76). Their com- peting reasons, which did little to simplify the situation, included using the same preposition before the infinitive as before a noun, so that one would say consentir a obe'ir if one said consentir a' une chose, using differ- ences in the preposition to express differences in meaning, so that obliger a would mean 'to constrain' while obliger de would mean 'to please', and finally avoiding the preposition a before an infinitive beginning with [a] for euphonic reasons. Whatever the reasoning which ultimately pre- vailed, in modern French t and de have for the most part lost their origi- nal meaning of direction, so that students must now memorize a distinc- tion which contributes nothing to meaning.

4 FRENCH REVIEW

In order to master this distinction, students must first be provided with a list of the verbs which can be followed by an infinitive, such as the espe- cially complete list in Fol and Barrette (288-93). Then students can pro- ceed to memorize the preposition required by each verb through such

strategies as grouping, semantic mapping, structured reviewing, and mechanical techniques (Oxford 40-43).

3. "Why do the adjectives come after the nouns?"

For English-speaking students, who are used to saying a blue car in

English with the adjective before the noun, it seems strange to say une voiture bleue in French. If students think that English is right in this re-

gard then French must be wrong. However, according to the universal order of meaningful grammatical elements proposed by Greenberg, it is normal for the adjective to follow the noun in French. In verb-object (VO) languages, like French and English, in which the object follows the verb, the adjective normally follows the noun it modifies (62).4 Thus, it is French that follows the pattern, not English.

The earliest identifiable ancestor of French, Proto Indo-European, was

basically an OV language in which the object preceded the verb and the

adjective preceded the noun it modified (Lehmann 69). Although word order was supposedly free in Latin, it too was essentially an OV lan-

guage, so that adjectives generally preceded the nouns. This was also the case in French until the sixteenth century.5 During the seventeenth cen-

tury, however, grammarians proposed the rules that we teach today that certain adjectives precede the noun while others vary their meaning according to their position. For example, pauvre does not have the same

meaning in un pauvre homme as in un homme pauvre (Sneyders de Vogel 343; Wartburg and Zumthor 153). Our students, therefore, can thank the

seventeenth-century grammarians for creating the modem rules for adjective position.

Perhaps an effective way of teaching the placement of adjectives is to tell students that adjectives that can be considered an inherent part of the noun normally precede it, as in un petit enfant. Oxford (68) proposes the acronym BAGS as a useful mnemonic device to help students remember that preposed adjectives refer to beauty (beau, joli), age (jeune, vieux, nou- veau), goodness (bon, mauvais, vilain, vrai), and size (grand, petit, gros, long, haut). When an adjective changes meaning according to position, the meaning is figurative when the adjective precedes the noun, as in mon an- cien professeur, and more literal meaning when it follows the noun, as in mon professeur ancien. For those adjectives whose meaning remains essen- tially the same in both positions, there is nevertheless a tendency toward a subtle distinction according to position: a preceding adjective expresses a quality inherent to the noun, whereas a following adjective indicates "une qualit6 accidentelle, une propridtd par laquelle le nom se distingue

GENDER IN FRENCH NOUNS 5

d'autres noms pour le reste identiques" (Wartburg and Zumthor 151). Thus, in general les doux moutons is non-restrictive and implies that all

sheep are gentle by nature, while les moutons doux is restrictive and refers to a subset of all sheep that happen to be gentle. There are so many stylis- tic considerations influencing adjective position, though, that this ten-

dency is not a firm rule (Sneyders de Vogel 343).

4. "Why are there so many irregular verb forms?"

It is easy to understand why students asked this question, since irregu- larities do not appear to serve any useful function in a language. In French there are two main reasons for irregular verbs: regular sound

changes that have led to irregularities in conjugation, and suppletion, the

process by which the conjugation of one verb includes forms from differ- ent verbs.

The evolution of the verb probare, which was regular in Latin and be- came irregular in Old French, illustrates how regular sound changes led to irregularities in conjugation.

LC pr6bo > OF preuve LC probdmus > OF prouvons LC pr6bas > OF preuves LC probdtis > OF prouvez LC pr6bat > OF preuve LC pr6bant > OF preuvent

It is specifically the evolution of the vowel [o] in this verb which created

irregularities, since it became [ce] when stressed and in an open syllable, as in je preuve, tu preuves, il preuve, and ils preuvent, but it became [u] when unstressed and in initial position, as in nous prouvons and vous

prouvez. In Modern French, the stem preuve changed by analogy to the stem prouve, so that today the verb is once again regular with je prouve along with nous prouvons. The verb vouloir by contrast did not regularize, so that the vowel [ce] occurs in je veux, tu veux, il veut, and ils veulent, while [u] occurs in nous voulons and vous voulez (Price 186-87).

Some highly irregular verb forms can be explained by suppletion where a verb form is lost and replaced by one from a different verb. The most striking French example of this phenomenon is the verb aller which is based on three different Latin verbs. The present tense of four persons je vais, tu vas, il va, ils vont and the imperative va come from the Latin vadere 'to go, to walk', while the future and conditional stem found in j'irai and j'irais come from the verb ire 'to go'. Forms with the stem all- (nous allons, j'allais, j'aille) are believed to have evolved from the Latin verb ambulare 'to walk'.

Modern French also inherited from Latin verbs which had already become irregular by the same processes described above. There is a ten- dency in any language for the most common verbs to be irregular, like ctre in French and to be in English, simply because speakers regularize verbs which are not used often enough for them to remember the irregu-

6 FRENCH REVIEW

lar forms. To illustrate such regularization in English, one has only to ask students to give the past participles of the following verbs, for which an older irregular past participle exists alongside a newer regular one: to beseech (besought/beseeched), to tread (trodden/tread), and to wake (woken/ waked). In Modern French, too, regularization continues so that bouillir is sometimes conjugated as je bouille instead of je bous, and one even hears vous disez instead of vous dites. Until all French verbs become regular, if

they ever do, students will have to memorize the irregular forms through repetition and practice. References, such as Pinchon and Coute, provide the teacher with diagrams to simplify verb paradigms for their students.

5. "Why are there so many diferent tenses?"

The students who asked this question are not only lamenting having to learn the conjugation and usage of so many tenses, but also implying that French has more tenses than English. However, a comparison of the two

languages shows that the reverse is actually true. In French there are fourteen tenses (or sixteen if one includes the little-used passe simple and

imperfect subjunctive) compared to twenty in English (or twenty-two, if one includes the little-used subjunctive).

Perhaps the real problem for students is not the number of verb tenses, but rather their different organization in French and English. Where Eng- lish has only five simple tenses (present, past, future, conditional, and

imperative) plus compound forms of each (I have said) and then progres- sive forms of both simple and compound tenses (I am saying, I have been

saying), French has seven simple tenses (excluding the passe simple) and then compound forms for each. The tenses which cause the greatest diffi- culty in French are likely the ones which do not exist in English, the imperfect and the subjunctive. It would be interesting to find out wheth- er these tenses would indeed be the ones students would most like to do away with. The subjunctive would probably top the list, since this tense has all but disappeared in English and since it contributes almost nothing to the meaning of an utterance in most of its uses in French.

As to why French has these tenses, the simple explanation is that the present and imperfect indicative, the passe simple, the present subjunctive, and the imperative were inherited directly from Latin. A new form of the future was created and the new conditional tense was based on its mod- el. Thus, of the eleven simple tenses in Latin, French preserved six of these, replaced the other five with the new compound tenses and the fu- ture, and then added two conditional forms and three compound tenses (passe compose, passe anterieur, and past imperative).

In reviewing French verb tenses, it can help to give students a list of all the simple tenses with their compound equivalents. Using this list, they can see that a relationship of anteriority exists between a compound tense and its corresponding simple tense. For example, an action in the pluper-

GENDER IN FRENCH NOUNS 7

fect precedes one in the passe compose" (Je l'avais djiia fini quand vous etes arrive), just as an action in the futur antirieur precedes an action in the future (Je l'aurai dcj~a fini quand vous arriverez).

6. "Why are some verbs conjugated with etre and some with avoir?" and "Why do verbs agree only in past tense?"

Students no doubt wonder why French has two auxiliary verbs in the

past tense and why agreement is sometimes made with the past partici- ple since once again these distinctions no longer exist in English and since they contribute almost nothing to meaning. Fortunately, among all the questions students asked, this is the one the history of the language explains the best.

The compound tenses developed in all the Romance languages, in much the same way as they developed in Germanic languages, such as

English. They originated from two different types of expressions, such as spoken Latin habeo litteras scriptas 'I have a letter written' and venita sum 'I am come'. At first the verb in these sentences, habeo or sum, was used in the present tense, and a past participle, scriptas or venita, functioned as an

adjective which modified the direct object litteras in one expression and the subject, implied ego 'I', in the other. Gradually these constructions

adopted a past tense meaning because if I have a letter written then it is because I have written it in the past. Similarly, if I am come in the pres- ent, it is because I have come in the past. To use another verb as an exam- ple, if I am gone, it is because I have left (Pulgram 194-95; Seklaoui 826-31).

In the original expressions of origin one can see that the auxiliary avoir was used with transitive verbs and that the past participle agreed with the direct object while the auxiliary Jtre was used with intransitive verbs and the past participle agreed with the subject. Over time, however, many intransitive verbs, like courir, adopted the auxiliary avoir so that the domain of etre was reduced from all intransitive verbs to only sixteen of the most common intransitive verbs which students must memorize. Agreement of the past participle with transitive verbs became more com- plicated when grammarians decided that it would agree only when the direct object preceded the past participle.

The conjugation of the compound tenses in English seems simpler than in French because both the auxiliary to be and past participle agreement have been lost in English. Will French also lose these distinctions? If the decision were left up to our students, who regularly say j'ai alle and la let- tre que j'ai &crit, the answer would be an emphatic yes. The loss of these distinctions from other Romance languages, such as Portuguese and Spanish, also points to their eventual loss in French, but only time will tell.

For now, students must memorize the list of verbs conjugated with ctre. Popular mnemonic devices include Dr./Mrs. Vandertramp (see, for exam-

8 FRENCH REVIEW

ple, Oxford 68) and la maison d'etre, but the surest way for students to learn these verbs is to memorize them.6 It also helps students to realize that all verbs, except reflexives, which take a direct object are conjugated with avoir, thus one says je suis descendue, but j'ai descendu les valises. As for past participle agreement, when there is a direct object, agreement depends on the placement of this object. If it follows the verb, as in je me suis laved les mains, then there is no agreement, but if it precedes the verb, as in je me les suis lavees, then agreement is made.

7. "Why don't you pronounce a lot of the consonants in words?"

A few students identified an important stumbling block in learning French, the enormous difference between French spelling and pronuncia- tion. In a beginning French course, teachers must constantly struggle against their students' tendency to pronounce all written letters, as in 'Ces personnes chantent bien'. One can explain French spelling in part by saying that writing has not kept pace with pronunciation. Most conso- nants which are silent today were once pronounced in the past so that the spelling of Modern French corresponds roughly to twelfth-century pronunciation with the addition of some letters during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

According to Wright (122-35), the goal of the first texts which can be called French, such as the Strasbourg Oaths (842) and the Sequence of Saint Eulalia (888), was to represent in writing the pronunciation of the vernac- ular. During some four centuries following this time scribes continued to use a spelling which reflected the spoken language, especially since liter- ary texts in Old French were written to be recited aloud or sung. Ewert (111) believes that spelling, however imperfect it may have been, was closer to pronunciation during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries than at any other time in the history of French.

Two tendencies from the thirteenth century on led to the divergence of pronunciation and spelling: one was a series of changes in pronunciation, especially the loss of many final consonants, while the other was a lat- inizing and conservative tendency on the part of scribes and grammari- ans which caused them to preserve silent letters or even to add superflu- ous letters to the spelling. The tendency to add letters to written words was motivated by a desire to distinguish homonyms, to give written words greater substance and a latinate appearance, and even to earn more money, since scribes and clerks were paid by the page. When the spelling of Old French doi changed to Modern French doigt, for example, the word not only resembled more closely its Latin etymon digitum, but it also gained two letters. It is amusing that clerks sometimes added letters erroneously, such as the d in poids from Latin pensum 'hung', thinking mistakenly that it was from pondus 'a weight.'

Students understand the divergence between spelling and pronuncia-

GENDER IN FRENCH NOUNS 9

tion better in French when they realize that these do not always corre- spond in English either. The word knight, for example, is pronounced [najt], not [knixt], as its spelling would indicate. Of course, this realiza- tion does not make French spelling any easier for students, nor for the French, for that matter. Only a spelling reform, such as the one under discussion in France over the past few years, could accomplish this. There is no cause for optimism, though, since reform movements have existed since the sixteenth century and almost nothing has changed.

8. "Many French words are similar to English words. Did the French get these words from the English or vice versa?"

Even though this question was asked by only one student, the topic is worthy of discussion since all students inevitably become aware of both cognates and faux amis. What is gratifying is that the student asking this question seems sincerely interested in obtaining an explanation, and even suggests an answer which turns out to be correct. Over the past mil- lenium mutual borrowing has led to similarities in vocabulary, as the French adopted words like match and bebe" from English and English adopted words like champagne and beef from French.

The history of English vocabulary is one of uninterrupted borrowing from French beginning with the Norman conquest of England in 1066. For example, English borrowed from French words like beef, mutton, and pork to refer to animal flesh for eating, yet retained the native English words like bull, sheep, and swine (later pig) to refer to the animal, hence the saying "French on the table, English in the stable." The French were much slower to return the compliment, so that it was not until 1815, after three great waves of English influence in the eighteenth century, that borrowings from English to French became continuous (Barbier 93). Walter and Walter (92) estimate that between 1066 and World War II, English borrowed approximately five thousand words from French, while French borrowed some three thousand from English.

One interesting example is the word tennis which originated in French, was borrowed by English, and then sent back to French again. English tennis came from Old French tenez when the -z was still pronounced as [ts], no doubt what one said as one served the ball. Then this English word was borrowed back into French for the modern name of the sport. Other interesting borrowings are those that originated in a third lan- guage. French vote does not come directly from Latin votum, but was bor- rowed from the English vote in the seventeenth century and the same is true for French club which came by way of English from Old Norse klub- ba. English orange and apricot come ultimately from Arabic narang and al- birquq by way of French.

While true cognates help in the acquisition of vocabulary, the so-called faux amis pose problems for students. These are words which began as

10 FRENCH REVIEW

cognates but whose meanings have evolved differently over time. A common pair of faux amis, which often trap students, is French librairie and English library. Both derive ultimately from the Latin liber 'book' and are places where books can be found, but une librairie is a place to buy them, whereas a library is a place where one can borrow them. There are also false cognates which show an accidental resemblance, such as Eng- lish cart and French carte. The English cart comes from the Old Norse kartr, perhaps influenced by the Anglo-Norman carete, a diminutive of car, while the French carte evolved from the Latin charta 'paper'. The English word card, not cart, is the real cognate of the French carte (Ayto 97, 99).

There is no systematic way of teaching French and English cognates and faux amis. However, it will help students to know that languages in contact naturally borrow from each other and that words often change their meanings in the course of their history. With these two basic con- cepts in hand, students may gradually develop a linguistic sense which can help them decide whether two words similar in appearance have the same origin and meaning.

Even if many of our students' questions are complaints, we can see that their complaints are in many ways understandable. Because the goal of today's classroom is communication, students asked why French pre- serves certain features which tax the memory yet contribute nothing or next to nothing to the message. For example, gender places large de- mands on the memory, yet the agreements it entails are unnecessary for communication, except in the case of animate beings. Proof of this fact is that communication in English is not impaired by the lack of grammati- cal gender. Since our students generally do not complain about the aspects of French which are essential to communication, but rather about those which make their efforts at communication more difficult, it appears then that they may be more linguistically astute than we may have given them credit for. This should indeed give us some encourage- ment to help them develop even further their linguistic awareness.

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

Notes

'A version of this article was presented at the 67th annual meeting of the American Association of Teachers of French in Quebec City in July 1994.

2The actual text of the question read: "Certain questions about the French language have probably come to mind since you began studying it. You may have asked your instructor a question in class, or you may simply have been wondering. For example, if you were study- ing English as a foreign language you might want to know: Why is mice the plural of mouse, but houses is the plural of house? or Why do you say prettier, but more beautiful (and not more pretty and beautifuller)? Please write down in English any questions you may have about the French language." Given that this questionnaire was attached to the final exam, the 25%

GENDER IN FRENCH NOUNS 11

response rate could be attributed in part to fatigue. In fact, twenty-eight students apolo- gized for not being able to think of any questions just then, some of them pointing out that they were tired after the final exam.

3This would explain why in all Romance languages verbs divide into these three main categories.

4Greenberg (60ff.) proposed that word orders were interrelated so that in VO languages the object follows the verb, the object follows the preposition, the adjective follows the noun, and the genitive follows the noun.

"Using written texts, Wartburg (175) has calculated that in the thirteenth century 84% of adjectives were prenominal in French, while the number had dropped to 75% in the six- teenth century. By the seventeenth century, the number had fallen to 50% and it has contin- ued to drop ever since, to the point that today most adjectives are postnominal in French.

6A convenient and foolproof way to memorize the verbs with etre is through a song, which probably originated with C&cile Garboushian who once taught French at Greenhills School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Sung more or less to the tune of "Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho," the words are: "Aller, venir, entrer, sortir, monter, descendre, arriver, partir, retourner, rester, mourir, et naitre avec etre, le participe passe s'accorde avec le sujet. Tomber, revenir, devenir, rentrer."

Works Cited

Ayto, John. Dictionary of Word Origins. New York: Arcade, 1990. Barbier, Paul. Rev. of L'Anglicisme et l'anglo-americanisme dans la languefranpaise; Dictionnaire

etymologique et historique des anglicismes, by Edouard Bonnaff6. The Modern Language Re- view 26 (1921): 90-94.

Bourciez, Edouard. Elements de linguistique romane. 4th ed. Paris: Klincksieck, 1946. Brunot, Ferdinand. La Pensde et la langue. Paris: Masson, 1922.

. La Langue classique (1660-1715). Paris: Armand Colin, 1924. Vol. 4, part 2 of His- toire de la languefranpaise des origines a 1900. 14 vols. 1905-1933.

Byrne, L. S. R., and E. L. Churchill. A Comprehensive French Grammar. 3rd ed. revised by Glanville Price. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986.

Ewert, Alfred. The French Language. London: Faber & Faber, 1933. Fol, Monique, and Paul Barrette. Un Style certain: les Mots pour l'ecrire. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:

Prentice Hall, 1991.

Greenberg, Joseph H. "Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements." Universals of Language. Ed. Joseph H. Greenberg. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1963. 73-113.

Ibrahim, Muhammad Hasan. Grammatical Gender: Its Origin and Development. The Hague: Mouton, 1973.

Lehmann, Winfred P. Proto-Indo-European Syntax. Austin: University of Texas P, 1974. Luce, Stanford L. "Learning French Gender with "e's"." French Review 52.4 (1979): 567-74. Oxford, Rebecca L. Language Learning Strategies: What Every Teacher Should Know. New York:

Newbury House, 1990. Pinchon, Jacqueline, and Bernard Coute. Le Systeme verbal du franpais: descriptions et applica-

tions pidagogiques. Paris: Nathan, 1981. Price, Glanville. The French Language: Present and Past. London: Edward Arnold, 1971. Pulgram, Ernst. "Synthetic and Analytic Morphological Constructs." Practicing Linguist:

Essays on Language and Languages, 1950-1985. Vol. II. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1988. 194-203.

Seklaoui, Diana Ranson. "Funci6n semantica o sintActica: la historia de los tiempos com- puestos en espafiol." Actas del II Congreso Internacional de Historia de la Lengua Espafiola. Eds. M. Ariza, R. Cano, J. M. Mendoza, y A. Narbona. Madrid: Pabell6n de Espaia, 1992. 823-32.

Sneyders de Vogel, K. Syntaxe historique du franpais. The Hague: J.-B. Wolters, 1919.

12 FRENCH REVIEW

Teschner, Richard V. "Noun Gender Categories in Spanish and French: Form-Based Analyses and Comparisons." Current Trends and Issues in Hispanic Linguistics. Ed. Lenard Studerus. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics and U of Texas at Arlington, 1987. 81-214.

Vendryes, J. Le Langage: introduction linguistique ia l'histoire. Paris: Renaissance du Livre, 1921.

Walter, Henriette, and Gerard Walter. Dictionnaire des mots d'origine etrangkre. Paris: La- rousse, 1991.

Wartburg, Walter von. Evolution et structure de la langue franpaise. 10th ed. Bern: Francke, 1971.

, and Paul Zumthor. Precis de syntaxe du franpais contemporain. 2nd ed. Bern: Francke, 1958.

Wright, Roger. Late Latin and Early Romance in Spain and Carolingian France. Liverpool: Fran- cis Cairns, 1982.