Continuity and change in the evolution of French yes-no questions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract This present study contributes to research on the structure of yes-no questions in French. Informed by previous historical linguistic research tracing developments from the Old French period onwards, we focus on qualitative analysis of grammatical commentary and variationist analysis of Acadian French spoken-language data. We compare the evolution of yes-no questions in Acadian, Metropolitan, and Quebec French, reconstructing the history of variants up to the present. While in most cases we encounter slow-moving change, we do find inter-varietal differences in degree of retention of individual variants, including outright loss; in development of stylistic differentiation; and in analogically based innovation. We also find inter-varietal differences in grammatical constraints governing usage and in the fine detail regarding sentential polarity, illuminated in terms of the semantico-pragmatic functions of negative yes-no questions. The overall results underline the importance of considering sociolinguistic histories, including histories of dialect contact, along with local linguistic markets.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.018 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".