New observations on the grammaticalisation path of <i>où est-ce que</i> in Quebec French
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract This article provides new observations on où est-ce que (lit. ‘where is-it that’) in headed relatives (i.e. relatives with a nominal antecedent) in Quebec French from two different data sources (corpus research and acceptability judgements). These observations will be interpreted as an indicator for a more advanced stage of grammaticalisation of où est-ce que in this variety of French than in its European counterpart. Moreover, it will be shown that où est-ce que is more advanced in grammaticalisation in Quebec French than qu’est-ce que (lit. ‘what is-it that’). I will argue that this contrast is due to the adverbial function of où est-ce que , which leads to structural ambiguity between appositive and restrictive relative clauses. This ambiguity creates the possibility of structural reanalysis of clauses beginning with où est-ce que as headed relative clauses. I will support this analysis diachronically by comparison with other languages and with a related form oùsque , which is diachronically related to où est-ce que and has a distribution similar to that of où est-ce que , in that it is also used in headed relatives. The article is structured as follows. In Section 1 , I will describe the distribution of où est-ce que and related forms in French both synchronically and diachronically and present the steps of grammaticalisation that have been undergone by où est-ce que . In Section 2 , I present new data from Quebec French that will show a more advanced stage of grammaticalisation of où est-ce que in Quebec French. In Section 3 , I suggest an informal analysis to explain this new observation. Section 4 provides a detailed analysis of the informal suggestion based on a formal distinction between restrictive and appositive uses of relative clauses. Section 5 offers a summary and discussion.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 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".