French and Chinese/Contrastive Grammar

French and Standard Chinese are far-removed linguistically. This page gives a brief background on some important grammatical differences.

Pronouns

Case marking

French displays a case distinction for personal pronouns.

• (fr) Je le vois. → I see him.
• (fr) Il me voit. → He sees me.
• (fr) Il va avec moi. → He goes with me.

Note the alteration between je 'I,' me 'me,' and moi 'me (stressed tonic).'

Standard Chinese does not display a case distinction; meaning is conveyed through word order. Note that some varieties of Chinese do mark case on pronouns.

• (zh) 我在看他。 → I see him.
• (zh) 他在看我。 → He sees me.
• (zh) 他跟我去。 → He goes with me.

Case tags would need to be removed using appropriate transfer rules.

2nd-person pronouns

French displays two 2nd-person pronouns:

• tu (singular informal)
• vous (singular formal, plural informal and formal)

Chinese displays four 2nd-person pronouns:

• 你 (singular informal)
• 您 (singular formal)
• 你們 (plural informal)
• 您們 (plural formal)

When transferring from French to Chinese, both tu and vous would most likely need to be translated to 你, due to ambiguity. Chinese to French would be an unambiguous transfer.

Appropriate directional notations would need to be added to the bidix to reflect this.

Possessives

French possessives are marked through the preposition de. The possessed noun is the head word, while the possessor comes after the preposition.

• (fr) le chien de la fille → the girl's dog (literally: the dog of the girl)
• (fr) les hommes de ce pays → the men of my country
• (fr) le nez du chat → the cat's nose

Chinese possessives are marked through the particle 的, also coincidentally pronounced de. In a reversal of the French word order, the possessor is the head word, while the possessed noun comes after the preposition.

• (zh) 女孩的狗 → [the] girl's dog (literally: girl de dog)
• (zh) 這個國家的人 → [the] men of this country
• (zh) 貓的鼻子 → [the] nose of [the] cat

This difference in word order would need to be dealt with in transfer rules.

Verbs

Person

French verbs display conjugations for person. However, person is not implicit; unlike most Romance languages, the subject is never dropped.

• (fr) Je pense. → I think.
• (fr) Nous pensons. → We think.
• (fr) Tu penses. → You (singular informal) think.

Chinese verbs do not display conjugations for person.

• (zh) 我想。 → I think.
• (zh) 我們想。 → We think.
• (zh) 你想。 → You (singular) think.

Person is indicated by the subject only, which may be dropped.

• (zh) 不知道。 → I don't know. (literally: don't know)

A hypothetical French-Chinese pair would most likely not deal with subject-dropping, as it is not mandatory and occurs in limited and difficult-to-predict situations.

Tense

French verbs mark tense through verb conjugation. Tense is obligatorily marked.

• (fr) Je pense. → I think.
• (fr) Je pensai. → I thought.
• (fr) Je penserai. → I will think.

Chinese verbs are marked by verb-prefixing or verb-suffixing particles. These particles are optional; tense is sometimes not marked.

• (zh) 我想。 → I think (without tense)
• (zh) 我在想。 → I am thinking.
• (zh) 我想了。 → I have thought.
• (zh) 我會想。 → I will think.

There would be two possible methods to deal with this:

• include tense particles in the morphological analysis of a single verb (i.e. 想 generates 會想 as an inflected form
• treat tense particles as separate lemmas and deal with inflection in transfer rules.

The latter approach seems more promising.

Interrogatives

Wh-questions

French displays three paradigms for *wh*-questions:

1. (formal|fronting of the interrogative pronoun and an inversion of the subject-verb order:

• (fr) Que voulez-vous? → What do you want? (formal)

2. (informal|fronting of the interrogative pronoun, followed by the particle est-ce que:

• (fr) Qu'est-ce que vous voulez? → What do you want? (informal)

3. (very informal|standard SVO sentence order, with the interrogative pronoun substituted in the normal position.

• (fr) Vous voulez quoi? → What do you want? (very informal)

Chinese has only one paradigm for wh-questions, matching in structure the last, very informal paradigm of French. The interrogative pronoun is not fronted.

• (zh) 你要什麼？ → What do you want?

Translating the several interrogative structures of French into Chinese would most likely require transfer rules. As for the reverse (Chinese to French), it would most likely be appropriate to generate structure #1, as it is correct (if perhaps not appropriate) in almost all contexts.

Yes/no questions

French displays two paradigms for yes/no questions:

1. (formal) inversion of the subject-verb order:

• (fr) Êtes-vous prêt? → Are you ready? (formal)

2. (informal) use of the sentence-initial particle est-ce que:

• (fr) Est-ce que vous êtes prêt? → Are you ready? (informal)

Chinese displays several paradigms for yes/no questions, including the following main ones:

1. the sentence-final particle 嗎 ma:

• (zh) 你準備好了嗎？ → Are you ready?

2. the so-called A-not-A construction, only usable with certain verbs:

• (zh) 西瓜甜不甜？ → Is the watermelon sweet? (literally: Watermelon sweet-not-sweet?)

Again, the structures of both French and Chinese may be dealt with through transfer rules.