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. Note below 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.

• (fr) Je le vois. → 我在看他。 :: I see him.
• (fr) Il me voit. → 他在看我。 :: He sees me.
• (fr) Il va avec moi. → 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, while Chinese displays four 2nd-person pronouns.

• (fr) tu → 你 :: you (singular informal)
• (fr) vous → 你 :: you (plural informal/formal and singular formal)

• (zh) 你 → vous :: you (singular informal)
• (zh) 你們 → vous :: you (plural informal)
• (zh) 您 → vous :: you (singular formal)
• (zh) 您們 → vous :: you (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 most likely translate to "vous," since "tu" is unacceptable in certain situations where 你 would be.

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.

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.

• (fr) le chien de la fille → 女孩的狗 :: the girl's dog (literally: the dog of the girl)
• (fr) les hommes de ce pays → 這個國家的人 :: the men of this country
• (fr) le nez du chat → 貓的鼻子 :: the cat's nose

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.

Chinese verbs do not display conjugations for person. Person is indicated by the subject only, which may be dropped.

• (fr) Je pense. → 我想。 :: I think.
• (fr) Nous pensons. → 我們想。 :: We think.
• (fr) Tu penses. → 你想。 :: You (singular informal) think.
• (fr) Je ne sais pas. → 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. Chinese verbs are marked by verb-prefixing or verb-suffixing particles. These particles are optional; tense is sometimes not marked.

• (fr) Je pense. → 我想 :: I think.
• (fr) Je pensai. → 我想了 :: I thought.
• (fr) Je penserai. → 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 (e.g. 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. All of these translate to the same structure in Chinese.

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

• (fr) Que voulez-vous? → 你要什麼？ :: 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? → 你要什麼？ :: 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? → 你要什麼？ :: What do you want? (very informal)

Translating the several interrogative structures of French into Chinese would most likely require the use of transfer rules (with chunking). 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: (formal) inversion of the subject-verb order and (informal) use of the sentence-initial particle est-ce que. Chinese displays two paradigms for yes/no questions: the sentence-final particle 嗎 ma and the so-called A-not-A construction.

• (fr) Êtes-vous prêt? → 你準備好了嗎？ :: Are you ready? (formal)
• (fr) Est-ce que vous êtes prêt? → 你準備好了嗎？ :: Are you ready? (formal)
• (zh) 你準備好了嗎？ → Êtes-vous prêt? :: Are you ready?
• (zh) 西瓜甜不甜？ → La pastèque est-elle douce? :: Is the watermelon sweet?

Again, the structures of both French and Chinese may be dealt with through transfer rules. The safest method would most likely be:

• from French to Chinese, always generate the 嗎 structure.

• from Chinese to French, always generate inversion.

Both of these structures are appropriate in all situations.