Postposition of the Subject in Contemporary French: An Exploration of Medium, Register and Genre

Postposition of the subject has been widely explored in the French language but only rarely in relation to the oral medium. It is strongly associated with written discourse of a more formal variety. Through an analysis of a corpus of oral narratives, this paper analyses postposition of the subject in contemporary French syntax and its relationship to questions of medium, register and genre. The paper explores the extent to which postposition occurs in the oral medium, incorporating findings from conversational narratives, traditional stories and contemporary storytelling. It analyses the typology of the most frequent types of example, the reasons why these types of postposition might occur in the discourse in question, and the extent to which questions of medium, register and genre play a role. The paper also discusses the implications for the future of this structure in oral varieties of French.