“ C’est ça que ça se passe ”: A Probabilistic Grammar of Relative Markers in Acadian French

Abstract

Restrictive relatives in French are often framed as problematic because vernacular usage departs from the symmetrical form–function mapping upheld by prescriptive grammars. Where the standard system privileges a diversified inventory of syntactically specified relativizers, spontaneous speech recurrently converges on the generalized subordinator que , often interpreted as a simplification or error. Drawing on a corpus of sociolinguistic interviews with speakers of Acadian French in Nova Scotia, this study examines the conditioning of relativization in a spoken minority variety using a variationist framework incorporating mixed-effects regression models. The analysis reveals a structured probabilistic system dominated by three high-frequency markers ( qui, que/qu’, dont ), whose distribution reflects both internal and external dimensions of relativization. These dimensions are examined through structural, processing-related, stylistic, and social factors, including syntactic function, dependency length, antecedent properties, matrix construction type, and sociolinguistic characteristics of the speakers. In non-subject relatives, the que ∼ dont alternation is structured primarily by oblique function and further conditioned by dependency length and style. Subject relatives remain near-categorical in qui , though rare non-canonical que/qu’ forms are consistently licensed by resumptives and weakly specified antecedents.