The Diversity of Interrogative Forms in French: How to Interpret Them?

Discusses two assumptions of how the diversity of the interrogative forms in French should be interpreted. The sociolinguistic hypothesis links syntactic interrogative forms to demographic criteria, such as age or socioprofessional background. The pragmatic hypothesis links communicative functions to syntactic structures. For instance, introductive questions are linked to SVQ structures ('tu fais quoi ?'). The study of the SVQ structure shows that pragmatic & sociolinguistic interpretations allow us to comprehend the wealth of interrogative diversity. It would be of utmost interest to search for & find a synthetic approach to these two assumptions. 2 Tables, 24 References. Adapted from the source document.