The Emergence of Emphatic ‘ne’ in Conversational Swiss French

Abstract

This study explores ne use in a previously unexamined variety of French: Swiss French. Based on a corpus of conversation among friends and family recorded at home, the results of this study show the lowest ne use reported for adult, middle-class speakers of European French, 2.5%. It also shows that ne functions micro-stylistically to effect micro-shifts in register allowing speakers to enact the institutional talk of public discourse. Finally, a new function appears to emerge: the use of ne as an emphatic, where it tends to appear in foregrounded clauses often with other emphatics, functioning as speaker evaluation or involvement.