Obscure question about French syntax

[alice]

I remember reading that there are vestiges of V2 order in French; the example was "la maison où demeuraient les femmes". So presumably you also say "la maison où mangeais-je le repas". How does this work if the object is a personal pronoun?

[zompist]

I remember reading that there are vestiges of V2 order in French; the example was "la maison où demeuraient les femmes". So presumably you also say "la maison où mangeais-je le repas". How does this work if the object is a personal pronoun?

Our French folks can say for sure, but that sounds awful to me, and I've just done a bunch of Googling, so I'd say--

1. Pronouns after où stay where le bon Dieu intended, before the verb: La maison où j'ai grandi, La ville où l'on parle le plus le français
2. SV order is pretty common: Le pays où les rêves existent, Le village où les enfants ne riaient plus
3. VS order does occur: La ville où dorment les princesses. It can be a pretty modern context: Deep Purple revient sur le lieu où est né «Smoke on the Water». I didn't find any examples with objects.

[Ares Land]

I remember reading that there are vestiges of V2 order in French; the example was "la maison où demeuraient les femmes". So presumably you also say "la maison où mangeais-je le repas". How does this work if the object is a personal pronoun?

That's correct. Old French followed V2 order and that order resurfaces in a number of cases, including subject inversion.

As a rough guideline, subject inversion works best for longer NPs. Pronouns resist being moved around. Notably, "la maison où mangeais-je ce repas" isn't grammatical. The subject pronoun is placed after the verb, in fact, only in a few cases:

• Questions: Où mangeai-je ce repas?
• Some adverbs trigger subject inversion: ainsi, peut-être, sans doute, toujours,... "Ainsi soit-il" (So be it = amen) Sans doute mangeai-je ce repas.
• As a marker of reported speech: "Je mangerai ce repas", dit-il.

(I probably forgot other cases, but these are the big ones.)

In these cases the object pronouns stays before the verb: Où le mangeai-je? Sans doute le mangeai-je

Subject pronoun inversion is pretty formal language. I don't think it occurs much or at all in spoken French.

A good resource here: https://books.openedition.org/pum/10265?lang=fr

[Rounin Ryuuji]

A good resource here: https://books.openedition.org/pum/10265?lang=fr

I used to be fairly competent at at least reading and writing French, and so used to use translation as a means of editing stories (to force myself to be very sure of what I meant in English); I've been trying it again, and could probably fill a whole thread with "French questions" for everything I seem to have forgotten or never actually learnt, so this is very nice to have.

[Raphael]

I used to be fairly competent at at least reading and writing French,

I'm a bit surprised to hear that - until now, I thought you actually were an L1 French speaker.

[alice]

alice is enlightened; thanks!

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I used to be fairly competent at at least reading and writing French,

I'm a bit surprised to hear that - until now, I thought you actually were an L1 French speaker.

I would be very interested in knowing how I managed to give you this impression.

[Raphael]

I would be very interested in knowing how I managed to give you this impression.

I'm afraid I don't remember the exact ZBB posts by you that gave me that impression, but I think There were some posts where you explained things about French, and perhaps even some posts where you talked about France itself as if you were very familiar with it.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I would be very interested in knowing how I managed to give you this impression.

I'm afraid I don't remember the exact ZBB posts by you that gave me that impression, but I think There were some posts where you explained things about French, and perhaps even some posts where you talked about France itself as if you were very familiar with it.

And now I know, I suppose, though I'm not sure I remember which posts those would be.

[Kuchigakatai]

Please note that when Old French or Old Spanish are said to have "V2 word order", this isn't the same as the V2 you find in modern German. Verb-initial (V1) declarative sentences are perfectly common Old French and Old Spanish (say, verb + object + place adverbial, with a subject expressed only in the verb's conjugation), unlike in modern German. By "V2", it is simply meant that when an adverb or adverbial phrase begins a sentence it usually triggers verb-subject word order (adverb + verb + subject + etc. order), which is frequent.

German, in contrast, truly has a basic word order for declarative sentences where the verb generally has to be the second component of a sentence, even if the pre-verbal slot is filled by a mere unstressed subject pronoun.