Studii de Lingvistica (Dec 2020)
Pour une systématisation du pronom ce devant la copule être en opposition aux pronoms il impersonnel et il personnel
Abstract
Our study, which falls within the field of teaching French as a foreign language, is inspired by two seemingly contradictory observations. The first concerns a recurrent error of Italian learners, who use the third-person personal pronoun, where only ce is accepted: Un enfant s’est arrêté sous les réverbères. *Il est un garçon d’une dizaine d’années. The second observation concerns the apparently paradoxical use of il, where we would expect ce: Né en 1948, Philippe Grimbert est psychanalyste. Il est aussi l’auteur de romans dont « Un secret » qui a été récompensé par le Prix Goncourt. In our article, we propose to find a meaning for this contradiction. We shall explain why the pronoun ce is necessary in the first case. We will explain why il is on the contrary permitted in the second case. This will lead us to define the pronoun ce, in opposition to il as a third-person personal pronoun, on the one hand, and in opposition to il as an impersonal pronoun, on the other, and to propose the system underlying the use of all three pronouns before être.
