The First Person Plural Form: Je Parlons

Abstract

Si seurement pouvions saouere. Saouere avant d'arriver de l'autre b6rd. Parce qu'une fois la, il sera trop tard. Ce que j'arons fait, l'arons fait. Si y a rien de l'autre c6to, nous tracasserions pour un rien. Je pourrions vivre le temps qui nous est alloue. a serait encore un gros lotte, mais le viverions sans que les boyaux nous le reprocheriont. Et si y a de quoi, quoi c'est que c'est a votre dire? Ca serait-i' Djeu possible que devions encore coumencer a soufri' 1a? J'en avons-t-i' eu assez? (Maillet 96) This poignant plea by Antonine Maillet's character, la Sagouine, can serve as an introduction to one of the most characteristic features of the traditional New Brunswick Acadian dialect which she uses so often in her works-the first-person plural form in ... -ons. The casual reader, unacquainted with the dialect, is tempted at first to read pouvions as a singular: If only I could know. But the association with the reflexive nous in je nous tracasserions pas and the object nous in the following sentence makes it clear that the true meaning is plural: If only we could know ... We wouldn't worry ... We could live the time allotted to us.' As early as the seventeenth century in France, we find this construction misused in satirical literature as a singular, notably in the pseudo-peasant writings studied by Rosset. Eminent twentieth-century linguists such as Brunot (253), Dauzat (328), and Bourciez (684), basing their arguments largely on Rosset, have also claimed that parlons could be singular, replacing parle. Sixteenth-century grammarians, writing at a time when ... -ons was in active use in colloquial speech (even by King Franqois ler, according to Brunot), although never accepted as standard, do not, unfortunately, specify the meaning of the construction (no doubt obvious to those who used it!), but merely condemn it. For example, Palsgrave warns Englishmen not to imitate everything they hear around them when in France: But were as in comune speche they use to saye: allons bien, ferons bien, jauons fait ung grant exploit, and such lyke, joynyng the first person plurell of the verbe in to je, whiche is the first person singuler, suche kynde of spekyng is used of none auctour approved, no more than girons demayn, ginciterons, gimaginons, and suche lyke. (331)

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