Grammatical and semantic characteristics of partial interrogatives in modern French

Zubkovs M.N.

DOI: 10.23951/1609-624X-2026-3-41-49

Information About Author:

Zubkova M.N., Candidate of Philological Sciences, Senior Lecturer, Moscow State Institute of International Relations (University) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation (pr. Vernadskogo, 76, Moscow, Russian Federation, 119454). E-mail: privezentsevamn@gmail.com; ORCID: 0000-0001-8174-6469; SPIN-code: 1641-6678.

The purpose of this paper is to study the variants of French Wh-questions and to identify the specificity of each of them in semantic and morphosyntactic terms. The analysis is based on French films, mainly of the last decade, which contain many dialogues that vividly illustrate modern colloquial speech. The interrogatives were divided into four types depending on their grammatical structure: three types are constructed with direct word order (Wh-fronting, in situ, est-ce que) and the last one – a verb-subject inversion. It was found that the most frequent is the Wh-in situ questions. It is more often used to clarify information within a known context, but it can also be used to request new information when the speaker has no idea about possible answer options. However, due to its morphosyntactic specificity, this structure is not universal. In second place in terms of prevalence are questions with est-ce que, used to ask for new information not related to the previous context and acquire additional emphatic meaning. A question with Wh-fronting + direct word order has a more limited distribution, used primarily for the purpose of clarifying the reasons and circumstances of the interlocutor’s actions. The compatibility with interrogative words varies for different types of questions: questions of type 1 are constructed with quoi, où and others, except pourquoi; type 2 – with pourquoi, comment, type 3 – with que. The subject-verb inversion is relatively rarely used in modern spoken French and is clearly contrasted with all other structures. It is shown that the variants of a Wh-question are not interchangeable. The main factor in choosing one or another form is the communicative intention of the speaker, as well as the grammatical and semantic specificity of each variant.

Keywords: morphosyntax, semantics, Wh-questions, variability, asking for information

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Issue: 3, 2026

Series of issue: Issue 3

Rubric: GERMANIC AND ROMANCE LANGUAGES

Pages: 41 — 49

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