Tag Archives: French grammar

An analysis of French word ‘très’

According to our analysis, the word ‘très’ is likely to occur in the following grammatical types:

  • Adjective modifier: here, ‘très’ modifies the meaning of an adjective: très beau (very beautiful, biddisimu), très content (very happy, cuntentissimu)
  • Adverb modifier: ‘très’ here modifies the meaning of an adverb: ‘très rarement’ = very rarely, raramenti; ‘très souvent’ = very often, mori à spessu
  • Adverb (i.e. in our terminology, a Verb modifier): ‘very’ modifies here the meaning of a verb: ‘j’ai très faim’ = I am very hungry, t’aghju mori fami; ‘il avait très soif’ = he was very thirsty, t’aia mori seti: where the verb is here the verbal locution ‘avoir faim’ = to be hungry, avè a fami; avoir soif = to be thirsty, avè a seti

Further reflexions on the status of “I love you” in Corsican language

Let us briefly recall the problem: translating ‘I love you’ might sound trivial, but it’s not. In fact, ‘ti amu‘ is not the best translation. The best translation is ‘ti tengu caru‘ when addressed to a male person, or ‘ti tengu cara‘ when addressed to a female person. Hence the proposed preliminary translation ‘ti tengu caru/cara‘. Such rough translation requires further disambiguation, but on what precise grounds?

Let us look at the issue from an analytical perspective. It appears that we need to assign a reference to the pronoun ‘te’ (you, ti). The latter could be identified according to the context, depending on whether the person ‘te’ refers to is male or female. At this stage, it appears that it is better to consider that the personal object pronoun has an inherent gender: masculine or feminine. This gender does not affect the pronoun itself which remains ‘te’ (you, ti) independently of the gender, but it does have an effect on the words that depend on it, i.e. the adjective caru/cara in Corsican, in the locution ti tengu caru/cara. The upshot is: in this case, ‘te’ (you, ti) is a personal object pronoun, masculine or feminine, whose inherent ambiguity can be solved according to the context.