Grammaire du sms by Aurélia Robert-Tissot (review)

This book explores the timely question of how the grammar used in SMS (text messages) differs structurally from the grammar of normative French. The inquiry focuses specifically on the omission of grammatical subjects (pro-drop), which it explores via an analysis of the French-language section of the Swiss SMS Corpus (sms4science.ch). Employing an innovative methodology that pairs variationist methods with formal syntactic analysis from the generative framework, the study yields a comprehensive glimpse of the distribution of subject pronoun omission, from both the top down and bottom up, in a nascent genre of hybrid language. The book begins with a justification for SMS-language as an object of formal analysis, which the author argues is more closely related to spoken language, and, therefore, more revealing of ongoing changes than other genres more closely tied to written language and bound by presentation. Five chapters follow, the first of which establishes the body of previous sociolinguistic analyses of SMS and lays the conceptual generative groundwork for defining a grammatical subject and the process by which it might be omitted. Subsequent sections frame the study by presenting the research hypotheses, introducing the test corpus, and articulating the methodologies to be applied sequentially. The variationist analysis is discussed first, yielding certain probabilistic findings: subject omission, although attested, happens in less than ten percent of SMS but is conclusively conditioned by pragmatic, syntactic and phonological factors, such as the referentiality of the subject, the overt expression of a conjugated verb in the same utterance, and the appearance of a weak syllable at the beginning of an intonation group, respectively. The generative analysis picks up where the variationist one left off—with the assumption that omitted referential subjects can be equated to familiar topics called"null morphemes"—and provides theoretical support for the quantitative findings. The finale sees the delicate emulsification of quantitative and theoretical outcomes to propose omission of the referential subject as a specific type of topic-drop featuring post-syntactic erasure of the familiar topic in the left periphery. The hybrid yet specialized nature of this text makes it valuable for syntacticians and sociolinguists alike, as a model for not only applying the methodologies native to one's subdiscipline, but for observing how well the other informs your own in its ability to disassemble the data in some other way. The format of this work, although divided into chapters, is not ideal for piece-meal consumption—instead, the book reads like a multi-stage experiment née dissertation that is most digestible as a whole. The pinnacle of the study—the researcher's ability to thoughtfully and impactfully marry quantitative and theoretical methods into a single multi-faceted discussion—is both noteworthy and one linguists in all sub-disciplines and language-families should strive to emulate. Published in a linguistic landscape where text messages now far outnumber calls and emails, this inquiry paves the way for future linguists of all stripes to examine language change by mining the hyper-evolving genre of SMS.