Les consonnes doubles: féminins et dérivés is the first volume of a series of ‘Etudes pour une rationalisation de l'orthographe française’, under the editorship of Claude Gruaz. The book takes the form of a general introduction, common to all future volumes, laying out the rationale for change to the spelling system, a discussion of the particular question of geminate consonants in feminine and derived forms, lists of words concerned, and a study of usage.
The 1990 reform of French spelling was particularly weak in its recommendations concerning double letters, an area repeatedly fingered as a source of confusion for writers. Simplification in this area concerned a handful of words in -olle, and a proposal that new derivations from words in -on should not see the n doubled – hence, for example variationisme. In other areas, the reform added new geminates, aligning chaussetrappe, charriot and combattif with trappe (despite attraper), charrier and combattre, tidying up given lexical paradigms at the expense of overall uniformity. This volume's historical overview of proposals for geminate reform shows clearly how previous reforms, such as the officially commissioned reports by Faguet (1905) or Beslais (1965) consistently favoured the simplification of non-functional geminates. This work is therefore a welcome attempt to set out a comprehensive statement of how geminates might form the basis of a future reform, if and when such a reform is undertaken.
The rule proposed, based on a tendency identified in the study of usage, is the following: ‘La consonne graphique finale d'un mot n'est pas doublée dans le féminin et les dérivés. Cependant le doublement existant est maintenu lorsque cette consonne est précédée de e’ (31). Its impact is illustrated in a series of lists, the first of which (33–50) has all geminate feminine and derived forms grouped by derivational source, and marks words already lexicalized without a geminate with an asterisk. Hence ‘teuton / teutone / teutonique*’. The verb battre and its prefixal forms ébattre, embattre and rebattre have no lexical entry to act as a derivational source (*bat, *ébat, *embat); however since such forms may be derived by analogy with combat, débat, etc. (presumably ébats is ruled out for its plurality), these are grouped in ‘analogical series’ (50). Series such as teuton, above, and indeed the list as a whole, form a potent illustration of the scale of irregularity. Regrettably, Gruaz et al. do not present their corpus, though it covers several dictionaries, since the asterisk mentioned above is bracketed to indicate competing forms (e.g. ‘embatre(*)’). However, if a source as uncontroversial as the Nouveau Petit Robert (1993) dictionary is used, then they have underestimated the irregularity, since at least all the following entries require asterisks: abatage, abatant, cariste, courbatu, courbature, courbaturé, courbaturer, débats, ébats, fayoter, folâtre, folâtrer, folâtrerie, folichon, pifer, pifomètre, sacoche. It is unclear why the plurals ébats and débats are in the list at all.
The vast majority of the series proposed are uncontroversial, though one may take issue with the salience for language users of car as a derivational source for cariole, cariste and carosse: for such a derivation car would need to be thought diachronically anterior to cariole, with autocar an expansion of car. This question of morphemic visibility applies also to derivations such as débonaire from bon. Finally the inclusion of the recent anglicism panel under the lexical entry pan seems a little cheeky, though the resultant graphical unification of the semantically close pan, paneau, and panel is undeniably elegant.
The volume finishes with a statistical analysis of the normative spelling of lexical groups by ending for derived forms in -n, -l, and -t, the bulk of the words concerned here, and of usage as revealed by a questionnaire survey and by Google searches. Though the normative forms are in the majority (frequently nearing 100%), the statistics indicate that users are highly unlikely to double normatively single-lettered words, while they are more likely to do the opposite. This, however, is not true for words with penultimate e (e.g. *électriciene), for obvious reasons.
Les consonnes doubles has the merit of consistency, where the exceptions granted in 1990 (colle, folle and molle among -olle words, for example) compromised its transparency. No such failure of nerves here: anée, batre, and doner happily rub shoulders with écheloner, garroter, and cristalotypie. The consistency reflects the aim of producing a rule ‘aussi simple et générale que possible’ (20), though that rule nonetheless contains a (phonetically justified) exception for penultimate e. This phonetic underpinning leads one to wonder whether a more radical initial hypothesis would not have produced a yet simpler and more general rule, such as ‘La consonne graphique d'un mot n'est doublée que si ce doublement revêt un caractère phonétique’. This would add to the 1500-odd words modified here, such items as attrister, personnage and tranquillité (which 42% of internet users understandably write tranquilité, but which is excluded because its derivational source, tranquille, does not end in a consonant) while retaining masse, mourrai and suggérer, and giving French gemination a functional basis. Whether the francophone nations (and above all France), or the ordinary writers of French, have the stomach for Gruaz's radical proposal, not to mention my yet more radical one, is another question. However, with the internet now awash with the generally misspelt writing of ordinary citizens, and the school system's emphasis on discourse skills rather than the vagaries of orthography having a measurably detrimental effect on youngsters’ spelling (Manesse Reference Manesse2007), the problem is not one which is likely to go away soon.
