Gender neutral language in French: Difference between revisions

Tonic pronouns are also called "autonomous" because, in opposition to clitics, they form their own prosodic unit and can stand alone in the sentence, hence their distribution isn't as fixed as the clitics' one.<ref name=":8" /> There are currently two competing systems:<ref name=":7" /><ref name=":6" /> one consists in syncretizing clitic and tonic pronouns (cf. analogical levelling),<ref name=":9">Campbell, Lyle (1998): ''Historical Linguistics. An Introduction''. First ed. Cambridge/Massachusetts: The MIT Press.</ref> following the paradigm of standard French "elle", which equates keeping the gender neutral subject pronoun (be it "iel", "ille", "al" or "ol", etc.) as such; the other approach, exemplified in the table below with "iel", supports differentiating clitics (cf. analogical extension)<ref name=":9" /> from tonic pronouns, thereby aligning with the paradigm of "il".