# FR: nouns formed from the past participle and gender



## lucas-sp

Salut à tous -

Est-ce qu'il y a une règle concernante la formation de noms du participe passé d'un verbe? Je pense à des mots comme *mise *(comme dans un pari ou dans une forme composée comme "mise-en-scène," "mise-en-place"), *aperçu, pensée, portée*, etc. (et il en existe plein d'autres, je le sais). Pourquoi utilise-t-on une nominalisation masculine pour "aperçu" et une féminine pour "mise" ou "portée"? Est-ce qu'il y a une distinction sémantique entre les sens d'une nominalisation masculine et d'une nominalisation féminine? Je n'ai jamais entendu parler d'une règle ou d'une distinction formelle pour le choix du genre pour ce genre de mots, et je me demande si une telle règle existe ou pas. 

J'ai remarqué que dans une nominalisation masculine (comme "aperçu"), l'accent est mis sur le caractère fini de l'acte, et dans une nominalisation féminine (comme "pensée") l'accent est plutôt processif et plus large ou indéfini. Mais je sais que je ne fais que déviner et je ne suis pas très content avec la règle que j'ai essayé à formuler. 

Idées? Intuitions? Peut-être quelqu'un a même croisé une formulation formelle ou linguistique pour cette situation. J'ai hâte d'entendre ce que vous pouvez dire sur ce problème! Je vous remercie d'avance pour vos pensées et réflexions!

(PS J'ai aussi pensé au fait qu'en gros le participe passé nominalisé au masculin en français se traduit par le participe passé en anglais et le participe passé nominalisé au féminin se traduit par le participe présent: "setting" pour "mise," par exemple. Peut-être ça pourrait nous aider à esquisser une règle sémantique pour la différence entre les deux nominalisations?)


----------



## jann

Did you find anything of interest in any of the links mentioned in our Resources post about the gender of nouns?


----------



## lucas-sp

Thanks for the link, jann, but I'm not really finding anything there. I completely understand that the differences in gender are mostly arbitrary, and that speakers from un-gendered language have a hard time not trying to "discover" rules or standards for gender distinctions that don't really exist. Basically, I was just wondering about whether or not there was a reason that a noun formed from the past participle is sometimes masculine and sometimes feminine - why isn't it an _aperçue_, for instance, or a _mis-en-place_ - and I thought I divined a general guideline based on the way in which the masculine words seem to emphasize the finished and discrete quality of the nominalization, while the feminine words seem more open-ended, indefinite, and process-oriented. (I also like the way that in French a thought is called "a thinking," because it really seems to make it more suggestive and in development than the over-and-done-with English word "a thought.") I was just wondering if there was in fact some semantically or semiotically meaningful distinction at work that I had just never heard about. (I even thought it seemed like it could be a vestigial rule left over from a more complicated set of distinctions from Latin, for instance.)

I'm totally ready to accept that the answer might just be "Because that's the way it is," but that would make me very sad. I also apologize if this isn't the right forum to ask this question in and I can move it elsewhere if you think that best.

So, does anyone else notice any difference in quality between the nouns that are feminine and those that are masculine? Or am I just tilting at windmills here?

I also realize that there are some words that don't fit the rubric I was sketching above - for instance, my rule would suggest that the nominalization of _contraindre_ should be _un contraint_, whereas it is une contrainte. (Although a constraint does often continue to function and have effects beyond the moment of its instantiation. Perhaps that actually fits in.) But the rule works with _un couvert _and _un écrit_ and _un dit_. Other words formed in the same way - _découverte, entrée, prise, remise, plainte, surprise_ - all sort-of work and sort-of don't (particularly _découverte_ and _surprise_, I think). There are many, many more feminine words than masculine ones, so perhaps the rule is just that "Nominalized verb forms formed from the past participle are generally feminine."


----------



## CapnPrep

lucas-sp said:


> (I also like the way that in French a thought is called "a thinking," because it really seems to make it more suggestive and in development than the over-and-done-with English word "a thought.")


What makes you say that _une pensée_ corresponds to "a thinking"? It's a nominalized past participle, just like "a thought".



lucas-sp said:


> So, does anyone else notice any difference in quality between the nouns that are feminine and those that are masculine? Or am I just tilting at windmills here?


Um, the second one, I think.


----------



## lucas-sp

Allright then. If you insist, you're obviously entitled to your opinion, but I think you're wrong to say that "une pensée" does not mean something closer to "a thinking" than "a thought." That's how we treat the "-ée" words when translating, at least. And actually, I think I found someone who agrees with me and states the difference much more clearly than I did.

Here's the linguist Michel Roché writing in the journal _Langue Française_ in 1992 (vol. 96, no. 96). This is from his article "Le masculin est-il plus productif que le féminin?"



> Nous avons vu comment le « pseudo-neutre », dans la substantivation de l'adjectif, assure au masculin un rôle prépondérant : dans notre échantillon, les proportions sont globalement de 70 % de masculins pour 30 % de féminine. [...] Une partie d'entre eux [les participes passés substantives] peuvent être assimilés aux adjectifs : mêmes processus de substantivation, mêmes valeurs d'emploi. Maie *il existe une série originale de formations dans lesquelles le participe passé garde une valeur verbale, active, qui les distingue des participes de type adjectival : l'arrivée, la sortie, la contrainte, une battue, une chevauchée..., sont des noms d'action ; conduite désigne le fait de conduire (ou de se conduire), ou un tuyau qui conduit un fluide, et pas « ce qui est conduit ». Or cette série est exclusivement féminine.* [...]



So he, at least, identifies major differences between the feminine and masculine words, including the one I was getting at above - the feminine translates as "the act of doing X or of having X done, or the mechanism of accomplishing X" whereas the masculine translates as "what has been X'ed." This linguist distinguishes between a feminine nominalization that retains its "verbal value," and considers the masculine equivalent to the nominalization of adjectives and thus much less active and dynamic. (Think about the difference between "mêlée" or "sortie" or "conduite" and "méfait" or "aperçu," for instance.)

He also identifies interesting historical differences between the two nominalizations. So, something to think about perhaps.


----------



## CapnPrep

Roché is distinguishing active and passive voice (_le fait de se conduire_ vs _ce qui est conduit_), not the perfective ("finished") vs imperfective ("open-ended", "process-oriented") interpretations you appear to have in mind. Also, he proposes a correlation in one direction only: active voice nominalizations are (or tend to be, see below) feminine. He does not say that feminine gender implies active interpretation, since this is obviously not true: _découverte_, _prise_, _redite_, etc. can indeed refer to _ce qui est découvert_,_ pris_, _redit_, etc.

Roché's generalization itself seems to have some exceptions: for example, _doigté_ is an action noun corresponding to _fait de_ / _manière de doigter_ and not to _ce qui est doigté_, and yet it is masculine.


----------



## lucas-sp

In a footnote, Roché does discuss words that began as feminine and processive (in older French, nominalizations from the past participle were apparently overwhelmingly feminine) but have lost their sense of activity over time: _allée, assise,_ and _coulée, _for example. I agree that my distinction is more about perfect/imperfect, but I'm not entirely sure he distinguishes clearly between active and passive. He writes "conduite désigne le fait de se conduire," and I could understand "découverte" fitting into that schema (une découverte = ce qui se découvre). The emphasis, to me, falls more on a vehicle of revelation and discovery. But he does not say that une découverte could be "ce qui est découvert" - he's distinguishing between the two kinds of passive voice and associates the reflexive passive with the feminine (along with the active voice); the passive with the past participle is linked to the masculine.

For me, I read "active" not as "active voice" but as "marked by activity," "in action." That's how I understand the distinction he draws between characteristics of verbs and of adjectives. But the text is ambiguous on that point. (I also understand "ce qui se conduit" as passive, but with a different emphasis than "ce qui est conduit.")

Isn't a "prise" basically "what takes hold"? Also, "redite" seems to fit nicely into his schema (and mine of perfect/imperfect), particularly when you compare it to "dit." (However, _doigté_ is an excellent exception. Thanks for pointing it out! I will put it in my list of past-participle substantives that I'm collecting.)

But I get the sense you don't really buy it, which is totally fine. In the parts of the (overly long) citation I gave above, Roché does discuss that at different periods different genders were favored for substantivizations. So it could just be that certain substantives became solidified earlier than others. But at least if I'm projecting my own desires onto a bare fact of language, I can share my folie à deux with Roché.


----------



## CapnPrep

lucas-sp said:


> (I also understand "ce qui se conduit" as passive, but with a different emphasis than "ce qui est conduit.")


No one said anything about _ce qui se conduit_. The distinction is between _le fait de se conduire _[active, not a reflexive passive] and _ce qui est conduit_ [passive]. _Conduite_ only has the active meaning, whereas _découverte_ for example can refer to both _le fait de découvrir_ and _ce qui est découvert_.



			
				lucas-sp said:
			
		

> Isn't a "prise" basically "what takes hold"?


No… it is either _le fait de prendre_ or _ce qui est pris_, but not _ce qui prend_.



			
				lucas-sp said:
			
		

> But at least if I'm projecting my own desires onto a bare fact of language, I can share my folie à deux with Roché.


Roché is an excellent linguist whose statements are based on data, not desires.


----------



## lucas-sp

I would think that Roché is implying that "une prise" is "ce qui se prend" (and not "ce qui est pris"); similarly "une découverte" is "ce qui se découvre." That seems fairly clear from the description he gives of "conduite" (Roché did say something about "ce qui est conduit"; he describes it as the opposite of what he calls "valeur verbale"). How do you understand his distinction between "valeur verbale" and "valeur adjectivale"? It seems obvious to me that the notion of "valeur verbale" means that it preserves the flavor of in-action-ness of the verb, thus a processive or imperfect quality. This is why I kindof thought his description of the "originary series of [feminine] formations" dovetailed with my own intuition here.

Following on what I feel to be your reading of Roché's distinction: It is surprising, though, that "doigté" - since it is "une manière de doigter" or "le fait de doigter" - would be masculine. That contradicts Roché's claim that "this series is exclusively feminine." But in the sense of "tact" it could be considered to fit in with the perfect quality of "dit" or "écrit" (doigté = ce qui a été bien doigté) and in the musical sense of "fingering" it also has a perfect element, referring to something done in the past ("What fingering did you use to play that passage?"). In this case I feel that the perfect/imperfect criterion might work better than Roché's other criterion of active or reflexive/pure passive.

It's true that if my hypothesis seems to play out here, it need not be the only rule structuring these nominalizations. Perhaps the two (your reading of Roché's rule and my other generalization) are not necessarily incompatible, and interact and interfere with each other.

(I also intended that "what takes hold" be read as "ce qui _se_ prend." Is the oldest meaning of "prise" the meaning of "storming [a castle]," "taking," "catching"? It's the action or vehicle of an act of taking, right (even in the sense that electric sockets are the vehicle for linkages into larger circuits)?)



> Roché is an excellent linguist whose statements are based on data, not desires.


All work in the social sciences is based, at least in part, on the researcher's view of the world, and is thus inflected by his or her own conscious and subconscious desires, prejudices, and unique experience (both physical and psychic) - in negotiation, of course, with the social, technical, and historical forces outside of the researcher that work to structure that world.


----------



## CapnPrep

lucas-sp said:


> How do you understand his distinction between "valeur verbale" and "valeur adjectivale"?


As I said above, I understand it as a voice distinction, active vs passive. I find no suggestion anywhere in this part of the article that Roché is contrasting two types of passive. As I also said above, _se conduire_ is not a reflexive passive, and Roché gives no examples of the type _ce qui se prend_, _ce qui se découvre_. In any case those give rise to the same nominalizations as _ce qui est pris_ and _ce qui est découvert_, namely _prise_ and _découverte_.



lucas-sp said:


> It is surprising, though, that "doigté" - since it is "une manière de doigter" or "le fait de doigter" - would be masculine. That contradicts Roché's claim that "this series is exclusively feminine."


Roché himself acknowledges this and mentions this very example. His explanation makes no reference whatsoever to the meaning of the word and relies simply on the homophony of the infinitive and the participle.


----------



## lucas-sp

Your reading (active/passive) continues to seem bizarre and willful to me. For starters, active and passive are both verbal values. I read the key distinction in his sentence - which introduces itself as a distinction between verbal and adjectival qualities - as being the introduction of the verb "être" in the second half. 

Reading with Roché:

*[Il] existe une série originale de formations dans lesquelles le participe passé garde une valeur verbale, active, qui les distingue des participes de type adjectival : l'arrivée, la sortie, la contrainte, une battue, une chevauchée..., sont des noms d'action ; conduite désigne le fait de conduire (ou de se conduire), ou un tuyau qui conduit un fluide, et pas « ce qui est conduit ». 

*The question is how we understand his definition of "nom d'action." I understand the final sentence as running: "conduite" designates the act of conducting (or of being conducted), or a tube that conducts a fluid, and not "that which is conducted." In this way a "nom d'action" is a noun which preserves the value of activity from the verb: a "nom d'action" either designates an action (either active or passive) or the medium or agent of an action - but not the object defined as "that which has had an action performed on it." 

He sets up the distinction very nicely by introducing a verb/adjective binary - why wouldn't we follow up on that earlier binary by tracing the distinction between action verbs and linking verbs + adjectives that continues in the second half of the sentence?

What in the sentence allows you to say with any certainty that "se conduire" is not a reflexive passive? It's certainly a possibility ("La fluid se conduit à travers des tuyaux..." "Les prisonnières, s'étant conduites jusqu'à la salle des supplices, commençaient à hurler). I don't think anything in the passage justifies you excluding this translation of "se conduire" (not just as "conducting oneself/behaving" but as "being conducted"). 

I also think doing so requires you to think only about the verb's subject/object, which seems to already decide the question of verbal/adjectival value. The question is whether - in my reading - the noun is in the service of the verb (verbal value) or the verb is in the service of the noun (adjectival value). In the first set of examples (an action or the medium of an action) the verb is the locus of meaning; in the second (that which is + participle) the verb is subordinated to the noun it describes as a peripheral and finite adjective.


----------



## CapnPrep

lucas-sp said:


> What in the sentence allows you to say with any certainty that "se conduire" is not a reflexive passive?


Because Roché is enumerating the senses of the noun _conduite_, one of which is "behavior" (_manière_/_fait de se conduire_).

The verbal/adjectival distinction aligns with the voice distinction for past participles (in French, as in English). The past participle of a transitive verb, when used as an adjective, has a passive voice interpretation. An active voice interpretation is only possible when the past participle is used as a verb, in compound past tenses. This is what Roché is referring to by _valeur verbale_ vs _type adjectival_. He even states explicitly that the _valeur verbale_ he is interested in is the _valeur active_.

The interpretation of this passage seems completely straightforward to me, as it relies only on rather basic notions of grammar, grammatical terminology, and argumentation. I understand that you may nevertheless find it difficult, but I reject your suggestion that I am "willfully" pursuing a "bizarre" reading of Roché's characteristically clear writing simply to disagree with you.


----------



## lucas-sp

I completely understand that "se conduire" is itself a verb, and in some senses one distinct from "conduire"; in the latter case "se conduire" can be reflexive and passive (in the senses that I cited above, one of which is implied by Roché's example of tubes and fluids). We could hardly expect him to say that the fluid is "comporting itself" in a certain way. When "se conduire" is next to the example he gives of fluids, the resonance between the two makes it possible to read "le fait de se conduire" as "the act of being led" (and not merely "the act of behaving"). In this way, the text offers a passive-voice verb that nevertheless remains "in action." Perhaps you could resolve this by saying that Roché is discussing active- and (for want of a better word) middle-voice verbal meanings as the two facets of the feminine series he identifies.

On the other hand, the concept of a "nom d'action" itself blurs the "basic notions of grammar and grammatical terminology" that you are claiming to be fundamental to the text. Meanwhile, Roché himself is explicitly blurring argumentation by shifting "active" from a verbal to a nominal object (from "valeur verbale, active" to "nom d'action"). The text itself seems clearly to suggest that the "basic notions" (most notably an exclusive and exhaustive distinction between action and passivity, verb and noun) need to be blurred to understand what's going on here.

I feel that my reading is more generous to Roché and opens up some of the possibilities implicit in his insistence on the words "active" and "action" - including the possibility, which itself is the object of much consideration in the social sciences, of thinking about activity and passivity in ways that are not mutually exclusive. But I understand your own wishes to keep to a more "literal" reading of the section, although you cannot achieve this by any means other than by attempting to reduce the possibility of polysemy in the text to a bare minimum. (This is why I find it a bit "bizarre" - probably the wrong word. You seem to really appreciate and praise Roché's work, but then you simultaneously choose to read the text in ways that limit its possibilities. I feel like it's odd to remove the possibility of an admired text to be suggestive and surprising by insisting on what seems like its least productive possible reading. This could obviously be the result of an implicit methodological disagreement between the two of us, but I have tried to be nothing if not generous in response to your very dismissive attitude.)

But my main goal was to hold the question open for exploration and reflection before immediately jumping back to any idea that there was an obvious or elementary criterion for these words. I am still very much open to exploring the vagaries of substantivization if anyone would like to join me. For instance, how do other people class these past-participle substantives? By feminine/masculine? By active/passive? By imperfect/perfect? And do these various sortings map onto each other in any systematic way? What words are left out or difficult to categorize?

As such, perhaps we could move the discussion in a different direction. Since "une découverte," according to you, is not one of these "noms d'action," does it not fit in the series of feminine nominalizations discussed by Roché in this section? Do you think your reading of the rule here - with its claims to "exclusive femininity" in its nominalizations - covers all such past-participle substantives, or just a subset? What kind of feminine substantives do you class in this "series" and which ones do you leave out? (For instance, is "une pensée" originally the name of the act of thinking, which is then metonymically associated with its by-products or "thoughts" - which would be "ce qui est pensé" in the passive, as you argued earlier?)


----------



## CapnPrep

lucas-sp said:


> When "se conduire" is next to the example he gives of fluids, the resonance between the two makes it possible to read "le fait de se conduire" as "the act of being led" (and not merely "the act of behaving").


It seems that you still have not understood the reasoning behind Roché's discussion of _conduite_. As I already said, he is listing the principal meanings of this word, which are:


leading/driving (_le fait de conduire_)
behavior (_le fait de se conduire_)
pipe/conduit (_un tuyau qui conduit un fluide_)
In other words, the "tubes and fluids" business is not an example; it's one of the dictionary definitions of _conduite_. Roché's point, which I hope is abundantly clear by now, is that after reviewing the various accepted meanings of this word, none of them corresponds to "something or someone that is led" (_ce qui est conduit_). 



			
				lucas-sp said:
			
		

> On the other hand, the concept of a "nom d'action" itself blurs the "basic notions of grammar and grammatical terminology" that you are claiming to be fundamental to the text.


No, _nom d'action_ is one of the basic grammatical terms I was talking about. You can believe it to mean whatever you want it to mean, but French linguists use it standardly — and unsurprisingly — to refer to nouns that denote actions (and not agents, patients, or any other participants in the action).

_Découverte_ is a _nom d'action_ like _conduite_, since it can refer to _le fait de découvrir_. Unlike _conduite_, however, it also has the meaning _ce qui est découvert_, so it not purely a _nom d'action_. Roché's generalization, as he states it, applies to nominalizations that have a _nom d'action_ reading, but no adjectival, passive reading. So it applies to _conduite_, but not to _découverte_ (unless it can be convincingly shown that the _nom d'action_ meaning is historically or conceptually prior to the other one).

Roché would be dismayed to hear you say that this passage is full of implicit clues, blurred argumentation, and ambiguous terminology, and that it requires a generous reading to reveal the many different analyses it may contain. There are academics who thrive on this sort of obscurantism, but Roché is not one of them. He writes to be understood.


----------

