ABSTRACT
Since grammarians played an important role in the development of the French language during the classical period, we will start the section with a metalinguistic text. Claude Favre de Vaugelas (1585-1650), although himself from Savoy, was one of the key figures in the standardization and control of French in the seventeenth century. For Vaugelas, codification served various ends: not least it contributed to the fixing of the language in what was considered to be its present state of perfection and helped ensure others gained pleasure from one's linguistic usage since it was believed hearers liked to hear ideas expressed in the way they themselves would have formulated them. Vaugelas elaborated the idea of good usage as that of an elite: he defined it as the linguistic behaviour of the plus saine partie of the court and of the best authors of the day. In his highly influential Remarques, which ran to more than twenty editions in the period up to 1738, Vaugelas gives a series of randomly ordered observations on points of doubtful usage, and, if possible, aims to resolve uncertainty and recommend Ie bon usage. Writing for a predominantly court audience, Vaugelas prefers to reduce the use of technical terms to a minimum; in these extracts Vaugelas restricts himself to terminaison (1. 15), periode (1. 36), conjonction (1. 26) and conjonctiue (1. 37), pluriel and singulier (11. 65-66) and diphthongue (1. 4) which, like the majority of his contemporaries, he uses indiscriminately to refer to diphthongs and digraphs. He also employs the case labels nominatif, accusatif (11. 25-26), showing a continued dependence on Latin grammar, despite his avowed desire to describe French in its own right.
