De 1919 à 1940, le corps des tirailleurs sénégalais s’affirma davantage au sein de l’armée coloniale. Auréolée de ses succès relatifs dans la Grande Guerre, l’armée noire fut dès lors pensée comme une armée permanente, ayant vocation à combattre sur les fronts extérieurs. Dès juillet 1919, le recrutement reposa sur un appel par tirage au sort avec possibilité de remplacement. Des règles précises se mirent donc en place afin d’encadrer l’ensemble des étapes amenant ces soldats depuis l’Afrique occidentale et équatoriale française vers la métropole ou le bassin méditerranéen. L’hivernage et l’alimentation furent ainsi abordés avec davantage de soin. Le corps des sous-officiers africains offre quant à lui un panel de parcours présentant au plus près les carrières de ces hommes, leurs origines et les soldats qu’ils furent. Leur formation et leurs résultats aux différents examens permet également de mieux cerner les attentes de l’état-major et de la 8e direction. En définitive, le corps des tirailleurs sénégalais fut davantage pensé afin de l’améliorer. Pour autant en 1940, ces efforts de pensée n’avaient abouti à aucune réforme en profondeur et l’armée noire connut les mêmes déboires que l’armée française. / From 1919 to 1940, The Senegalese Infantry Corps firmly established itself within the colonial army. Crowned by its relative success in World War I, the black army was subsequently considered a permanent army, tasked with fighting worldwide. After July 1919, recruitment relied on a draft lottery with the possibility of substitution.Detailed rules at the time were put in place to offer a means of placing soldiers from West African and Equatorial French colonies in France itself or in the Mediterranean basin. In this way, winter quarters and food supplies were given greater consideration.The African non-commissioned officer corps offered a training experience to further the careers of these men, considering their origins and their abilities as soldiers. Their training and their results on different tests also helped to better understand the expectations of the French Army General Staff and their respective divisions.In the end, the Senegalese Infantry Corps was assumed to be a stronger component of the French army. But in 1940, it became apparent that none of these efforts bore substancial reform and the black army suffered the same setbacks as the regular French army.

Français Tirailleur (FT) är ett pidginspråk som talades av västafrikanska soldateroch deras vita officerare i den franska kolonialarmen cirka 1857-1954. Den häruppsatser beskriver denna språkvatietet utifrån ett korpus som består av de dokumenteradeyttranden som hittills hittats. Studien visar bland annat att standardnegation uttrycks med en pre-verbal partikel (pas), ja/nej-frågor uttryckts främstgenom intonation, genussystemet är inte produktivt, det finns ingen skillnad mellansubjekt och objekt i pronomensystemet och attributiv ägande uttrycks med possessivapronomen, juxtaposition eller prepositioner. Den standardiserade type-token-rationär 26%, vidare forskning om ordförråd i pidginspråk och jämförelser med talat språkbehövs. Det finns två former som är väldigt frekventa och som anses vara mycketkarakteristiska för FT: ya och yena. Dessa former har tidigare beskrivits som stativaverb, relativmarkörer och finithetsmarkörer. De förekommer i majoriteten av alladokument i korpuset. De fungerar som stativa verb, kopula eller kopulalika markörer,samt potentiellt även som predikatsmarkörer. Frågan om huruvida adjektiv är enrelevant språklig kategori i denna pidgin diskuteras också i denna uppsats. / Français Tirailleur (FT) is a pidgin language that was spoken by West Africansoldiers and their white officers in the French colonial army approximately 1857-1954.The aim of this study is to investigate a corpus of previously unanalyzed utterancesof FT in order to discern linguistic structures and test previous statements about thenature of FT. Much of previous literature on FT is based on an anonymous manualpublished by the French military in 1916, this thesis aims to provide new informationto our understanding of this pidgin. These are some of the findings: standardnegation is expressed by means of a preverbal particle (pas), polar interrogation byintonation, grammatical gender is not a productive category and attributive possessionis expressed by possessive pronouns, juxtaposition (possessum - possessor) andprepositional constructions. The standardized type-token-ratio of this corpus, 26%,suggests that the lexicon of pidgins needs to be further studied. Comparisons withcorpuses of spoken language are needed. There are two very frequent pre-predicatemarkers that are considered characteristic of FT: ya and yena. These two markershave previously been described as stative verbs, relativizers and markers of finiteness.The two markers are very frequent in a majority of the sources and are highly polysemous,functioning as stative verbs, copula or copula-like markers and possibly alsopredicate markers. The status of adjectives as a part-of-speech in FT is also discussed.

This corpus-based study describes some grammatical and lexical features of Français Tirailleur (FT), a pidgin spoken in the French colonial army from the mid-1800’s to the 1950’s. By examining the largest corpus available of the language, this study aims to (1) discern hitherto undescribed or strengthen previous claims about grammatical and lexical features of FT, (2) compare these features with its lexifier language and (3) identify changes over time. The corpus has been manually part-of-speech tagged and all noun phrases have been marked up. The results include a description of the form and function of the FT noun phrase, covering (pro)nouns and their modifiers as well as noun phrases with an embedded prepositional phrase. Furthermore, the apparent diachronic development of the expression même chose is analyzed, along with examples of circumlocution. FT is shown to differ from French in several respects, e.g. in substituting the demonstrative determiners ce(t)/cette with ça, but no signs of substrate influence are found. Contrary to intution about the simplex nature of pidgins, FT appears to follow French in placing certain adjectives before the noun, while postposing others. There remain several interesting aspects to explore in the grammar of FT, among them the elusive, multi-functional items ya and yena. Our further understanding of pidgins would benefit from more data and cross-linguistic comparison. / Denna korpus-baserade studie beskriver några lexikala och grammatiska drag hos Français Tirailleur (FT), ett pidginspråk som talades i franska kolonialarmen från mitten på 1800- till 1950-talet. Genom att undersöka den största tillgängliga korpusen över språket söker denna studie (1) urskilja hittills obeskrivna drag eller styrka existerande hypoteser om språkets natur, (2) jämföra språket med dess lexifierare samt (3) identifiera eventuell diakron variation. Korpusen har ordklasstaggats manuellt och alla nominalfraser har märkts upp. Resultaten innefattar en beskrivning av nominalfrasens form och funktion, en analys av uttrycket même chose och dess historiska utveckling samt ett antal exempel på cirkumlokution. FT skiljer sig från franska i flera avseenden, men inga tecken på substratinfluenser hittades. Trots att pidginspråk brukar kännetecknas av avsevärd förenkling, tycks FT ha bevarat franskans relativt komplexa system med både för- och efterställda adjektiv. Det råder brist på data och tvärlingvistiska jämförelser mellan pidginspråk, men det återstår ännu flertalet intressanta frågor att undersöka i FT-korpusen.