The chômeur, in the context of grammar

Grammar

In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...

, is an element of a sentence that has been syntactically

Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....

 "demoted" from the nucleus to the periphery of a clause

Clause

In grammar, a clause is the smallest grammatical unit that can express a complete proposition. In some languages it may be a pair or group of words that consists of a subject and a predicate, although in other languages in certain clauses the subject may not appear explicitly as a noun phrase,...

. It comes from the French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 word for "unemployed". In a passive

Passive voice

Passive voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. Passive is used in a clause whose subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb. That is, the subject undergoes an action or has its state changed. A sentence whose theme is marked as grammatical subject is...

 sentence, the agent

Agent (grammar)

In linguistics, a grammatical agent is the cause or initiator of an event. Agent is the name of the thematic role...

 is a chômeur, having been "demoted" from the nuclear function of subject

Subject (grammar)

The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...

. For instance, by changing the sentence Dogs attack the postman into The postman is attacked by dogs, one transforms "dogs" into a chômeur. The concept was introduced and used extensively in relational grammar

Relational grammar

In linguistics, Relational Grammar is a syntactic theory which argues that primitive grammatical relations provide the ideal means to state syntactic rules in universal terms. Relational grammar began as an alternative to transformational grammar....

. The term was suggested by Colette Craig.

Sources

• Perlmutter, David M. (Ed.). (1983). Studies in relational grammar 1. Chicago: Chicago University Press.