trottiner

17:15 Nov 19, 2019 

No worries, you understood the meaning anyway. There are some rather bizarre, but fun things in this text. No wonder questions are asked.

17:11 Nov 19, 2019 

Thanks. I stand corrected about "que". I don't usually get into a debate about French grammar. Mea culpa. However, I understood the gist of this sentence once I'd looked up "trottiner" (a new verb to me)

16:47 Nov 19, 2019 

Let's not forget that from what we've seen, this writer has a very particular style, so I don't find it surprising that he bends the rules of grammar to achieve his effect—as many of the best writers do.

Not that I'm much taken with this writer so far, but I am very much in favour of grammar serving style instead of the other way round.

16:11 Nov 19, 2019 

I agree that que could make sense if you think that chercheurs is the subject. And so, if you reverse the word order of the sentence, you get: les chercheurs trottinent des questions. Fine. May I ask what it means, please?<p>On the other hand, let's for a minute look at the (admittedly rare) example supplied by TLFi: 2. Empl. trans. Obséder, revenir sans cesse à l'esprit. Le mariage espagnol n'avait pas cessé de me trottiner (Audiberti, Mal court, 1947, II, p. 158). Or, if you reverse the word order of the example: ...le mariage espagnol [qui] trottine la personne désignée par « me »... Or, if you apply this to our question, ...les questions qui trottinent les chercheurs... QED. <p>In other words, you have the choice between 1) what you think what the French should be like but that, I, as a native speaker, find a bit difficult to understand, and 2) a rather unusual use of a verb, but that is however attested by a reliable dictionary, and which I, as a native speaker, understood almost immediately (I did hesitate at first). Only wrote this to "defend" the text, since I agree anyway with Yvonne's "In effect it means the same thing..."

15:33 Nov 19, 2019 

I agree that it should be "que" and that the "questions stylistiques" ... "trottinent les chercheurs depuis des décennies". However, inanimate things don't usually act as the verb subject in English sentences (making people the object) hence why I changed the position.
In effect it means the same thing: questions of style troubling/bedevilling/preoccupying researchers for decades means that researchers have been raising these questions for decades because they have been troubled by them. (I think "obsessed" or "plagued" by may be too strong)
To keep the horsey image I suggested "trot out" which has the same sense of repetition but there are lots of ways of expressing this. I've given several. But I am NOT doing a literal translation of "trottiner", but rather more like transcreation to get the inherent idea across.

13:52 Nov 19, 2019 

The way the sentence is structured ("...des questions stylistiques qui trottinent les chercheurs depuis des décennies :"), it is the "questions stylistiques" that "trottinent les chercheurs depuis des décennies"); not the other way around.

13:21 Nov 19, 2019 

I agree it's strange, but let's face it, that's not the first stange thing from your text. As you say, it's an intransitive verb but the text makes it clear that questions is the subject and chercheurs the object. Using trottiner like that may be disparaging, but it's definitely familiar. Polyglot45's "plague" is the right meaning, but wonder whether it might not be a tad too strong. There's something "light" about trottiner. If you're happy to leave aside any reference to horses, would "titillate" possibly work here?/To add (and perhaps I should have started there) that TLFi mentions: Obséder, revenir sans cesse à l'esprit and gives an example as a transitive verb.

11:46 Nov 19, 2019 

Is it possible that "qui trottinent" is a typo for "que trottinent"?

11:22 Nov 19, 2019 

trottiner dans la tête de quelqu'un.
Trottiner is a diminutive of trotter.

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