Phraseological motifs for Distinguishing Between Literary Genres. A Case Study on the Motifs of Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication

The present paper is based on the assumption that the language of the novel is characterized by a statistically relevant overrepresentation of certain linguistic units (e.g. lexemes, key words, collocations and colligations, Siepmann 2015). First steps towards checking the validity of this hypothesis had been undertaken in pioneering works in the 1990s/2000s (e.g. Stubbs & Barth 2003). These studies were however limited by the small size of their (exclusively English) corpora. The present study explores the role of some patterns (phraseological motifs) in distinguishing French literary subgenres. It also proposes a case study of some motifs related to the verbal (dire avec sourire ‘to say with a smile’) and non-verbal communication (adresser un sourire ‘to send a smile’). Unlike traditional corpus-stylistic analyses, which frequently focus on the style of a single author, our corpus-driven approach identifies lexico-syntactic constructions in literary genres which are automatically extracted from the corpora.The main purpose is to show the relevance of the notion of phraseological motif (Legallois 2012; Longrée & Mellet 2013; Novakova & Siepmann 2020) for the distinction of literary subgenres. Linking form and meaning, these ‘multidimensional units’ fulfil pragmatic as well as discursive functions.The data has been extracted from large French corpora of the PhraseoRom research project https://phraseorom.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr. They are accessible on http://phraseotext.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/phraseobase/index.html and contain 1000 novels (published from the 1950s to the present), partitioned into six sub-corpora: general literature (GEN), crime fiction (CRIM), romances (ROM), historical novels (HIST), science fiction (SF) and fantasy (FY).The results of our study reveal some unexpected differences between the literary subgenres: e.g. the motif dire d’une voix ‘to say in a voice’ in HIST compared to GEN. In FY, expressions of verbal communication are related to shouting and screaming. Expressions related to the non-verbal communication (prendre dans ses bras ‘to take in one’s arms’) are specific to ROM, where body language is overrepresented. In SF, there is a very limited number of these types of expressions. More generally, the motifs provide the link between the micro level (phraseological recurrences) and the macro level (the fictional script).

Discourse Markers of French: Multifaceted Look at a Controversial Category

In this paper, we discuss the question of discourse markers (DM) – a category conceived differently by theoretical and applied linguistic approaches. Unlike in applied approaches, in which DMs are considered desemantized/grammaticalized lexical units devoid of their own semantics and therefore of status in the language, we consider DMs to constitute a full-fledged category of language, having its own semantics and distribution, both of which play a crucial role in the construction of discourse (Paillard 2011, 2012; Franckel 2008, 2019). This hypothesis has been developed in theoretical linguistics and has seen little evidence from a perspective of the acquisition and didactics of foreign languages. Based on cross-analysis of linguistic theories (Benveniste 1974; Ducrot 1980; Hopper & Traugott 1993; Culioli 1990,1999; Franckel & Paillard 2008) and on distributional analysis of data of the spoken corpora, we show that the absence of specific linguistic status for DMs has repercussions at the didactic and acquisition levels: DMs are generally approached in an ad hoc manner, all functions combined, which leads on the one hand to gaps in the acquisition of French and, on the other hand, to the ambiguity of criteria for evaluation. Therefore, at the level of applied linguistics, we suggest the integration of DMs in the learning path as a full category, an integration that must be carried out on several axes – semantic, syntax and prosodic – and be based on an authentic oral corpora of the spoken language. At the theoretical level, we use transversal analysis in order to give yet another argument in favor of a semantical-enunciative approach to discursive markers.

Downward movement: (se) baisser ‘to fall’

This article aims to disambiguate the French verb baisser, which describes the downward movement of an entity, and to present its conceptual structure. Our approach is strongly based on the belief that the meaning of the word is conceptual, and that it reflects the world being looked at, not the real world (Honeste 1999, 2005). Our interest will focus on the locative and abstract meanings of the chosen verb, the uses of which we will study. Each use is a set formed by a predicate, defined by its arguments whose field is delimited by the predicate itself (Gross 2015). Arguments are defined using object classes. Each use is illustrated by a single sentence and a translation into Polish, the translation being a synonym of a word in another language. The type of event described by the verb will be studied, taking into account: the situation described by the verb (kinematic, dynamic, according to Desclés 2003, 2005); belonging to one of the four groups of verbs of movement, distinguished by Aurnague (2012) according to two parameters: change of location and change of elementary locative relwation; polarity (initial, median and final, according to Borillo 1998). Baisser has twelve uses (locative and abstract). Their invariant meaning is downwards movement, which is conceptualized in different ways: displacement of an entity downwards in physical space, but also as a decrease along a scale: of quantifiable value, of sound, of luminosity, intensity or quality, and finally of physical strength and of quality.

Online Intercultural Dialogue: “Failed” Communication in a Telecollaboration Project

Over the past two decades, the development of computer-mediated communication technologies has modified human communication. Increasingly, representatives from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds are disposed to a constant negotiation of meanings. The main purpose of this study is to carry out a linguistically grounded analysis of the intercultural dialogue during online asynchronous written exchanges between Latvian and Cypriot students.Based on the politeness theory of Brown and Levinson (1987), which implies that all adult members of society are endowed with two universal aspects: “positive face” and “negative face”, and using the methods of content analysis and discourse analysis, this research analyses the way learners communicate or hide their position concerning sensitive cultural issues. To attain the objective of the present research, a quantitative and qualitative experimental study was conducted. The learners’ public messages in the discussion forums were juxtaposed with their private messages concerning proposed cultural topics. The findings show a strong interdependence between the politeness strategies used by the learners and the intercultural issue discussed. Thus, online intercultural discussions can be qualified as context-dependent and content-dependant. Discussion forum does not seem to be an appropriate environment to facilitate and encourage intercultural discussions about potentially controversial issues.

The adjective: an eminently syncategorematic part of speech

In this article we propose an alternative to the theories which subdivide the adjective into three major types (qualifier, relational, adjective of the third type), themselves subdivided into several subclasses. We believe instead that there is only one adjectival lexeme with different uses (unitary hypothesis). To do this, we start from the two ways of looking for the adjectival prototype: on the one hand, the abstract prototype built by accumulating criteria, on the other, the semantic prototype. We examine the behavior of occurrences of the abstract prototype (admirable, monumental) and the semantic prototype (grand) with respect to gradation, the attributive function (more specifically the place of the adjective) and the predicative function. The examples show not only that the two prototype models can be reconciled, but above all that the behavior and the meaning of any adjective depend in large part on the noun it qualifies, a result which confirms our unitary hypothesis. The syntactic-semantic dependence of the adjective on the supporting substantive is such that it can be concluded that the adjective is a syncategorematic part of speech, rather than a polysemous one.

Multifunctionality of the French Verb Finir ‘to Finish’ Based Constructions: a Corpus-Based Study of French and Lithuanian

Based on the Corpus parallèle de Textes Littéraires (CTLFR-LT), consisting of French fiction texts and their translations into Lithuanian, the present article aims toshow the functional versatility of the French verb finir ‘to finish’. The paper focuses on the following particular constructions:S((in)anim) + finir + (GN);S((in)anim) + (en) finir de + V(inf);S ((in)anim) + finir par + V(inf);pour finir.While retaining its literal meaning, the verb finir ‘to finish’ exhibits a great range of modally marked uses. These uses, considered peripheral in the majority of French monolingual and bilingual grammars or dictionaries, nevertheless appear to be statistically very significant in the present dataset. The study shows that the verb finir ‘to finish’ can be used as a component of various constructions in which it loses its core lexical meaning and functions as an adverbial or discourse connector. The analysis of the data of the corpus Corpus parallèle de Textes Littéraires merely confirms the fact that the constructions under consideration can have a two-fold reading: the adverbial function of time and the function of a sentence adverbial.

Functioning and oral interpretation of initialisms and acronyms in the French daily press

This article explores initialisms and acronyms taken from newspapers in the French press. In this article, using data from our study of abbreviated words, we attempt to answer the following questions: How can we shorten a word in French? What are the correct forms (means) of pronunciation of initialisms and acronyms? Can an initialism be considered as a separate (common) word? Before investigating the origin and function of various abbreviations in the French press, the preferred modality of each era, or even the basic rationales behind using such abbreviations, we define a term for abbreviated forms. It seems important to us to present our own definition and to illustrate in detail the problems of the subject. French uses four forms of abbreviated words to help create new words and build vocabulary. These four main forms of abbreviated words are: initials, acronyms, abbreviations, and truncations. At the same time, our goal in this article is to clarify the problem of pronunciation of initialisms and acronyms. To achieve our goal, we used a survey methodology conducted among people from different social groups and ages, in order to determine forms of oral speech and decipher abbreviations of the French daily press. Based on our research, we created a data table on the pronunciation of initialisms in French. The corpus elements and the survey conducted provide us with reliable data on the functioning, interpretation and decoding of abbreviated words in modern French. The survey results allow us to observe the fact that there are two main ways of using abbreviations in French: reading and spelling. Our analysis shows that the obligation to use reading to write an acronym depends, in part, on a number of formal conditions. One of these conditions is the syllable and phonetic structure of acronyms. In conclusion, based on the survey results, we describe the table and types of abbreviations in the corpus of our study.

Outline of a Linguistic Model for the Study of Emerging Naming

The article presents the outline of a linguistic model that is part of a methodology for identifying and analyzing emerging or referentially unstable namings, such as cultural appropriation, street harassment, climate refugee or ecocide. The model and the method are intended to guide the interpretation – manual or semi-automatic – of the referential expressions, according to the semantic-cognitive type of the designated entity (human entity, social process, event, etc.), but also taking into account interdiscursive negotiations that affect the choice of terms and their uses. The proposed approach is original and is based on several guiding ideas: (1) take into account the complexity of the naming and the entanglement of his different facets which are categorization, meaning, performativity and valuation (desirability, preferences, social norms), (2) target the development phase of the naming (observe how speakers deal with the unstable): for this purpose, we will use the notion of identification between weak or identified entities and strong or reference entities, (3) report in an integrated way the referential elaboration of knowledge, the lexical and semantic elaboration of expressions, and the expression of intersubjective attitudes. The scientific framework combines three main disciplinary areas: automatic language processing (construction and representation of knowledge, reference), semantics (elaboration of meanings) and discourse analysis (interdiscursive elaboration of concepts and terms).

The Official Recommendations Proposed to Replace Anglicisms in the Petit Robert de la langue française

The dictionary Petit Robert leads a fight against both the single thought and the impoverished expression by offering a very broad vision of the practices of French. A certain number of anglicisms, very frequent among the new entries of this dictionary, are considered questionable, insofar as the prestige and the economic and techno-scientific power of the United States give rise to a wave of borrowed words, even when the lexicon has suitable French synonyms. The Petit Robert indicates which words in French are recommended by the Commission générale de la terminologie et de néologie to replace the anglicisms. The objective of this study is to observe the English words recently introduced in this dictionary and the different French equivalent terms proposed to oust them. Could the official recommendations supplant the loanwords and become fixed in practice?

On the discursive construction of the multiple meanings of francophonie/francophone viewed through the prism of argumentative semantics

This paper addresses the issue of polysemy, and more precisely of multiple meanings in the case of the words francophonie/francophone from the perspective of argumentative semantics. The aim of the paper is to examine the mechanisms that account for the multiple meanings of francophonie/francophone, i.e. the semantic and discursive mechanisms involved in the (re)construction of lexical meaning as the words occur in discourse. The data analysed in this paper consists of a set of discourse fragments about francophone identity, discourses that vary according to the speaker, the geographical location and the media support. The study is carried out within the framework of the SAP theory (Semantics of Argumentative Possibilities), following a procedure based on a pre-built reference meaning – i.e. a description of the argumentative potential of the lexeme – that will be used when analysing the discursive occurrences. First, the paper briefly presents the SAP theory and the pre-built reference meaning of the lexemes francophonie/francophone (described in terms of core-elements, stereotypes and argumentative possibilities). It then illustrates several discursive mechanisms of meaning construction. The analysis highlights a series of meaning construction mechanisms: transgressive activation of the argumentative potential, reconfiguration by scission of the core-elements or by deletion of one of the elements, modality addition, transgressive reconstruction of the core meaning, and finally core circularity. Thus, the paper indicates, from the perspective of argumentative semantics, that the multiple meanings of the words francophonie/francophone, i.e. the various semantic configurations attached to these words, can be seen as reconfigurations of a single lexical meaning.