Problèmes de linguistique générale
About: This article is published in Language.The article was published on 1968-03-01. It has received 1838 citations till now.
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Dissertation•
01 Jan 2009
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose a demarche comprehensive, the mixite conjugale, to define a redefinition des identites creole et metropolitaine dans la rencontre intime entre creole and metro.
Abstract: Dans un contexte valorisant le metissage quel qu'il soit, le couple mixte creole/metro n'est pas marginalise sans toutefois, etre completement dans la norme. Cette these se propose d'eclairer, au travers d'une demarche comprehensive, la mixite conjugale, objet percu essentiellement de maniere stereotypee. Cette problematique pose trois questions. Dans quelle(s) mesure(s) le couple se percoit-il comme mixte ? A quel sentiment de soi de chaque individu cela renvoie-t-il ? Qu'est-ce qui va les amener a certains moments a affirmer leurs differences et a d'autres a les taire, cherchant soit a les exacerber ou au contraire a les gommer ? L'enquete, soutenue par une demarche comprehensive, a porte sur 17 couples interroges sur leur vecu conjugal. L'analyse des entretiens et des recits de vie contribue a une redefinition des identites creole et metropolitaine dans la rencontre intime entre creole et metro. La mixite conjugale devient alors a la fois revelatrice de la fabrique du sentiment du « nous » et des logiques d'influence a l'origine de l'elaboration de la culture commune du couple. La these montre comment a partir d'une situation culturellement differenciee, les individus construisent l'indifferenciation (conversion identitaire) ou la mixite conjugale (negociation).
9 citations
TL;DR: This article explored the role and position of the mediator who voices the perpetrator's perspective in the mediated autobiography of Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz who was sentenced to death in 1947.
Abstract: This paper draws on rhetoric and discourse analysis to explore the role and position of the mediator – editor or translator – who voices the perpetrator's perspective. The process inevitably raises questions of agency and ethical responsibility, compelling mediators to disclose their own attitude and leave traces of their presence in the text. Discursive strategies allow them to inject their own voice into the text, thus producing a counterdiscourse that can oppose and even sabotage the perpetrator's discourse. I propose an analysis of the speaker's “ethos” in the mediated autobiography of Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz who was sentenced to death in 1947. I will assess the importance of editorial and translational intervention as argumentation and positioning, in order to acknowledge editors and translators as ethical agents.
9 citations
29 Jan 2006
TL;DR: This paper argued that Hindi/Urdu is a category distinct from evidentiality, a claim supported by such languages that attach mirative extensions to verbal forms other than evidentials, such as Nepali or Kalasha, Khowar.
Abstract: Mirative meanings (surprise, sudden awareness, high degree, polemic) have recently been described as distinct from evidentiality. Languages with evidential markers such as Nepali or Kalasha, Khowar are already known to have grammaticized the expression of such meanings. Hindi/Urdu, which have no specific marker, displays non the less a wide sets of such meanings systematically attached with its aorist (the simple form used for narrative past). The paper attempts to test the claim that mirativity is a category distinct from evidentiality, a claim supported by such languages that attach mirative extensions to verbal forms other than evidentials. I will first define the standard meanings of the –yâ/-â form, argue in favour of the aoristic behaviour of the whole set of meanings, then try to relate the aoristic effect to the special (mirative) meanings, and finally suggest an interpretation derived from the enunciative (utterance) theory of Culioli. Typology started about twenty years ago (Chafe & Nichols 1986, then Guentcheva 1996 and Aikhenvald 2004) to describe evidentiality as a linguistic category. More recently, it started to describe mirativity as a distinct linguistic category (Delancey 1997, Aikhenvald 2004), although evidentials are now well known to display “mirative extensions” (to behave as markers of mirative meanings too). The empirical facts which were described because of the new interest in evidentials is certainly responsible for the change in the representation of the category (less focusing on the distance from the source of information) and eventually for the distinction of two categories. At the same time descriptive grammars now get a proper frame for describing related forms or meanings and are more and more aware of the existence of the category. The reason why this category (or these categories) has long been ignored in languages where it existed is simply because it was unknown in most familiar European languages. Nepalese grammar for instance may now reconsider the “inferential” as a marker for evidentiality and/or mirativity, and there are many other examples of such welcome results of interactions between typology and description. However, Hindi/Urdu have not yet been described as displaying an evidential system, which is understandable since there is no morphologically specific marker for it. As noted by Aikhenvald (2004: 210), “a major argument in favour of mirative meanings as independent from evidentials and information source comes from languages where mirative extensions are characteristic of categories other than evidentials”. I will try here to support this claim, pointing at the same time to the difficulties in identifying the “path” and origin of extension due to the labelling of these “other categories”. 1 Or non-testimonial form, since it is widely used to related events not directly observed by the speaker (reported events). Aikhenwald (2004) however rightly points to the fact that markers for evidentiality relate in many languages to the mode of perception of the event (directly observed, heard, felt, even smelled) rather than to the distance from the direct source of information. 2 Apart from the use of the future of verb “be” (hogâ) as an auxiliary for marking presumption or probability (hence the terminology of presumptive, putative, sometimes used to design it). Note that the use of hogâ is limited to cognitive inference (not requiring a material trace or observed event to infer from it the past event).
9 citations
01 Jan 2005
TL;DR: Kalmbach et al. as discussed by the authors studied the way French grammar is presented in Finnish school books, especially in grammar books but also in text or exercise books, focusing on pronominalization.
Abstract: Kalmbach, Jean-Michel From de to ca : How to teach French grammar to Finnish-speaking learners Jyvaskyla : University of Jyvaskyla, 2004, 214 p. ISBN 952-91-8561-8 (nid.) 951-39-2116-6 (PDF) The present study focuses on the way French grammar is presented in Finnish school books, especially in grammar books but also in text or exercise books. Some Internet sites have also been studied. Although French has been and still is a fairly widely studied foreign language in Finnish schools and in higher education, the level of teaching books has not undergone any real changes for many decades. All recent grammar books as well as the grammatical content of text or exercise books can be traced back to one older grammar, which is still in use and contains many non existent or clearly wrong grammar rules, the newer ones thus perpetuating the same old mistakes. The morphology of the French article is rather complicated, but it can be thoroughly explained by means of clear and simple rules that virtually leave no place for interpretation. In the material that was studied, this was certainly not the case, as many important mechanisms seem not to have been identified by the authors. One of these is the famous “cacophony rule”, which explains why an article form beginning with a d disappears after the preposition de. This simple rule does not exist in the Finnish school literature. Many problems are also due to the misleading application of Finnish aspectual categories, such as partitive object vs. total object, to French, where these simply do not exist. We show in this study that not only does the Finnish partitiivi not correspond to a hypothetical French “partitive”, but that there is not even such a thing in French as “partitive article”. The erroneous interpretation of grammatical structures in the case of article causes very serious problems in the field of pronominalization, as the form of the pronoun replacing the noun phrase may depend on the form of the article. A special emphasis is laid on pronominalization. For Finnish learners the greatest difficulty lies in what can be called the “il/ca dichotomy”. Whereas Finnish generally uses one single pronoun (se) to refer to noun phrases or any kind of antecedents, French normally uses il to replace a noun phrase and ca in all other cases. Furthermore the pronoun il can have various forms, depending e.g. on referential category, and pronominalization is achieved by means of a mixture of classical personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns and even adverbs or prepositions (zero anaphor). These build a very complex and heterogeneous system which is undoubtedly difficult for learners to understand and to handle. This system is not explained in the proper way in the grammars or other learning material we have studied. French grammars and other French school books produced in Finland need to be thoroughly reviewed and modernized. There is an urgent need to remove erroneous rules and also to introduce into the terminology basic concepts such as determiner or infinitive markers (which exist not only in English but also in French). The terminology also needs to be more consistent and clearer and rules must be presented as real rules learners can implement in everyday language performance and not as catalogues of cases based on alleged semantical criteria. The future of French learners and of French learning in Finland is at stake.
9 citations
Dissertation•
01 Nov 2004
TL;DR: In this paper, Freud and Merleau-Ponty discuss the subjectivite and subjectivité of the human subject and human subject, and discuss the question of homine a l'etat d'aporie.
Abstract: Comment l'homme peut-il etre "a la fois tout entier corps et tout entier esprit", nature et subjectivite ? Le projet de faire dialoguer Freud et Merleau-Ponty s'appuie sur ce constat : d'une part, tout deux refusent de laisser la question de homine a l'etat d'aporie, d'ou leurs critiques du dispositif cartesien et de ses avatars. D'autre part, il ne veulent pas pour autant dissoudre les concepts d'homme et de subjectivite, mais travaillent au contraire a renouveller la problematique classique de l'homme en la transformant en une problematique du decentrement du sujet par rapport a lui-meme et a ses reperes traditionnels (conscience, ipseite). A partir d'une conception de l'intentionnalite se tenant a la limite de la phenomenologie, ils procedent ainsi a une genese de l'ego, qui se radicalise en une interrogation archeologique sur les origines de la subjectivite et de l'humanite, le ca et les pulsions chez Freud, la chair et la Nature chez Merleau-Ponty. Leur exigence d'interdisciplinarite apparaitra alors comme une occasion pour la pensee contemporaine de depasser les alternatives steriles a la source de son etat de crise (dualisme des substances ; distinction entre empirisme et transcendantal )
9 citations