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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TL;DR: The authors analyzed the influence of the valeur aspectuo-temporelle attribuee aux formes composees on the frequence d'accord du participe passe (APP).
Abstract: Dans cet article, nous analysons l'influence de la valeur aspectuo-temporelle attribuee aux formes composees sur la frequence d’accord du participe passe (APP). On sait que l'APP est variable dans les usages de la langue parlee, notamment lorsqu’il est employe avec l'auxiliaire avoir. Partant de l'observation de corpus de langue parlee, et d’une approche variationniste, nous evaluons la frequence d’accord des participes feminins potentiellement audibles, en fonction de l'effet de sens qui est attribue a la sequence [avoir (pres) + PP], selon qu’il est evalue comme ‘resultant’ ou ‘evenementiel’ selon la terminologie de Descles et Guentcheva (2003). Les resultats de cette analyse laissent entrevoir une influence faible mais relativement constante de ce facteur semantique sur l'APP, et soulevent plus avant la question de la presence d’elements specifiques au medium oral comme facteurs d’influence sur le marquage morphologique du genre; en d’autres termes, de l'existence d’une grammaire spontanee de l'oral (Branca-Rosoff, 2005).
5 citations
TL;DR: The authors argues that public discourse has sunk to dangerous levels in the present century, citing examples of bad faith, provocation and insult from Australian prime ministers (2002, 2015) and presidential candidates in France (2005) and the United States (2016) and concludes that lying, incoherence, self-contradiction, insult and injury fall outside the bounds of public discourse.
Abstract: This paper reviews the role of discourse in law and public life and identifies threats to the polity from malicious forms of communication In addition to its role in legal argument, communication is fundamental to public debate in the formation of laws and policies, and it constitutes the social and political fabric through the use of forms of address and recognition of others This argument builds on aspects of discourse theory and feminist and other critiques of it that suggest that it applies to a narrow community of discourse, and so excludes other cultures It takes a broad view of participants in public debate, which necessarily crosses national and cultural borders Responsible communication demands that we argue in good faith, truthfully and coherently, and that we recognize our partners in discussion, both for who they are and for their place in a shared community The paper argues that public discourse has sunk to dangerous levels in the present century, citing examples of bad faith, provocation and insult from Australian prime ministers (2002, 2015) and presidential candidates in France (2005) and the United States (2016) It concludes that lying, incoherence, self-contradiction, insult and injury fall outside the bounds of public discourse Rapid communicative intervention is needed to identify each of these malicious forms of communication as a betrayal of the civic public, before it provokes the next vicious response
5 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the context in which these self-portraying pictures are taken, as well as the online and social environment in which they are shared, are more important than the self-represented subjects themselves.
Abstract: In this paper, I propose that what I will call “#selfie” is far from being a figurative object as it is generally assumed, since figurativeness is not an accidental consequence. As 'figurative', we mean the quality of the image with iconic reference to objects and subjects belonging to the natural world (beings, phenomena, things). According to Greimas (1984), in order to analyse a work of art you must first determine whether it is of a figurative or abstract kind and, therefore, whether it represents icons that are related to the natural world (beings, phenomena, objects) or those which have no figurative references. Based on a number of examples of #selfies, I shall instead demonstrate that the context in which these self-portraying pictures are taken, as well as the online and social environment in which they are shared, are more important than the self-portrayed subjects themselves. The hashtag “#”, in fact, indicates the centrality of the tag, the gesture of tagging, which is considerably more important than the fact of being self-portrayed through the #selfie. This implies that research on the practice of taking and sharing #selfies should (re)consider the current discussion focus on all those contemporary phenomena that are fostering and developing self-expression through new media. Taking into account the reflections made by Esposito on the impersonal (2007) and the research by Villa on contemporary self-portraits (2012, 2013), I will try to relate the production of #selfies to the practices of conceptual art (eg. Location of the I by Martin John Callanan), rather than privileging the idea of artistic (self)representation.
5 citations
Cites background from "Problèmes de linguistique générale"
...28 Benveniste, 1966 (in Esposito 2007, 130) or none”....
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...In fact, as I will explain better further on by analyzing Eddy (2007), Benveniste (1966) distinguishes between the I and the 2nd and 3rd person....
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...The non-person, writes Benveniste (1966), ‘since it does not imply anyone, can take any subject or none, and this subject, expressed or not, is never established as a person’ (in Esposito 2007, 130)....
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...The non-person, writes Benveniste (1966), ‘since it does not imply anyone, can take any subject or none, and this subject, expressed or not, is never established as a person’ (in Esposito 2007, 130). Moreover, Esposito, reflecting on Simone Weil (1957), writes that...
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31 Jan 2003
Abstract: Recent research on the element se in Haitian Creole predicative constructions seem to have reached opposite conclusions. On the one hand, se has been argued to be a functional head in the verbal functional structure of HC. On the other hand, it has been argued to be a nominal resumptive pro-form of the subject of predication. The paper evaluates the arguments for both positions in regards to the unification potential that each analysis provides to account for the various occurrences of the element se in the HC grammar, as well as to the eventual relation that se may be assumed to entertain with the element ye that surfaces in predicative sentences with displaced predicates. It is shown that neither perspective achieves a full unification. Elements of an alternative analysis based on some innovations of the Minimalist framework presenting a potential for a middle ground position are explored. It is suggested that se is a functional projection that alternatively licenses a thematic or an expletive subject, depending on whether it does or doesn’t allow thematic checking. The proposal offers a new perspective for the dual role of se as a licenser of predication (copula se) and as the apparent subject of a type of expletive construction (pronominal se). With respect to Creole genesis, this perspective offers a window into the complexity of the workings of universal principles, remaining neutral as
5 citations
01 Jan 2014
TL;DR: The authors argue that a specific euphemistic effect is derived whenever it is mutually manifest to participants of a communicative exchange that a speaker is trying to be indirect by avoiding some dispreferred saliently unexpressed alternative lexical unit(s).
Abstract: The account presented in the thesis combines insights from relevance-theoretic (Sperber and Wilson 1995) and neo-Gricean (Levinson 2000) pragmatics in arguing that a specific euphemistic effect is derived whenever it is mutually manifest to participants of a communicative exchange that a speaker is trying to be indirect by avoiding some dispreferred saliently unexpressed alternative lexical unit(s). This effect is derived when the indirectness is not conventionally associated with the particular linguistic form-trigger relative to some context of use and, therefore, stands out as marked in discourse. The central theoretical claim of the thesis is that the cognitive processing of utterances containing novel euphemistic/politically correct locutions involves meta-representations of saliently unexpressed dispreferred alternatives, as part of relevance-driven recognition of speaker intentions. It is argued that hearers are “invited” to infer the salient dispreferred alternatives in the process of deriving explicatures of utterances containing lexical units triggering euphemistic/politically correct interpretations. In the course of time, such invited inferences can lead to semantic change by becoming routinized relative to some context of use and reanalyzed as the defeasible default meanings of these locutions, presumed in the absence of contextual assumptions to the contrary. This conventionalization process is responsible for euphemisms becoming “contaminated” with negative connotations associated with taboos, which leads to their recycling in the vernacular or ‘euphemism treadmill’. It also explains why political correctness is effective only when it is novel and still capable of bringing people’s unconscious biases to consciousness. The biases are, arguably, brought to consciousness by metarepresenting the salient dispreferred alternatives as part of comprehension of utterances containing PC locutions perceived to be marked in the given context. It is suggested that the likelihood of the euphemism treadmill taking place is increased in cases of narrowing the lexicalized meaning of a concept to its taboo meaning, while it is less likely to happen in cases of conceptual broadening.
5 citations