Abstract
In this study, which is part of a larger research project on dialogue, the author deals with “little words” (as they are often called). These common and polyfunctional words seldom appear in grammars and are only dealt with within short lemmata in dictionaries. <i>Presentatives</i>, such as Fr. <i>voici</i> / <i>voilà</i>, Lat. <i>ecce</i>, Gr. ἰδού “Here is, lo!”, form an independent grammatical class which needs to be defined, firstly, in a genetic approach. The author starts with the enumeration of ancient languages presentatives, classifies them according to their etymology and goes on to study Latin <i>ecce in particular</i>. This classification shows two structures: most ancient language presentatives come from a grammaticalized form of the imperative form of a verb requiring a visual or tactile perception; other presentatives are based on a demonstrative theme or a particle agglutination. Only Latin <i>ecce</i> remains unclear in spite of the many assumptions that have already been proposed. In addition, while all the other presentatives are often grammaticalized with a second-person pronoun, the sequence <i>ecce + tibi</i> is not attested in archaic Latin and does not even function as a pure presentative: the structure <i>ecce me</i> is used for self-presentation. In reality, while all the other presentatives are allocentric, <i>ecce</i> is egocentric. The author concludes that <i>ecce</i> is related to <i>ego</i> ‘I’. This particularity can help us both reconstruct the etymology of this word and define the presentation it expresses, thus enabling us to understand how <i>ecce</i> fundamentally illustrates the inscription of the dialogue within morphology.
Highlights
Words elsewhere called "presentatives" are sometimes classified as adverbs or prepositions
The presentative ecce first allowed a speaker to draw the attention of the co-speaker, either towards an object present in the situation of enunciation, the enunciative space, or towards an event (Ecce autem perii! ‘Look I’m dead!’); ecce is comparable to French voici/voilà, known as a “presentative of events”
If we trace the genesis of the listed presentatives, we exclusively find ancient imperative forms of verbs requiring visual or tactile perception
Summary
Words elsewhere called "presentatives" are sometimes classified as adverbs or prepositions These words can be attested from the earliest texts, as shown by the use of the Latin ecce ‘behold! ‘Look I’m dead!’); ecce is comparable to French voici/voilà, known as a “presentative of events”. This presentative received other functions: it could work as an enunciative particle, with a conclusive value (ecce ‘there you are!’; cf eccere ‘Lo!, there you are’), or with an affective value (essentially in order to approve or disapprove of something: ecce ‘OK!’ or ‘well, oh well done!’). We must take into account both its specific ancient use (i.e., ecce me meaning ‘here I am’) and the particular meaning of that presentation, which was not exactly one
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