Faut dire : variation et sens d'un marqueur parenthétique entre connectivité et (inter)subjectivité

Abstract

This article aims to contribute to the study of discourse markers (DMs) which arise out of structures which are syntactically (pseudo-) subordinated ; such markers are also known as “parentheticals” or “propositional discourse markers”. A working corpus of examples was built up on the basis of a thorough examination of several corpora of spoken French (mainly European varieties). First of all, the morpho-syntactic variation of the expression (il) faut dire (que) is analyzed, specifically in terms of the presence or absence of the neutral subject pronoun il and the complementizer que, and of the positional variability of (il) faut dire (que) with regard to the complement clause that it is supposed to govern. Then, the question is raised whether (il) faut dire (que) actually functions as a DM or if it is more akin to a textual connective, comparable in this to the expression je dois dire que studied by Kronning (1988). This part of the analysis leads to the conclusion that, although (il) faut dire (que) may occur in contexts permitting a connective reading, in most of the attested oral examples it works indeed as a real DM with an interlocutive value involving explicativity and subjectivity.