La création du monde par l'article défini. Le marqueur évidentiel ?

Abstract

Walter De Mulder : « The "creation of the world" by the definite article. Le : an evidential marker ? » To use/interpret a definite description, the speaker/hearer has to justify the uniqueness conveyed by the definite article. To do this, he has to construct information by making a number of inferences, by default or in accordance with Levinson's principle of informativity. Since these inferences affect the degree of reliability of the utterance, the definite article, whose linguistic meaning triggers them, is to be considered a marker of evidentiality as defined by Dendale, but, as can probably also be maintained for other evidential markers in French, this evidential value is not to be equated with its basic meaning.