We are interested in the initial stages of vocabulary acquisition in L1 and L2 ‒ coofficial languages ‒ and we analyze the lexical materials provided by 200 Valencian 3rd grade primary school students. The general purpose is to present the available lexical repertoires in order to discover the lexical variation ‒ Catalan and Spanish ‒ in 15 centers of interest from the quantitative results (total number of words, total number of vowels or different words, average per schoolchild) and qualitative results, analysis of the common or exclusive lexis among the 50 words that have achieved the highest index of availability in each notional area. The scope and novelty of the research lies in two essential aspects for applied linguistics in general and didactics in particular. The planning of lexical acquisition in education must be supported by research that optimizes gradual sequencing according to the maturity and linguistic competence of the students and, on the other hand, the selection of lexical materials must consider a reference lexicon based on corpora of native speakers. In other words, the specificity of this case of lexical variation is explained by its interlinguistic condition ‒ curricular training of co-official languages ‒ and school context at the initial stage of acquisition.

In this article we address the issue of the variation of questions aimed at the personal state sequences in the history of the Spanish language. With a primordial phatic function, they not only serve to reestablish social harmony between individuals who have not seen each other for a long time, but also to fill the social void that social relations abhor.

Even though the nineteenth century saw the significant development of botany, Émile Zola, an enthusiast of progress and the modern city, made it part of his cycle sparingly, making it a botanical counterpoint that punctuates subtly his work. There are four novels in the Rougon-Macquart cycle where the plant appears in the form of sequences that develop a kind of plant cosmopoetics: La Fortune des Rougon, La Curée, Le Ventre de Paris and La Faute de l’abbé Mouret. We have chosen two of them (La Fortune des Rougon and Le Ventre de Paris to demonstrate that with each appearance, the plant in the form of ruderal plants or vines becomes a powerful narrative spring that establishes, at the same time, a novelistic topo-energetic and a symbolic device. There are two possible readings of these botanical sequences: one that is integrated into the novelistic ecosystem specific to each of these four novels and the other that shows how they function from the perspective of the whole.

Cyrano de Bergerac’s comic narratives provocatively grant speech to animals and plants, radically decentering anthropocentric perspectives. While animal enunciation has been extensively studied, vegetal discourse in Cyrano’s works remains underexplored. This article focuses on the Demon of Socrates’ encomium praising the intellectual superiority of cabbages in the Lune. Beyond its materialist subversion, the speech act raises ethical concerns about appropriating and translating vegetal silence. Though fiction allows cabbages a voice, their muteness persists, foregrounding the incommensurability between human and plant communication. Cyrano’s burlesque world paradoxically highlights the violence inherent in ventriloquizing mute beings.

Rutebeuf’s Dit de l’Herberie, curiously constructed in two parts, one in verse, the other in prose (it’s Rutebeuf’s only prose text), seems to have prompted two imitations (unless he himself drew inspiration from one of the other two texts). This is a “mini-genre” that can be attached to the more extensive “professional dits” series, and which raises questions about urban representations in the central Middle Ages: an affectation of “realism”? Pure puerility with obscene undertones? Or a piece that paradoxically serves to build the self-confidence of the juggler Rutebeuf? We’ll take each of these paths in turn.

In L’Ovide moralisé, the Christianised medieval adaptation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the theme of metamorphosis provides a privileged observatory for probing the complex links between man and the plant world in the 14th century. Numerous stories highlight the way in which the medieval ontological system, broadly defined as analogist, can be permeated by animistic tensions. To shed light on this principle of hybridisation, this article will draw on Philippe Descola’s categories. Focusing on the author’s writing strategies and their effect(s), it will examine the principles of continuity and discontinuity between interiority and physicality. At the same time, by comparing the source text and its rewriting, we will be looking at possible changes in the way plants are perceived between Antiquity and the end of the Middle Ages.

How can one follow the path of nature within a space shaped by culture? This is the question posed by the 14th-century Echecs amoureux, which describes two antagonistic vegetal spaces: on the one hand, the wild forest of Diana, which corresponds to the reasonable way of being in the world; on the other, the delectable garden of Venus, which leads along the path of sensuality. This initial boundary proves surprising. Culture (the garden) is not, as you might expect, on the side of reason, while the forest leads to it. The complexity of this relationship is confirmed in the illuminations, which combine contradictory plant elements to represent these spaces. These plays on ambiguity suggest that the forest and the garden have something in common in that they remain illusory: Diana’s primitive forest is a-topic, belonging to the past, while Venus’s beautiful garden is deceptive. The ambiguity of our relationship with plants is a way of questioning man’s place in the world. The text suggests that we cannot follow just one path or the other, but that a happy medium seems necessary. The solution that Echecs amoureux seems to propose lies in a world that combines the plant and the urban, subsumed – quite unexpectedly for a modern reader – by the urban.

In the well-known exemplum about the simple man who constantly repeated the Ave Maria, a plant plays a central role in the narrative: it is a sign that reveals to witnesses and readers the spiritual value of the main character. In some versions this plant is a lily flower, in others–a tree of unknown species. The article is an attempt to read this motif and its variants through the prism of medieval botanical texts and to find in it some elements of the medieval imagery of the plant.

Due to historical and cultural factors, French-Canadian and Quebec literature has traditionally been sparse in its engagement with nature writing. This void was addressed in the 1920s and 1930s by writers who emigrated from France to Canada, notably Marie Le Franc. An exploration of the depictions of time, space, and subjectivity in her works, compared to the novels of Hémon, Constantin-Weyer, and Bugnet, unveils the distinctly vegetal quality of Le Franc’s prose and her profound connection to the forest.

What about ‘Pataphysics in the 21st century – Alfred Jarry’s philosophical and scientific concept, governed by the rules of the absurd, the principle of discovery and the derogation of rules? An excursion into the world of plants will provide an answer to this question, and a recourse to ‘Pataphysics may be useful for the explorations of the human-plant relationship. Indeed, Jarry’s work offers an eco-subliminal reading. The subject of the following article is one of Jarry’s most challenging works, namely the collection of prose and versified pieces Les Minutes de sable mémorial (1894), classified as a sketch of the principles of Ubu (a figure which, as we know, is composed in part of plants). Starting from post- and hypermodern perspectives on ‘Pataphysics – those of Baudrillard and the writing duo Deleuze and Guattari – the article examines the entry of the plant world into ‘Pataphysics and then focuses a paradigm of the human-plant relationship: the mandrake. This excursion into the mythologically charged terrain (or earth, soil) of the mandrake concludes with a close reading of certain patabotanical aspects, among which the rhizomatic (anthropomorphized) figure plays a central role.