De La Langue Francaise Research Articles

The Enjoyment of Pure Reasoning

IntroductionThe French libertine novelist Donatien-Alphonse-Francois de Sade's (1740-1814) famous last request was that acorns should be sewn onto his tomb. He did not want his name or his literary works to be remembered by those who came after him. Soon after his death in 1814, however, it was clear that his wish would not come true: for example, the eponym 'sadism' appeared in the Dictionnaire universel de la langue francaise in 1834, and eminent writers such as Charles Baudelaire and Gustave Flaubert discussed his novels.1At the end of the nineteenth century, Sade's name appeared in a totally new context. The German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing introduced 'sadism' as a clinical concept, and several psychiatrists started discussing Sade's life and work. One decade later, the French writer Guillaume Apollinaire published L'oeuvre du marquis de Sade, the first comprehensive study on Sade's life and work. Apollinaire's interest in Sade was followed by, among others, Maurice Heine, who discovered and published several of Sade's texts, and Gilbert Lely, who wrote the first detailed biography of Sade. During these years, the 'Divine Marquis,' as he was called, was also an important figure for the surrealists, who saw him as an intellectual companion in their revolt against bourgeois society.Despite this multi-faceted interest in Sade, however, the Marquis was not a central figure in the intellectual life of the past century, as Apollinaire had predicted he would be.2 Nevertheless, in the two decades after the Second World War, Marquis de Sade's novels were interpreted comprehensively by most of the leading French philosophers of that time: in 1947, Pierre Klossowski's study, Sade mon prochain,3 and Georges Bataille's secret de Sade4 were published, and twenty years later-after Simone de Beauvoir,5 Maurice Blanchot,6 and Jacques Lacan7 had released their interpretations of Sade-a reworked version of Klossowski's text8 and a new Sade study by Roland Barthes9 appeared.101967 was also the year that Gilles Deleuze published Coldness and Cruelty.11 This book has a special place in the long line of French Sade studies. As the French title, Presentation de Sacher-Masoch. Le froid et le cruel,12 suggests, it is not Sade's oeuvre but rather the work of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1835-1895) that occupies the bulk of Deleuze's study.13 However, Sade is far from absent in the text: Coldness and Cruelty is bookended by detailed interpretations of Sade's novels. Reading Sade in combination with Masoch reveals what is at stake in Coldness and Cruelty. In his long essay Deleuze argues that the unity of sadism and masochism, as expressed in the clinical concept of 'sadomasochism,' is a non-entity.14 Instead, apathy, reason, and the father are central for Sade, whereas coldness, imagination, and the mother characterize Masoch's universe.15When critics discuss Deleuze's anti-sado-masochistic thesis, no attention is paid to what he claims is one of the central characteristics of sadism: that Sade's libertines16 are, first and foremost, thinkers, and that their sexual enjoyment is derived from the activity of pure thinking.17 This thesis is remarkable, first, because it flies in the face of the widespread psychiatric interpretation of sadism. After all, Sade's characters are commonly thought to torture their victims because they enjoy the other's pain and suffering, not the free unfolding of pure thought. Deleuze's interpretation also runs counter to the other leading interpretations of Sade in French philosophy.18 Klossowski, for example, argues that the libertine's pleasure is not in thinking but in dreaming about torturing young virgins;19 Barthes, for his part, holds that the object of the sadist's enjoyment is the strict obedience to empty formal rules;20 and Bataille21 suggests that the sadist's enjoyment is an effect of transgressing the border between what Bataille calls 'the restricted economy' and 'the general economy. …

Chemical fertility of forest soils: basic concepts

Fertility is a very old concept and many definitions are available in literature. The first edition of the Dictionnaire de l’Academie Francaise in 1694 defines fertility as: “quality of that which is fertile; good farming is that which contributes most to the fertility of the soil” (the capacity of a soil to produce a large harvest). A more accurate definition appeared in the 18th century in the Dictionnaire Critique de la Langue Francaise (1787): “Fertility refers exclusively to soil and plants: Fecundity refers to animals”. At the beginning of the 19th century, the first scientific studies on fertility enabled to characterize soil properties and measure water and mineral uptake in the perspective of increasing crop yields. In this context, fertility referred to the “chemical richness” of a soil in terms of the presence of mineral elements essential to plant growth: both macronutrients (N, P, K, Ca, Mg, S) and micronutrients (Cu, Zn, Fe). The “natural” fertility of the soil is, in this case, defined as the potential of a soil to provide these mineral elements and may be supplemented with an “artificial” fertility related to added fertilizers. Barbier (1955) proposes two visions of fertility; that which can be characterized by i) a production (fertility levels thus depend on the soil properties as well the cultivation techniques), or ii) the capacity to produce (the fertility of a soil determines a potential production capacity without taking into account cultivation techniques). All of these studies in the field of agronomy perfectly illustrate the complexity of the concept of soil fertility.

Berkane ou le déracinement dans l’hybridité identitaire

This essay examines Berkane’s inability to get rooted in France and Algeria. What prevents Berkane, Assia Djebar’s main protagonist in La Disparition de la Langue Francaise, from finding home? Berkane has a problematic identity. Just like Kristeva, Berkane’s hybridity is a source of suffering; it’s the monster of all the crossroads. Far from being a harmonious blend, it creates chaos within. Imprisoned in the colonial past, Berkane is unable to comprehend the postcolonial present. Torn between France and Algeria, he can’t find ‘home’, a notion that seems fluid and impossible to define. Berkane embodies the dichotomous absent present, a ghost that floats between countries with no point of reference or spatio-temporal anchor. Drawing on a wide range of postcolonial theories, this essay studies Berkane’s problematic hybrid identity as it manifests itself on two different levels: the personal and the relational. His unaccepted hybridity turns him into an eternal wanderer.

BECKETT’S BOOTS: The Crux of Meaning

Estragon's boots in En attendant Godot harbor secret that is less 'audible' in its English version. To perceive it, we must follow different threads: remark made by Beckett to Roger Blin; commentary by Leslie Hill and one by Dieter Wellershof in their analyses of writer's work; Beckett's avowed intention in composing play; and role given, in both textual and scenic details, to evocation of two thieves crucified on Golgotha.11. An Obsession with BootsBeckett who descended from Huguenot emigres (Knowlson 1996, 6) was quite aware of French origin of his name. In Eleutheria, character disguised as spectator jumps upon stage and, reading author's name in program, pronounces it as 'Becquet' (136). Leslie Hill, recalling this incident, questions status of names with respect to texts they surround (112). He draws attention to fact that word bequet or becquet has three senses: something pasted on to proof, an overlay, a male salmon, or pike, and the middle sole in boot, or hobnail boot itself. He adds fourth sense for near homophone becquee, which is a 'beakful' of food (Hill, 113).2 Actually, French word, as found in Harrap 's Standard French and English Dictionary, first published in 1934 and most likely source for Beckett, is translated, in boot makers' jargon, as 'hobnail.' The boot itself is not designated. Pars pro totol Perhaps because of its tradespecific nature, this meaning is not found in all dictionaries. However, it figures in Tresor de la langue francaise (1975) under heading cordonnerie ('shoe making'), and it is first meaning given in Grand Larousse encyclopedique (1960). The definition given in French corresponds exactly to 'hobnail' as defined in The Concise Oxford Dictionary (heavy-headed nail for bootsoles) as well as in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of English Language, which Beckett would undoubtedly have consulted given his admiration for its author. The synecdochal transfer extends beyond boot itself, for, in English at any rate, 'hobnail' is likewise person. The Oxford English Dictionary (1989), after specifying that short nail with round head was used for bottom of Plough-Men's gives derived meaning: A man who wears hobnailed shoes; rustic, clodhopper, clown (emphasis added).In Eleutheria, boots are indeed key element, for they are clearly associated with identity. They come into play at moment of Victor's father's death. That precise moment is an important turning point: The Vitrier has been summoned to repair window Victor has broken. The symbolic value of broken glass (here window pane) in context of play in which protagonist suffers from suffocating atmosphere of his bourgeois identity is obvious. His revolt is thus associated with his violent gesture and with fact that it is his shoe thrown through closed window that creates crisis. The Vitrier has retrieved shoe and returns it to him, nullifying young man's rebellious act and exacerbating his frustration: On ne peut rien perdre non plus (71). What is he trying to lose? Victor's shoes, according to Dougald McMillan, represent his implication in material world that holds young man captive (106).The symbolic role attributed to boots or shoes is not, however, confined to Eleutheria. In labyrinth-like search for meaning in trilogy, Dieter Wellershoff - in an essay dating from 1963 - signals kind of Ariadne's thread formed by pair of shoes (176). In his essay Wellershof draws attention to scene in Malone meurt in which man wearing pair of yellow shoes hits Malone on head. He raises question about who could be author of this crime: Is it Molloy or Moran who both killed an old man [...]? Has incident now been repeated third time? (Wellershof, 176; my translation). The 'criminal act' being repeated here, Wellershof maintains, is one in which Malone finally meets himself' (176). …

Un grand corpus de français parlé : le CIEL-F

Résumé Cet article présente d’un point de vue épistémologique et empirique le travail de constitution du Corpus International Ecologique de la Langue Française, grand corpus de français parlé bientôt disponible sur la toile. On y explique la réflexion ayant guidé le recueil des données (approche écologique, comparabilité de zones de la francophonie et situations de communication) et les choix effectués (aires communicatives et types d’activités documentés) en vue d’analyses relevant de domaines diversifiés (variation, interaction, multimodalité, français en contact, syntaxe orale), pour tenter de combler plusieurs lacunes des corpus oraux actuels. On aborde également la question de la mise en réseau des experts, des problèmes liés aux différents terrains, ainsi que de la standardisation, l’archivage et la diffusion des données collectées (enregistrements audio et vidéo, transcriptions, métadonnées), avant de présenter quelques exemples d’analyses comparées.

Stories of Frenchness: becoming a Francophile

This paper reports on life-story accounts used to gain insights into the symbolic value language learners attach to French. The concept of ‘interpretative repertoires’ is used to show how participants situate personal narratives in broader cultural discourses (a ‘Francophile repertoire’) to construct their experience of Frenchness. Data from three life narrative case studies – British adults who have studied French to a high level – illustrate how situated repertoires are circulated and reproduced. This type of analytical approach can extend our understanding of how engagement with ‘prestige’ languages such as French is inscribed in particular forms of cultural capital. Cet article examine l'analyse des récits autobiographiques pour mettre en relief les valeurs symboliques attachées à l'apprentissage de la langue française. Le concept des «répertoires interprétatifs» a été utilisé afin de montrer la façon dont les récits personnels se situent dans les discours culturels plus répandus (un «répertoire francophile») pour construire l'expérience de la francité. Des récits venant de trois études de cas (adultes d'origine Britannique ayant étudié le français jusqu’à un niveau supérieur) illustrent comment ces répertoires peuvent circuler et se reproduire dans le vécu des individus. Cette approche analytique du discours permet d'approfondir notre conception des rapports que l'on peut avoir avec les langues étrangères, d'autant plus celles comme le français dites de prestige dont la connaissance est associée à des formes de capital culturel.

Songe du Vieux Pèlerin by Philippe de Mézières

552 Reviews the acceptability of neologisms in Italian by taking stock of the evolving definitions of neologia invarious Italian dictionaries. To the extent that the creation of an in ternational auxiliary language constitutes a grand neological enterprise, the theme of JeanneMartinet's contribution on the state of Interlingua dictionaries intersects with the general topic of this book. The other contributors, looking at French, deal with a variety of relevant topics. Giving the reader a welcome peek behind the scenes with regard to the process of collecting and evaluating neologisms from the press for possible inclusion in Larousse dictionaries, Khalid Alaoui compiles the raw percentages for the different domains and differentneotypes (morphological formulae) associated with a corpus of neologisms so gleaned in order to provide a snapshot of the state of current neological activity.Danielle Candel and Virginie Tombeux provide a detailed ana lysis of representative terminologies associated with nuclear energy as presented in the Tresor de la langue francaise, taking stock of the relative frequencies of the neotypes employed, and making it apparent that themulti-volume TLF has considerable potential for neological research even in such a specialized domain. After reviewing aspects of advertising-based neology, virtually all ofwhich escapes inclusion in conventional dictionaries, Karine Berthelot-Guiet provides a novel take on a possible format for a dictionary composed of such neologisms. Franchise Quinsat provides a highly detailed and unsparing (mistakes abound!) examination of the presentation of Arabisms in French dictionaries. Finally, in a refreshing contrast to thepresent obsession with Anglicisms, Mariagrazia Margarito provides a panorama on Italianisms, which were once similarly vilified, in current French dictionaries. University of Alabama Michael D. Picone Songe du Vieux Pelerin. By Philippe de Mezieres. Trans, by Joel Blanchard. (Agora) Paris: Pocket. 2008. 1002 pp. 13.60. ISBN 978-2-266-15711-7. On page 908 of themodern French translation of Philippe deMezieres's important political allegory Songe du Vieux Pelerin (1386-89) the author states that he is keeping things short because in general great lords today prefer short books. The irony of this statement is not lost on the translator, Joel Blanchard, who adds a laconic footnote: 'sic'. This note tells us much about the inherent sympathy and at the same time the critical distance that Blanchard maintains towards this prolix medieval writer. Blanchard's excellent translation (supplemented by explanatory notes and an updated bibliography) comes at a moment of revival of interest in themultifaceted works of this latemedieval soldier, diplomat, and royal adviser. Philippe's long life (1327-1405) coincided with major changes in the political and spiritual landscape of Europe and theNear East, and he contributed his ideas in such diverse areas as ideals of sainthood linked to the crusades, spiritualmarriage, and political theory.He also devised a detailed Rule fora new order of chivalry. The Songe, addressed to theyoung French king Charles VI, is an extremely complicated allegory centred on a long voyage undertaken by Queen Truth in the company of MLR, 105.2, 2010 553 Ardent Desir (Philippe's alter ego) and many allegorical ladies in order to find a place worthy of receiving theQueen's forgeof'bons besants' (good money). Travel ling throughmost of Europe (torn apart by theHundred Years War and theGreat Schism) and other regions, the company concludes that no place ismorally pure enough to receive the forge. In order tomake France worthy, theQueen begins to instructCharles VI, also called the young Moses, in the art of good government. Structured by intricate allegorical constructs, such as the ship of France, a chariot with many parts, and amoral chessboard, the topics treated range from fiscal, eco nomic, and judicial issues to religious instruction, the condemnation of astrology, and crusading projects. Blanchard isdoing an excellent job in rendering Philippe's extremely involved ideas in clear modern French and thusmaking this important text available to awider audience. He is also preparing a new critical edition of the Songe thatwill replace the seriously flawed edition by G.W. Coopland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969). University of Pittsburgh Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski Les Croises en Orient: la representation de Vespace dans le cycle de la croisade. By Pascal Peron. Paris: Champion. 2008. 604 pp. 105. ISBN 978-2-7453 1689-9...

Inside the Writer's Studio: Jean-Philippe Toussaint's Mes bureaux: Luoghi dove scrivo

JEAN-PHILIPPE Toussaint's Mes bureaux: Luoghi dove scrivo is a little-known book by a relatively well-known author. None of the scholarly literature acknowledges its existence, Toussaint's publisher the Editions de Minuit does not include it in Toussaint's bibliography, and the national libraries of France and Belgium do not own a copy of the text. (1) This lacuna is particularly significant given that Toussaint has been a prominent figure on the French literary scene since the publication of his first novel La salle de bain in 1985. The novel was a commercial and critical success, selling 80,000 copies during its first year of publication and provoking critics to speak of a nouveau roman. (2) Since this auspicious debut, Toussaint's writing has continued to receive considerable critical attention. In 2005, Toussaint gained institutional recognition by winning the prix Medicis for the novel Fuir. Paradoxically, while Fuir was thrust into the limelight for having won Toussaint the prix Medicis, Toussaint's other book published in 2005--Mes bureaux--was ignored by nearly all critics. (3) While the text may have been overlooked due to its unusual form and content--Mes bureaux is an eclectic arrangement of prose, photographs, and drawings that take the reader inside many of the places where Toussaint has written--more likely the book owes its obscurity to its curious publication history. To begin with, Minuit, Toussaint's editor, did not publish it. In fact, Mes bureaux was not even published in France. Instead, it was printed and distributed by a small Venetian publisher--Amos Edizioni--for the very logical reason that the text is, oddly enough, in Italian. The Italian translation of an unpublished French manuscript, Mes bureaux is, indeed, an exceptional book. That Amos Edizioni printed only one thousand copies for distribution means that it is also a rare one. The text is also remarkable in that unlike Toussaint's other books which have been translated into thirty languages from Galician to Japanese (Toussaint, La bibliotheque 16), Mes bureaux has appeared in only one language. It is as if the book has been, quite literally, lost in translation. The book's material elusiveness echoes the text itself, which walks a fine line between the opposing yet enmeshed preoccupations of intimacy and evasion, a balancing act that characterizes Toussaint's production more generally. From the publication of his first novel La salle de bain to his most recent novel (at the time of writing this essay) Fuir--the titles of which gesture toward the dual concerns of intimacy and evasion--Toussaint has explored the limits and possibilities of intimacy, both at the level of story and of discourse. Toussaint continues this investigation with Mes bureaux, albeit from a distinctly autobiographical perspective. (4) The text offers the reader a rare glimpse inside the writer's studio, giving a behind the scenes look at the diverse yet ordinary spaces where Toussaint has written. Mes bureaux constitutes an exercise in--and a meditation on--intimacy: it offers intimate details about Toussaint's writing process and production, it acknowledges and privileges the influence of his family on his writing, and it explores certain intimacies between fiction and non-fiction as well as between word and image. The word bureau--the point of departure for the text--is a polyvalent term that the Tresor de la langue francaise delineates as having both intimate and non-intimate dimensions: 1. Table, souvent couverte d'un tissu de bure, ou d'une autre matiere protectrice, generalement munie de tiroirs ou de casiers, entouree d'une ou plusieurs chaises ou fauteuils, oU l'on ecrit, manie des papiers classes ou a classer 2. Piece privee ou officielle oU est installee cette table; lieu, etablissement oU s'effectue, generalement selon un horaire fixe, un travail regulier retribue, de nature plutot intellectuelle 3. …

Validating choices: Texts in the <i>Trésor de la Langue Française</i>

The Tresor de la Langue Francaise (TLF) database was designed, and texts chosen for inclusion in it, in the late 1950s. This paper evaluates the choices of texts made by the TLF committee in the light of a contemporary encyclopaedia of French literature and of subsequent published research in the field of French literature, provided by the MLA (Modern Language Association) online bibliography. Spearman?s rank correlation coefficient, and outlier analysis based on Mahalanobis distance evaluate similarities in the sets of data. The conclusion is that the choices made in the mid-twentieth century were a reasonable reflection of scholarly interests both at the time the database was constituted, and subsequently up to the present. The method described in this paper is applicable to the evaluation of other full-text databases.

Pierre Goldman and the Beginnings of jeune litterature juive

Very few Jewish writers of the twentieth century have enjoyed a reception comparable to that of the political activist, self-styled guerrilla, gangster, and author Pierre Goldman. In 1979, the assassination of the thirty-five year old Goldman by members of a right-wing commando provoked an outcry from the general public and prompted a reevaluation of the dangers of anti-Semitism among French Jews. The Marxist critic Regis Debray and the Jewish writer Helene Cixous responded to Goldman's slaying by devoting entire books to the question of how his life and death came to challenge the very foundation of the grande nation. The novelist Catherine Axelrad suggested in her novel La Varsovienne (1990) that the circumstances of Goldman's murder--his killers had never been found and remained at large--enabled the extreme Left to offer quasi-national funerals for the revolution. More than 15,000 people attended his funeral, among them Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Samuel Beckett, Yves Montand, and many of the Jewish student leaders who never had gained Goldman's support. (1) For many of his peers, the killing of the Jewish enfant terrible brought the issue of their own status and safety as outspoken Jews to the forefront. The journalist Luc Rosenzweig--a colleague of Goldman at Liberation--took the event as incentive to conduct a series of interviews with young Jews, which he later published as La France juive, a title sardonically alluding to Edouard Drumont's notorious anti-Semite pamphlet La France from 1886. According to Rosenzweig, the hors-la-loi Goldman became a martyr for those who, facing the choice between Judaism (particularism) and the University (universalism), chose the latter. (2) Rosenzweig's collection of interviews came to stand as powerful homage to Goldman, not as a political extremist, but as a persecuted Jew whose death told the story of France's inability to render justice to its Jewish citizens. In his preface, Rosenzweig, the son of German communists, wrote: En tuant Pierre Goldman, ses assassins, quels qu'ils soient, ont tente de mettre un terme definitif a une histoire que la France traine comme un boulet: celle de la lachete collective d'un peuple qui accepte d'envoyer 'ses' juifs a la mort. (3) In the first survey of the emerging jeune litterature juive presented in 1982, the literary critic Lazare Bitoun explained the impact of Goldman's life and memoirs by pointing to Goldman's rejection of the discourse of victimization. Instead of using the israelite et sa connotation aigre-douce de la langue francaise, Goldman had had the courage to replace it le mot Juif qui revendique et affirme une difference. (4) The opening line from his autobiography Souvenirs obscurs d'un Juif polonais ne en France (published in 1975), which contained in condensed form his historical, generational, and biographical point of departure, was canonized by his peers and the authors following him: suis ne le 22 juin 1944 a Lyon, en France, en France occupee par les nazis (longtemps j'ai pense que j'etais ne et mort le 22 juin 1944).... Je n'avais pas l'age de combattre, mais, a peine en vie, j'eus l'age de pouvoir perir dans les crematoires de Pologne (27). It is this line that Henry Raczymow uses almost ten years later as an epigraph to his novel Un cri sans voix, in which he describes the lethal fate suffered decades after the Shoah by a young Jewish woman whose identification with the resistance fighters from the Warsaw ghetto ultimately leads her to commit suicide in 1982. Another Jewish writer of Goldman's generation, Myriam Anissimov, dedicated one of her books to Goldman. Even authors of Sephardic background, such as the Algerian-born Jean-Luc Allouche, turned to Goldman as a Jew who --because he could never be assimilated--embodied the absolute stranger, the lueur d'une derniere fraternite desesperee. (5) Allouche had remembered in his autobiography how he, a Maghrebi-born Jew, had felt quite vexed by a slogan celebrating solidarity with the student leader Danny Cohn-Bendit during the student protests: . …

Cultures, Ideologies, and the Dictionary: Studies in Honor of Ladislav Zgusta

Contents: B.B. Kachru, Ladislav Zgusta: Illinois Years. - Bibliography of Publications by Ladislav Zgusta. - B.B. Kachru, Introduction. - I: Contextualizing Culture: D. Bartholomew, Otomi Culture from Dictionary Illustrative Sentences. - P. Corbin, Un Film, Deux Linguistes et Quelques Dictionnaires. Un Regard Particulier sur Simple Mortel de Pierre Jolivet. - J.A. Fishman, Dictionaries as Culturally Constructed and as Culture-Constructing: Reciprocity View as Seen from Yiddish Sources. - F.J. Hausmann, Allusions Litteraires et Citations Historiques Dans le Tresor de la Langue Francaise. - L.F. Lara, Towards a Theory of the Cultural Dictionary. - W.P. Lehmann, Spindle or the Distaff. - Y. Malkiel, Principal Categories of Learned Words. - E.A. Nida, Lexical Cosmetics. - II: Lexicography in Historical Context: F. Karttunen, Roots of Sixteenth-Century Mesoamerican Lexicography. - T.B.I. Creamer, Current State of Chinese Lexicography. - D.A. Kibbee, 'New Historiography', History of French and 'Le Bon Usage' in Nicot's Dictionary (1606). - N. Dinh-Hoa, On Chi-nam Ngoc-am Giai-nghia: An Early Chinese-Vietnamese Dictionary. - G. Stein, Chaucer and Lydgate in Palsgrave's Lesclarcissement. - III: Ideology, Norms and Language Use: M.A. Ezquerra,Political Considerations on Spanish Dictionaries. - D.M.T.Cr. Farina, Marrism and Soviet Lexicography. - C. Marello, Florence like Athens and Italian like Greek: An Ideologically Biased Theme in the Forewords of Some Italian Thesauri of the 19th Century. - A. Wierzbicka, Dictionaries and Ideologies: Three Examples from Eastern Europe. - R.D. Zorc, Philippine Regionalism versus Nationalism and the Lexicographer. - IV: Pluricentricity and Ethnocentricism: J. Algeo, British and American Biases in English Dictionaries. - C.W. Kim, One Language, Two Ideologies, and Two Dictionaries: Case of Korean. - B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, Worldview and Verbal Senses. - C. Poirier, De la Soumission a la Prise de Parole: Le Cheminement de la Lexicographie au Quebec. - J. Whitcut, Taking it for Granted: Some Cultural Preconceptions in English Dictionaries. - V: Dictionaries across Languages and Cultures: Y. Kachru, Lexical Exponents of Cultural Contact: Speech Act Verbs in Hindi-English Dictionaries. - R.J. Steiner, Bilingual Dictionary in Cross-Cultural Contexts. - VI: Language Dynamics vs. Prescriptivism: A.P. Cowie, Learner's Dictionary in a Changing Cultural Perspective. - R.H. Gouws, Dictionaries and the Dynamics of Language Change. - F.E. Knowles, Dictionaries for the People or for People? - VII: Language Learner as the Consumer: G.M. Dalgish, Learners' Dictionaries: Keeping the Learner in Mind. - VIII: Structuring Semantics: F.F.M. Dolezal, Dictionary as Philosophy: Reconstructing the Meaning of Our Father. - M. Ritchie Key, Meaning as Derived from Word Formation in South American Indian Languages. - J.P. Louw, How Many Meanings to a Word? - IX: Ethical Issues and Lexicologists' Biases: D.L. Gold, When Religion Intrudes into Etymology (On The Word: Dictionary that Reveals the Hebrew Source of English). - T. McArthur, Culture-Bound and Trapped by Technology: Centuries of Bias in the Making of Wordbooks. - X: Terminology across Cultures: Z. Polacek, Amharic Lexicography and the Dynamics of Sociopolitical Terminology. - G.O. Richter, Grammatical Indications in Chinese Monolingual Dictionaries. - XI: Afterword: B.B. Kachru, Directions and Challenges.

Le Traitement des Corpus Textuels a I'lnstitut National de la Langue Francaise (CNRS)

The Institut national de la langue francaise, or INaLF, works in two closely related areas: text databases and their various applications, products of lexicography and studies in lexicology, more particularly FRANTEXT database, the world's largest repository of French quotations, and computerizing the Tresor de la langue francaise, carried out in collaboration with the Bibliotheque nationale de France

Change points: ageing and content words in large a database

Time-series analysis is applied to the most frequently occurring vocabulary relating to the concept of ageing in the Tresor de la Langue Francaise database. The chosen time-series method is the multiple regression model (sometimes called 'two-phase regression' or 'switching regression') of change-point analysis. The results produced by this method suggest possible interpretations of attitudes towards ageing in France during the period under study (1789-1964). The applicability of the multiple regression model of change-point analysis to literary texts is suggested.

Le programme d'informatisation du <em>Dictionaire critique de la langue française</em> de l'abbé Jean-François Féraud (1787)

After several years of research work and publications on the lexicographic output of Abbe Jean-Francois Feraud, GEHLF (Groupe d'tude en Histoire de la Langue Francaise), TELMOO (Textes Lyriques Medievaux d'Oc et d'Oil), and the Morin-Dagenais research team (University of Montreal) joined together to create a database of the Dictionaire critique de la langue francaise (Marseille: Mossy, 1787).This paper first briefly mentions the reasons motivating this project and the practical limits to which it is subjected. It then sets out a typology of the DC revealing the main syntactic regularities of its entries and showing how these regularities allow us to create a motivated reference system. It also discusses the problems of reproducing typographic characteristics of the original (such as italics, capitals, etc.) and justifies the choices made for the purposes of the project.Results that can be expected from the computerized version of the dictionary are then briefly examined, as well as the system of codes to be keyed in along with the capture of the text. In the latter regard, a choice was made not to overburden the input operation in order to minimize the risk of typing errors.Finally, the problems raised by the encoding of the DC's usage labels and notes, which constitute the dictionary's main interest, are discussed. It is shown that because these notes are not standardized, the provision of a search tool enabling the user to explore, according to individual needs, the extremely variable and often discontinuous formulations used by Feraud is a more realistic approach than trying to force the text to fit a rigid encoding scheme.

Ce que Lacan retient de Damourette et Pichon : l'exemple de la négation

Michel Arrive, : « Damourette, Pichon et Lacan : effets d'une rencontre » The aim of this paper is the description of the connections between the linguistic theory of the negation in Damourette and Pichon's Essai de grammaire de la Langue francaise and the analysis of the subject in Jacques Lacan's Ecrits and Seminaire. For Damourette and Pichon, there is no really negation in french, but the combination of the discordance (the word ne) and the forclusion (pas, point, jamais, etc.). For Lacan, the discordance and the forclusion are operations of the subject of unconsciousness.

Conflict and Language Planning in Quebec.

The aim of this multidisciplinary book is to present a coherent picture of Quebec's efforts to make French the only official language of Quebec society through the adoption in 1977 of the Charter of the French Language. Also known as Bill 101, the Charter has been well received in francophone Quebec but is still viewed as quite a controversial measure in the anglophone communities of Quebec and Canada. This book provides many answers as to why Bill 101 was implemented by the Quebec Government but it raises numerous questions when it comes time to evaluate the impact of the Charter on different sectors of Quebec society. For instance has Bill 101 achieved its goal of establishing the use of French in Quebec and if so at what cost? Has the Office de la langue francaise, the government body in charge of implementing Bill 101, succeeded in its task of enforcing the Francization of Quebec business firms? Whose interests has the passage of Bill 101 really served in Quebec society and does the Charter promote the cause of Quebec Independence? What have been the effects of Bill 101 on French/English relations in the Province and what strategic options are open to Quebec anglophones faced as they are with a drop from majority to minority status? Finally, how do the education provisions of Bill 101 dealing with Quebec anglophone minorities compare with those found for francophone minorities across Anglo-Canada? Each chapter of this edited book deals with one or more of these questions. As a case study of language planning in a modern society, the issues raised in this volume should be of concern not only to Quebec and Canadian readers but also to all those involved in fields such as political science, sociology, public policy, education, sociolinguistics, language planning and social psychology. If this volume helps readers better appreciate the issues raised by language planning efforts such as Bill 101 in Quebec, then it will have achieved its purpose. Above all, this volume shows that as with other aspects of human activity language too can be planned.

Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis

TH1OSE WHO WOULD CODIFY THE MEANINGS OF WORDS fight a losing battle, for words, like the ideas and things they are mneant to signify, have a history. Neither Oxford dons nor the Academie FranUaise have been entirely able to stem the tide, to capture and fix mneanings free the play huinan invention and imagination. Mary Wortley Montagu added bite to her witty denunciation of the fair (my only consolation for being that has been the assurance never being mnarried to any one among them) by deliberately misusing the grammatical reference. ' Through the ages, people have made figurative allusions by employing gramnmnatical termns to evoke traits character or sexuality. For example, the usage offered by the Dictionnaire de la langue francaise in 1876 was, On ne sait de quel genre il est, s'il est mile ou femelle, se dit d'un homnme tres-cache, dont on ne connait pas les sentiments.2 And Gladstone made this distinction in 1878: Athene has nothing sex except the gender, nothing the woman except the form.3 Most recently-too recently to find its way into dictionaries or the Encyclopedia the Social Sciences-feminists have in a imore literal and serious vein begun to use gender as a way referring to the social organization the relationship between the sexes. The connection to grammar is both explicit and full unexamined possibilities. Explicit because the grammatical usage involves formal