French Linguist Research Articles

The French Language Today: A Linguistic Introduction (review)

Reviewed by: The French language today: A linguistic introductionby Adrian Battye, Marie-Anne Hintze, and Paul Rowlett Gladys E. Saunders The French language today: A linguistic introduction. 2nd edn. By Adrian Battye, Marie-Anne Hintze, and Paul Rowlett. London: Routledge, 2000. Pp. xiv, 345. ISBN: 0415198380. $27.99. This textbook originally appeared in 1992, under the title The French language today(no subtitle). The second edition was actually prepared by only Hintze and Rowlett, as Battye, the first-named author died in 1993. The goals of this second edition are basically the same as those of its predecessor: to provide undergraduate students with a comprehensive description of the linguistic structure of Modern French and to place this description within both a historical and a social context (x). Rather than presenting a catalogue of facts in the style of a reference or teaching grammar, the authors have aimed to highlight patterns, generalizations, and explanations in a more marked way than was the case in the first edition (x). A number of changes in the presentation of the material have been made, but the basic structure of the book remains unaltered: five chapters, each covering a different topic, viz., the historical development of Standard French (Ch.1), the sound system (Ch. 2), word-formation (Ch. 3), sentence patterns (Ch. 4), and geographical and stylistic varieties (Ch. 5). The authors have taken great pains to make the book more ‘user-friendly’, especially in response to comments from readers of the first edition. They have added several new features including a glossary of linguistic terms (313–25), a subject index (339–45), a slightly differently formatted and expanded bibliography (326–38), and a ‘Further reading’ guide at the end of each chapter. The table of contents has been improved upon as well and now contains not only the main chapter headings, but also subsection headings. The subtitle, ‘A linguistic introduction’ adds specificity to the main title and makes clearer the authors’ vision of their book: as a ‘text on the linguistics of French’ and not ‘a potted grammar or an introduction to linguistics with exemplification from French’ (x). The new edition contains subtler changes as well: the authors’ style is far lighter and more engaging; some materials have been unobtrusively rearranged within the chapters; and the statistical information, particularly in Ch. 1, has been updated. In spite of their splendid efforts, the authors have not produced an error-free volume. Ch. 2, for example, contains a number of infelicities: Table 2.18 (91), a new feature, intended to summarize the distribution of [o]/[ɔ] in open and closed syllables, is incomplete, confused, or inexact. The fourth row of the table fails to show that [ɔ] may occur also in nonfinalclosed syllables (as in docteur[dɔk.tœr]). Still on the same page, and just beneath the table, [o] is mistakenly called a mid-lowvowel. Novice students of French linguistics are likely to be confused by the authors’ unexplained and inconsistent use of ‘E’, for e-muet[ə] (e.g. rEvenir‘to return’ (85): why have they used ‘E’only in the first syllable?). In the discussion on vowel harmony (93), the mid-low vowel [œ] is mistakenly referred to as mid-high: ‘the front rounded mid-high vowel [œ] tends to close to [ø] if it precedes [ø]’ (93). Putting aside minor problems such as these, the second edition is clearly an improvement on what was already an informative and well thought-out textbook. Those interested in making the study of French linguistics more appealing or wishing to have under one cover a comprehensive introduction to the [End Page 645]French language, from the perspective of modern linguistics, will do well to consider this fine volume. Gladys E. Saunders University of Virginia Copyright © 2003 Linguistic Society of America

Historical Romance Linguistics: The Renaissance of a Discipline

HISTORICAL ROMANCE LINGUISTICS: THE RENAISSANCE OF A DISCIPLINE Roger Wright University of Liverpool I am delighted to accept the invitation to comment in this Critical Cluster of essays, but wish to express immediate bewilderment at the proposed title of "Death of a Discipline?". Even with the questionmark , this idea is completely misconceived. In fact, this discipline has been recently undergoing radical renovation, and is now one of the most interesting and vibrant fields in the whole Humanities Research area. There are two kinds of Historical Romance Linguistics, as opposed to Historical Hispanic, Italian or French linguistics. One kind involves the comparative analysis of two or more of the Romance languages, which is often illuminating; for example, as Tom Cravens (2002) has shown, studying together linguistic developments in Corsica and in the Pyrenees can illuminate changes in both areas, since an analysis which seems to be possible in one place is thereby potentially a candidate for consideration in another. This kind of comparison has always been practised; although the results are not necessarily historically significant in every case, the technique remains not only valid but regularly undertaken, for example in the papers presented at the annual Linguistic Symposia on Romance Languages in the United States. The other kind of Historical Romance Linguistics concerns the study of the language of the period when it seems reasonable to consider that there was one Romance language, before it split into the different Romance languages we know now; and in recent years, this field of research has been revolutionized. Studying the history of Romance (as opposed to the history of an individual Romance language) inevitably takes us back into the "Late Latin" period. This is inevitable because every scholar accepts now that there was no sudden change from Latin to Romance; it is not the La corónica 31.2 (Spring, 2003): 127-34 128Roger WrightIm corónica 31.2, 2003 case that everybody went to bed one night speaking Latin and woke up the next day speaking Romance. There is, therefore, a transitional period, and the more that this period is studied the longer it turns out to be. Scholars thought, once upon a time, that it was not only convenient but rational to apportion different linguistic phenomena to either Latin or Romance, and managed thereby to preserve two separate fields of study. For example, distinctively long and short vowels, synthetic passive morphology, future tenses, neuter nouns, nouns used without articles, genitive cases and accusative + infinitive constructions belonged in this perspective to Latin but not to Romance; the use ofse with passive meaning, of future tenses formed with an auxiliary , the use of articles derived from ii.i.e or ipse, the use of de plus an apparently accusative form of the noun, and of quod (later que) + finite verb constructions after verbs of saying, belonged in this perspective to Romance and not to Latin. This view had the merit of being clear, but the disadvantage of being false, since many (perhaps all) ofthe supposed distinctively "Romance " features do in fact turn up in texts that look like Latin. Even for those who instinctively prefer to keep the areas of study apart (Late Latin being studied by Latinists and Early Romance being studied by Romanists, even though the two are studying the language of exactly the same speakers), it has become clear that not everything changed at the same time. It was never a case of one language turning into another; the pronunciation seems to have developed earlier than the inflectional morphology did, for example, and even within the morphological developments the ablative case seems to have disappeared from general use before the neuter category of nouns did. But furthermore, in each individual case it is now clear that there was a long transitional period; for example, such as when the old one-word future tenses (such as facies) and the new future constructions formed with HABEO (such as faceré habes, which developed into harás) both coincided in the speech community, just as the future tenses and the voy a constructions both co-exist as two acceptable variants in Modern Spanish, without belonging to two different languages. There have been two highly salutary...

Social and Stylistic Variation in Spoken French: A Comparative Approach by Nigel Armstrong (review)

956 Reviews 'je me sens aussi a l'aise [. . .] qu'un scaphandrier sur un pur sang', I would supply the snappier Scouse 'as comfortable as a cow on a bike'. Foley rightly mocks Dylan Thomas and his probably hypocritical and apocryphal statement that 'comparing one thing with another is like comparing Milton to Stilton'. His dictionary is a splendidly researched, thought-out, and organized work of linguistic passion, of whose author we could not say: 'tu divagues comme une ablette etourdie'. (Jules Renard). I hope this book will not be 'as popular as a fart in a space-suit' (Billy Connolly). It fills in plenteously the large gaps left by standard dictionaries. University of Reading Walter Redfern Social and Stylistic Variation in Spoken French: A Comparative Approach. By Nigel Armstrong. (Impact: Studies in Language and Society, 8) Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 2001. x + 278pp. ?88.49. As the first real synthesis of work undertaken in France within the 'Labovian' or quantitative paradigm normally associated with English-speaking urban studies, this book is timely and welcome. Nigel Armstrong's volume is 'comparative' in two senses. Firstly, it draws on material from a number of sources, including the author's own published work. But the book's principal interest lies in its use of French data, at successive levels of linguistic analysis, to cast doubt on putative sociolinguistic 'universals', largely drawn from studies of English. Fairly recent assimilation to the national language has gone hand in hand in France with a uniquely normative approach to its teaching. Therefore, Armstrong argues, apart from a very clear north-south divide, distinct regional or urban accents simply have not yet had time to develop, in contrast to the UK (and, arguably, Francophone Belgium). So while it is often claimed that French speakers are sensitive to regional but not social class features, data from evaluative tests conducted in Rennes and Nancy in fact suggest rather the reverse. Another axiom of sociolinguistic research, namely that intraspeaker variation (style-shifting by individuals) is generally less marked than interspeaker variation (speech differences between social groups), is similarly challenged in Chapter 3: French seems extraordinarily rich in anomalous 'hyperstyle' variables, for which precisely the opposite pattern obtains. Data from interrogative and negative constructions, reviewed in Chapter 4, also defy AngloSaxon expectations, by demonstrating grammatical variation of a 'quantitative' kind normally associated with phonology (that is, social groups use the same variants to differing degrees), rather than the 'polar' pattern, in which groups show nearcategorical use of a single variant, which is familiar from English studies. Armstrong concludes from these chapters that 'French goes against the intuitive notion that pronunciation will tend to be more resistant to standardisation than grammar'. An anomaly of a differentkind is optional liaison (the presence or absence of a linking consonant in, for example, les trains-(z)-arrivent\ which is unusual in that it shows increased rather than reduced variability as expected among higher social groups: this variable is treated separately in Chapter 5. Finally, in Chapter 6 Armstrong offers some tentative conclusions regarding lexical variation?the domain generally seen as least amenable to the Labovian approach?noting that patterns of correlation with extralinguistic (e.g. age, sex, class) and stylistic factors seem much sharper than those seen in phonology. Armstrong is acutely aware of the difficulties here, however, and the chapter closes with some valuable comments on sociolinguistic methodology. The style of this work is admirably clear and accessible throughout, and focused introductions and summaries are provided for each chapter. While this is one habit one would not wish to discourage, the author can at times be criticized for oversummarizing : 2.5-2.9 are all 'summary and discussion' sections of sorts and to some MLR, 97.4, 2002 957 extent overlap; likewise, sections 7.2-7.5 ofthe final chapter ('Summary and Conclusion ') offerfurther reflections on points already summarized in Chapters 2-6. The occasional want of structural economy, however, in no way lessens the importance of this work, which French linguistics has been needing for some time. It will soon become a standard in its field, and interest specialists and undergraduates alike. University of Kent David Hornsby Fictions of Identity in Medieval...

Komunikacinė dramos sklaida ir jos socialumas

The paper analyses the communicational aspects in drama and discusses the interaction between drama, theatre and society. The expansion of performance theory and theatre semiotics has changed the emphasís of dramatic theory since 1970's toward new concepts of communication in drama. This article gives particular attention to the semiotics ideas of the relationship between drama and mis en scene and investigates the role of the audience in the context of contemporary drama and theatre studies. The traditional model of communication from Aristotle and Plato, was understand as a simple conveyance of information or as the objective transmission of contents from sender to receiver, creating the intersubjective relationship that are the foundation of society. Recent critical practice and investigations by theorists such as Patrice Pavis, Marco De Marinis, Anne Ubersfeld, Kleir Elam has led to the radically different ways of the communicational concepts. The starting point of research into theatrical communication was the French linguist Georges Mounin's (1969) denial of its possibility. Thus the main task of the theatre semioticians was to find a Specific model of theatrical communication. M. De Marinis argued, that the complexity and multiplicity of codes guarantees that a certain degree of comprehension (and communication either) is always achieved in the theatre. Mise en scene P. Pavis defines not as the transformation of drama text into performance, but rather as their confrontation. The process of drama's concretizations series from 'textual' to 'receptive' concretization) is always concemed with the social context and cultural conditions surrounding the audience. The changing social context permits infinite number of the same drama texts readings. Mis en scene can be understood as the “social practice”. Thus communication theory with the attitude toward sociology gives more open concept of drama. The task of the audience nowadays is not to look for the “true” meaning in dramatic performance, but to create his own meaning in the process of communication. It means, that the “manipulation power of drama” as the ground for traditional theatrical communication is rejected. The perceptual studies - the “pleasure” of reading and viewing, the deconstruction of meaning - gives new conceptions of communicational and social aspects of drama.

A verbal analysis of nonstandard English.

Abstract Linguistics has traditionally been a field dedicated to the study of the systematization of signs. This was the niche originally carved out by the French linguist de Saussure. Recent trends have questioned this narrow focus of the field. Arguments about the need to study language and thinking in context have existed since the days of Vico's extension of Descartes and were later highlighted in the Skinner and Chomsky debate. The argument for context-based analysis has resurfaced in current linguistic arguments, most notably in the subfield of sociolinguistics. With this increased focus on context, cross-fertilization between behavior analytic thinkers and those in linguistic fields previously denied to behavior analysts may now be open. Behavior analysis has much to offer the current field of sociolinguistics by providing a plausible micro-model of how political and economic factors select for various linguistic (i.e. autoclitic) forms such as dialect and accents. These autoclitic forms develop into overlearned patterns of responding and are not easy to extinguish. The early social conditions that select for the retention of such patterns are traceable from their form. This tracing tactic will be applied, using discourse analysis methodology, to identifying the functional and structural characteristics of Ebonics that qualify it as a distinct language and determine its value in the linguistic market. ********** Linguistics was always the wrong field for verbal behavior, since it is a tradition that has always been married to langue, a systematization of symbols (Irvine, 1989; Lee, 1984). Skinner (1957) staunchly opposed this tradition when he stated no form of verbal behavior is significant apart from its controlling variables(p. 33 1). Recently, the separation of signs and the material world has received a number of challenges within the field of linguistics (Irvine). Irvine champions a model of economic and political selection as the determinant of linguistic behavior. Irvine has urged linguists to move past the study of culturally determined signs and systems. This renewed interest in the study of social interaction by linguists increases prospects, severely limited after Chomsky's review (Place, 1983), for successful cross- fertilizations between the experimental analysis of verbal behavior and other areas in the study of language. A cross fertilization between Skinner's (1957) micro-model of verbal behavior and the more mainstream macro-models of sociolinguisitcs is presented and then applied to the current Ebonics debate. HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF LANGUAGE STUDIES In the eighteenth century, Descarte questioned the nature of the universe by reducing it to the basics of what could be known from logic and introspection. This approach led to his famous dictum Cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am). Through this rational line of reasoning and logic, Descarte argued, the world can be known. In 1704, Giambattista Vico extended Decarte's position by arguing that not only do objects not exit independently from thought, but that the nature of thought can only be elucidated by an examination of the evolution of language and social customs for the group (Vico, 1948). Some two hundred years later, de Saussure distinguished between the rationalistic study of linguistic forms (i.e. the study of the historical cumulation of language) as synchrony and the study of language in context (i.e. the study of contemporary events) as diachrony (de Saussure, 1983). This view later evolved into its modern distinctions of (diachrony) and parole (synchrony). The rationalist line of Descartes continued to study langue or language. In this tradition, language is studied as passive, receptive, collective, and homogeneous. De Saussure carved this out as the niche area for the field of linguistics and modern linguistics continues in this tradition. The emphasis is primarily on what make language a unique system and separates it from other sign systems. …

Tense and Aspect in Indo-European Languages: Theory, Typology, Diachrony (review)

Reviewed by: Tense and aspect in Indo-European languages: Theory, typology, diachrony by John Hewson, Vit Bubenik Benji Wald Tense and aspect in Indo-European languages: Theory, typology, diachrony. By John Hewson and Vit Bubenik. (Current issues in linguistic theory 145.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1997. Pp. xii, 403. This is an important study, both for the conceptual framework it proposes for the analysis of tense and aspect and for the wealth of data it discusses. As stated by the authors in a preface, the volume is the outgrowth of a PhD seminar. This accounts for the comprehensiveness of the survey undertaken of the various Indo-European languages and also for the somewhat speculative quality of some of the analyses. By this I mean that it is an excellently integrated and coordinated effort involving many scholars rather than the product of extensive refinement and readjustment of analyses by a few scholars over a long period of research. The clarity of the general exposition far outweighs the residual unclarities in some specific analyses. Ch. 1 establishes the tense-aspect descriptive framework, called ‘chronogenesis’, positing basic cognitive notions of time relations and event perspectives and how they map onto various morphological systems. Some innovative terminology is used, based on the tense/aspect theory of the early twentieth century French linguist Gustave Guillaume (applied to Classical Greek and Latin), but some of the unclarities and incoherencies of that theory are eliminated. While the framework is tailored for IE languages, its explicit cognitive underpinnings and the method of mapping, as proposed by the authors, imply that the framework is not limited to any particular language family. Therefore, the interest of the work goes beyond IE to TA systems in general. Nevertheless, since the theory is systematically applied exclusively to IE in the book, it is within the analysis of the variety of systems in IE that its more general applicability can be appreciated here. In this vein, the framework is successful in allowing revealing comparisons across IE languages and avoiding confusions of traditional terminology applied to those languages, e.g. preterit, aorist, imperfect, etc.—used differently for different languages. With regard to utility for cross-linguistic typological comparisons, the ensuing Chs. 2–12 are organized into larger sections; (A) ‘Languages with the original three-aspect system’ (Ch. 2, Ancient Greek; Ch. 3, Vedic and Classical Sanskrit); (B) ‘Languages with the original present-aorist system and innovative perfect’ (Ch. 4, Classical Armenian; Ch. 5, Old Church Slavic; Ch. 6, Albanian; Ch. 7, Tocharian); (C) ‘Languages with a three-tense system’ (Ch. 8, Baltic; Ch. 9, Celtic; Ch. 10, Latin); (D) ‘Languages which merged the original aorist and perfect into preterit’ (Ch. 11, Germanic: Gothic, Old English; Ch. 12, Anatolian: Hittite). Note that the traditional terms featured in the section headings are used interchangeably with innovative terminology in the text, e.g. ‘aorist’ = ‘perfective past’, probably as a convenient habit in addressing IEists. The above section headings also presuppose a reconstruction of the Proto-IE tense-aspect system, e.g. with three aspects. The book does not explicitly reconstruct the entire system but suggests basic parts of it on the basis of the trajectories of the attested historical systems. Sometimes I got the impression that the authors are figuring out the PIE system as they write, e.g. hesitation in whether certain aspects of the Hittite system are innovative or conservative (243ff). This is understandable given the huge amount of data involved in PIE TA reconstruction, and it is even helpful to understanding to see the process of reconstruction carried out rather than having a presentation of the results of that process with less attention paid to the problems encountered along the way. Incomplete programmatic observations include such matters as incipient ergativity in Tokharian, and the differences between aorist vs. perfect usage in the original (New Testament) Greek sources and Old Armenian translations (cf. the title of Section B given above). Section E, ‘Later developments’, contains Ch. 13, ‘From Ancient to Modern Greek’; Ch. 14, ‘Development of the modern Indic tense-aspect system’; Ch. 15, ‘Development of the Modern Slavic tense-aspect system’; Ch. 16, ‘Development of the Modern Iranian tense-aspect system’; Ch. 17, ‘From...

Chomsky et la linguistique fonctionnelle française : Relecture de Georges Mounin sur l’histoire de la linguistique au XXe siècle

This paper deals with one aspect of the complex relationship between Chomsky and French linguistics (specifically the French school of functional linguistics of André Martinet). The starting point is a well-known book published by Mounin on the history of linguistics in the twentieth century (La linguistique du XXe siècle, 1912), a book which still figures prominently in standard references on the evolution of the field. Retrospectively, when one examines Chomsky’s scientific production since the fifties, the condemnation of Chomsky’s work as thin on the ground or simply fashionable looks somewhat odd. Worse than that, a demonstration is offered that this book gave an inaccurate and distorted picture of Chomsky and his work at the time. Whenever facts can be checked, Mounin, a staunch disciple of André Martinet, can be shown to be misleading or plainly wrong. Sadly, an examination of the 1993 autobiography of André Martinet demonstrates that this anti-Chomskyan bias is hardly a new phenomenon and has continued throughout the twentieth century. To counterbalance the distorted views that I criticise, a reasonably comprehensive bibliography of Chomsky’s work is included in the paper as well as a synoptic view of Chomsky’s scientific career. 1 also take advantage of this paper to illustrate one of the insights of generative grammar (i.e. the need to formalise the open-endedness of language) with respect to English nominal compounds.

Poignant Relations by James Smith Allen (review)

Book Reviews27 1 vants, ils font exister les choses" (26)].Through these many sources, Larivière combats the false notion that only a few militant feminists from Quebec find linguistic feminization compelling. Specifically, the book responds to eight arguments. Most of them come from men, and mostly French men—particularly "'ces messieurs' de l'Académie" (112)—whom Larivière charges with a "messianic" attitude toward the language. However, she acknowledges the opposition of certain women, either because they feel powerless or because they enjoy reflected glory from their husbands' power, which the wives consider threatened by feminization. Larivière proceeds upon the following premise: "La langue a tout ce qu'il faut, grammaticalement parlant, pour féminiser les noms. . . " (30). Two ofher topics will serve as examples: 1) The use ofthe masculine as both specific and generic leaves a gaping hole in the language, obscures women's role, and can lead to absurdities of the following type: "L'homme est un mammifère; il allaite ses petits" (46; quoted from Thérèse Moreau, Le Langage n 'estpas neutre, 1991). T) The use ofthe masculine as a neuter can lead to syntactic impossibility, such as, "Le professeur Dupont est enceinte et il souffre constamment des nausées" (57). Larivière concludes that the arguments against feminization come from individuals lacking in linguistic knowledge, or derive from obvious "mauvaise foi," or perhaps a simple "bonne vieille misogynie camouflée" (117). She cites the outcry of"ex-garde des Sceaux français" Jacques Toubon on hearing "les droits de la personne," instead of "les droits de l'homme": "ce n'est pas du français" (46). Larivière would side with celebrated French linguist, Claude Hagège: ". . . les Français ne sont que les dépositaires, non les propriétaires exclusifs, du français" (Ross Steele, Susan St. Onge, Ronald St. Onge, La Civilisationfrançaise en évolution II, 1997: 342). Larivière's solution: one must "se faire l'oreille" (99). For Larivière, language, as a "produit social," (22) must evolve to reflect changing social realities. Women, in their new responsibilities, must become visible, audible—named. In a previous work, published electronically in 2000, Larivière has treated the how of the issue (Comment en finir avec la féminisation linguistique ou les mots pour la dire: www.00h00.com). Here, she has answered, so that no doubt remains, the question why. Now, if we could only find a way to get some of the "messianic" Cro-Magnons to read her book! Annabelle M. ReaOccidental College James Smith Allen. Poignant Relations. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2000. 270 Pages. ISBN: 0-8018-6204-3. $42.50 new ($17.50 used on amazon.com) Poignant Relations details the lives and writings ofthree unknown nineteenth -century French women: Marie-Sophie Leroyer de Chantepie, Geneviève Breton-Vaudroyer, and Céline Renooz-Muro. These women's discourses are 272Women in French Studies mixed (autobiography, diary, letters, novels, literary criticism and theoretical work in the sciences), and, Allen tells his readers, their lives are as paradoxically constituted by their writing and their refusal of"feminism" as their texts are at once subversively destabilizing and intended to create conscious selves. Allen suggests that their combination ofgenres offers concrete strategies for dealing with conflicting loyalties and interests that anticipate the more recent "discovery" ofwomen's style as mixed and relational. Allen's title ispolysémique: it implies both a sense oítouch and an indication of sensitivity. At the same time, it evokes stories related, and relayed, as well as the connections among the women and those close to them. He situates the women historically, socially, and culturally and sees them as educated individuals whose writing includes them in a level of French society that would otherwise have denied them any influence in public affairs. Allen links his subjects to contemporary feminist discourse through his discussion ofthe women writing themselves into agency, and through the notion of"the self-in-creation [that is] more important than the genre it assumes" (39). He further suggests that their form ofmixed-genre autobiography is best approached through the work of such theorists as Sheri Benstock and Shoshona Felman and the...

Études de linguistique française en Italie

Around forty Italian studies of French grammar running from the early 60s to 1997 are described in this Guide bibliographique. They are all undoubtedly noteworthy for their scientific interest, but in Italy the subject they deal with is in need of further exploration. Not only do such studies represent individual initiatives (no large common project has ever been carried out), they also take different approaches, which is inevitable in so far as grammar encompasses phonetics, lexicon, comparative analysis and teaching. In fact, the degree of diversity is not as high as one might expect. Only six trends are observable: pedagogic grammars, psychomechanical, pragmatic and énonciation-oriented studies, lexicon-grammars and manuals. In spite of this, the works in Schena’s Guide clearly show the evolution which the concept of grammar has undergone during the last three decades; research into meaning and the introduction of the human being into language have undermined the widely accepted priority that generativism and formalism give to syntax, since all levels — syntactic, semantic and pragmatic — are now treated as a sort of continuum which excludes any global model. The author’s aim is to present the key ideas of the studies mentioned above and to point out their innovative function in the Italian panorama of French linguistics.

Linguistic historiography: a survey with particular reference to French Linguistics at the turn of the century

A growing interest in both the history and the historiography of linguistics has in recent times been seen by many as an indication of the discipline's increasing maturity, despite the fact that in the opening sentence of his recent book (1998), Seuren laments the still insufficient volume of scholarship in this area. There was a boom in the publishing of histories of linguistics in the 1960s and early 1970s: the beginnings of a critical historiography were established, and journals and professional associations were founded. The 1990s saw a new wave of activity: apart from a plethora of edited volumes, several histories appeared and to the now established journals (Historiographia Linguistica, Histoire-Epistémologie-Langage) has been added another (Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, started in 1991). Among the histories are one-volume publications by Koerner and Asher (eds.) (1995), Malmberg (1991), Swiggers (1997) and Seuren (1998), as well as multi-volume editions: Lepschy (ed.) which appeared first in Italian (vol.1 in 1990), then in English (vol. 1 in 1994), Auroux, vol.1 in 1989, and Schmitter (1987), which is the first of a planned eight-volume series in German. A trilingual volume is scheduled to start appearing (Koerner, Auroux, Niederehe and Versteegh (eds.), in preparation). In all this, there have been many ‘persistent questions’ (to use a phrase from Koerner, 1995), but there have also been some shifts of emphasis. Unavoidably selective, this article will attempt to survey more recent work, referring back to older work for certain key points only (for earlier work, see Koerner, 1978b; Ayres-Bennett, 1987; Swiggers, 1987). As certain questions tend to recur, concerning, for example, the chronological versus the thematic, the descriptive versus the theoretical, or breadth versus depth of coverage, I shall try to characterise briefly a number of recent approaches, before examining certain key issues in greater detail. Finally, I shall look at two examples from the founding period of contemporary linguistics in France.

In Memoriam Suzanne Fleischman: October 25, 1948-February 2, 2000

In Memoriam Suzanne Fleischman: October 25, 1948-February 2, 2000

Albert Valdman (ed.), French and creole in Louisiana. (Topics in language and linguistics.) New York & London: Plenum, 1997. Pp. xiii, 372.

The purpose of this volume is not only to provide “more delicate and accurate descriptions” (p. 2) of Louisiana French, but also to highlight the variation, origins, and social contexts of French-related varieties in Louisiana. The volume's editor, whose research on French and creole linguistics spans decades (cf. Valdman 1977, 1978, 1983, 1993) has gathered – starting from workshops and annual meetings on regional dialects – an impressive collection of articles on Western Hemisphere French, in order to create a comprehensive overview of the past, present, and future of French in Louisiana. The reader may consider dividing the book into four sections: (a) general issues surrounding endangered languages and minority languages in the US; (b) linguistic sketches of Cajun French (CF) and Louisiana Creole (LC); (c) discussions of sociopolitical events surrounding the language planning and preservation movements; and (d) chapters devoted to other varieties of French that have similarities to CF and LC.

La khmérisation de l'enseignement et l'indépendance culturelle au Cambodge

Abstract The Khmérisation of Teaching and Cultural Indépendance in Cambodia During the French colonial period, the French language was imposed on every domain, including administration, justice, and education. According to the directives of the colony's governor, "the objective of giving the Cambodians a basic French education is to enable them, as quickly as possible, to fill the functions of telegraphers and interpreters. It is by gradually excluding the Annamite element, and by involving the Cambodian people in our administrative life as quickly as possible, that we shall succeed in winning the sympathy of a people that defies us because it does not yet know us." F. Martini, a French linguist, observed that the politics of colonization entailed the stagnation of native languages. After the departure of the French in 1953 and until 1967, in spite of a complete change of orientation in French language education, French remained the dominant medium of instruction. In 1967 the "khmerization" of the educational system was decreed. Khmer teachers were substituted for French teachers and schoolbooks in Khmer were written. From 1967 to 1974, with the support of various political and cultural movements, the Pali and Khmer linguistic groups jointly led Cambodia towards linguistic independence.

Place des revues dans la constitution d'une discipline : la linguistique française (1947-1997)

Jean-Claude Chevalier, Part and functions of journals in french linguistics development (1947-1997) Having first defined the part played, and the function assumed by journals in scientific life, the author proposes an overwiew concerning the main developments in the after-war II french linguistics. Through examination of french journals creations and english and american ones reception, several sample surveys lead to conclusion that french linguistics presents a specific development, compared to what occurs in the international movement devoted to linguistic sciences. Jean-Claude CHEVALIER, Part and functions of journals in french linguistics development (1947-1997) Having first defined the part played, and the function assumed by journals in scientific life, the author proposes an overwiew concerning the main developments in the after-war II french linguistics. Through examination of french journals creations and english and american ones reception, several sample surveys lead to conclusion that french linguistics presents a specific development, compared to what occurs in the international movement devoted to linguistic sciences.

F. Brunot (1860-1937) : la fabrication d'une mémoire de la langue

Jean-Claude Chevalier : F. Brunot (1860-1938) : the Fabrication of a Memory of the French Language This article studies how the French linguist F. Brunot — author of the huge and famed History of the French language — was educated and how his career developed. It shows the way his conception of the history of the French language as memory was strongly determined not only by the French academic tradition, but also above all by the future Brunot envisioned for French society.

Le tissu de la mémoire : quelques perspectives de travail historique dans les sciences du langage

Jean-Jacques Courtine : The Fabric of Memory : Historical Perspectives in Language Sciences This article introduces the different contributions to this issue and tries to open new perspectives on language and memory to historical work in language sciences. It offers a brief survey of the main historical trends in French linguistics in the last 20 years, discourse analysis and history of linguistics. It weight the results of these traditions in the light of recent historical work on the question of memory. It highlights the scientific as well as political and cultural aspects of an interdisciplinary work on language and memory.

L'écriture et la double articulation du langage

I am going to discuss the subject of the "double articulation" of language, starting from the well-known debate held in the Forties, with reference to works of A. Martinet, Vachek, Hjelmslev and Uldall. The discussion was about the conditions under which written language could "admitted" into the linguistic field. I will discuss in particular the severe judgment of French linguistics concerning glossematics and script, considering the double articulation. I will show that the way in which French linguists are presenting this debate is misguided, because one has to take into account the fundamental asymmetry of writing and speech. We must now open up new approaches to the relationships between the two models. This is what F. Coulmas, among others, is doing for the Chinese Language. Although they are quite opposite, the two media are not two different languages, but a single having two types of competence, which, because of this partnership, is changed and becomes richer (L Prime Theory).

Les figures éteintes dans le lexique de haute fréquence

Jacqueline Picoche & Marie-Luce Honeste, The Treatment of Conventionalized Figures in Lexicon Items of a High Frequency In this paper, the authors study only two main figures, metaphor and metonymy, and a third, secondary and hybrid one, named catachresis. This figures are important for the polysemic development of words. The first one seems to be explained by a movement of « subduction » or abstraction and semantical impoverishment, notion borrowed from the french linguist Gustave Guillaume and important in the works of Jacqueline Picoche. The second one seems to be explained by a contrary movement of thought, that she calls « transduction » : isolation of a semantic component in the semem n° 1 and injection of this component in a semem n° 2, of equal or superior semantic wealth. The examples are chosen in the french high-frequency vocabulary. So, the matter is extremely common and worn out figures, whose figure status must be explained diachronically ; but an adequate stylistic treatment can give them back something of their previous vigour, and even synchronically there are reasons for chosing a figurative ordination of the semens. verishment, notion borrowed from the french linguist Gustave Guillaume and important in the works of Jacqueline Picoche. The second one seems to be explained by a contrary movement of thought, that she calls « transduction » : isolation of a semantic component in the semem n° 1 and injection of this component in a semem n° 2, of equal or superior semantic wealth. The examples are chosen in the french high-frequency vocabulary. So, the matter is extremely common and worn out figures, whose figure status must be explained diachroni- cally ; but an adequate stylistic treatment can give them back something of their previous vigour, and even synchronically there are reasons for chosing a figurative ordination of the semens.

Variation and Change in French: Essays Presented to Rebecca Posner on the Occasion of Her Sixtieth Birthday

The variationist paradigm of sociolinguistics launched by Labov has brought about radical revision in the way we view linguistic evolution. This book is the first to systematically apply the insights within French linguistics. This book should be of interest to students and teachers of linguistics, sociolinguistics, French and Romance linguistics, historical and comparative linguistics.

Two issues of authorship and influence in turn-of-the-century French linguistics

Our grasp of two important episodes in the history of linguistic science, with heightened attention riveted to the French arena, invites certain corrections or, at least, qualifications. First: semantics clad in its new grab was launched, almost a century ago, not by Bréal in splendid isolation, but by the triumvirate A. Darmesteter/Littré/Bréal, with the original gambits made before Littré's death in 1881. Second: medical, especially pathalogical, metaphors in the analysis of word histories, favored by J. Gilliéron and his school of dialect geographers and diachronic lexicologists, go back to a once famous, but later practically forgotten essay by Littré, a scholar known for his finely chiseled style. This idiosyncrasy makes excellent sense once it has been placed in the framework of Littré's professional aspirations: for many years his dream was to become a medical doctor.