French Period Research Articles

A Grammar of Authority?

Abstract Directive Speech Acts (dsas) are a major feature of historical pragmatics, specifically in research on historical (im)politeness. However, for Classical French, there is a lack of research on related phenomena. In our contribution, we present two recently constructed corpora covering the period of Classical French, sermo and apwcf. We present these corpora in terms of their genre characteristics on a communicative–functional and socio-pragmatic level. Based on the observation that, both in sermo and apwcf, dsas frequently occur together with terms of address, we analyse and manually code a sample based on this co-occurrence, and we compare the results with regard to special features in the individual corpora. The emerging patterns show a clear correspondence between socio-pragmatic factors and the linguistic means used to realise dsas. We propose that these results can be interpreted as signs of an underlying “grammar of authority”.

Cyclic changes to the negative coordinating conjunction from Latin to Modern French

AbstractThe evolution of the negative coordinating conjunction (‘neither’/‘nor’) from Latin to Modern French instantiates a type of cyclic development that is previously undocumented as such at the level of morphosyntax, viz. a ‘semasiological’ cycle. In effect, the conjunction appears to have taken an almost perfectly circular path. Thus, in Classical Latin, as is consonant with the typological status of that language as a Double Negation language,neque/necwas exclusively used in negative contexts. Medieval French being a Negative Concord language, on the other hand, its negative coordinating conjunction,ne, a direct descendant ofneque/nec, was able to develop a full range of weak negative polarity uses. In a range of contexts,newas thus semantically equivalent to either the additive conjunctionet(‘and’) or the disjunctionou(‘or’). By the end of the Classical French period, however, the conjunction (which by then takes the formny/ni) has lost all of its weak negative polarity uses again, and it is used only in strong negatively polar environments in Modern Standard French. Based on data from the electronic corporaFrantextandBase de Français Médiéval, I analyze the three stages of this evolution. I show that, together with other developments in the French negative system, it falsifies predictions made in the literature and has consequences for the reconstruction of negative systems in less well-documented languages.

Crossing the Atlantic: Reading Rooms and Foreign-Language Periodicals in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro

Reading rooms, a totally unprecedented kind of institution in a country newly independent from Portuguese rule, started being set up in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro in the late 1820s. Catering mainly for the foreign communities, their fare consisted for the most part in imported printed material. Although it might sound like an exaggeration to claim that Rio was flooded with newspapers, books and periodicals, they became gradually and increasingly available to its inhabitants. The establishment of the British Subscription Library in 1826, the Portuguese Circulating Library in 1837, and the Biblioteca Fluminense in 1847 played a pivotal role in the circulation of British and French periodicals, allowing for the dissemination of news, ideas, key political, social and economic issues, as well as the diffusion of fiction and literary news. This essay reveals the presence and circulation of some of the foreign periodicals in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro libraries and reading rooms and traces their impact on the local Republic of Letters.

The Language of Smell in Vladimir Nabokov’s Mystical Discourse of Prose from His French Period

This article focuses on the mystical connotations of the olfactory images in V. Nabokov’s prose from his French period (1937–1940). The authors analyse the connection between Nabokov’s mystical, philosophical, and aesthetic conceptions. They demonstrate that mystical experience is not conveyed by the writer directly but through the narration structure and forms of the mystical code in literature and philosophy (as in N. Gogol, P. Ouspensky, A. Bergson, etc.). The research refers to studies that prove the metafictional nature of Nabokov’s mysticism and its connection with perceptual imagery. As a result, the authors distinguish the ambivalent meaning of olfactory images. Smell is an element of the observer’s sensorial hallucination and a way in which the otherworld impacts on characters’ perception. On the other hand, images of smell are used to assess the ability of language to convey not only familiar smells, but also supersensory experiences. In Nabokov’s prose, the main smell characteristics are the temporal and spatial distance between the source and the subject of perception, the correlation with the observer’s viewpoint, and the peculiarities of nomination. More particularly, the magical meaning of smell images that create the plot for solipsistic characters is associated with the perception of the grotesque nature of smell. The authors conclude that mysticism is an attribute of Nabokov’s fictional world itself. The mystical connotations of smell lie in its transgressive and irrational forms: the fact that smell is difficult to verbalise is due to its ability to transcend the boundaries of fictional worlds, imaginary reality, and narration about it.

Tooth-masters and their advertisements in Dutch Newspapers from 1691 till 1876

By means of newspaper advertisements, we can paint a picture of tooth mastership in the 17th,18th, and 19th century The first known advertisement about dentistry, written by Dorothea Bokstal, appeared in 1691 in two Dutch newspapers (in Haarlem and Amsterdam). She claimed to have an understanding of the Science of Teeth. The first tooth-master advertised himself in 1724, but the many advertisements by Lehman Joseph and his descendants in the 18th century were the ones that gave us real insight into the way that tooth masters worked, the problems they faced and when they were allowed to practice somewhere. After 1813 (the French period) a tooth master needed to prove his/her skills. And the invention of new materials and instruments made more treatments possible. The introduction of the medical laws by Thorbecke caused a setback, but the introduction of the State Exam in 1876 brought the tooth masters further knowledge in their field.

Towards Developing the Smart Cultural Heritage Management of the French Colonial Villas in Hanoi, Vietnam

Hanoi city was formed and inherited a unique urban heritage. Among them are the French-colonial Villas, which were constructed in the pre–1954 period. During the development process, the local government and community have always paid special attention to these heritage sites and organized many conservation and research activities. However, the management and preservation of these sites are still facing many challenges under pressure from urbanization, environmental impact, leading to the risk of being invaded and destroyed. The objective of this paper is to discuss the potential of developing the management strategy for French colonial villas in Hanoi within contemporary society using the concept of the Smart Cultural Heritage. The authors believe that will support various cultural services as well as promoting and preserving cultural heritage. It does so by presenting the results of the survey of the status of villas in the French period in Hanoi to classify and evaluate establish the regulation of use management and value conservation, build up the Big Data system. At the same time, the proposal will use smart platforms and participatory processes to encourage community access to raise awareness and assess

On-Site Raman Spectroscopic Study of Beads from the Necropolis of Vohemar, Northern Madagascar (>13th C.)

In the late 19th century, ancient tombs were discovered near the village of Vohemar at the northeastern point of Madagascar, and subsequent excavations during the French period (1896–1945) revealed the presence of a major necropolis active from ~13th to 18th centuries. Some artefacts (Chinese ceramic shards and glass trade beads) recovered from these excavations was sent to France and now in part belong to the collection of the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle, Nimes. Carnelian and glass trade beads were analyzed with a mobile Raman spectrometer, which identified different materials (soda-lime glass, quartz/moganite, carnelian/citrine, chalcedony) and coloring agents (Naples yellow, cassiterite, amber chromophore, transition metal ions, etc.). The results are compared with those obtained on beads excavated at different sites of Southern Africa and at Mayotte Island, and it appears that (most of) the beads come from southern Asia and Europe. The results confirmed the role that northern Madagascar played within the maritime networks of the Western Indian Ocean during the 15th–16th century.

Газеты и журналы как инструмент формирования литературной репутации Д. С. Мережковского в Европе рубежа XIX-XX столетий

The paper considers the role played by newspapers and other periodicals in Merezhkovskii’s strategies for conquering the Paris literary market as a means of constructing his own European reputation at the turn of the 20th century. It outlines the Russian writer’s early reception in France and demonstrates his attempts to establish contacts with leading French periodicals and publishing houses with the help of francophone mediators of Slavic origin. Special attention is paid to Maurice (Mavrikii Eduardovich) Prozor, a Russian diplomat who lived in Europe, had some influence in Western literary circles, particularly among the editors of newspapers and reviews, and significantly contributed to promoting Merezhkovskii.

“Chassez le national, il revient au galop…”. Eugenio d’Ors in the Decade of Pontigny of 1931 With Six Unpublished Letters from Paul Desjardins and One Back

The French period of Catalan philosopher and writer Eugenio d’Ors (1881-1954) has not been sufficiently studied. The edition of six unpublished letters between D’Ors and Paul Desjardins, the famous director and organiser of the Décades of the abbey of Pontigny, which deal with the preparation and celebration of a seminar on the Baroque in the summer of 1931, offer a first reflection on the reception of D’Ors’s thought in Paris. He was a presence oscillating between the initial dazzle and the subsequent disappointment, between blind admiration and irritated disenchantment.

“Chassez le national, il revient au galop…”. Eugenio d’Ors in the Decade of Pontigny of 1931 With Six Unpublished Letters from Paul Desjardins and One Back

The French period of Catalan philosopher and writer Eugenio d’Ors (1881-1954) has not been sufficiently studied. The edition of six unpublished letters between D’Ors and Paul Desjardins, the famous director and organiser of the Décades of the abbey of Pontigny, which deal with the preparation and celebration of a seminar on the Baroque in the summer of 1931, offer a first reflection on the reception of D’Ors’s thought in Paris. He was a presence oscillating between the initial dazzle and the subsequent disappointment, between blind admiration and irritated disenchantment.

ОТРАЖЕНИЕ НАЦИОНАЛЬНОГО МЕНТАЛИТЕТА В ВОСПРИЯТИИ ИСТОРИЧЕСКОГО АФОРИЗМА (ЧАСТНЫЙ СЛУЧАЙ РЕАЛИЗАЦИЯ ФРАНКОФОНИИ-РУСОФОНИИ)

Работа посвящена изучению роли французского языка в европейском обществе начиная с XVI в. до нашего времени. Исследование проведено на материале различных версий известного афоризма, приписываемого Карлу V (взятого из текстов XVI, XVII, XVIII и XX вв.). Цель статьи — выявить и описать особенности лингвистической перцепции французского языка вXVI–XX вв.: французский язык рассматривается в диахроническом аспекте как средство международного культурного диалога: от ранненовофранцузского периода до современного французского языка. The work is devoted to the study of the French language role in European society from the 16th century to our time. The peculiarity of the national mentality is always manifested in the evaluative attitude of the subject to the surrounding objective reality. The purpose of the article is to identify the specifics of the linguistic perception of the French language in the 16–20 centuries: the French language is considered in a diachronic aspect as a means of international cultural dialogue: from the early French period to the period of the modern French language. The purpose of the article, along with the analysis of specific textual material, is also to study and describe the historical and cultural context. The empirical material consists of various versions of the famous quotation about the role of the French language attributed to Charles V, which we have discovered in the works of writers and public speakers of the 16–20 centuries. The work is of an interdisciplinary nature and is performed from the standpoint of the linguistic approach with the involvement of historical data and related social Sciences (political science, sociology, cultural studies). The article examines the history of aphorism and analyzes the value attitude to the French language viewed by foreign Francophones (and Russophones) through the analysis of value judgments in the text. We came to the following conclusions. First, the famous statement of Charles V is a hypertext with many implicit references, referring the reader to the archetype: nonextant original source (that perhaps never actually existed). Secondly, by examining the various versions of this quotation that appeared and were published at different times, it is possible to consider separate “cultural layers” of the Francophone culture of different historical epochs. Thus, the closest version of the quotation to the archetype was found in a Latin work written in the late 16th — early 17th century, where the French language is characterized as linguam nobilem (“noble language”). Later, in French versions in the 17th and 18th centuries, French is rated as francais aux hommes (“French for men”), and in the XXth century as le francais pour me parler a moi — meme (lit.: “French to talk to myself”, that is, “language for myself”, part of the personal space, part of the true “I”). Thus, the perception of the French language as a carrying agent of French values and French culture is determined by the system of norms that make up the content of the collective consciousness in a particular epoch in the 16–20 centuries.

Tussen ‘vandalisme’ en ‘la manie de tout conserver’

Abstract In between ‘vandalism’ and ‘la manie de tout conserver’. Limburg’s archives in revolutionary times The history of the Dutch province of Limburg during the French period from approximately 1795 to 1815 is more like that of Belgium and the Rhineland than the north of the Netherlands. The province itself, in a border region of the Netherlands, is a creation of the nineteenth century with a very complex geopolitical history going back to the Middle Ages. So Limburg, located at the edge of several countries, is a region which has never received much attention at a national level. The same is true for the Limburg archives of the Ancien Régime. This is of particular note because the Limburg archives contain the oldest original sources in the Netherlands. Despite this, consulting the archives of the Ancien Régime was not attractive to historians until well into the twentieth century. In the past many records of institutions dating to the Middle Ages were deliberately destroyed or lost as a result of war, or taken abroad, or they were accidentally ‘forgotten’ and ended up in the attic. Not unjustly the revolutionary government during the French period has been regarded as bearing directly or indirectly a great responsibility for this loss. But this is not the whole picture, and the account must be more nuanced. Owing to secularization, records from religious orders were lost in the decades leading up to the French period; and after 1815 there was little interest in archives, except perhaps for financial reasons. Documents previously sent for safe-keeping abroad disappeared from circulation. However, sometimes by coincidence, sometimes by the concerted actions of lovers of old documents, a number of extremely important historical documents have been preserved. The largest part of these has over time been acquired by the State Public Record Office of Limburg. As a result of this collecting of archives from abroad, Limburg has a richer collection from this period than is found in the rest of the Netherlands.

LEXICAL INNOVATIONS OF THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC PERIOD

The article reveals influence of the modern social context caused by the Covid-19 pandemic on the linguistic situation, i.e. emergence of new elements of form, content and functioning in French media discourse. Thus, the method of correlation of social and linguistic factors used in linguistics is confirmed in the study of the historical development of society by analyzing changes in its vocabulary and determining the word markers («mots-témoins») of key concepts and events. Chronologically, the research covers the first half of the year 2020. The source of factual material is the electronic versions of the French periodicals: Le Monde, Le Figaro, Le Point, L'OBS, etc. The analysis of linguistic units is accompanied by linguistic and cultural commentary and examples from Ukrainian media resources. The lexical corpus consists of medical terms and specialized vocabulary units related to education, media and society in the context of the coronavirus crisis. The article highlights the position of the French Academy as for grammatical forms, semantic features and functional characteristics of linguistic innovations. The peculiarities of use of certain key lexical innovations are compared on the material of periodicals in France, Belgium (Le Soir, DH.be) and Canada (Le Journal de Québec). The nominative function of the investigated lexemes in the media discourse is accompanied by stylistic coloring through metaphorization aimed to stress out the axiological and pragmatic functions of the journalistic text. The active use of this specific vocabulary is confirmed by the presence of synonymous series. The studied material revealed the use of English-language borrowings, which may become the subject of a separate analysis. A characteristic feature of these words is their derivational productivity, which leads to their widespread use in various linguistic registers. The list of the lexical innovations mentioned in the article is not exhaustive, since the problems associated with the coronavirus pandemic prompt active scientific and social activities that will inevitably be reflected in the language.

Text sentiment in the Age of Enlightenment: an analysis of spectator periodicals

Spectator periodicals contributed to spreading the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment, a turning point in human history and the foundation of our modern societies. In this work, we study the spirit and atmosphere captured in the spectator periodicals about important social issues from the 18th century by analyzing text sentiment of those periodicals. Specifically, based on a manually annotated corpus of over 3 700 issues published in five different languages and over a period of more than one hundred years, we conduct a three-fold sentiment analysis: First, we analyze the development of sentiment over time as well as the influence of topics and narrative forms on sentiment. Second, we construct sentiment networks to assess the polarity of perceptions between different entities, including periodicals, places and people. Third, we construct and analyze sentiment word networks to determine topological differences between words with positive and negative polarity allowing us to make conclusions on how sentiment was expressed in spectator periodicals.Our results depict a mildly positive tone in spectator periodicals underlining the positive attitude towards important topics of the Age of Enlightenment, but also signaling stylistic devices to disguise critique in order to avoid censorship. We also observe strong regional variation in sentiment, indicating cultural and historic differences between countries. For example, while Italy perceived other European countries as positive role models, French periodicals were frequently more critical towards other European countries. Finally, our topological analysis depicts a weak overrepresentation of positive sentiment words corroborating our findings about a general mildly positive tone in spectator periodicals.We believe that our work based on the combination of the sentiment analysis of spectator periodicals and the extensive knowledge available from literary studies sheds interesting new light on these publications. Furthermore, we demonstrate the inclusion of sentiment analysis as another useful method in the digital humanist’s distant reading toolbox.

Coercion for the ages? A thousand years of parallel inchoative histories for the French passé simple and passé composé

This paper investigates the diachronic evolution of so-called aspectual coercion (de Swart 1998, Bary & Egg 2012) in French, with respect to two major tenses, namely the simple past (passé simple) (PS) and compound past (passé composé) (PC); it will more specifically bear on cases of inchoative readings. Throughout a study spanning several diachronic stages and capitalizing on earlier work (Caudal 2015a, Caudal 2015b, Caudal, Burnertt & Troberg 2016), it will be shown that the PC and the PS exhibit striking differences in their acquisition of inchoative coercions, with the PC consistently lagging behind the PS in some respects. Initially, at the Old French period, the PC was totally deprived of any coercive power w.r.t. states, whereas the PS already had a broader and better established inchoative coercive capability. But across subsequent stages of the language, the PS gradually increased its inchoative potential at a steady pace – although it seems to retain some difficulties with certain types of stative utterances, especially those denoting individual-level states, and locative/posture structures. While the PC has often been claimed to have largely replaced the PS, I will here show that even in Modern French, the PC seems to still have a noticeably lesser ‘inchoativizing power’ than the PS. In order words, in spite of nearly a thousand years of parallel evolution and semantic convergence, the initial semantic gap between the two forms still hasn’t been bridged. I will suggest that these consistent differences should lead us to consider so-called inchoative coercion as a distinctly conventionalized type of meaning expansion mechanism – rather than a simple matter of overcoming the violation of some aspectual semantic restriction.

ВЛИЯНИЕ ФРАНЦУЗСКОЙ САДОВОЙ КУЛЬТУРЫ НА ОЗЕЛЕНЕНИЕ ГОРОДОВ ВЬЕТНАМА

The article analyzes the role of the French protectorate in the development of the greening system of major cities in Vietnam. The article presents political, economic and religious facts that influenced domestic policy in the field of urban planning and landscape architecture in the period from 1858 to 1954. The French protectorate period was an important milestone in the history of Vietnamese architecture. The French made significant changes to the construction art of Vietnam with its traditional wooden architecture. They built homes using new technologies such as mansard roofs, terraces, and balconies, and also used new materials for Vietnam - cement, steel, concrete, ceramic tiles, and slate. It is shown that in the initial period of French rule in Vietnam, only European traditions were used in architecture and Park construction, and after the 1st world war, with the acquisition of a certain negative experience, they began to take into account the traditions of local construction art and the climatic conditions of the region. A significant contribution of French specialists was made in the first attempts to select types of woody plants for urban gardening that meet the requirements of safety and street hygiene. French influence in the garden culture of Vietnam shifted the vector of development of this area of activity towards Europeanization. This is especially evident in the structure of urban squares and the ways in which plants were formed according to the laws of European topiary art, which required regular planning.

‘Adieu, Vaarwel, groet mijne zo Waarde Ouders’

Abstract ‘Adieu, Vaarwel, groet mijne zo Waarde Ouders’: The usage of French loan suffixes and loan words in a nineteenth-century family correspondenceThe French cultural hegemony in Europe over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries affected Dutch society. During the French period (1795-1813), the French influence on Dutch politics was significant as well. As a result, the Dutch language ‘frenchified’: many loan words and loan suffixes were borrowed from French. A corpus analysis of the family letters of the Bijleveld family from Leiden (1813-1814) reveals the extensive impact of French language contact. Especially in the letters of son Theodoor, who was sent to France in 1813 to serve for Napoleon’s Garde d’honneur (‘guard of honor’), the amount of loan suffixes is considerable. This result outnumbers the outcomes of the study by Rutten, Vosters and Van der Wal (2015) and shows that the language use of elite citizens was significantly influenced by French. A comparison between loan suffixes and loan words in the letter corpus reveals an even more compelling result: the relative frequency of loan words in the corpus is twice as high as the relative frequency of loan suffixes.

Девять вопросов христианскому миру. Полемика вокруг богословских идей В. С. Соловьева на страницах французских журналов в 1880-х гг.

Девять вопросов христианскому миру. Полемика вокруг богословских идей В. С. Соловьева на страницах французских журналов в 1880-х гг.

Banditisme in de Franse tijd in het Leiedepartement, 1796-1813

Summary Banditism in the French period in the department of the Lys, 1796-1813

Agreement syncretization and the loss of null subjects: quantificational models for Medieval French

AbstractThis paper examines the nature of the dependency between the availability of null subjects and the “richness” of verbal subject agreement, known as Taraldsen's Generalisation (Adams, 1987; Rizzi, 1986; Roberts, 2014; Taraldsen, 1980). We present a corpus-based quantitative model of the syncretization of verbal subject agreement spanning the Medieval French period and evaluate two hypotheses relating agreement and null subjects: one relating the two as reflexes of the same grammatical property and a variational learning-based hypothesis whereby phonology-driven syncretization of agreement marking creates a learning bias against the null subject grammar. We show that only the latter approach has the potential to reconcile the intuition behind Taraldsen's Generalisation with the fact that it has proven nontrivial to formulate the notion of agreement richness in a way that would unequivocally predict whether a language has null subjects.