Contenu du sommaire : Segments graphiques du français. [Pratiques et normalisation dans l'histoire] sous la direction de Nelly Andrieux-Reix et Simone Monsonégo

« The Written Markers of Words Throughout History » The various devices and auxiliary signs that can be added to writing, in order to make word-units (or groups of words) easier to identify, have always existed, and have always made up one of the essential components of writing systems : the paragraphemic level. In the Classical tradition, we find a wide range of signs, many more than our modernday, typographical vision has accustomed us to seeing : i.e. not only spaces delimiting groups of letters, and signs indicating the separation of elements (points, hyphens, symbols, punctuation, etc.). The causes of our modern, limited vision of things are no doubt to be found in our over-estimation of the role played by the letters of the alphabet alone in visual activity, and in the under-estimation of the substantial and complex evolution of what constitutes, for us, « reading-units ». To take only the example of the European Middle Ages, we can find, in the writing of Latin, from one type of writing to another, a very varied range of graphic signs, both intra- and extra-Linear, all of which must be taken into account, and whose main purpose was to make the task of reading easier. All these Medieval visual devices have contributed to our present rich stock of symbols, typographical as well as electronic. It is therefore necessary to acquire a wider and unprejudiced view of the major historical role that has always been played by the different levels of writing systems in making reading easier, and in identifying and conceiving the « word » as a distinct unit.

« Abbreviations and Word-Boundaries » The scribes who put the French language into a written form for the first time were clerics, who had been trained to write in another system, that of Latin, which comprised a coherent sub-system of abbreviations. In this particular case, they merely transferred the uses of one language to the other, without trying to adapt them. This gave rise to ambiguities, and, as far as the representation of syllables was concerned, discrepancies between the written picture of the word and its phonetic form. However, the use of abbreviations had no repercussions as far as segmentation of the written chain was concerned, and did not complicate the perception of lexical units, since the use of abbreviations at line-endings (when the word was incomplete) was forbidden.

« The Graphic Units of Medieval French : Words and Phrases, and their Shifting, Problematic Representations » The term « sequences » is used to designate the graphic segments formed by the joining together, in writing, of grammatical and lexical elements which could just as well be written separately. Some of these sequences correspond to phrase- units ; others go beyond the limits of the phrase. Throughout the history of writing in the Middle Ages, various recurrent types of morpho-syntactic sequences can be found. Their origins may partly be explained by the Latin grammatical model, which was the only such model that was formally taught, and the only one that had any authority. It seems likely that the first attempts at codifying the spelling and the morphology of the vernacular had little effect on the use of these sequence-types ; similarly, the increasing progress of lexical awareness that can be seen from the 14th century onwards does not seem to have made these uses appear contrary to grammatical correctness : indeed, their persistence is probably due to the « normalising » effect of continued usage.

« Theory and practice of graphic segmentation in the 16th Century » This article sets out to examine the practices of printers in the early 16th Century, concerning the writing of elements which were elided orally, and which could either be written as two separate elements (e.g. le homme) or as a single graphic form (lhomme). The choice of one or the other form appears to have depended on various factors : the grammatical category of the terms in question (some groups, such as article + noun, are more frequently written as a single form than others), the « graphic environment » (use of capitals, of aspirate/non-aspirate h, positional variants...), or on the type of text : in texts in verse, more care was taken to use spellings closer to the spoken language. The treatment of elisions also depends to a large extent on the printer, and on his experience of the French language. Many of these features had already been pointed out by the grammarian Palsgrave, to whose 1530 grammar we refer.

« From the Characteristic Segmented Forms of an Early Printed Book (1488) to the Writing of French in Distinct Lexical and Grammatical Units » From the analysis of word-boundaries in an early printed book, it appears that, at that time, joined word-forms are, for the most part, due to elision (4.44 % of the sample examined, out of a total of 5.13 joined forms). We try to show how these joined written forms, which correspond to oral elided forms, can be explained by the general rules of French prosody : by the position of the rhythmic accent at the end of each rhythmic/semantic group, and by the regular recurrence of this accent, through the dynamics of the oral language, which is represented in writing by the joining of unstressed, elided elements to the beginning of the next word that follows, in order to produce a single written form. The appearance and the development of the use of the apostrophe in French (borrowed from Greek, where this sign noted elision), between the first third of the 16tb century to the end of the 17th, is symptomatic of a movement towards a more grammatical analysis of the French language, and reflects the necessity of distinguishing more clearly between written lexical units and written grammatical units. In a general theory of writing systems, it can be said that, in the use of the apostrophe, two different principles are at work : the phonetic writing principle, since the apostrophe notes (oral) elision, and the visiographic/semiographic principle, since the apostrophe allows lexical and grammatical units to be distinguished, thus making the task of word-recognition easier for the reader. L. Biedermann-Pasques : « From the Characteristic Segmented Forms of an Early Printed Book (1488) to the Writing of French in Distinct Lexical and Grammatical Units » From the analysis of word-boundaries in an early printed book, it appears that, at that time, joined word-forms are, for the most part, due to elision (4.44 % of the sample examined, out of a total of 5.13 joined forms). We try to show how these joined written forms, which correspond to oral elided forms, can be explained by the general rules of French prosody : by the position of the rhythmic accent at the end of each rhythmic/semantic group, and by the regular recurrence of this accent, through the dynamics of the oral language, which is represented in writing by the joining of unstressed, elided elements to the beginning of the next word that follows, in order to produce a single written form. The appearance and the development of the use of the apostrophe in French (borrowed from Greek, where this sign noted elision), between the first third of the 16tb century to the end of the 17th, is symptomatic of a movement towards a more grammatical analysis of the French language, and reflects the necessity of distinguishing more clearly between written lexical units and written grammatical units. In a general theory of writing systems, it can be said that, in the use of the apostrophe, two different principles are at work : the phonetic writing principle, since the apostrophe notes (oral) elision, and the visiographic/semiographic principle, since the apostrophe allows lexical and grammatical units to be distinguished, thus making the task of word-recognition easier for the reader.

« The Written Word in 17th Century Manuscripts and Printed Books » In the 17th Century, the handwritten manuscripts of classical authors present a large number of idiosyncrasies and archaic uses (joined forms, few external markers of word-boundaries). In contrast, the printed works of the same authors between 1630 and 1710 display remarkably homogeneous uses as far as the written representation of word-units is concerned (use of spaces, apostrophes, hyphens), which in turn differ in certain respects from our contemporary usage.

« Variations in Written Word Forms in the 18th Century » In the 18th Century, awareness of the written word appears to be fixed. However, this awareness is not related to contemporary theoretical definitions of the word, such as can be found in the works of Restaud, Buffier, Girard, Beauzée or Féraud. On the other hand, the actual segmentation of texts into words, as practised by some grammarians, or by a writer like the self-taught window-glass maker Menetra, may show elements of an unconscious system. We find, for instance, that some authors tend to join the definite article, or the preposition en to the following words in writing, as well as using joined forms such as delà. Moreover, some grammarians systematically use joined forms such as parconséquent, àmoins, parce que, and so on.