Contenu du sommaire : La linguistique diachronique : grammaticalisation et sémantique du prototype, sous la direction de Walter De Mulder et Anne Vanderheyden

The only objective of this text is to offer a general presentation of the research on grammaticalization and of diachronic prototype semantics. After a brief reminder of the history of the studies on grammaticalization, it presents the "parameters of grammaticalization" of Lehmann. Then, it turns to the way research of grammaticalization has tried to account for the semantic evolution of the grammaticalized elements, first in terms of metaphoric transfers, then in terms of contextual reinterpretation and metonymy, and, finally, on the basis of the general hypothesis of subjectification. The second part of the article presents the way prototype semantics can be used to analyze semantic change, starting from an article by Peter Koch and the book on diachronic prototype semantics by Dirk Geeraerts.

"Grammaticalization" is defined as the formation of grammatical elements out of lexical units, and the creation of new paradigms. This paper wants to attract attention to a third type of changes, on a more abstract level: the changes which modify the system of distinctions and oppositions on which the paradigms of the language, its grammar, are founded. The author analyzes three changes which have occurred in French from the end of the twelfth century to the sixteenth century: the reorganization of the system of the demonstratives, the replacement of moult by beaucoup and très, and the introduction of new forms in the paradigm of the indefinites. She proposes to explain these changes by the hypothesis that they reflect the introduction in French of a formal and paradigmatic difference between units of first level (nouns, pronouns, verbs) and units of second level (adjectives, determiners, adverbs).

Maintenant has a temporal-adverbial use, in which it introduces the moment of utterance, and a logical use as "connecteur", where it expresses opposition. It thus seems to have evolved in a way comparable to or, which was used in Old French to refer to the moment of utterance. The first part of the paper shows that the semantic description of maintenant falls within the problematics of grammaticalization and that the evolution of the term can serve as an illustration of the central theses found in the research on grammaticalization. The second part is more descriptive and focuses on the uses of maintenant in Middle French, in order to describe the relation between the deictic value and the other temporal and logical values, and to oppose maintenant to or, following M.L. Ollier, so as to seize the difference between those two terms.

On the basis of texts from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, this paper traces the different stages of the evolution of the form stemming from the latin numeral unus, before it became part of the system of the French articles. It particularly takes into account those texts which allow us to compare different stages of the language, such as the reworkings in Middle French of texts in Old French, as well as successive versions of the same latin text. The description of this evolution, in terms of a grammaticalization proces, shows the differences between the initial stages and later ones. The article uns in Old French is the result of a proces of semantic enrichment: a new textual role, the introduction of a new referent in the text, has been superimposed on its ancient numeral meaning. From Middle French on, the article un undergoes a proces of semantic weakening, which is conditioned by the process of integration into the paradigm of the articles: on the one hand, the idea of the "countable singular", which will bring the article un into contrast with the articles du and des, develops out of the numeral meaning; on the other hand, as opposed to the article le, the textual function is redefined as absence of an anaphoric link. The article also looks into the plural forms of the article un, which have disappeared in the Middle French period. It is shown that the cause of the disappearance of these plural forms is not semantic, but phonetic. as the reworkings in Middle French of texts in Old French, as well as successive versions of the same latin text. The description of this evolution, in terms of a grammaticalization proces, shows the differences between the initial stages and later ones. The article uns in Old French is the result of a proces of semantic enrichment: a new textual role, the introduction of a new referent in the text, has been superimposed on its ancient numeral meaning. From Middle French on, the article un undergoes a proces of semantic weakening, which is conditioned by the process of integration into the paradigm of the articles: on the one hand, the idea of the "countable singular", which will bring the article un into contrast with the articles du and des, develops out of the numeral meaning; on the other hand, as opposed to the article le, the textual function is redefined as absence of an anaphoric link. The article also looks into the plural forms of the article un, which have disappeared in the Middle French period. It is shown that the cause of the disappearance of these plural forms is not semantic, but phonetic.

This paper, devoted to classical French, falls within the problematics of grammaticalization, as developped for the French diachrony by C. Marchello-Nizia and B. Combettes. It deals with the expression and position of the constituents in the utterance, by contrasting the subject and the object, and intends to show that in classical French, there are on the object, unlike the subject, strong constraints of expression and position, which show the constitution of a hierarchical syntactic unit, the verb phrase, within which the nominal object is postposed to the verb and closely linked to it. From this point of view, classical French is a main stage in French diachrony, because it establishes the verbal phrase and definitively marginalizes, as archaisms or stylistic fact, free patterns, inherited from ancient French, that are regarded from then on by the grammarians as unjustified ellipsis or transpositions contrary to basic word order.

Following the book on diachronic prototype semantics by Dirk Geeaerts, this paper tries to show that prototype semantics is, by its very nature, fit to describe semantic change. The authors first propose a semantic analysis of the Modern French preposition contre in terms of a "network", where the different meanings of the preposition (its spatial and adversative meanings, as well as the meanings of proportion and exchange) are organized around a prototypical sense ("movement of an entity towards another entity which functions as a limiting point") - an analysis that also includes a "schematic" or "basic" meaning. In the second part of the paper, they try to apply the same type of approach to analyze the use of the preposition in Old French and to explain the evolution of contre from Old French to Modern French. In this way, they can point out some phenomena which confirm the prototypical nature of the meaning-structure of contre: more than one meaning can be at the basis of one and the same extension of meaning, some meanings are more relevant than others in order to understand the semantic evolution of the preposition, and some meanings are more stable than others. Moreover, it is shown, following Geeraerts, that the prototypical conception of meaning can maintain the isomorphic principle ("one form, one meaning").