Contenu du sommaire : Procédés de modalisation : l'atténuation, sous la direction de Pierre Patrick Haillet

This paper focuses on interpretation of statements such as Il me fallait de la menthe when understood as a specific way to represent the viewpoint Il me faut de la menthe — the use of one tense instead of another marking the speaker's attitude. In this approach, all statements are seen as discursive representations; modalisation itself is defined as a relationship between two discursive representations, one of them being a given viewpoint and the other one combining that viewpoint with the expression of the speaker's attitude towards it. A possible classification of such devices - based on the linguistic features of the statements - is also discussed.

We discuss a particular use of juste, that doesn't seem to have been noticed up to now, in which the adverb may be defined as a comment from the speaker on his utterance, and can thus, a priori, be considered an enunciative adverb: je ferme juste les fenêtres et j'arrive ! The problem is that juste doesn't show all the syntactic characteristics usually given to describe this kind of usage. The solution we propose is to replace a purely formal classification with an approach in which the syntactic possibilities and impossibilities are given an interpretation, so as to correlate form and meaning in the elaboration of the identity of this use of juste.

Within the general class of modal epistemic adverbials, we separate a small group of expressions (about a dozen) that we identified as "strong opinion Adverbs". In discourse, when such adverbials, appearing as parenthetical clauses in a sentence, include a I st person deictic element (i.e. in their "direct use"), their role is to express the speaker's subjective strong conviction about his utterance truth. But at the same time, they often fulfill a pragmatic function of attenuation: through them, the speaker explicitly assumes the responsibility of his affirmation - or of his appreciation — and by doing so, he demonstrates some kind of restraint that makes it easier for him eventually to adjust or to negotiate if a full agreement is not met with his addressee.

In this article we compare three expressions of modalization of the discourse of the speaker: pour moi, selon moi et o mon avis in exophrastic use. Semantically related, these expressions share the characteristic that they communicate a "view of the mind". They present however some differences of meaning as shown by their conditions of use. Pour moi fits best for the expression of completely individual views of the mind, sometimes having no link with reality and truth (Pour moi tu es mort). À mon avis and selon moi present the view of the mind as related to reality and truth, with a mon avis permitting the expression of spontaneous views of the mind as nearly instinctive reactions to a situation while selon moi presents them, on the contrary, as well weighed up, assessed.

The author shows that, according to their syntactic properties, the statements in which the imperfect is used instead of the present tense - and is therefore interpreted as an attenuation marker - can be divided into two categories, which also happen to fulfill two distinct pragmatic functions. One of them aims at attenuating a given speech act (of the stating or asking type), while the other one specifically provides a justification of the speaker's material intrusion into the addressee's sphere.

Apart from its regular aspectual and temporal values, the French imparfait shows a whole range of pragmatic uses in discourse, generally assumed to be modal values. The aim of this article is to provide evidence for a temporal and aspectual analysis of these so called modal values. The pragmatic values are proved to be derived from the regular temporal and aspectual values of the imparfait, by means of general pragmatic principles, within the theoretical framework of markers and hypermarkers of speech acts.

This paper focuses on statements such as Cette critique n'est pas infondée, Ce n'est pas faux, interpreted in relationship to Cette critique est fondée, C'est vrai; in other words, a given statement that combines negation with a marked term is opposed to the corresponding positive one with the unmarked term. The author shows that, eventhough such negative statements do not necessarily function as litotes, they systematically express the speaker's attitude towards the viewpoint that corresponds to the positive statement with the unmarked term. This is precisely the role they play not only when used in concessive structures, but also in "question-answer" types of interactions.

Three principles underiy the approach adopted in this paper (i) mood is a basic feature of any statement with a conjugated verb, (ii), "attenuation" implies specific markers in the utterance to produce such an effect, (iii) any utterance comprising such markers combines representation of viewpoints with the expression of the speaker's attitude towards them. We focus on viewpoints that constitute likely arguments in favor of a given type of conclusions. We also discuss the way in which there are represented by statements where the conditional is combined with pouvoir or devoir, indeed, the use of Tu aurais pu/dû descendre les poubelles is not only a way of alluding to Tu n'as pas descendu les poubelles, but also to the addressee's obligations as well as his/her capacity of fulfilling them.