Contenu du sommaire : Les marqueurs d'attitude énonciative

Utterance-level adverbs : How to define and subclassify them General works on adverbs, but also textbook grammars in their chapter on this part of speech, all recognise a category whose most neutral label, theoretically speaking, is that of“utterance-level adverbs”. The most representative of these are the adverbs franchement( “frankly”), honnêtement ( “honestly”), sincèrement ( “sincerely”), etc. These works also agreeon the over all definition of the category : these are adverbs which serve to refer to theparticular conditions of production of a speaker's utterance. Within this category ofutterance-level adverbs, which in large part is constituted differentially in relation to the others, we argue for the following semantic sub-categories : 1. Adverbs denoting the speaker's psychological or moral stance with respect to the addressee. For example, franchement, honnêtement, sincèrement, entre nous ( “between youand me”), etc. 2. Adverbs expressing some kind of comment by the speaker on the make-up of theutterance (e.g. concrètement ( “concretely”), objectivement ( “objectively”), en clair( “specifically”), en gros ( “in general terms”), etc.). 3. Adverbs having to do with the source of the information at issue : 3.1. Adverbs of personal opinion (e.g. à mon avis ( “in my opinion”), à mon sens ( “in myview”), à mon sentiment ( “what I feel is...”), etc.). 3.2. Modally-distancing adverbs (e.g. autant que je sache ( “as far as I know”), à ma connnaissance ( “to my knowledge”), si j'ai bonne mémoire ( “if I remember rightly”), sauf erreurde ma part ( “if I'm not mistaken”), etc.). 3.3. Evidential adverbs (e.g. à ce que j'ai entendu dire ( “from what I've heard”), à ce qu'on raconte ( “from what they say”), de source (sûre + bien informée + diplomatique) ( “fromreliable/well-informed/diplomatic sources”), etc. 3.4. Individuating adverbs (e.g. personnellement ( “personally”), en ce qui me concerne ( “as faras I'm concerned”), pour ma part ( “for my part”)). In this article, we list and briefly summarise this set of forms.

Personnellement and franchement : two discursive attitudes, two moments of the uttering process. The aim of this paper is to propose a comparative analysis of the two French sentence adverbs franchement and personnellement, within a polyphonic framework (see Anscombre-Ducrot 1983). Our claim is that each of these adverbs qualifies the utterance in which itoccurs in a different way : while the first one modifies the act of saying, the second works asa modal operator, more specifically, as a domain adverb of the speaker's assumption carriedby the proposition. As we shall see, both syntactic and semantic lexical properties of these adverbs provide two different types of polyphonic structures, that is to say, franchement andpersonnellement both work as polyphonic markers that express different kinds of relations between the speaker of an utterance and the discursive roles it convokes : these relations are exactly what we are intending to account for here.

Indices et attitudes énonciatives : le cas de apparemment. The aim of this article is to give a semantic and enunciative description of Modern French adverb apparemment. This description is supported additionally by the evolution ofapparemment from Medieval French until today. Modern French presents three separateuses of the adverb. Apparemment1, quite scarce today, is a item subjunct which occurs onlyin negative contexts. Apparemment2, is a polyphonic subjunct, and determines an adjective ora past participle with the meaning “seemingly, [but not actually]”. Apparemment3 is anenunciative polyphonic adverb, very common today in spoken French. When utteringapparemment3 p, the speaker refers to a certain number of facts, which he presents asindications supporting a conclusion he does not entirely assume. Apparemment3 is used bythe speaker to distance himself from a certain viewpoint. It can be related to a pragmaticfunction of attenuation, and thus works as a marker of the enunciative attitude of thespeaker.

From enunciative adverbs to markers of speaker's attitude : the case of tout + Adj. in Modern French. This study is mainly based on the examination of the two semantic values of the combination tout + Adj in Modern French, that is : the so-called intensive value, as in tout jeune(= 'extremely young'), and the extensive one, as in tout nu (= 'entirely naked'). A thorough examination of both syntactic and semantic properties of these constructions reveals acommon basic value, also to be found among enunciative adverbs and exclamatives. Themain claim of this article is there exists a pragma-semantic category of markers of the speaker's attitudes, which includes intensifiers like tout, enunciative adverbs like franchement,exclamatives, and very likely some connectives, and which can be identified on the basis ofseveral specific properties.

Lexicographers, linguists and grammarians have paid little attention to the study of the French particle sinon. Yet sinon covers a wide range of at least 7 different meanings to which an eighth can be added when sinon is used to introduce a new topic ina conversation. Here we shall make a study of that conversational sinon and show that this particular use of sinon exhibits the same semantic values of the other 7 usages, but expresses involvement on the part of the speaker. Finally, we shall establish that sinon is a fully grammaticalized particle that can be compared with the Dutch anders, which can be used to express an attitude of the speaker. It is not the case of the French autrement and the Englishotherwise, which are restricted to the expression of semantic contents and textual links.

From comparison to enunciative value : the case of aussi bien. The aim of this paper is to show that the adverbial phrase aussi bien, in its use as a connective or conjunct, is the result of a process of grammaticalization. It is indeed the grammaticalized form of the adjunct bien used in a comparative construction of equality. Theprocess involves an intermediary stage which corresponds to the additive value of aussi bien.The connective itself is an enunciative tool which enables the speaker to legitimate the utterance which it introduces by means of the preceding one, the comparative construction indicating that both utterances are equally true to reality.

« Don't say ouais ! ». Social Uses, Semantic Variation and Regularity of Linguistic Operations For a specialist in linguistic studies the existence of ouais raises quite a simple question :should it be considered as equivalent to oui or not ? Most of the time it is accepted that theorigin of the interjection is the adverb. Although this hypothesis is easily broken byconvenient arguments two major drawbacks can be mentioned. Firstly one may wonder whyouais was first associated with surprise and not with agreement. Secondly if language levelsare not taken into consideration, why can't we replaced ouais with oui in all types ofcontext ? The author of this article assumes that it can be easily explained if we considerouais as a specific morpheme. He draws a chart of the different meanings of ouais and showsthat they illustrate a regular basis depending on the link between the interjection and itscontext. As a consequence he changes thoroughly the link which is usually establishedbetween linguistic rules and language levels. The author does not intend to know whetherouais is familiar or not, which is a question with no answer. He prefers to ask the followingquestion, which he can answer : why does the speaker with the highest status forbids othersto use ouais. Thus he finds that changing his point of view on the links between linguistic andpragmatic fields enables him to come to the cause and the consequence of the informationhe gives about the functions of ouais.

A polyphonic approach to speaker's attitudes : the structures [comme si A] in Modern French. The approach presented in this paper is based on a principle which originates from recent publications on polyphonie : the discourse is fundamentally seen as a set of representations,and discursive strategies are relationships between two (or more) viewpoints. The author focuses more particularly on constructions which represent the speaker's attitude towards agiven viewpoint. Comme si A appears to be one of those constructions. A distinction is made between basic properties of comme si A on the one hand, and specific properties – due to the combination of comme si A with a given context – on the other. The author then showshow it is possible to account for such a variety by resorting to the concept of a linguistic continuum defined by two extremes : stratégie de contestation and stratégie d'atténuation.

Autrement : a polyvalent connective. This paper focuses on the French adverb autrement from a pragmasemantic point of view.The main purpose of this study is to show that autrement has several meanings. Even thoughit belongs to French – ment adverbs, it also works as a connective when combining twosentences, or two cotexts p and q. After classifying some of its attested uses, especially onsyntactic grounds, the study puts the emphasis on its pragmatic function in French oraldiscourse. The main claim here is that autrement obviously rests upon a negative statementwhile connecting semantic entities : p autrement q introduces a logical implication between pand q, whose approximate meaning is : “Il you don't want to have q, than you have to do p”.In other words, p and q are closely related by means of a contradictory relation.