Langues et littératures


Book Description

La plupart des textes rassemblés ici ont été rédigés pour le colloque international " Linguistique et langue anglaise " qui s'est tenu à Toulouse les 7 et 8 juillet 2000. Des linguistes, des traductologues et des stylisticiens ont mis en lumière la nécessaire homogénéité de leurs outils respectifs, lorsqu'ils sont appliqués à ce qui constitue le dénominateur commun de leurs diverses approches : la langue. En effet, on peut difficilement envisager de faire passer la spécificité d'un texte d'un encodage de départ donné à un encodage d'arrivée choisi (pour le traductologue), d'y découvrir la trace de mécanismes fondamentaux (pour le linguiste), d'en dégager des marqueurs de subjectivité créant des écarts par rapport à une norme plus ou moins établie (pour le stylisticien) sans être au fait des structures énonciatives et syntactico-sémantiques d'une (ou plusieurs) langue(s) naturelle(s). Most of the papers in this volume were written for the international conference on "Linguistics and the English Language" which was held in Toulouse on July 7 and 8, 2000. Their authors (linguists, translation specialists and stylisticians) underscore the necessarily homogeneous character of their scientific tools when applied to what obviously constitutes the common ground of their respective approaches : language. Indeed, one can hardly aim at translating the specific encoding of a given source-text into the chosen encoding of a target-text, at bringing out the traces of basic language mechanisms, at highlighting the markers of subjectivity generating significant deviations from more or less pre-established norms, without being fully aware of the enunciative, syntactic, and semantic structures of one (or several) natural language(s). This is precisely what each of the contributions selected for this volume tries to achieve, with its own specified methodological device.




Divergences Et Convergences


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Seuils


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Les Vestiges Du Gothique


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Reference


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This volume provides an innovative approach to the referential process thanks to its focus on the relationship between conventions and discourse pragmatics. It brings together a cross-section of current research on referential conventions and pragmatic strategies, in a number of different fields (formal and theoretical linguistics, semantics, discourse analysis, psycholinguistics, interactional linguistics, natural language processing), in a variety of verbal and non-verbal languages (English, German, different varieties of French, Indonesian, French Belgian Sign Language) and in a diversity of contexts (the coining of names, language acquisition, second language learning, and various genres such as news articles, narratives, satire or game playing). The volume is meant as a series of thought-provoking studies which place speakers and addressees at the core of the referential act, thus providing evidence on how they negotiate and adjust, depending on the context.




Semantic Plurality


Book Description

This monograph proposes a comparative approach to all the ways of denoting ‘more than one’ entity, from collective and aggregate nouns (with the first-ever typology), to count plurals, partly substantivised adjectives and conjoined NPs. This semantic feature approach to plurality, which cuts across number, the count/non-count distinction, and lexical/NP levels, reveals a very consistent Scale of Unit Integration, which establishes clear-cut boundaries for collective nouns, and accommodates cases such as three elephant, cattle or a chain of islands. The study also offers a refined understanding of aggregate nouns (a category nearly as large as that of collective nouns) and quantification in pseudo-partitives, develops Guillaume’s notion of ‘internal plurality’, and proposes the innovative concept of ‘hyperonyms of plural classes’ (e.g. furniture). The Animacy Hierarchy is also found to be influential, beyond hybrid agreement. The book aims to be accessible to scholars of any theoretical background interested in these topics.




Dance of the Dialectic


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A satirical look at Canadian politics since 1968.




Discourse Readjustment(s) in Contemporary English


Book Description

This study examines the linguistic tools which enable speakers and writers to propose adjustments and re-adjustments of the sentences they’ve just produced, as well as the goals they fulfil by doing so. We examine corrections, reformulations, specifications, modifications of points of views and link them with discursive strategies. (Re)-adjustments can be made in order to express oneself in a better way, to favor comprehension by adapting to the addressee, to structure one’s intervention, to play on the potentialities of language (polysemy, homonymy, ambiguity), to mention the main purposes associated with the use of those devices. The study focuses on the markers associated with those strategies. Therefore, it links the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic levels.




Models of Modals


Book Description

Modal verbs in English communicate delicate shades of meaning, there being a large range of verbs both on the necessity side (must, have to, should, ought to, need, need to) and the possibility side (can, may, could, might, be able to). They therefore constitute excellent test ground to apply and compare different methodologies that can lay bare the factors that drive the speaker’s choice of modal verb. This book is not merely concerned with a purely grammatical description of the use of modal verbs, but aims at advancing our understanding of lexical and grammatical units in general and of linguistic methodologies to explore these. It thus involves a genuine effort to compare, assess and combine a variety of approaches. It complements the leading descriptive qualitative work on modal verbs by testing a diverse range of quantitative methods, while not ignoring qualitative issues pertaining to the semantics-pragmatics interface. Starting from a critical assessment of what constitutes the meaning of modal verbs, different types of empirical studies (usage-based, data-driven and experimental), drawing considerably on the same data sets, shows how method triangulation can contribute to an enhanced understanding. Due attention is also given to individual variation as well as the degree to which modals can predict L2 proficiency level.




Saturday Night


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