Le passé composé en usage futur et la pertinence au présent

Cet article étudie les effets de sens du passé composé (PC) sous la portée d'un adverbe situeur futur en français. Nous partons de l'hypothèse de Sthioul (1998) selon laquelle cet usage du PC impose une représentation conçue comme passée depuis une projection allocentrique du moment de la parole située dans le futur. Cet article considère que le PC en usage futur est un usage métalinguistique du passé composé et donc un usage métareprésentationnel (ou interprétatif, cf. Sperber & Wilson 1995) du langage. Nous explorons les restrictions d'emploi de cet usage par des critères sémantiques (télicité, agentivité) et concluons qu'aucun d'entre eux ne forme une contrainte forte alors qu'il y a une condition pragmatique d'emploi beaucoup plus contraignante pour l'usage futur du passé composé. En particulier, nous suggérons que i) ce qui est représenté au futur n'est pas le procès mais l'état résultant (ce qui le rapproche du PC de l'accompli), ii) que l'état résultant est typiquement désirable et a déclenche une inférence à propos de l'attitude ou du comportement à tenir dans le présent dans la perspective de l'état résultant au futur. Ainsi, le passé composé en usage futur prend sa pertinence au présent et non directement au futu

A cognitive-pragmatic view of the French epistemic future

In this paper, we review the various types of epistemic usages of the (simple and anterior) future tenses in French with the assumption that what actually licenses their occurrence is not a semantic feature such as aspect but pragmatic effects that give relevance to the utterance at the moment of speech. We review the main hypotheses proposed in the relevant literature and conclude that epistemic futures seem to fulfill the function of communicating - through a metarepresentation of a future verification - not only epistemic modality and evidentiality, but also, and perhaps especially, the inference that a particular course of action has to be undertaken from the perspective of a state of affairs that is true in the presen

René de Saussure and the theory of word formation

This volume presents two works elaborating a general theory of words and their structure written by René de Saussure, younger brother of Ferdinand de Saussure. Although originating in René de Saussure's concerns for the structure of Esperanto, these essays are clearly intended to articulate a general account of word formation in natural language. They appear here in the French original with facing English translations, accompanied by some remarks on René de Saussure's life and followed by essays on the Esperantist background of his analysis (by Marc van Oostendorp), the contemporary relevance of his morphological theory (by Stephen Anderson), and the semantic theory of words underlying his analysis (by Louis de Saussure). These two works have remained essentially unknown to the community of scholars in general linguistics since their publication in 1911 and 1919, respectively, although Esperantists have been aware of them. They develop in quite explicit form a theory of what would later be called morphemic analysis, based primarily on data from French (with some material from German and English, as well as occasional examples from other Indo-European languages). In its fundamental aspect, René's view of word formation differed significantly from that of his brother, who saw the structure of complex words as revealed not through their decomposition into smaller "atomic" units but rather in the relations between words, relations which could be presented in analogical form and which anticipate rule-based theories of morphological structure. The contrast between the two brothers' views thus anticipates basic issues in current theorizing about word structure

René de Saussure and the theory of word formation

This volume presents two works elaborating a general theory of words and their structure written by René de Saussure, younger brother of Ferdinand de Saussure. Although originating in René de Saussure's concerns for the structure of Esperanto, these essays are clearly intended to articulate a general account of word formation in natural language. They appear here in the French original with facing English translations, accompanied by some remarks on René de Saussure's life and followed by essays on the Esperantist background of his analysis (by Marc van Oostendorp), the contemporary relevance of his morphological theory (by Stephen Anderson), and the semantic theory of words underlying his analysis (by Louis de Saussure). These two works have remained essentially unknown to the community of scholars in general linguistics since their publication in 1911 and 1919, respectively, although Esperantists have been aware of them. They develop in quite explicit form a theory of what would later be called morphemic analysis, based primarily on data from French (with some material from German and English, as well as occasional examples from other Indo-European languages). In its fundamental aspect, René's view of word formation differed significantly from that of his brother, who saw the structure of complex words as revealed not through their decomposition into smaller "atomic" units but rather in the relations between words, relations which could be presented in analogical form and which anticipate rule-based theories of morphological structure. The contrast between the two brothers' views thus anticipates basic issues in current theorizing about word structure

René de Saussure and the theory of word formation

This volume presents two works elaborating a general theory of words and their structure written by René de Saussure, younger brother of Ferdinand de Saussure. Although originating in René de Saussure's concerns for the structure of Esperanto, these essays are clearly intended to articulate a general account of word formation in natural language. They appear here in the French original with facing English translations, accompanied by some remarks on René de Saussure's life and followed by essays on the Esperantist background of his analysis (by Marc van Oostendorp), the contemporary relevance of his morphological theory (by Stephen Anderson), and the semantic theory of words underlying his analysis (by Louis de Saussure). These two works have remained essentially unknown to the community of scholars in general linguistics since their publication in 1911 and 1919, respectively, although Esperantists have been aware of them. They develop in quite explicit form a theory of what would later be called morphemic analysis, based primarily on data from French (with some material from German and English, as well as occasional examples from other Indo-European languages). In its fundamental aspect, René's view of word formation differed significantly from that of his brother, who saw the structure of complex words as revealed not through their decomposition into smaller "atomic" units but rather in the relations between words, relations which could be presented in analogical form and which anticipate rule-based theories of morphological structure. The contrast between the two brothers' views thus anticipates basic issues in current theorizing about word structure

L'imparfait narratif : point de vue (et images du monde)

Selon la théorie de la pertinence, l'imparfait, comme les autres temps verbaux, est une expression procédurale. Interpréter un imparfait comme « narratif » résulterait donc du parcours, par le destinataire, d'un chemin particulier dans la procédure de l'imparfait. Cet article défend l'idée que pour construire l'interprétation narrative de l'imparfait, le destinataire est amené à inférer un sujet de conscience, et donc à construire une représentation en foncction d'un point de vue distinct du locuteur au « moi-ici-maintenant ».As Relevance theory states, we assume in this paper that tenses encode procedural information. About the imparfait, we shall argue that the « narrative » effect is the result of a specific branch of the imparfait procedure. The aim of this article is to suggest that the hearer, in order to build this narrative interpretation of the imparfait, has to infer a subject of consciousness distinct from the speaker at the speech moment

Relevance and emotional effects

Dans cet article, nous proposons d’intégrer les effets émotionnels (à la suite de Wharton, 2003), à savoir l’expressivité, donc les aspects affectifs de la communication linguistique, dans une conception pragmatique cognitive générale, en l’occurrence la Théorie de la pertinence de Sperber & Wilson (1986/95). Nous partons du constat que cette dimension cruciale de la communication linguistique a été pratiquement entièrement laissée de côté par le courant formel et propositionnaliste en sémantique et pragmatique. En nous appuyant sur quelques cas empiriques, et notamment sur celui d’un « malentendu » émotionnel, nous proposons de lier ces effets à la notion d’ineffabilité descriptive. Nous défendons l’idée que les effets émotionnels permettent de dépasser les limitations de la communication propositionnelle et interagit étroitement avec elle ; nous proposons d’envisager ces effets comme atteignant leur pertinence par leur résonnance expérientielle, à savoir leur capacité d’évoquer des émotions similaires par l’accès à des traces mémorielles ou par l’imagination, ce qui ouvre à une forme particulière de créativité langagière.Since the communication of information about emotional states clearly plays a central role in human interaction, it might be presumed that pragmatic accounts of linguistic communication would include well developed views on how these states are communicated. However, for a range of reasons, aspects of linguistic communication which feel as if they go beyond the strictly propositional dimension have long been dismissed by scholars interested in meaning: as a result, there is a conspicuous void in theories of pragmatics where the emotional dimension to communication should be. Although speech-act philosophers found ways to incorporate aspects of non-truth-conditional meaning in terms of propositional attitudes, the direct expression of emotional states, as opposed to the description of such states is largely ignored. Indeed, in most modern theories of pragmatics, the domain of research is limited to those cases that fall within the category of non-natural meaning. This excludes expressive meaning.This paper synthesizes an account of emotions and emotion-reading that fits with work in a cognitive model of pragmatics – relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1986/1995) – and with work on emotions in cognitive and affective science (Cosmides & Tooby, 2000; Deonna & Teroni, 2012). Turning first to pragmatics, there are two main ways in which the relevance theory account of utterance interpretation diverges from both traditional Gricean and Neo-Gricean ones and we believe that these two divergences underpin our ultimate claim: that relevance theory is capable of rising to the challenges we raise in this chapter. The first of these is that within relevance theory the informative intention need not always be described as an intention to communicate a single proposition and propositional attitude. In relevance theory the informative intention is construed more broadly than merely an intention to communicate a proposition p: as an intention ‘to make manifest or more manifest to the audience a set of assumptions I’ (Sperber and Wilson, 1986/1995: 58 - our italics). When what is communicated is quite vague, it typically involves a marginal increase in the manifestness of a very wide range of weakly manifest assumptions, resulting in an increased similarity between the cognitive environments of communicator and audience. The second difference concerns the line Grice (1957) famously drew between showing and non-natural meaning (meaningNN). It has often been remarked that this line has had a huge influence on the development of pragmatics. Many pragmatists continue to focus on the notion of meaningNN and abstract away from cases of showing. So where, in fact, should the line be drawn? According to relevance theory, it should not be drawn at all. Cases of both showing and meaningNN qualify as instances of ostensive-inferential communication and instead of there being a cut-off between the two notions, there is a continuum of cases in between.Turning to cognitive and affective sciences, we adopt two ideas. Firstly, from cognitive science, we view emotions as one type of evolved superordinate cognitive mechanism, the function of which is to mobilize cognitive processes responsible for perception and attention, physiological changes etc. Secondly, we endorse the key concept from affective science that emotions are attitudes bearing on evaluations (contrarily to raw feelings). So, rather than treating all stimuli as equal while scanning the environment, (which would, presumably, result in some kind of cognitive overload), appraisal theorists claim that people scan for inputs as a function of particular criteria, among which goal relevance. Attention is therefore paid to stimuli when once appraised as being relevant and, in certain conditions, an emotional episode may result.Our account builds on these two observations using relevance-theoretic pragmatics. The kind of information conveyed during emotional communication puts the user into a state in which emotional procedures are highly activated, and are therefore much more likely to be recognised and selected by an audience (Wharton, 2009 ; de Saussure, 2013). Central to this thinking is the idea that the notion of cognitive effect needs to be complemented by a new notion of emotional effect, typically activated by emotion-reading procedures, which trigger immediate experiential responses either in memory or in imagination, which are straight away relevant – potentially very much so – in one’s mind

L'imparfait narratif : point de vue (et images du monde)

Selon la théorie de la pertinence, l'imparfait, comme les autres temps verbaux, est une expression procédurale. Interpréter un imparfait comme « narratif » résulterait donc du parcours, par le destinataire, d'un chemin particulier dans la procédure de l'imparfait. Cet article défend l'idée que pour construire l'interprétation narrative de l'imparfait, le destinataire est amené à inférer un sujet de conscience, et donc à construire une représentation en foncction d'un point de vue distinct du locuteur au « moi-ici-maintenant ».As Relevance theory states, we assume in this paper that tenses encode procedural information. About the imparfait, we shall argue that the « narrative » effect is the result of a specific branch of the imparfait procedure. The aim of this article is to suggest that the hearer, in order to build this narrative interpretation of the imparfait, has to infer a subject of consciousness distinct from the speaker at the speech moment