Volume 63, Issue 1

How to define le français parlé has been a matter of controversial discussions for several decades. The distinction between two different aspects of orality established by Ludwig Söll (1974) and developed further by Peter Koch / Wulf Oesterreicher (1985) has become a well known position in Romance Linguistics even beyond the limits of the discipline, though it has remained far from being generally accepted. According to this approach, the definition based on the use of the medium is insufficient and should rather be based on style and communicative parameters. This article discusses which significant factors may have promoted the conceptual bifurcation and describes the long process of the controversial debate caused by the divergent opinions concerning spoken language. One of the central topics addressed in this contribution is the question which of the two aspects should be considered as primary and can be regarded as the basic category.

The question of “interlectality” in the context of French Caribbean Creolity, especially in its occurrence as literary “interlect”, constitutes a (potential) area of dialogue between linguistics and literary studies. From a linguistic perspective, it is especially important to “translate” the literary category of interlect into a linguistic terminology. In fact, the analysis shows that, in case of Chamoiseau, we are dealing with a literary interlect with aesthetic pretensions, which results from the endeavor to make everyday life aspects of the Antilles accessible to a national Francophone public. This interlect cannot merely be comprehended via structural criteria but should also be conceptualized in terms of a poetics of opacity, in which the specificity of the French Caribbean contact situation finds its aesthetic-literary formation.

Despite the study of Loubès (2006), the name(s) and origin of the Cagots still represent an unsolved puzzle. Like the older terms crestia(n) , christia , synonymous of the fr. cagot , and the settlement names of the Cagots ( crestianies , lieux aux cagots , etc.), the names of the socially excluded cagots , capots , etc. have seen rather fantastical interpretations (lacking thorough linguistic argumentation), while the names chrestia(nerie) , christia etc., due to phonetic similarity, have been connected to lt. christianus ‘chrétien’, comparable to the former historical linguistic explanation of fr. crétin / crétinisme < lt. christianu , although the latter is to be understood as lt. crista + inu (RJb 59, 29-45). The present linguistic analysis shows that a total of 39 names for these pauperes Christi have to be connected with groups of lepers, who were virtually excluded from regular village life in Gascony and Navarre. Thus, lt. cacare ‘chier’ is not valid for an etymological interpretation, but for phonetic and semantic reasons bask. kagote / agote ‘gancho, pequeño’, which, for example, also led to gafo , gaho ‘lépreux’ (REW 3633). The author shows how the words-and-things-method, with help of cognitive research, still leads to better and more convincing etymological explanations than an interpretation based too heavily on similarities in the phonetic structure and an etymological prototype chosen as leader-word (lt. christianus > frz. crétin , bask. crestia ).

Based on a quantitative empirical analysis of more than 4600 French text messages from the newly established Swiss reference corpus of text messages (cf. www.sms4science.ch), we show that the (graphic) realization of past participle agreement, often considered to be particularly prone to orthographic errors and indicative of more formal registers of contemporary French, is realized in the overwhelming majority of cases in our data (89,9 %). This holds independently of the sometimes heavily deviant graphic character of the respective text messages and the (very rare) phonic realization of past participle agreement in contemporary French. Significant triggering linguistic factors for the absence of (full) past participle agreement are type and distance of the controller of the agreement (more deviant realizations with relative pronouns than with cliticized objects, more deviant realizations with the controller following the past participle in constructions with être as the auxiliary), and the features of agreement (more deviant realizations of gender than of number features on the past participle), this being in line with important universal typological and theoretical findings. External factors such as sex and education play a certain role, too, which makes past participle agreement in French a sociolinguistic rather than a stylistic variable bound to graphic forms of communication.

The French indefinite pronoun on and the Spanish existential haber show processes of evolution in the verb domain which go beyond the traditional concept of grammaticalization: On develops into a 1st person plural pronoun in spoken French, and for haber we can find uses where the verb agreement reveals that the participant has been reinterpreted as a subject instead of an object, e. g. habían soldados ‘there were soldiers’. I will argue that these processes of change can be analyzed in a unified framework built on the notion of ambiguity. In order to develop such a framework, I will start by discussing previous approaches to ambiguity in logics and semantics. In a next step, I will propose a wider definition of this concept which integrates cases of ambiguity in the language system as well as cases of ambiguity in discourse, and I will outline semantico-cognitive and pragmatic parameters which permit us to define basic situations of ambiguity in speaker-hearer interaction. These situations of ambiguity characterize basic scenarios of innovation, and analyses focusing on the development of new ambiguities in discourse may thus offer valuable perspectives on language change.

This article analyzes the performative context of Voltaire’s epic poem La Henriade . Using the concept of ‘aurality’, that implies the presence of a written text together with its public reading, the author does not focus on the epic text as such but on the text of epic representation in order to discuss the genre as a media of communication that relates poet and public. In this context, it is significant that Voltaire eliminated graphic rhyme, the so-called rimes pour l’oeil , in later editions of La Henriade , promoting phonetic - i.e. audible - rhyme and anticipating thus French spelling reform by almost hundred years. Retracing Voltaire’s own public readings of epic texts on one hand, and discussing his position towards declamatory practices in French theatre of the 18th century on the other - bearing in mind the distinction between declamation and recitation made by Du Bos and Marmontel -, it can be observed that Voltaire does not only aim at a dramatization of epic poetry, but even seems to suggest its theatralization as performance.

Famous for his courtesy book La Civil Conversazione , Stefano Guazzo can also be seen as a precursor of Early Modern salon-culture. His final book, La Ghirlanda della contessa Angela Bianca Beccaria , provides a fascinating, yet nearly unknown example of the European art of conversation. Like other libri-mosaico (A. Quondam) in the 16th century, La Ghirlanda represents a distinct social space that is usually referred to as ‘accademia’. Based on a narrative dialogue about an aristocratic game, the book illustrates the dual nature of this space which needs to be carefully considered. The study of Guazzo’s writing contributes to a deeper understanding of how the academies connected their scholarly, ‘male’ tradition to their playful, ‘feminine’ face. La Ghirlanda creates a most interesting link between two spheres - aristocracy and the republic of letters - that demonstrates the cohesive power of literature.

Ficino’s De Amore is considered to be a key text for the neo-platonic love theory and for the conception of the poet as an enthusiast. As such, this work had a great impact on Renaissance love poetry and poetics. While these ideas of love and poetry have been given wide attention, only few scholars have explored the brilliant literary character of De Amore . This paper analyses the philosophical ideas of love, beauty and enthusiasm as the poetics of the text and interprets its literary form as a performative strategy. In the context of the paper, the concept of ‘performativity’ addresses two important aspects: firstly, the speeches and the argumentation of the symposium’s participants do not only explain enthusiasm, but they also enact it. Secondly, the author aims via this performance to act upon his reader’s minds and to communicate the very enthusiasm it deals with.

This study examines empirically how the three main posture verbs in Dutch, i. e. liggen (‘to lie’), zitten (‘to sit’) and staan (‘to stand’), are translated into Spanish in presentational contexts. From the analysis of a translation corpus, it turns out that even though the most common translation of the three posture verbs is haber (‘there be’), its frequency decreases considerably in favor of tener (‘to have’) in the case of zitten . Based on a detailed analysis of their respective semantic and pragmatic properties, it is argued that tener appears as soon as there is an “impact relation” between the object and its location, whereas haber expresses genuine containment. Close analysis reveals that it is chiefly the categorical nature of tener that triggers its use as a translation of zitten .

The anonymous Renaissance dialogue El Crótalon has been described as a reflex of bourgeois claims to define an autonomous, self-regulated subjectivity (Mar Martínez Góngora). In this context dialogue, as the present contribution shows, plays a crucial role. It is not a mere vehicle of interchange but constitutes a scenario of subjectivization that allows one to explore the relationship between subject, truth and power. Thus the beginning of the dialogue stages the creation of a subject via the implementation of a passionate attachment to knowledge; the latter being considered as a way to a truth that founds - and paradoxically is founded by - power. This configuration is challenged in the eighteenth dialogue, where truth and power dissociate. Subjectivization is no longer considered as empowerment; quite on the contrary it is perceived as the source of human bondage to time. At the same time, knowledge itself is centred in the subject, whereby El Crótalon yields a distinctively modern perspective on subjectivity.

This article investigates from a literary historical and cultural point of view the reception of Baudelaire, especially of his Les Fleurs du Mal , during the Restoration period in Spain. After a short survey of the Spanish poetry of the time in view of its aims and ideological foundations, attention is drawn to the first testimonies of the readings of Baudelaire in Spanish criticism. A focal point of interest remains Leopoldo Alas Clarín’s great essay on Baudelaire, published in 1887/1889 in reaction to a denigrating article on the poet by the influential French critic Ferdinand Brunetière. Clarín’s essay shows his understanding of Baudelaire as a poet deeply characterized by metaphysical preoccupations, in contrast to the tradition of romantic feeling, parnassian impassibilité and symbolist vagueness. At the same time, it becomes clear why Clarín’s sensible view of Baudelaire did not find much response (unlike the situation in Catalonia) in the contemporary Spanish criticism, which was involved in an intense debate about the rising of Hispanic modernismo and often looked at Baudelaire as a representative of cultural (and even physical) degeneration. It is only after the definite implantation of modernismo in Spain that the great importance of Baudelaire is recognized. This is evident in the appreciation of his poetry by Juan Ramón Jiménez.