Corps de l’article

The contrastive empirical study of pragmatic markers from a cross-linguistic perspective has been given a fair amount of attention by a numerous number of publications (for example Cuenca 2008) recently. In line with this interest, Pragmatic Markers and Pragmaticalization: Lessons from false friends contributes, first and foremost, to a systematic investigation into the study of pragmatic markers through compiling five papers along with three book reviews in one volume. The book explores semantics and pragmatic functions of discourse markers from varied Romance and Germanic languages.

The volume has three editors. Peter Lauwers and Gudrun Vanderbauwhede, from the universities of Ghent and Leuven, have many publications with respect to cross-linguistic contrastive research (for example Lauwers and Vermote 2014; Vanderbauwhede 2012). Also, Stijn Verleyen, from Research Foundation – Flanders, has a number of publications among which is The French and Dutch noun phrase in contrast (Vanderbauwhede and Verleyen 2010), a contrastive study of demonstratives and definite articles in French and Dutch published jointly with Vanderbauwhede.

In the introduction section, the editors provide an insightful description of the topic and a delimitation of the material investigated in the different chapters. The results of the papers are also well positioned in literature as they contribute to the existing theoretical discussions on pragmatic markers, that is, the bottom-up identification of cross-linguistic pragmatic functions, the applicability of establishing a semantic map to the study of pragmatic markers, the discrimination of typological differences between languages and language families, and finally the matter of grammaticalization versus pragmaticalization. Nevertheless, one criticism that can be made both about the title of the book and the title of the introduction – How false friends give true hints about pragmatic markers – is that they are not generalizable to all articles presented in the book. As a matter of fact, merely three articles (out of five) study discourse markers which fall into the category of false friends. Hence, the focus could have been shifted towards “cognate forms,” as a basic feature common to all items under investigation throughout the book.

In addition, the editors could have clarified the typological difference that exists between the false friends under investigation. In fact, the particles investigated in Beeching’s and Carretero’s papers are attributable to the category of partial (semantic) false friends, that is “those words that have several senses, some of which coincide in both languages while others do not” (Chamizo Domínguez and Nerlich 2002: 1836). Besides, the studied particles in the paper by Defour et al. would exemplify the definition of full (semantic) false friends, “those words whose meanings in various languages diverge widely […]” (Chamizo Domínguez and Nerlich 2002: 1836).

Among the merits of the volume is its unity, specifically the internal consistency of the articles in terms of topic, methodology and results. Indeed, all articles investigate pragmatic functions of the forms that are either etymological or semantic cognates. Furthermore, on the basis of well-established methodologies, all articles contrast the empirical data from a cross-linguistic viewpoint and their results make important contributions to the study of pragmatic markers. The uniformity of content coupled with the instructive introduction of the editors gives the readership valuable insight into cognate discourse markers.

As to the corpora analyzed in the articles, it is worth noting that although the variety of translations of a given discourse marker in different contexts makes it difficult to specify cross-linguistic semantic similarities, the use of translation parallel corpus by Beeching and Defour et al. is defensible. As Aijmer, Foolen et al. (2006: 111) put it, translation corpora are heuristic “in the study of pragmatic markers precisely because of their underspecified core meaning and their polysemous nature.” They also assert that, “[…] which word or construction we regard as correspondences between languages ultimately depends on the analyst’s own judgment” (Aijmer, Foolen et al. 2006: 111).

In the first chapter Semantic Change: Evidence from false friends, Beeching makes an inquiry about the synchronic functions of effectively/effectivement and finally/finalement in English and French. The article brings to light the pragmatico-semantic change of these particles by establishing a sort of semantic map. To this end, in addition to lexicographic evidence, the author uses the empirical data, taken from the corpora of British National Corpus (BNC), the Corpus de référence du français parlé (CRFP), and the INTERSECT parallel translation corpus, to contrast the functions of the particles synchronically. For instance, Beeching argues that effectivement has a purely positive function similar to “that’s right,” whereas effectively shares some characteristics with “actually” and “in fact” which have hedging usages (“[… they] mitigate what is said with the purpose of acknowledging the addressee’s actual or possible objection” (p. 25). In addition, the FRANTEXT and Chambers-Rostand corpora are used to reflect upon the distributional frequencies of effectivement and finalement. The corpora reveal an increasing rate of occurrence of these pragmatic markers over centuries in both written and spoken languages. In order to determine the degrees of pragmaticalization of the discourse markers in question, the author uses INTERSECT Corpus. In this respect, Beeching formulates the core meanings of effectively/effectivement and finally/finalement. Accordingly, she argues that due to the similarity in their core meanings (that is, ‘summative’ or ‘all things being equal’ interpretation), effectively and finalement have developed hedging usages while they are not grammatically decategorialized. This finding gives credence to the independence of pragmaticalization from grammaticalization. The article, ultimately, offers alternative routes (for example, cognitive universals) to the study of regularities in semantic change.

In the second chapter Degrees of Pragmaticalization: The divergent histories of actually and actuellement, Defour et al. trace the semantic-pragmatic developments of the English and French false friends “actually” and “actuellement.” This research objective is achieved by adopting both diachronic and synchronic approaches. The archaic English data is extracted from Helsinki Corpus of English Texts (HC), the Corpus of Early Correspondence (Sampler) (CEECS), a letter corpus (1417-1681), and the extended version of Corpus of Late Modern English Texts (CLMETEV); the present-day usages of actually is attested by the BNC. As to French, the historical part of FRANTEXT is used for diachronic analysis; besides, the authors make use of the corpora Le Monde and Corpaix for present-day usages of actuellement. To provide further semantic evidence for the particles, Namur Corpus, a parallel translation corpus, is also involved. The authors start by contrasting actually and actuellement from a synchronic point of view. They argue that there exists a semantic overlap between these two particles; however, as opposed to actuellement, actually is multifunctional. Furthermore, Defour et al. clearly describe the gradual alteration in the meanings of these discourse markers diachronically from the 13th century to present. Up to the transitional period of the 17th century when actually and actuellement began to carry a new sense (‘temporal’), both particles used to occur with non-temporal meanings. From the 17th century onwards, these cognate forms have undergone a process of semantic-pragmatic change, but with different results. It is mainly within the French word actuellement that the temporal sense (‘now’) predominates in the present-day usages, whereas actually has developed more discourse-related functions. In comparison with the former conducted studies on the semantic-pragmatic development of monolingual adverbs, the originality of the article lies in its cross-linguistic analysis of the shifts in semantics and pragmatics of cognate forms.

In You’re Absolutely Right!!: A corpus-based contrastive analysis of ‘absolutely’ in British English and ‘absolutamente’ in Peninsular Spanish, with special emphasis on the relationship between degree and certainty, the distribution of syntactic functions of the adverbs in question are quantitatively contrasted in spoken and written languages. Carretero also concentrates on the functions of particles regarding the syntactic roles they play. The data is taken from the World Edition of the BNC (for English) and from the Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual (CREA) (for Spanish). The author hypothesizes that: (I) the strong subjectivity that is carried by absolutely and absolutamente (and warrants discourse functions similar to those of adverbials of ‘certainty’) is in association with their occurrence as modifiers of the whole clause or with their syntactic function as (part of) minor clauses; (II) the frequency of this strong subjectivity is higher for absolutely than for absolutamente; and (III) the semantics of the words modified by both adverbs, with the restricted function as modifiers of words, bear resemblance. The results of the extensive discussions presented through the article confirm the proposed hypotheses in an efficient manner. Overall, the article supplements the preceding argumentations surrounding the subjectivity of stance adverbials defined by Tseronis (2009: 43) “[…] as one of the possible linguistic means by which the qualification of a standpoint can be realized in discourse.”

The imperative of intentional visual perception as a pragmatic marker: A contrastive study of Dutch, English and Romance by Van Olmen is a synchronic comparison of frequency, distribution, and usages of look in English and its counterpart kijk in Dutch. The analysis of the quantitative data, from a 600,000-word corpus of British English and a 300,000-word corpus of spoken Northern Dutch, indicates that the discourse-related function of the imperatival forms of the particles is not restrained by their traditional label as attention-getting devices. This finding is followed by a cross-linguistic comparison of the pragmatic markers (resulting from the imperative ‘look’) in three Romance languages with look and kijk in order to investigate the sequence of changes they underwent in the course of their evolution from the imperative to pragmatic markers. Similar to Beeching’s, the question of grammaticalization is addressed in Van Olmen’s article. However, here the author calls into question the most predominant views on whether or not the emergence of the imperative of intentional visual perception as a pragmatic marker follows any path of grammaticalization and claims that existing debates are purely ideological and not capable of providing very informative clues in this regard. The paper is particularly significant as, contrary to Romance languages, there exists a limited number of studies concerning the use of the imperative of intentional visual perception as a pragmatic marker on Germanic languages.

Fagard, in É vida, olha…: Imperatives as discourse markers and grammaticalization paths in Romance: A diachronic corpus study examines Spanish and Catalan mira, Portuguese olha, Italian guarda, French regarde, and Romanian uite regarding the usage and the degree of grammaticalization. The data is obtained from Valibel, PFC, and Clapi corpora for French, CREA and CCCUB respectively for Spanish and Catalan, CORV and Ruxandoiu for Romanian, LIP for Italian, and Corpus do Português for Portuguese. The author tests each particle for a set of discourse functions and concludes that the uses of French regarde as a discourse marker is of lower rate in comparison to those of other particles. Furthermore, the results of the paper reveal that the discourse-related functions of all Romance items seem to originate from a grammaticalization process; however, the term regarde demonstrates a lesser degree of grammaticalization which is at odds with the recent findings subscribing to the idea that French, among Romance languages, is the most grammaticalized one. In the conclusion of his paper, Fagard explains this inconsistency by setting forth a number of hypotheses. For example, the author hypothesizes that there might be some exceptions to the general trend in the evolution of Romance languages.

On the whole, the transparent structure and the clear language of the articles along with their originality make the book an asset to every scholar and graduate student interested in the field of pragmatic markers and contrastive studies. Besides, the cross-linguistic contrastive approach towards cognate forms, which clarifies their similarities and differences in terms of semantics and pragmatic functions, would bear constructive consequences for teaching as well as translation practices.