Affiliation:
1. The University of Manchester
Abstract
Abstract
This paper studies the synchronic uses and diachronic evolution of a small set of so-called “response particles”
in French, viz. the contemporary forms oui ‘yes’, si ‘yes’, and non ‘no’, and
their historical sources, as well as a by now largely obsolete fourth particle nenni ‘no’. Among current models
of response particle usage, the leading syntactic model is argued to be fundamentally flawed, while the leading semantic model
reveals itself incapable of providing an empirically accurate account of the present-day uses of the French particles. Instead,
(historical) pragmatics is shown to constitute an indispensable component of such an account. This is hypothesized to be true not
just for French, but across languages. In addition, analysis of the French data throws (further) doubt on the explanatory power of
the concept of synchronic functional paradigms.
Publisher
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Subject
Linguistics and Language,Language and Linguistics
Reference33 articles.
1. Corpus CLAPI: http://clapi.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/V3_Accueil.php?interface_langue=FR
2. Frantext: http://www.frantext.fr/
3. Perseus Digital Library: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/
Cited by
2 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献，注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献，订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献