Écho des études romanes, 2010 (vol. 6), issue 1-2

Centre - périphérie dans le système linguistiqueFrench

Centre - periphery in the linguistic system

Jan RADIMSKÝ

Écho des études romanes 2010, 6(1):7-10 | DOI: 10.32725/eer.2010.001  

Introduction

Les notions de centre et de périphérie : une certaine idée de l’organisation du système linguistiqueFrench

The notions of centre and periphery: a certain idea of the organization of the linguistic system

Anne-Marie CHABROLLE-CERRETINI

Écho des études romanes 2010, 6(1):11-20 | DOI: 10.32725/eer.2010.002  

This contribution aims to compare the concepts of centre and periphery with the concept of linguistic system they induce. After presenting the historical and problematic context of the 1930s, which saw the emergence of the theses of the Prague Linguistic Circle, we will try to demonstrate the ambiguity of the concept of system, which can be lessened by a focus on the concept of organisation.

De la perspective centro-périphérique en linguistiqueFrench

On a central-peripheral perspective in linguistics

Rostislav KOCOUREK

Écho des études romanes 2010, 6(1):21-31 | DOI: 10.32725/eer.2010.003  

The central-peripheral principle (C-P) is not a linguistic system aimed at replacing the present linguistic categories. It is a perspective of free evaluation which cuts across linguistic categories applying specific criteria to their central and peripheral features. It follows the hypothesis supposing that one can, in this way, obtain more detailed information about the nature of linguistic structure, its variety, its immense complexity, as well as its limits within the domain of language. The perspective may be helpful in bridging the gap between far-reaching linguistic abstractions and the true little facts of language resulting from research. If...

Les notions de centre et de périphérie dans la caractérisation des unités linguistiquesFrench

The notions of centre and periphery in the characterization of linguistic units

Colette FEUILLARD

Écho des études romanes 2010, 6(1):33-43 | DOI: 10.32725/eer.2010.004  

This study aims to characterize the concepts of centre and periphery with regard to different linguistic levels, phonemes, morphemes, "synthemes" and grammatical relations, from a double viewpoint, systemic relations/use, through various criteria, integration, distribution, information, etc. The distinction centre/periphery is briefly related to the dynamics of language development. As a conclusion, the correlative concepts of centre and periphery cannot be defined as an absolute distinction, but as a variable and gradual one, which requires to be reconsidered in each situation where it is used.

Imaginaire [méta]linguistique et langue objet : le cas du FLEFrench

[Meta]linguistic imaginary and object language: the case of French as a foreign language

Enrica GALAZZI

Écho des études romanes 2010, 6(1):45-55 | DOI: 10.32725/eer.2010.005  

More than a quarter of a century since its formulation, we can rightfully wonder about the effectiveness of the « centre-periphery » metaphor. In order to do this, we should take into account the symbolic contents it acquired over time, ranging from geometry to less static fields like town-planning and sociology. Those contents, which have become stable in the speakers' thought-world, convey debatable evaluations when we apply them to linguistic expressions (faits de langue).The coming and going of migrations between centre and periphery (peripheries) at different levels will be illustrated by examples highlighting the problematical...

Centre et périphérie dans le cadre de la grammaticalisation : la spécialisation des catégories morphosyntaxiquesFrench

Centre and periphery in grammaticalization: the specialization of morphosyntactic categories

Bernard COMBETTES

Écho des études romanes 2010, 6(1):57-68 | DOI: 10.32725/eer.2010.006  

The aim of this paper is to show how peripheral elements are the result of a conflict between two types of evolution rules: the main trends of change and the other, more specific ones within microsystems. This application of the rules is illustrated by two examples: first, the case of indefinites, which are a heterogeneous class in French, is considered. The comparison of "quelques" and "plusieurs" shows that the origin of expressions can hinder the general tendency towards specialisation of categories. The second example is the opposition "que" / "ce que" in conjunctive locutions. The different syntactic and semantic factors that have taken place...

L’interférence du centre et de la périphérie (illustrée par des exemples de diachronie romane)French

Interference between centre and periphery (illustrated by examples of Romance diachrony)

Sándor KISS

Écho des études romanes 2010, 6(1):69-76 | DOI: 10.32725/eer.2010.007  

In the linguistic system the boundary between central and peripheral spheres is not impermeable. Interferences between these spheres are illustrated by Late Latin and Romance phonological and syntactic examples.

César Chesneau Du Marsais et Maurice Gross. Deux révolutions épistémologiques en miroirFrench

César Chesneau Du Marsais and Maurice Gross. Two epistemological revolutions in mirror

Jean-Claude CHEVALIER

Écho des études romanes 2010, 6(1):77-83 | DOI: 10.32725/eer.2010.008  

Maurice Gross was well acquainted with the history of grammars and possessed an excellent library of old textbooks. He had a predilection for general grammar and especially for Du Marsais who proposed to the readers of Diderot's Encyclopédie a double theorisation of language. In the Traité des tropes, Du Marsais made an inventory of the variables that constitute the different figures of speech, and in the Encyclopédie, he proposed a theorisation of the structures of the sentence itself in order to constitute a general grammar.

Du centre à la périphérie : structuration des langues en diachronie, ou la forme interne des langues et ses axes de développementFrench

From centre to periphery: the diachronic structuring of languages, or the internal shape of languages and its development

Savina RAYNAUD

Écho des études romanes 2010, 6(1):85-96 | DOI: 10.32725/eer.2010.009  

Since it is difficult to define language, an effective method of proceeding is by deepening and strengthening the knowledge of its properties, in particular through comparisons. This paper aims to clarify the well known property of human languages, which are characterized by having a centre and a periphery. The notions of centricity-peripherality, developed within the Prague linguistic tradition, apply to many other entities, both cultural and natural: towns first of all, but also physiological systems (the circulatory and nervous systems), and physical phenomena (the formation of crystals, the propagation of circles in the water resulting from the...

Stratification des structures linguistiquesFrench

Stratification of language structures

Mortéza MAHMOUDIAN

Écho des études romanes 2010, 6(1):97-108 | DOI: 10.32725/eer.2010.010  

The Praguean phonology is the first to have elaborated a repeatable procedure to describe the sound pattern of languages. This procedure allows to single, with some rigor, speech sound in contradistinction with sound as physical phenomenon. However, this procedure leaves a few problems unresolved. This paper aims at discussing two of these: 1° the antinomy of deterministic structure and random (i.e. stochastic) structure and its implications for the function of language as communication tool; 2° the frontiers between a language as such and its dialects.

Le supplétivisme - phénomène du centre ou de la périphérie ? Étude typologiqueFrench

Suppletivism - a phenomenon of the center or the periphery? A typological study

Ivo VASILJEV

Écho des études romanes 2010, 6(1):109-116 | DOI: 10.32725/eer.2010.011  

While being a subject totally marginalized in most discourses of modern linguistics, suppletion, a supposedly marginal phenomenon, seems to have never been considered a subject worth of analysis within the framework of the centre-and-periphery dichotomy. The author argues that from the point of view of language typology as defined by Vladimír Skalička, suppletion can clearly be considered a phenomenon in which inflection reaches its maximum degree, being, therefore, fairly characteristic of languages with a high share in the inflectional type and central to their systems. After reviewing some of the existing definitions of suppletion, the author dresses...

L’impératif en anglais : « préfiguration » d’une sortie du système de la paroleFrench

The imperative in English: "prefiguring" an exit from the speech system

Michael ALVAREZ-PEREYRE

Écho des études romanes 2010, 6(1):117-127 | DOI: 10.32725/eer.2010.012  

This paper tackles aspects of the construction of meaning of the English imperative, in the framework of Vachek's (1966) suggestion that "anti-integrating" tendencies may be at work in linguistic systems when the peripheral position of some elements enables them to activate specific functional possibilities. The typical lack of markers in the imperative is claimed to contribute positively to a particular strategy of enunciation. Davies (1986) showed how the bare stem of the verb enables the speaker to present the hearer with a potentiality of action to be enacted. To account for the way the projection of actual enactment is signified, Cotte (1998)...

Centre et périphérie dans la conjugaison. Le cas du gérondif françaisFrench

Centre and periphery in conjugation. The case of the French gerund

Teddy ARNAVIELLE

Écho des études romanes 2010, 6(1):129-142 | DOI: 10.32725/eer.2010.013  

We shall defend here the idea that the French (prepositional) Gerund is in the contemporary language on the way of evolution which reduces its "peripheral" character, observable in particular in its difficult compatibility with auxiliary verbs "avoir" and "être, to "refocus" it in the conjugation, where the compound forms acquire a more important place. We can suppose that this movement is in connection with the reduction of the character of preposition of "en", for the benefit of a status of simple "complémenteur" (complementizer), what shows the expansion of the value of "reformulation".

L’accord en tchèque : le centre et la périphérie. Les cas périphériques de l’accord et non-accord en tchèque contemporain sur le matériel de vastes corpus du tchèque contemporainFrench

A concord in Czech : the centre and the periphery. Peripheral cases of concord and non-concord in contemporary Czech on material from large corpora of contemporary Czech.

Vladimír PETKEVIČ

Écho des études romanes 2010, 6(1):143-160 | DOI: 10.32725/eer.2010.014  

The article describes special and exceptional cases in the area of paratactic and hypotactic concord in Czech from the viewpoint of centre and periphery in the system of Czech. The analysis of concord is based on large corpora of contemporary Czech: SYN, SYN2000 and SYN2005.

Marginalité lexicale et marginalité grammaticale dans les textes littérairesFrench

Lexical marginality and grammatical marginality in literary texts

Franciska SKUTTA

Écho des études romanes 2010, 6(1):161-170 | DOI: 10.32725/eer.2010.015  

This paper discusses two contrasting types of linguistic marginality in rather unconventional literary texts. Lexico-semantic incompatibility is analysed in Constellations (1958) by André Breton, whereas a variety of agrammatical constructions are examined in Tardifs instantanés (1987) by Jean-Loup Trassard. The analysis shows that in spite of their non-standard linguistic structures, such texts establish a specific coherence, placing peripheral phenomena in the centre of interest.

Le métalinguistique et le périphérique en morphologie constructionnelleFrench

Metalinguistics and the peripheral in constructional morphology

Gregor PERKO

Écho des études romanes 2010, 6(1):171-180 | DOI: 10.32725/eer.2010.016  

The aim of this article is to analyse the connection between metalinguistic character of some world formation processes as well as some complex lexical units and their "marginal" status within most major morphological approaches. The first part of the article argues that the metalinguistic character of the process should be adopted as the only criterion for distinguishing between central and prototypical marginal word formation processes, such as echo-words, blending, clipping, abbreviations, verlan or secreted affixing. The second part applies the notion of autonymic connotation to the domain of word-formation.

Supports centraux et supports périphériques : des « maillons faibles » du Lexique-Grammaire ?French

Central and peripheral light verbs: weak link of the lexicon-grammar?

Jan RADIMSKÝ

Écho des études romanes 2010, 6(1):181-193 | DOI: 10.32725/eer.2010.017  

Si, des marges au cœur de la condition, et vice-versa. Étude de cas et réflexion sur la relation - et le parcours - centre-périphérie-centreFrench

Si, from the margins to the heart of the condition, and vice-versa. Case study and reflection on the relationship - and the trajectory - of center-periphery-center

Guy ACHARD-BAYLE

Écho des études romanes 2010, 6(1):195-207 | DOI: 10.32725/eer.2010.018  

In this paper, I deal with the polysemy of the conditional conjunction Si (If), which has been considered by several authors as "more or less" conditional (Lycan, Sweetser, Vogüé), that is to say, as a central (logical) vs. a marginal (discursive) marker of conditionality. Following the concept of vagueness, introduced by Neustupný in the works of the Prague Linguistic Circle (Travaux linguistiques de Prague 2), I first want reconsider these supposed degrees of conditionality. Then, following the Functional Sentence Perspective developped by Mathesius, Firbas, Daneš, and the Discursive Frames Theory developed more recently by Charolles following Fauconnier...

À propos de la structuration interne des catégories linguistiques - l’exemple de la classe des connecteurs argumentatifsFrench

On the internal structuring of linguistic categories - example of the class of the argumentative connectives

Ondřej PEŠEK

Écho des études romanes 2010, 6(1):209-219 | DOI: 10.32725/eer.2010.019  

The connective mais is often qualified as a central or prototypical unit of the category which it belongs to. The aim of this paper is to reason these affirmations in the framework of the Prague theory of centre and periphery. Applying a structural-semantic method, we analyze the meaning of the connectives of the category of mais as a matrix of distinctive features. These features are formulated as interpretative instructions that "tell" to the recipient of the message how to treat the connected constituents. The configuration of these features determines the place of each unit within the category. Thanks to the structural method, the...

Approche des versants oraux et écrits d’un genre d’exposition expert (article-conférence) dans le domaine francophone : l’écrit et l’oral soutenu(s) ont-ils les mêmes centres ?French

An approach to the oral and written aspects of a genre of expert exposition (article-conference) in the French-speaking field: do the written and the oral support(s) have the same centers?

Marie-Christine POUDER

Écho des études romanes 2010, 6(1):221-231 | DOI: 10.32725/eer.2010.020  

Confrontation between spoken and written versions of French-speaking experts conferences makes possible to approach the problem of a mono or doubly centred language, according to an analysis introduced by some theorists of the Prague's Circle. We underline the existence of a continuum in the forms of speech linked to the different domains exercised by the speakers as well as their manners to communicate (reading paper, free speaking, showing slides). The distant forms in the continuum (monologue improvisation/ written paper) are opposed in many major aspects in putting words (topics-order, detachments, variations in morphosyntax, types of actualisation),...