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Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 1999

Mentional references and familiarity break

Francis Corblin
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Résumé

The main concern of this paper is the proper analysis of the NP celui-ci in French. The contribution of L. Tasmowski to this discussion is well known (Tasmowski 1990). In my view, this contribution makes two important points: 1) in its anaphoric uses, celui-ci cannot be analysed as a "nominal anaphoric" along the lines suggested by Corblin (1985, 1990) for its exophoric uses. This point is also made in Kleiber (1991), Zribi-Hertz (1991), Imoto (1997); 2) eventhough celui-ci like pronouns and definite NPS must be linked in its anaphoric uses to a familiar discourse referent, it involves "une rupture de familiarité" [a familiarity break] (Tasmowski 1990 : 377). Basically, I will argue in this paper that these two points are correct, although they seem to draw the analysis of celui-ci in two opposite directions and look somewhat paradoxical. In this paper, I propose a solution to those difficulties which is based on the analysis of celui-ci as a "mentional NP". Other mentional NPs in French are, for instance, le premier, le second, ce dernier. Mentional NPS, it will be claimed, are just NPs which are associated to a previously established discourse referent by using only the properties of the previous mention having evoked this discourse referent in the discourse context. I will claim that there is a strong association between mentionals and NPs without a noun in French, namely that mentional references are achieved by NPs without a noun. I will show moreover that this specific kind of reference based on contingent properties of a discourse referent (the fact that it has been mentioned in such and such a way) is the key for understanding how a coindexed NP produces the break in topic continuity noted by Tasmowski.

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ijn_00000477 , version 1 (08-04-2004)

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  • HAL Id : ijn_00000477 , version 1

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Francis Corblin. Mentional references and familiarity break. M. Coene. Studia linguistica in honorem Lilianae Tamowski, Unipress,Padova., pp.533-544, 1999. ⟨ijn_00000477⟩
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