La désignation exemplaire dans Les Nouvelles françaises de Segrais

In the Nouvelles françaises, the designation of characters is remarkable for its high frequency of indefinite expressions. Many occurrences of such expressions are non-standard, insofar as they aim at referents which have already been identified and named. On the basis of the semantic implications inherent to indefinite descriptions, our study aims at understanding the discursive effect produced by these turns of phrase and at accounting for their choice within the frame of the literary genre used by Segrais.