1887
Volume 42, Issue 2
  • ISSN 0378-4177
  • E-ISSN: 1569-9978
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Abstract

was used over 619.000 times in the two days that have followed the attack of and has regularly been taken up in both written and spoken forms since. A number of variants of this meme (i.e. ) have also emerged among French speakers. We argue that this is primarily related to the fact that the structure of actually clashes with its meaning. Whereas its word order and default rightmost sentence stress are compatible either with an all-focus reading or a narrow focusing of , the solidarity/empathy message it communicates suggests that its subject is narrowly focused. We propose that two strategies have emerged to solve this conflict: (i) various alternative forms have appeared that allow proper subject focusing and (ii) speakers have reinterpreted the original structure so as to pragmatically retrieve the (additive) focused nature of the subject.

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2018-06-06
2025-02-19
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): copular sentences; empathic reading; focus; French; predicative proper names
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