Revue Romane. Langue et littérature. International Journal of Romance Languages and Literatures - Volume 47, Issue 1, 2012

Most investigations of Romance factitive constructions study the causative verb hacer (‘to make’) and pay little attention to related verbs such as dejar (‘to let’). This article seeks to fill up this gap by contrasting the syntax of positive and negative causation, and particularly focuses on the case marking of the causee. The analysis of a Spanish corpus allows us to examine previous accounts of case marking, namely the hypothesis of incorporation and the related ‘Stratal Uniqueness Law’, and the theory of direct vs. indirect causation. The second part is dedicated to the question whether the cognitive-semantic characteristics of the causation models have any effect on its syntax. Finally, a multifactorial analysis, taking into account the degree of dynamicity of the constituents and the accusative or dative case of the causee, demonstrates that variation of pattern mainly depends on the rich polysemy of the main verbs.

Some examples of iterative aspect, especially in French literature, show a highly complex structure : the iteration does not concern a single eventuality, but a combination of eventualities. In order to deal with these facts, we introduce a new category in the grammar of aspect : the cluster of eventualities. Through the analysis of attested examples, we describe the semantic properties of this new entity, which appears useful also for the analysis of some singulative sequences.

This paper offers a corpus-based study of two evidential (semi-)copular verbs in French. It deals with their degree of synonymy and the extent to which they are grammaticalized as semi-copulas. First, the study of subcategorization and semantic restrictions of both the direct and indirect (marked) construction with comme, completed by the careful scrutiny of contextual elements, shows that both verbs exhibit slight meaning differences with respect to the inferential process involved in the encoding of indirect inferential evidentiality (Willet 1988) : “results” (se révéler) vs “reasoning” (s’avérer). Second, both verbs fit quite well in the paradigm of copular verbs, although s’avérer seems slightly more ‘transparent’, that means less selective. Crucially, the uses of se révéler with nominal predicates quite often exhibit lexical persistence, while in the adjectival domain both verbs are almost twins as shown by a distinctive collexeme analysis.

The subjunctive mood has frequently been explained in terms of unreality, presupposition, non-assertion and the distinction between new and old information. Although these explanations offer a partial account of the semantics of this mood, it is shown that many occurrences of the subjunctive mood remain unexplained. This being so, the present paper aims at explaining the indicative and subjunctive mood in impersonal expressions with the verb ser from a Cognitive Grammar perspective of linguistic analysis. The analysis shows that the variation between the indicative and subjunctive mood in this grammatical context can be explained in terms of dominion and control. An extension of the analysis further shows that it may account for the occurrence of the subjunctive mood in other grammatical contexts.

The object of this essay is to analyze a basic part of the work of the Spanish, Granada-born poet, Elena Martín Vivaldi, as well as her opinions and arguments about children’s literature. We start with the idea in the poetic work of Martín Vivaldi that there are some poems that stand out and could be aimed towards a children´s audience because of their subject matter, intention, and even their genesis. In this sense we want to reflect on the real possibilities that the work of this Spanish poet can connect with readers of different ages, and we suggest a corpus close to the taste of the youngest readers.

This article aims, on one hand, to show how Miguel de Unamuno through his usage of the novel as a philosophical media evades the crisis of the European sciences and, on the other hand, to define his idea of novelistic existence. Through the example of Niebla it is shown how the novel becomes key in both his epistemological and ontological project since it is both the manifestation of our true being and a media to understanding this being and the world.

The article focuses on a case of rewriting of a short episode in the narrative of Erri De Luca. It is all about a cry: in 1930, in the harbour of Naples, an anonymous woman who is watching the departure of a ship suddenly cries out the name of Salvatore, probably her son being on the ship to emigrate to America. This episode, narrated in the tale “Udito: un grido” first published 1993, returns with striking lexical similarities in the drama L’Ultimo viaggio di Sindbad, 2003. Despite the similarities, one can not consider the second occurrence as a mere copy of the first, because of subtle variations on many levels: change of genre, narrator and perspective give the second occurrence of the cry episode a wider significance, strongly emphazising orality and actualizing a mythical dimension.

Misérable Miracle by Henri Michaux, is not only a poetic account of mescalinian experiments : in our opinion, the book also gives rise to a semiotic thinking on the notion of event. The paper is devoted to a detailed investigation of the manner in which 1) words — thanks to their iconic property — are events, 2) sentences are formed by the structure of events, and 3) texts — thanks to the rhetoric of energeia and enargeia — are designed as events by the reading horizon.

Discovered in the Vrancea County as a result of toponymic surveys, the Ro. chiu has the semasiological field of its etymon, the Lat. clivus. The intermediary phase of its phonetic evolution (cl’iuœu) is indirectly attested by the Ukr. klyva. The same Latin lexical base was preserved in Alb. qye as well. The Romanian word must be added to both the Romanian-Albanian correspondences registered up to the present day and to those among Romanian, Rhaeto-Romance and the Northern Italian dialects.