Revue Romane. Langue et littérature - Volume 49, Issue 1, 2014

Despite the growing interest in discourse markers over the past two decades, few studies are dedicated to the interlinguistic comparison of discourse markers. By means of a corpus-based approach the present study proposes a comparison between the discourse markers derived from verbs of perception in Italian (guarda/guardi, senti/senta) and Spanish (mira/mire, oye/oiga). The results of a comparable corpus study reveals that the discourse markers sharing the original perception modality display a similar formal behaviour (mira/mire ~ guarda/guardi, oye/oiga ~ senti/senta). From the parallel corpus on the other hand it results that the most frequent equivalent of mira/mire is senti/senta, which can be linked to the original semantics of both verbs. These two main observations confirm the relevance of a parallel corpus as a complementary source to a comparable corpus when comparing phenomena in two (or more) languages. This combined corpus approach brings about not only interlinguistic insights but provides at the same time knowledge about the relation and uses of the discourse markers within the languages.

This study involves the existence in Megleno-Romanian dialects of a lexically suppletive distinction between singular and plural forms of the adjectives meaning ‘small’ and ‘big’. The phenomenon has gone largely unnoticed both by comparative Romance linguists and by morphological theorists yet it is both typologically surprising and theoretically significant. Analysis of a remarkably similar phenomenon in mainland Scandinavian languages led Börjars and Vincent (2011) to propose a considerably attenuated version of Maiden’s claim (2004) that lexical synonymy can drive the diachronic emergence of suppletion. My close investigation of the the source of the suppletion in Megleno-Romanian, and consideration of the Scandinavian facts in the light of the Megleno-Romanian data, will show that in fact the emergence of suppletion in just these adjectives constitutes excellent evidence for the claim that lexical synonymy favours suppletion.

The traditional way of explaining the subjunctive mood in Portuguese is utterly related to the distinction made between reality and non-reality. That is, while the indicative mood has been explained in terms of reality, the subjunctive has been the mood of non-reality. Although this explanation covers many occurrences of the subjunctive mood, it is also recognized that it fails to explain the use of the subjunctive mood in factive contexts. This being so, the present study aims at explaining the variation between the indicative and subjunctive mood in factive contexts from a Cognitive Grammar perspective. The hypothesis put forward is that the mood variation can be explained in terms of dominion and control. Thus, it is claimed that the subjunctive mood in factive contexts can be explained by a reduced degree of active control, this being consistent with an event that is located outside the conceptualizer’s dominion of effective control. On the other hand, the indicative mood occurs in contexts of epistemic control that are located inside the conceptualizer’s epistemic dominion. An additional analysis of the subjunctive mood in other grammatical contexts corroborates the initial claim.

There are sporadic moments when the prose in Zibaldone leans towards a lyrical tone, clearly revealing a strong tension between two opposing tendencies. One, which separates the lines dividing literary genres, prevalent in the theoretical ideas of the author and represses stylistic variation, and the other, which fuses these dividing lines, promoting stylistic variation and opening up a common ground between the styles of the philosophical diary and the Canti. In this common ground, various basic principles of Leopardi’s thinking are partially refuted by his praxis: relativism, criticism of romantic pathos, dichotomy between indetermination and precision, among others.

This paper looks at how a given text, Carlo Goldoni’s comedy Un curioso accidente, has been translated, received and used in different adaptations in France, Germany and Denmark. In France and Germany the comedy is met with great interest already in the 18th century, mostly through very different adaptations (in France by François Roger and in Germany by Johann Christian Bock) used with considerable success on stage, less for the actual translations. Later the comedy was forgotten in those two countries. In the rest of Europe, the comedy is not translated till the 19th century ; in Denmark it is discovered about 1850, not least because Johanne Louise Heiberg, leading actress at the Royal Theatre, is enchanted by the female lead character Giannina. At the end of the century the play is restaged, but now — in agreement with the general spirit of the time — in much more realistic productions by William Bloch.

The written mediation we encounter in Titu Cusi Yupanqui’s Instrucción goes much further than simply influencing the form of the text. This study focuses on the various classical rhetorical elements found in the document which strongly influence its content. The evidence of such rhetorical devices questions the Inca’s authorship and points towards a possible co-author of the document.

¿Qué otra cosa puede ser la literatura