Revue Romane. Langue et littérature. International Journal of Romance Languages and Literatures - Online First

François de Curel, mistakenly regarded as an author of the “problem play”, enjoyed a reputation of an innovator in dramaturgy during his lifetime. By rejecting the canonical form of the drama, he proposes works in which psychological analysis prevails over the dramatic progression of the action. In fact, in La Figurante, the French writer paints a portrait of the characters who resemble “marionettes” operated by unknown forces. In order to survive in bourgeois society, they assume the “masks” that social conventions demand of them and conscientiously play the comedy. However, under the facade and the artifices, the protagonists keep their existential anxieties which express their inner sincerity. In this context, the analysis of this play will lead us to seek affinities with the grotesque dimension of the Pirandello theater.

Review of Marta Saiz-Sánchez (2020). Les marqueurs d’accord et de désaccord du français et de l’espagnol. Étude diachronique XIe-XVIIIe siècle. Berne : Peter Lang. 460 p. L’ouvrage que nous présentons est une étude exhaustive sur le fonctionnement des marqueurs d’accord et de désaccord oui, non et si du français, et sí et no de l’espagnol, mais également des structures anciennes qui en sont à l’origine, comme oïl, si feray ge ou non est, pour le français médiéval, et si faze ou sy haré, pour l’espagnol médiéval.

This article deals with the argumentative function of evidential markers in Viel’s novel Paris-Brest. We argue that the combination between reported speeches and evidentials allows the internal narrator to build contexts where his moral responsibility is successfully denied. More specifically, we analyse the expressive effects conveyed by the different types of the evidentials he resorts to in terms of epistemic commitment and reliability.

In several varieties of Catalan, Valencian and Occitan, inflectional exponents originating in the imperfect subjunctive (reflex of Latin pluperfect subjunctive) are analogically extended into the first and second person plural present subjunctive forms, resulting in syncretism between present and imperfect subjunctive forms for the relevant persons. The scope and directionality of such extensions are remarkably consistent, and are indicative of a change driven by the structure of the inflectional paradigm in the relevant varieties. A significant consequence of this development, which fits into a general Romance tendency for analogical remodelling of first and second person plural forms, is alignment between previously overlapping distributions of stem allomorphs and stress placement, and thus greater predictability of inflected forms.

A la nuit la nuit de François Billetdoux est une pièce de théâtre écrite presque tout entière au conditionnel et avec des structures verbales et discursives du mode irréel. L’emploi de cette stratégie linguistique, qui fait le principal objet des analyses effectuées dans le présent travail (à la fois littéraire, linguistique et théâtrologique), est corrolaire d’une intention de fragiliser les bases ’’factuelles’’ sur lesquelles se fonde la construction de l’univers représenté dans l’œuvre. La pièce de Billetdoux s’inscrit ainsi dans la lignée de la Sonate des spectres, de l’Annonce faite à Benoît et d’autres textes littéraires et dramatiques qui montrent une certaine relativité des histoires individuelles.

This article contributes to the historical study of intercomprehension between speakers of closely related languages by focusing on Italy in the period up to the mid-fifteenth century. After an introduction to the topic, the second section will be devoted to methodological questions, including certain differences between research based on experimental testing and research based on historical evidence. The third section of the article reports opinions by medieval speakers about the intelligibility of different Italo-Romance varieties, and then compares them to opinions about genealogically and/or geographically more distant languages. While the dominant view among experts on Italy’s linguistic history is that speakers were trapped within mutually unintelligible vernaculars, this review of the extant evidence suggests a greater degree of intercomprehension than is usually supposed.

This article deals with clitic right dislocation (CLRD) structures. The interface examination of the interpretative, syntactic and prosodic properties of CLRDs shows that these constructions can be ordered on a scale based to a minor or greater degree of prosodic and syntactic integration between verb and post-verbal object. This scale of integration is based on the hypothesis that the different dislocations are part of a complex system of resources for the post-verbal expression of topic and focus categories. Crucially, the study shows that in interrogative CLRDs the clitic resumes an accessible referent which is also focal, manifesting the greater intersubjective attitude of the speaker. The work is based on the analysis of spoken data mostly taken from the CLIPS corpus.

According to normative descriptions of Italian future-framed adverbial clauses, the future tense is the only option (Quando verrai [F], ti presterò il libro ‘When you come, I’ll lend you the book’). However, the present tense may also be used (Quando vieni [P], ti presto il libro). I demonstrate that choice and acceptance of the present in future-framed adverbials are conditioned by the speaker’s presumption of settledness; that is, in every future world compatible with the speaker’s beliefs the eventuality necessarily occurs. The data come from an online questionnaire consisting of a forced-choice and an acceptability judgment task completed by 429 native speakers of Italian, and were analyzed using mixed-effects regression. Results show that the present is chosen most and rated highest when the future eventuality is presumed settled ([+certain, +immediate, +temporally specific]). These findings demonstrate that speakers use the present to express confidence in the realization of future eventualities.