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

Guérilla (2019), a multi-voiced novel by the French-language Belgian writer, Véronique Bergen, raises the question of the current environmental crisis. I shall look at the main characters’ ecological personality: four eco guerrilleros, a woman, a child and Gaia. Within the theoretical framework developed by Stéphanie Posthumus, which she based on Félix Guattari’s Ecosophy and three Ecologies (mental, social and environmental), I shall examine the characters’ subjectivity. Furthermore, I shall resort to the concept of resistance to which Véronique Bergen has dedicated her essay Résistances philosophiques ( 2009 ). I shall highlight the resistant stances adopted by the characters in their experimentation of subjectivity: the guerilla and the use of violence, the misuse of language, the building of new alliances with all life forms and the cosmos.

L’olivier est toujours un élément silencieux de la chanson de geste au Moyen Âge. La France septentrionale a précocement développé, aux XII-XIII siècles, une littérature épique qui se focalise sur les héros de la cour de Charlemagne. Les paladins du roi sont toujours engagés dans la lutte contre les infidèles, soit les Sarrasins soit les vassaux rebelles. Outre le courage et la force, ces guerres requièrent diplomatie et stratégie. Par conséquent, avant les conflits, le roi rassemble ses héros sous un olivier pour organiser la guerre. L’olivier devient un objet de bon augure pour la bataille, chargé de symbolisme religieux, en rappelant les prières de Jésus Christ dans le jardin de Gethsémani, la nuit de la Dernière Cène. Dans l’article, on essayera d’écrire une histoire du rôle de l’olivier dans la chanson de geste, en essayant de préciser les différents rôles de l’arbre.

The first- and second-person plural oblique pronuns in modern standard Italian are ci and vi; other varieties of Italo-Romance present ne (rarely ni) and ve. The pronominal clitics ci, ne and vi are often identified etymolo­gically with the local adverbs ci, ne and vi, reflecting Latin (*)hince, inde and ibi. According to a competing view only ci has an adverbial origin, whereas the pronominal clitics ne and vi reflect Latin nōs and uōs. In this study I present the material and analyse it historically. I conclude that the latter hypothesis is more plausible: it was precisely the accidental merger of pronominal ne and vi (from Latin nōs and uōs) with adverbial ne and vi (from Latin inde and ibi) that triggered the replacement of ne with ci (from Latin (*)hince).

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.