Temporal monoreferentials in French (hier, aujourd'hui, demain, the names of
the days and the names of the months), although used frequently, were never the
subject of a comprehensive study before Curat (1999), resulting in imprecision and
inconsistency in their classification. Defining their status is thus at the centre of this
study, which shows that hier, aujourd'hui, demain and the names of the days are
substantives, but unlike other substantives, they can, in themselves, refer to a «sole
individual* and play the role of noun phrases without a determiner. Their usage without
a determiner depends on their link to the nexus ego-hic-nunc (they are defined by the
time of their enunciation) and the unicity of their referent. They do, however, require
the presence of a determiner once detached from that nexus or when they refer to
several referents (real or not). A more or less strong lexical predisposition for
«nynegocentric» (i.e speaker referential) deicticity allows their lexeme to have a special
link with the nexus ego-hic-nunc, and the nexus thus imposes the monoreferential
constraint - hence the use without a determiner. In first place on the scale of
nynegocentric deicticity are the terms which make up the enunciative framework (je,
tu, ici, etc.). Hier, aujourd'hui and demain are placed second: they but rarely accept
the presence of a determiner. Next are the names of the days, which may be used
with or without a determiner, followed by the other substantives which require the
presence of a determiner for reference purposes. One can thus conclude that hier,
aujourd'hui, demain and the names of the days make up a subcategory of common
nouns.
The operation of the names of the months differs from that of the names of the
days in terms of both syntax and reference (they seldom vary in number, refer to one individual, and function without a determiner most of the time, independently of any
link with the nexus ego-hic-nunc); it more closely reflects that of proper nouns. They
form a subcategory of proper nouns.
The approach used, based primarily on the work of Kleiber and Curat,
was grammatical, semantic and deictic.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/14811 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Ralalaharimanitra, Simone |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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