The discursive functioning of the relative narratives and descriptions of French ; Fonctionnement discursif des relatives narratives et descriptives du français
This work is intended to highlight certain discursive properties of the French narrative and descriptive proposals and thus to relaunch the debate (Giora 1983, Brandt 1990, Look 2007) on their contribution to the textual organisation. More specifically, on the basis of a corpus study carried out in the context of the focus theory (Walker et al. 1998), we suggest that (i) the functional distinction between these two types of relative (Lambrecht 1998, Gapany 2004) is not fully empirically motivated, and (ii) despite their syntactic, semantic and pragmatic resemblance to independent proposals (Emonds 1979), they lack functional autonomy, at least in terms of their ability to influence referential transitions between statements. ; International audience This article intends to shed light on some discourse properties of narrative and descriptive relative clauses in French and thereby to revive the debate (Giora 1983, Brandt 1990, Look 2007) about their contribution in text organization. More specifically, going by a corpus study realized in the framework of Centering theory (Walker & al. 1998) we suggest that (i) functional distinction between these types of relatives (Lambrecht 1998, Gapany 2004) is not fully motivated empirically, and that (ii) despite number of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic characteristics they share with root clauses (Emonds 1979), they have no functional autonomy at least as for their ability to influence referential transitions between utterances. ; This work is intended to highlight certain discursive properties of the French narrative and descriptive proposals and thus to relaunch the debate (Giora 1983, Brandt 1990, Look 2007) on their contribution to the textual organisation. More specifically, on the basis of a corpus study carried out in the context of the focus theory (Walker et al. 1998), we suggest that (i) the functional distinction between these two types of relative (Lambrecht 1998, Gapany 2004) is not fully empirically motivated, and (ii) despite their syntactic, semantic ...