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Les modalités en français: la validation des representations by Laurent Gosselin

2012; American Association of Teachers of French; Volume: 85; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tfr.2012.0407

2329-7131

Thomas J. Cox,

Historical Linguistics and Language Studies

about each of its 2,500 verbs, and, at only a20, would be a worthwhile addition to any interested French speaker’s library. Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis A. Kate Miller GOSSELIN, LAURENT. Les modalités en français: la validation des représentations. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010. ISBN 978-90-420-2756-5. Pp. 470. 100 a. As teachers of French to a general student population, we might want to avoid following the example of Gosselin, who apologizes in advance for “une analyse quasi complète—forcément longue et relativement fastidieuse” (282) of one of his attested examples. In this dense and thorough study of modality in its broadest sense, which includes modal verbs, conditional and subjunctive modes, implicit modality in nouns and adjectives, temporal and qualifying adverbs, and subordinating conjunctions, Gosselin proposes une théorie modulaire des modalités (TMM) as applied to modern written French. Early in the last century, grammatical analysis of the possibilities of expressing different perspectives on a single event or fact/dictum (for example: Peut-être que Pierre viendra; Je doute que Pierre vienne; Je sais que Pierre viendra; Il est à craindre que Pierre vienne; Il faut absolument que Pierre vienne; Je ne veux pas que Pierre vienne) led grammarians and linguists like Brunot and Bally back to the Greek philosophers, logisticians , and rhetoricians, as well as to medieval works on argumentation and persuasion. Later inquiries delved into semantics, semiotics, psycholinguistics, and pragmatics, all of which are explored in the present study but shown to fall short of explanatory adequacy. Instead, Gosselin identifies nine parameters as being necessary and sufficient for the description of all the linguistic modalities of French. They fall into three categories: the conceptual, the functional, and the metaparametric (a descriptive function for values of other parameters). These in turn are subdivided into even more specific categories covering all instances of modality in written French. The data presented to illustrate these categorizations and sub-categorizations consist predominantly of a large number of unattested examples in which the aforementioned Pierre and his companion Marie are judged, doubted, or ordered about in support of the writer’s arguments. The attested examples are predominantly from the works of Jules Verne, perhaps revealing Gosselin’s predilection for science fiction, or possibly an unintended demonstration of the fact that the narrative mode of that period presented a richer, more textured interplay of dictum and modus, the object of this study. More than two hundred pages are devoted to the formal representation of conceptual space through tree structures, logical formulations, directional markers, and categorical comparisons. The chapters entitled “Principes de calcul” and “Catégories modales” are equally abstract and detailed. However, read carefully, they reveal new perspectives on the complexities of conceptual structures. A typical paragraph heading, “Métarègles inf érentielles assignatrices extramodales” (303), gives some small indication of the abstract nature of the arguments. The non-specialist would be well advised to keep a glossary close at hand while reading this volume, or probably to avoid it completely. In spite of the current French fad for using the word déontologie as often as possible, the constant recurrence of the terms aléthique, axiologique, boulique, and déontique impedes the momentum required to follow the quasi-Proustian Reviews 607 syntax of many passages. In most instances, the terms validation/invalidation, nécessaire , possible, probable, douteux, souhaitable, regrettable, obligatoire, redouté might have served the author’s purposes equally well. San Diego State University (CA) Thomas J. Cox SANAKER, JOHN KRISTIAN. La rencontre des langues dans le cinéma francophone: Québec, Afrique subsaharienne, France-Maghreb. Québec: PU de Laval, 2010. ISBN 978-27637 -9048-0. Pp. 175. $24,95 Can. The study of contact between French and other modern languages, as well as between “standardized” French and regional or national “versions,” has long been at the forefront of diverse scholarship in many disciplines. Despite the broad treatment of these topics in a variety of critical methodologies and from many theoretical perspectives, the question of the textualization of linguistic encounters in French-language cinemas has received little academic attention. Sanaker’s book seeks to fill that void. With a background in French literature and linguistics...