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- Title
A propos from verbal complement to discourse marker: a case of grammaticalization?
- Authors
Prevost, Sophie
- Abstract
This paper presents an analysis of the evolution of the French preverbal expression àà propos (''by the way'' in Modern French). First I discuss the possibility of analyzing it as a discourse marker. Basing the analysis on Fraser's approach (Journal of Pragmatics 14: 383--395, 1990, Journal of pragmatics 31: 931--952, 1999), I show that àà propos falls within the definition of discourse markers, displaying their main characteristics. More specifically it serves to reinforce, or even create, discourse coherence. Secondly I give an account of the historical development of the expression and of the emergence of its pragmatic uses. I argue that it is closely related to the evolution of àà ce propos (and to a lesser extent to that of àà propos de), and hypothesize that àà propos has progressively replaced àà ce propos in certain contexts, while also developing in contexts of more abrupt discourse shift. I finally address the issue of the interpretation of àà propos as a case of grammaticalization, and show that there are sufficiently convincing arguments to justify its being analyzed as such. I also discuss the relevance of introducing the notion of pragmaticalization, and argue for this being a mere subclass of grammaticalization, though pertaining more specifically to the pragmatic area.
- Subjects
FRENCH etymology; DISCOURSE markers; GRAMMATICALIZATION; TRANSLATING &; interpreting; HISTORICAL semantics; SEMANTICS
- Publication
Linguistics, 2011, Vol 49, Issue 2, p391
- ISSN
0024-3949
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1515/LING.2011.012