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Resumo No programa da relevância, Wilson (2012; 2018; 2019) tem conduzido o estudo literário expondo duas conflitantes concepções. A primeira é a concepção dos teóricos relevantistas de que a relevância contribui para o estudo da literatura. A segunda concepção é um contraponto da teoria da literatura, especificada no nome do crítico literário Keith Green (1997), de que a relevância não contribui para o estudo literário. Analisamos ambos os pontos de vista, tais como protagonizados por Wilson e Green, e discutimos a natureza das teorias da linguagem e das teorias da literatura. Propomos que, embora compartilhem o mesmo objeto observacional, isto é, a literatura, a teoria da relevância e a teoria da literatura não compartilham o mesmo objeto teórico, sendo um equívoco a equivalência de ambas. De tal equívoco resulta um problema de incomensurabilidade teórica e um risco eminente de fracasso da pragmática em sua iniciativa de sistematização dos fenômenos literários. Abstract Wilson (2012; 2018; 2019) has been conducting literature studies within the relevance theory program by exposing two conflicting conceptions. First is the notion held by relevance theory and its supporters that relevance can contribute to literary studies. The second conception is a counterpoint from literary theory by literary critic Keith Green (1996), that relevance has little to contribute to literary studies. We analyse both points of view, as asserted by Wilson and Green and we discuss the nature of linguistic communication theories and literary theories. We propose that, although they share the same observational object - literature - relevance theory and literary theory do not share the same theoretical object, so that the equivalence of both is a mistake. From such a mistake results a theoretical incommensurability problem and an imminent risk of pragmatics failing in its initiative to systematize literary phenomena. Resumen En el programa de la teoria de la relevancia, Wilson (2012; 2018; 2019) realizó el estudio literario exponiendo dos concepciones en conflicto. La primera concepción es que la relevancia contribuye al estudio de la literatura. La segunda concepción es un contrapunto defendido por el teórico literario Keith Green (1997), que la relevancia no contribuye al estudio literario. Analizamos ambos puntos de vista, tal como lo llevan a cabo Wilson y Green, y discutimos la naturaleza de las teorías del lenguaje y las teorías de la literatura. Proponemos que, aunque comparten el mismo objeto observacional, es decir, la literatura, la teoría de la relevancia y la teoría de la literatura no comparten el mismo objeto teórico, siendo la equivalencia de ambas un error. De tal error resulta un problema de inconmensurabilidad teórica y un riesgo inminente de fracaso de la pragmática en su iniciativa de sistematizar los fenómenos literarios.

This paper proposes a pragmatic solution to utterances where the various indicators of time and aspect (tenses, lexical-conceptual features of Aktionsart, adverb phrases and contextual cues) seem to have divergent temporal reference and aspectual properties. This type of cases is usually treated at the semantic level as ‘mismatches’ and resolved compositionally through logical operations of ‘aspectual coercion’. We suggest on the contrary that no such effect of ‘mismatch resolution’ or ‘coercion’ is at work: these utterances are worked out inferentially according to the various pieces of evidence they provide for their relevance, in line of Deirdre Wilson’s and Dan Sperber’s (1995) relevance theory. Such utterances give rise to cognitive effects that are hardly attainable by apparently more literal formulations, while being cost-effective. Our analysis follows the work ofEscandell-Vidal and Leonetti (2011)about the rigidity and thus prevalence of computational linguistic expressions, called ‘procedural expressions’ byBlakemore (1987)withinSperber and Wilson’s (1995[1986])framework, relevance theory.

In this paper, we argue that the successful integration of expressive acts of communication into an inferential theory of pragmatics faces a major challenge. Most post-Gricean pragmatic theories have worked to develop accounts of the interpretive processes at work in the communication of propositions; the challenge, therefore, is how expressive acts be integrated when their content is, as it appears to be, non-propositional. Following previous research (Wharton, 2009), we link the affective effects produced as a result of such acts to descriptive ineffability and procedurality, and argue that they activate experiential heuristics through which they find relevance. Our approach stands at least partially within the development of recent approaches to emotion as evaluative devices (appraisal theory) and we suggest that certain cognitive effects arise in communication thanks to affective effects, which then act as attention attractors and boosters for optimally relevant cognitive effects. We show that, sometimes, affect can win out over the non-affective side of cognition and also that at least some poetic artefacts may activate ‘pure affective effects’, which can be relevant in their own right, i.e. relevant without cognitive effects.

EnglishThis paper addresses the compositionality of the French modal verb devoir (‘must’) in past conditional sentences, focusing on the intriguing fact that such sentences tend to trigger counterfactual interpretations. This is puzzling in particular because neither the verb nor the tense would achieve this interpretation alone. We suggest that this is due to a conflict between evidential, modal and temporal features, from which a meaning of wrong past expectations, hence counterfactuality, emerges pragmatically. francaisDans cet article, nous nous interrogeons sur les raisons pour lesquelles le verbe devoir au conditionnel passe suscite une lecture contrefactuelle, alors que ni devoir ni le conditionnel, passe ou non, n’y conduisent a eux seuls. Notre tentative de solution sera pragmatique et s’attache a la concurrence que se livrent ces deux expressions au niveau de l’evidentialite, devoir selectionnant alors une interpretation prospective, correspondant a d’autres de ses emplois de valeur future.

Resume L’etude presentee ici cherche a confirmer d’une part l’hypothese d’une divergence entre les predictions des theories pragmatiques d’origine griceenne et les intuitions des locuteurs au sujet de ce qui est dit et ce qui est implicite, et d’autre part la force memorielle des jugements que forment les sujets parlants a ce propos. Notre point de depart est l’etude de Rubinelli et al. (2006) qui a montre une telle divergence dans le contexte de publicites medicales ; notre replication de cette experience en francais en soutient les resultats. Nous modifions dans un second temps cette experience afin d’explorer la force des jugements obtenus, a la suite d’une indication qui provient d’un accident experimental survenu dans le contexte de l’etude originale : les sujets parlants, une fois un premier jugement pose sur la simple presence d’une phrase dans un texte, ne consentent meme pas a effectuer la verification formelle s’ils en ont la possibilite. Notre interpretation est cognitive : la verification impose un cout dont aucune remuneration suffisante en termes informationnels n’est attendue. Nous l’expliquons en termes de recherche de pertinence, mais a un niveau qui n’est plus celui de la simple interpretation par le destinataire.

Resume Cet article reprend la notion d’aspect sporadique, qui signale l’occurrence occasionnelle mais non reguliere d’un etat de choses, et en examine une propriete curieuse : son incompatibilite avec la negation, et donc le caractere, au moins apparent, de polarite positive de l’aspect sporadique. Cette propriete est d’autant plus etrange que l’aspect sporadique signale une quantification (temporelle) et que la negation de phrases quantifiees permet generalement d’obtenir une portee sur la quantification elle-meme. Nous constatons ce probleme avec trois manieres d’exprimer la sporadicite : avec le verbe modal pouvoir, avec des quantifieurs adverbiaux comme parfois et avec l’usage regional du passe surcompose. L’hypothese explicative que nous defendons est pragmatique : nier une quantification occasionnelle, que nous appelons « partielle indeterminee », produit une ambiguite pragmatiquement insoluble entre une interpretation de quantification universelle ou nulle (pas parfois peut renvoyer de maniere equivoque a toujours ou a jamais) alors que rien ne vient justifier l’usage d’un quantifieur partiel pour obtenir une telle interpretation. Nous terminons en examinant quelques consequences de notre analyse.

Cet article questionne l’un des criteres donnes par Berlin et Kay (1969) pour identifier ce qu’ils appellent les Termes de couleur basiques. Selon eux, ces termes, qui ont la propriete de conceptualiser un champ chromatique de maniere abstraite, presentent une distribution morphologique identique. Ils prennent l’exemple du contraste, en anglais, entre les termes permettant la derivation d’approximation (red-reddish) et ceux qui l’interdisent (chartreuse-*chartreuseish). Appliquant ce critere au francais a la suite de Bloemen et Tasmowski (1983), et en observant egalement la derivation verbale, nous tentons d’en observer la pertinence et les limites, et envisageons des termes hybrides, comme orange qui accepte mal ?orangeâtre et roux ou olive qui acceptent bien roussâtre et olivâtre. Notre approche est essentiellement pragmatique, suggerant un ancrage de ces faits non dans le seul arbitraire de la langue mais en cognition.

In this paper, we consider the straw man fallacy from the perspective of pragmatic inference. Our main claim is that the straw man fallacy is a ‘pragmatic winner’ not primarily because of its persuasive power but rather because it targets the pragmatic cognitive-inferential skills of its victim while enhancing the prestige of its author. We consider that in the context of a straw man fallacy, the issue of the burden of proof, which is ‘reversed’, does not directly bear on the argumentation itself but has essentially to do with the difficulty for the targeted speaker of getting the attention of the audience back. It is difficult because countering this fallacy involves primarily a discussion of the reasons why the inference drawn (the meaning or the thought fallaciously attributed to the targeted speaker) was unduly derived, a process which is virtually destined to be a failure first of all because of the lack of relevance (in the sense of Sperber and Wilson in Relevance. Communication and cognition. Blackwell, Oxford, 1995) of justifications in comparison with that of actual points. Notions of retractability and the explicit-implicit divide are central to our approach.

In this paper, we review the various types of epistemic usages of the (simple and anterior) future tenses in French with the assumption that what actually licenses their occurrence is not a semantic feature such as aspect but pragmatic effects that give relevance to the utterance at the moment of speech. We review the main hypotheses proposed in the relevant literature and conclude that epistemic futures seem to fulfill the function of communicating – through a metarepresentation of a future verification – not only epistemic modality and evidentiality, but also, and perhaps especially, the inference that a particular course of action has to be undertaken from the perspective of a state of affairs that is true in the present.

RÉSUMÉCet article étudie les effets de sens du passé composé (PC) sous la portée d'un adverbe situeur futur en français. Nous partons de l'hypothèse de Sthioul (1998) selon laquelle cet usage du PC impose une représentation conçue comme passée depuis une projection allocentrique du moment de la parole située dans le futur. Cet article considère que le PC en usage futur est un usage métalinguistique du passé composé et donc un usage métareprésentationnel (ou interprétatif, cf. Sperber & Wilson 1995) du langage. Nous explorons les restrictions d'emploi de cet usage par des critères sémantiques (télicité, agentivité) et concluons qu'aucun d'entre eux ne forme une contrainte forte alors qu'il y a une condition pragmatique d'emploi beaucoup plus contraignante pour l'usage futur du passé composé. En particulier, nous suggérons que i) ce qui est représenté au futur n'est pas le procès mais l'état résultant (ce qui le rapproche du PC de l'accompli), ii) que l'état résultant est typiquement désirable et a déclenche une inférence à propos de l'attitude ou du comportement à tenir dans le présent dans la perspective de l'état résultant au futur. Ainsi, le passé composé en usage futur prend sa pertinence au présent et non directement au futur.

1. Generalites Cette communication se propose de presenter les recherches actuelles menees a Geneve en pragmatique et en analyse du discours, en essayant d’observer la maniere dont leurs epistemologies se positionnent par rapport aux grands courants herites de Saussure. L’idee structuraliste de Saussure, et plus generalement, l’epistemologie saussu­rienne, qui a transforme la linguistique et les sciences humaines de maniere si vaste, doit son succes, outre au caractere revolutionnaire et fond...

This article aims at determining the type of ambiguity manifested by modal verbs, focusing on French. Modal verbs are often described as polysemous since they seem to encode a fixed number of possible meanings. Options of offer are the following: (i) that modal verbs are indeed polysemous according to a technical notion of polysemy, i.e. they encode a limited set of clear-cut modal meanings; (ii) that they are a mixture of polysemy and underspecification, that is, each meaning selected in the lexicon may undergo further adjustment; (iii) that modal verbs are not conceptual but rather procedural, i.e., they encode instructions based on their grammatical dimension (they take scope over propositions which they modify); (iv) they have a vague meaning; or (v) they are simply conceptual as any other full verb is and, as most conceptual expressions, they are underspecified and get a precise meaning in context through pragmatic enrichment. Our assumption is the latter, however with a nuance regarding epistemic necessity with devoir (must) following experimental results by Barbet (2013). We take the opportunity of this issue to go at large on conceptual and procedural meanings in the first part of the paper.