Figement et Pragmaticalisation
Authors: Dalmas Martine 
Published: May 2017

The aim of this paper is to account for the central role played by freezing in several types of linguistic change and to come back to one of the main questions raised by the comparison between languages. This study focuses on the shift from the referential function to a more pragmatic function. It studies three pairs of expressions in German and French: glatt / carrément; schließlich / finalement; tu vois / siehst du and écoute / hör (mal). The word ‘fixedness’ is not used here as it is in the phraseological tradition (and within Europhras). Indeed, in this paper it designates the formal frozenness of polylexical forms (one of the usual defining features of phrasemes) as well as the functional frozenness of forms that are not necessarily polylexical.

The cases presented here are examples of three different levels: the level of the speaker, the discourse level and the interaction level. The types of fixedness which have been analysed result from morphological, syntactic and semantic freezing and those forms acquire a pragmatic function: in the domain of adjectives glatt / carrément shift to the function of predicative particles; the adverbs schließlich / finalement assume the function of argument markers, and the verbal forms siehst du / tu vois illustrate the gradual passage from perception to cognition, therefore to the function of interpretative guidance.

Those forms have undergone an “erosion” process in both languages. However they present a noteworthy invariant. The partial differences in their functions show that the dynamics of change depend on the variations in the preservation and exploitation of some of the features of the original forms. The common points and the differences are linked with the gradual nature of the process of pragmaticalization, and the changes at play can be observed “in the making”.

The first section of the paper presents a general description of pragmaticalization (in its basic meaning of passage from the lexical-grammatical sphere to the pragmatic sphere) and its various manifestations (decategorization, deparadigmaticization, etc. (cf. Dostie 2004)), the other three parts of the paper are devoted to the description of the markers in French and in German.

The German adjective glatt shows how characterization - from the implicature <ohne Widerstand> - tends to become more subjective as it applies to human behaviours and speech acts. That shift to internal perspective (Traugott and König 1991: 208-209), which follows from a metaphorical process, can be considered to precede pragmaticalization. In some cases the characterization moves to predication, which is presented by the speaker as being “at the limit of what could be expected”; the event in question can be interpreted as felicitous or infelicitous. According to the principle of secondary “resonance” (Black 1977) the metaphorical reading of that lexeme is maintained even when an utterance obviously expresses an evaluation. The same process is at work for the French adjective carré and the adverbial form carrément. The adverb carrément focuses the features <direct> and <without consideration> in the same way as glatt does, it shows the speaker’s evaluative intention concerning the somewhat unexpected quality of the process (an action or a behaviour). As is the case with glatt the shift results in the expression of the speaker’s attitude (or judgement), in accordance with what Traugott and König call semanticpragmatic Tendency III (1991: 209).

The third part of this paper deals with the domain of temporality and it is devoted to an example of shift to the discourse and interpretative functions. The lexemes schließlich and finalement also undergo two shifts: the former evolves from a de re temporality (it precedes the last step in a sequence of events) to a de dicto temporality (when it precedes the last step in a sequence of data); the second shift is from discursive temporality to a purely argumentative function and connects those lexemes with rival phraseological units (with which, however, they are not synonymous) such as nicht zuletzt, letzten Endes, letztendlich or en fin de compte, tout compte fait, and au total.

The paper ends with forms that are clearly phraseological - since they are polylexical forms - which focus the relation between cognition and interaction. Those forms are what the francophone tradition refers to as “énoncés parenthétiques”. They are verbs designating two basic modes of perception (voir / sehen and entendre-écouter / hören) in a form indicating proximity and interaction (second person, interrogative or imperative forms: vois-tu / tu vois / siehst du, écoute / hör (mal)) which are used to point to cognitive phenomena. The call to the addressee or co-enunciator’s perception is highlighted by “an enunciative staging” (“mise en scène énonciative”, cf. Détrie 2010) aiming at sharing and adherence.

The comparison between the two languages shows that for the same kind of linguistic material, German and French shift easily from physical perception to intellectual perception while in the case of French the shift can go as far as to designate the mental process of comprehension.

The pair voir / sehen is evidence of this difference at the end of the pragmaticalization process: while the verb voir contains the semantic feature <comprehension>, that function tends to be performed by other forms in German including the verbs wissen and verstehen. Another interesting point of difference is that the French tu vois has a punctuating (Bolly 2010) and structuring use when it focuses a constituent; this is a use that its German counterpart does not share.

There is also a clear difference between écouter and hören: the passage from the call to auditory perception to cognitive perception is similar in both languages, however only French uses the verb écouter in a clearly interactive function mentioned in studies carried out so far (Rodrigues Somolinos 2003), so as to avoid disagreement and the risk of a face threatening act. Ecoute is used in that way when an argument is added afterwards to justify an assertion in order to avoid a reproach. In German that function is served mainly by lexemes belonging to another word category such as adverbs, discourse markers, or even more elaborate verbal forms at the beginning of a speaker’s turn.

This study is too short to draw general conclusions but the following points summarize its most salient aspects:

a) The forms tending to pragmaticalize meet the need to underline the speaker’s discursive activity in the interaction; they are also explicit marks of the call to the necessary constitution of shared knowledge.

b) In both languages similar phenomena concerning the process of pragmaticalization can be observed. Beyond lexical parallels and a similar shift to an internal perspective the divergences are linked with differences in metaphorization (base domain or degree) and in the distribution of competing forms.

c) Lastly, the shift of the functions analysed in this paper does not mean that the lexical contents of those forms fade with the loss of the referential function. The change of level (referential > predicative > discursive > argumentative) maintains the main features of the units concerned. The process of metaphorization which is often the basis of the functional shift results from the mapping of some features from one domain to the other, which guarantees a certain semantic stability. What is more, the interpretation of some features can result into certain meaning effects and certain functions.

This study remains incomplete and must be broadened with a corpus analysis. However it lays stress on one of the domains where a language can be followed “in the making”. Functional and semantic freezing is a slow process which, in the case examined here, is still going on and which can be watched “live”. The pragmatic level is also to be associated with the need to produce a visible enunciative gesture and that visibility is guaranteed as long as the shift is perceptible.