The Adnominal Uses of the Czech and the French Demonstrative in Informal Spoken Language ; Les emplois adnominaux des démonstratifs tchèques et français dans la langue orale informelle ; The Adnominal Uses of the Czech and the French Demonstrative in Informal Spoken Language: A Study in Contrastive Referential Semantics ; Les emplois adnominaux des démonstratifs tchèques et français dans la langue orale informelle: Étude de sémantique référentielle contrastive

The objective of this dissertation is to compare the usages of the definite demonstrative in adnominal uses in Czech and in French, more particularly in their informal spoken register (the one most prone to change and innovation). In order to do so, we rely on corpus data consisting mostly of informal spoken exchanges (conversations). The data is annotated and analysed in TXM, a textometric software developed by the CACTUS research group at the École normale supérieure de Lyon. In addition to a statistical account of the frequency of the adnominal demonstrative in both languages, the dissertation opts, first and foremost, for a semantic-referential approach, centred around fours axes : (i) the functioning of the adnominal demonstrative of both languages within the domains of deixis (exophoric and endophoric), (ii) the particularities of “emotional” uses – those where the demonstrative does not take part directly in the identification of a semantically unique referent (Löbner, 1985 and 2011), but produces a semantic-pragmatic effect falling within the speaker’s subjectivity (cf. Adamec, 1983; Kleiber, 1991; Jonasson 1994) –, (iii) the ongoing grammaticalization of the Czech demonstrative TEN, neutral as regards the expression of distance of the referent and undergoing a process of weakening of its deictic semantics (cf. Adamec 1983; Berger 1993; Mathesius 1926; Meyerstein 1972; Orlandini 1981; Vey 1946; Zíková 2017), and, to a more limited extent, (iv) the accumulation of several functional words (Abney, 1987), including the demonstrative, within the same noun complex in Czech. It is the issue of the grammaticalization of TEN into a definite article which is paid particular attention in this work. In addressing this issue, we majorly base our analyses upon the theoretical framework of the “Concept Types and Determination Theory”, developed by Löbner (1985 and 2011). In general, the analyses presented in this work are couched within a comparative approach and underlined by questionings related to linguistic ...