Phraseology and Style in Subgenres of the Novel: A Synthesis of Corpus and Literary Perspectives [1st ed. 2020] 978-3-030-23743-1, 978-3-030-23744-8

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xxiv
Literary Style, Corpus Stylistic, and Lexico-Grammatical Narrative Patterns: Toward the Concept of Literary Motifs (Iva Novakova, Dirk Siepmann)....Pages 1-15
The Notion of Motif Where Disciplines Intersect: Folkloristics, Narrativity, Bioinformatics, Automatic Text Processing and Linguistics (Dominique Legallois, Stefan Koch)....Pages 17-46
Key Adverbs and Adverbial Motifs in English Fiction and their French Functional Equivalents (Iva Novakova, Dirk Siepmann, Marion Gymnich)....Pages 47-81
Speech Verbs in French and English Novels (Sascha Diwersy, Laetitia Gonon, Vannina Goossens, Marion Gymnich, Agnès Tutin)....Pages 83-113
Alcohol and Tobacco Consumption in English and French Novels Since the 1950s: A Corpus-Stylistic Analysis (Francis Grossmann, Marion Gymnich, Dirk Siepmann)....Pages 115-150
French and American Science Fiction During the Nineties: A Contrastive Study of Fiction Words and Phraseology (Laetitia Gonon, Olivier Kraif)....Pages 151-188
Science Fiction versus Fantasy: A Semantic Categorization and its Contribution to Distinguishing Two Literary Genres (Vannina Goossens, Clémence Jacquot, Susanne Dyka)....Pages 189-221
Reading and Writing as Motifs in English and French General Fiction (Julie Sorba, Laetitia Gonon, Susanne Dyka, Vannina Goossens)....Pages 223-249
Dans un état de NP and in a state of NP: Bridging the Syntagmatic Gap in English and French Fiction (Susanne Dyka, Ludwig Fesenmeier, Marion Gymnich)....Pages 251-278
Towards an Interdisciplinary Approach for Differentiating Contemporary Fiction Subgenres (Iva Novakova, Dirk Siepmann)....Pages 279-285
Back Matter ....Pages 287-298

Citation preview

Phraseology and Style in Subgenres of the Novel A Synthesis of Corpus and Literary Perspectives Edited by Iva Novakova · Dirk Siepmann

Phraseology and Style in Subgenres of the Novel

Iva Novakova · Dirk Siepmann Editors

Phraseology and Style in Subgenres of the Novel A Synthesis of Corpus and Literary Perspectives

Editors Iva Novakova Grenoble Alpes University Grenoble, France

Dirk Siepmann University of Osnabrück Osnabrück, Germany

ISBN 978-3-030-23743-1 ISBN 978-3-030-23744-8  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23744-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Marina Lohrbach_shutterstock.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

The genesis of this book was in a four-year collaborative research project PhraseoRom1 on the phraseology of contemporary novels, co-funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR2) and the German Research Foundation (DFG3). It is one of the few international projects to truly bring together researchers from both literary studies and linguistics. The book, whose ten chapters report on selected results of this project, revolves around a detailed analysis and classification of recurrent fiction-specific patterns found in fictional genres and their general functions, as revealed by sophisticated corpus-driven enquiry. It focuses both on patterns found in the novel generally and genre-specific patterns shared by various literary genres. In addition, the book

1https://phraseorom.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr.

The PhraseoRom project (2016–2020), led by I. Novakova (University Grenoble Alpes, France) and Dirk Siepmann (University of Osnabrück, Germany), brought together 25 researchers from different French and German universities [University Grenoble Alpes, Sorbonne-Nouvelle Paris 3 University, University of Montpellier (France), University of Bonn, University of Osnabrück and University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany)]. 2Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR). 3Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).

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compares and contrasts the stylistic practices encountered in British, American and French contemporary novels published since the 1950s and discusses implications these might have for phraseology or literary translation. The book lies at the intersection of corpus, computational linguistics, and stylistics and is resolutely situated within the digital humanities. It is our hope that it will lend impetus to genre studies by being the first large-scale project to employ Natural Language Processing (NLP) and digital stylistics tools to describe literary genres not just in terms of traditional rhetoric or grammar, but more so as lexico-grammatical artifacts based on recurrent patterns. Thus, the book is primarily concerned with phraseological aspects of style. Since our aim is to explore the recurrent features of fictional genres and their general functions, we rarely consider specific authors or novels individually here, although our methodology could also serve to identify author-specific lexico-syntactic patterns. Generally speaking, our research has produced persuasive evidence to suggest that the identification of recurrent patterns, often called “motifs” in the French literature on the subject (Longrée and Mellet 2013; Legallois 2012), enables researchers to better distinguish the specificities of different literary genres. Viewed from this angle, literariness arises from the significant over-representation of particular motifs in specific literary genres, most of which are so discreetly conventional that the reader may not consciously notice them. Put succinctly, motifs are genre markers at sentence level. Where genre theory is concerned, the innovative potential of our approach is in particular due to the avenues it opens to considering long-standing debates on feature analysis, genre distinction and the hybridization of genres from a new vantage point and by deploying a new, interdisciplinary methodology.

Presentation of the Chapters The chapters of this book are arranged systematically to build up the picture, starting with general issues and general fiction and then moving on to comparisons between specific genres.

Preface     vii

Chapter 1, written by I. Novakova and D. Siepmann, outlines linguistic approaches to literature, to phraseology and idiomaticity, as well as new approaches in stylistics and in theories of literary genre for characterizing the recurrent lexico-grammatical patterns in contemporary fiction. It also summarizes our methodology, presents our corpora and highlights the book’s innovative features. Chapter 2 (D. Legallois and S. Koch) proposes an overview of the term “motif ” which refers to recurring patterns in different disciplines: folkloristics, narratology, bioinformatics, NLP and linguistics. Chapter 3 (I. Novakova, D. Siepmann and M. Gymnich) analyzes the key adverbs and adverbial motifs in English and their functional equivalents in French novels using the keyword approach (Scott and Tribble 2006). Chapter 4 (S. Diwersy, L. Gonon, V. Goossens, M. Gymnich and A. Tutin) deals with verbs introducing direct speech in English and French contemporary fiction (especially in the crime, fantasy and romancesubgenres). Chapter 5 (F. Grossmann, M. Gymnich and D. Siepmann) investigates the expressions related to alcohol and tobacco consumption in post-war English and French fiction from a corpus-stylistic and corpus-driven vantage point. Chapter 6 (L. Gonon and O. Kraif ) compares the “fiction words” (neologisms) in French and American science fiction during the 1990s to determine to which extent two different literary traditions may share a common background of fictional references, mixing elements that come from various “xenoencyclopedias” (Saint-Gelais 1999). Chapter 7 (V. Goossens, C. Jacquot and S. Dyka) distinguishes between the two fictional genres of science fiction and fantasy through an original semantic and stylistic classification of the recurrent narrative patterns and related motifs in the corpora. Chapter 8 (J. Sorba, L. Gonon, S. Dyka and V. Goossens) considers the discursive functions of motifs generated by the expressions écrire/lire une lettre, un roman, write/read a letter, a novel in general contemporary fiction in comparison with a corpus of crime novels.

viii      Preface

Chapter 9 (S. Dyka, L. Fesenmeier and M. Gymnich) studies the motifs generated by the structures “dans un état de NP/in a state of NP” from functional and stylistic points of view in six subgenres: general, crime, romance, fantasy, historical and science fiction. Chapter 10 (I. Novakova and D. Siepmann) outlines the most salient results of our research while emphasizing the interdisciplinary approach applied in differentiating contemporary fiction subgenres. It also points out the avenues the book opens to fruitful future research in the digital humanities. Grenoble, France Osnabrück, Germany

Iva Novakova Dirk Siepmann

References Legallois, Dominique. 2012. “La Colligation: autre nom de la collocation grammaticale ou autre logique de la relation mutuelle entre syntaxe et sémantique?” Corpus 11. http://corpus.revues.org/2202. Longrée, Dominique, and Sylvie Mellet. 2013. “Le Motif: une unité phraséologique englobante? Étendre le champ de la phraséologie de la langue au discours.” Langages 189: 68–80. Saint-Gelais, Richard. 1999. L’Empire du pseudo: Modernités de la science-fiction. Québec: Nota Bene. Scott, Mike, and Christopher Tribble. 2006. Textual patterns: Key words and corpus analysis in language education. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Acknowledgements

We owe a great debt of gratitude to Professor Marion Gymnich (University of Bonn, Germany) for her invaluable aid in re-reading the various chapters of this book. We sincerely appreciate, too, Denise Burkhard’s (University of Bonn, Germany) meticulous work in preparing the manuscript for publication, and express our thanks to her. Finally, we are indebted to Henry Randolph (Tek Ryder Translations, California, USA) for his skilful editing and proofreading of the draft chapters.

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Contents

1

Literary Style, Corpus Stylistic, and Lexico-Grammatical Narrative Patterns: Toward the Concept of Literary Motifs Iva Novakova and Dirk Siepmann

2

The Notion of Motif Where Disciplines Intersect: Folkloristics, Narrativity, Bioinformatics, Automatic Text Processing and Linguistics 17 Dominique Legallois and Stefan Koch

3

Key Adverbs and Adverbial Motifs in English Fiction and their French Functional Equivalents 47 Iva Novakova, Dirk Siepmann and Marion Gymnich

4

Speech Verbs in French and English Novels 83 Sascha Diwersy, Laetitia Gonon, Vannina Goossens, Marion Gymnich and Agnès Tutin

1

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5

Alcohol and Tobacco Consumption in English and French Novels Since the 1950s: A Corpus-Stylistic Analysis 115 Francis Grossmann, Marion Gymnich and Dirk Siepmann

6

French and American Science Fiction During the Nineties: A Contrastive Study of Fiction Words and Phraseology 151 Laetitia Gonon and Olivier Kraif

7

Science Fiction versus Fantasy: A Semantic Categorization and its Contribution to Distinguishing Two Literary Genres 189 Vannina Goossens, Clémence Jacquot and Susanne Dyka

8

Reading and Writing as Motifs in English and French General Fiction 223 Julie Sorba, Laetitia Gonon, Susanne Dyka and Vannina Goossens

9

Dans un état de NP and in a state of NP: Bridging the Syntagmatic Gap in English and French Fiction 251 Susanne Dyka, Ludwig Fesenmeier and Marion Gymnich

10 Towards an Interdisciplinary Approach for Differentiating Contemporary Fiction Subgenres 279 Iva Novakova and Dirk Siepmann Appendix A: Corpora 287 Appendix B: Discursive Functions 291 Index 295

Notes on Contributors

Sascha Diwersy is associate professor of French linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and the Praxiling research laboratory at Paul Valéry Montpellier 3 University, France. His main research interests are in corpus linguistics, syntax, semantics, lexicology, text linguistics and the study of language varieties. He has authored a textbook on collocation, corpus-driven lexico-grammatical analysis and contrastive studies (Kookkurrenz, Kontrast, Profil) and has written some 30 articles. His is the (co-)author of several large corpora in different languages (French, German, Spanish, English, Russian) and the (co-)developer of two corpus analysis platforms (EmoBase/Lexiscope, BTLC.PrimeStat/Varitext). Susanne Dyka currently works at the Institute of English and American Studies at Osnabrück University and the Institute of Anglistics at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg. Her main research interests are in lexicography and phonology. As a member of the PhraseoRom project team she specializes in the semantic classification of RLTs. Ludwig Fesenmeier is professor of French and Italian Linguistics in the Institute of Romance Studies at Friedrich Alexander University xiii

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Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. His main research interests are in (historical) Romance text linguistics, historical syntax of the Romance languages as well as Romance variational linguistics. He has co-edited several volumes and written two other books and more than 70 articles and reviews. Laetitia Gonon  is an associate professor of French language and stylistics at the University Grenoble Alpes, France (UGA, UMR5316 Litt & Arts). She specializes in the style of crime news items and popular fiction from the nineteenth century to the present day, particularly their phraseology. She is currently interested in Anglicisms in French novels (Flaubert, but also contemporary French bestsellers, detective novels and sentimental novels). Vannina Goossens  is a postdoctoral fellow at the University Grenoble Alpes and a member of LIDILEM, as part of the Franco-German ANRDFG PhraseoRom project. Her work is in the fields of semantics and corpus linguistics with focus on studying the semantic structuring of lexicon and lexical units, polysemy, polylexical sequences and their role in structuring discourse and literary genres using statistical and textometric methods. Francis Grossmann is professor emeritus of Linguistics at the University Grenoble Alpes, France, and a member of the LIDILEM Research Team. His research has focused in recent years on analysing the phraseological dimensions of scientific discourse, the lexicon of emotions and the discursive markers of reported speech. His research interests further include lexical learning at different levels of education. He has (co)-authored some fifteen books or entire journal issues. He has also co-directed several research projects and his work has been published in over 70 peer reviewed publications as well as book chapters and conference proceedings. Marion Gymnich  is professor of English Literature and Culture at the University of Bonn, Germany. Her research interests include British literature and culture from the nineteenth century to the present, narrative theory, and genre theory. She has (co-)authored six books, (co-) edited 14 books and has published more than 100 articles.

Notes on Contributors     xv

Clémence Jacquot is an associate professor of linguistics and stylistics at the University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 and a researcher at the Praxiling laboratory (UMR 5267). She is a specialist in stylistics and, during her Ph.D. and as a postdoc in Digital Humanities, did work on the tools used to interpret literary texts. She is currently interested in the differences between the narrative subgenres and their description using digital stylistics tools. Stefan Koch is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of ErlangenNuremberg (Germany) in the binational PhraseoRom project. He has to his credit publications on Spanish scriptology, Spanish and Italian historical linguistics as well as Italian morphology, Romance and general typology. Olivier Kraif is professor at the University Grenoble Alpes teaching in the field of Computer Science and Natural Language Processing. He has been a researcher in LIDILEM (Laboratoire de LInguistique et DIdactique des Langues Étrangères et Maternelles) since 2002. He works in the field of text corpora processing with an emphasis on multilingual corpora (comparable as well as parallel). His research aims include developing tools and techniques for investigating linguistic phenomena from lexicon, phraseology, contrastive analysis and translational studies perspectives. Dominique Legallois is professor of French linguistics at SorbonneNouvelle Paris 3 University, France. His main research interests are in corpus linguistics, discourse analysis and construction grammar. He has (co-)authored two textbooks on construction grammar (Constructions in French) and text linguistics (The Grammar of Genres and Styles: From Discrete to Non-discrete Units) and has written more than 60 articles and reviews. Iva Novakova is professor of French and Contrastive Linguistics at the University Grenoble Alpes and a member of LIDILEM research team. Her research has focused in recent years on phraseology and corpus linguistics. She has published more than 80 works in the field of the emotional lexicon, on the phraseology in literary language, on causative constructions and on time-modes-aspects. She co-led the

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French-German Emolex (2010–2013) research project EMOLEX on the emotional lexicon in five European languages. Currently, she is principal investigator, with Dirk Siepmann, of the PhraseoRom project (2016–2020), whose main objective is studying the extended phraseology and specific textual motifs of contemporary French, English and German novels. Dirk Siepmann is professor of English language teaching at the Institute of English and American Studies of Osnabrück University, Germany. His main research interests are in lexicology and lexicography, translation studies and language teaching. He has (co-)authored two textbooks on academic writing (Writing in English and Wissenschaftliche Texte auf Englisch schreiben), and written ten other books and more than 80 articles and reviews. Currently, he is principal investigator, with Iva Novakova, of the PhraseoRom project (2016–2020). Julie Sorba is an associate professor in Linguistics at the University Grenoble Alpes (LIDILEM and UMR5316 Litt & Arts Research Centers), France. She defended her Ph.D. thesis in comparative linguistics of ancient languages. In recent years, she has pursued her academic research interests along two main tracks: lexicology and especially phraseological phenomena in broad corpora of French contemporary—literary/non-literary—texts using the tools of corpus linguistics. She has written more than 40 articles and reviews. She is the co-editor of LIDIL a Journal of Linguistics and Language Education. Agnès Tutin is professor in French Linguistics at the University Grenoble Alpes, France, participates in the LIDILEM research team, and heads up the Masters in Linguistics program. Her main research interests are in lexical semantics, phraseology and corpus linguistics. In her recent work, she has focused on phraseological routines in academic discourse and spoken corpora.

Abbreviations

CONT Contrast corpus CRIM Crime fiction DF Discursive functions DISP Dispersion EN English FR French FW Fiction words FY Fantasy novels GEN General fiction HIST Historical novels LIT Literary corpus LLR Log-likelihood ratio LSCs Lexico-syntactic constructions NLP Natural language processing NP Nominal phrase RLT(s) Recurrent lexico-syntactic tree(s) ROM Romance novels SF Science fiction novels

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List of Figures

Chapter 2 Fig. 1 Genome sequences Fig. 2 Verbal valence as elements of the motif (based on Čech et al. 2017, 16) Fig. 3 Frequency of the motifs (based on Čech et al. 2017, 16) Fig. 4 An example of the RLT pousser la porte (push the door open)

28 30 30 36

Chapter 4 Fig. 1 CA applied to the data set obtained by cross-tabulating verb class and the combination of language with genre (The verb class is shown in red, the combined category of genre and language in blue. Circle size represents contribution) Fig. 2 Vocabulary growth curves for the verb slot of the speech tag construction in the English and French samples

94 97

Chapter 5 Fig. 1 Most frequent types of alcohol in the English and French sub-corpora (n English = 8046; n French = 6837)

141 xix

xx      List of Figures

Fig. 2 “Other” types of alcohol in the English and French sub-corpora, n = 229 in the English corpus, n = 239 in the French corpus Fig. 3 Take a sip in the English corpus before and after sorting, n = 303 before sorting; 202 after sorting Fig. 4 Boire une gorgée in the French corpus before and after sorting, n = 207 before sorting; 113 after sorting Fig. 5 Sip of wine and gorgée de vin in the English and French corpora

141 143 144 145

Chapter 6 Fig. 1 Distribution of the selected words in the French corpus (n.b. the OTH label refers to words that have not been categorized) Fig. 2 Distribution of selected words in the English corpus Fig. 3 Distribution of types of formation for the selected words in the French corpus Fig. 4 Distribution of types of formation for the selected words in the English corpus

162 163 165 166

Chapter 9 Fig. 1 Recurrent Lexico-Syntactic Tree for dans un état de NP in the French sub-corpora 255 Fig. 2 Recurrent Lexico-Syntactic Tree for in a state of NP in the English sub-corpora 255

List of Tables

Chapter 2 Table 1 Table 2

The Dragon-Slayer as a motif chain and its equally valid story variants (based on Ofek et al. 2013, 3) Textual motif “discovery of a body” (based on Muryn et al. 2016, 9–11)

28 37

Chapter 3 Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4 Table 5 Table 6

Quantitative differences between different types of adverbs in English and French English and French key manner adverbs with potential equivalents Quantitative differences between selected candidates for equivalence (occurrences per one million words) Distribution of manner adverbs by verb semantics (log dice >5) Natural French equivalents of English adverbs Frequency of key adverbs in translation and comparable corpora revisited

49 53 54 56 59 78

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Chapter 4 Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4 Table 5 Table 6 Table 7 Table 8 Table 9

Corpora used for the study 88 Occurrences of direct speech 89 Frequencies of verb classes cross-tabulated by genre combined with language 93 Contrastive specificities of verb classes by language 95 Contrastive specificities of verb classes by genre in the French data set 96 Contrastive specificities of verb classes by genre in the English data set 96 Frequencies of verb classes cross-tabulated by language 110 Frequencies of verb classes cross-tabulated by genre for English 111 Frequencies of verb classes cross-tabulated by genre combined for French 111

Chapter 5 Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4

Most frequent RLTs related to the cigarette script in the English sub-corpus Most frequent RLTs related to the cigarette in the French sub-corpus Most frequent RLTs related to the consumption of alcohol in the English sub-corpus Most frequent RLTs related to the consumption of alcohol in the French sub-corpus

126 132 137 140

Chapter 6 Table 1 Table 2 Table 3

Quantitative description of the corpora 153 Semantic classes derived from the selected fiction words 161 Comparative distribution according to POS 163

Chapter 7 Table 1 Table 2

French and English science fiction and fantasy corpora 191 Cumulative thresholds and number of RLTs for each language and genre 193

List of Tables     xxiii

Table 3 Table 4 Table 5

Semantic dimensions and values used in the PhraseoRom project 195 Classification of patterns by semantic dimension for French science fiction and fantasy 201 Classification of RLTs by semantic dimension for English science fiction and fantasy 202

Chapter 8 Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4 Table 5 Table 6

Specificities of the recurrent lexico-syntactic patterns of our study in the GEN corpora The lexical and grammatical collocates of the eight patterns Syntagmatic variations of the article across the eight LSCs The syntagmatic variations of the noun across the eight LSCs The syntagmatic variations of the verb across the eight LSCs The paradigmatic variations across the noun in the eight LSCs

228 230 232 233 233 235

Chapter 9 Table 1

Frequency of dans un état de NP and in a state of NP with statistically relevant collocates and number of statistically relevant collocates (LLR ≥10.83) 256 Table 2 Frequency of en état de NP 257 Table 3 Statistically significant collocates of in a state of NP sorted by word classes 258 Table 4 Statistically significant collocates of dans un état de NP sorted by word classes 258 Table 5 Statistically significant verb collocates of dans un état de NP (LLR ≥10.83) 259 Table 6 Statistically significant verb collocates of in a state of NP (LLR ≥10.83) 260 Table 7 Statistically significant noun collocates of dans un état de NP (LLR ≥10.83) 262 Table 8 Statistically significant noun collocates of in a state of NP (LLR ≥10.83) 263 Table 9 Statistically significant adjective collocates of dans un état de NP (LLR ≥10.83) 264 Table 10 Statistically significant adjective collocates of in a state of NP (LLR ≥10.83) 265

xxiv      List of Tables

Appendix A Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4

Size of the entire comparable corpora Size of the samples in the literary corpora (LIT) (Samples of literary corpora (LIT) versus reference corpora [CONT] [cf. Table 3]) Size of the contrast (non-literary) corpora (CONT) Size of the parallel corpora

288 289 290 290

1 Literary Style, Corpus Stylistic, and Lexico-Grammatical Narrative Patterns: Toward the Concept of Literary Motifs Iva Novakova and Dirk Siepmann

1 Introduction In this chapter, Section 2 opens with an outline of the linguistic approaches to literature, to phraseology and idiomaticity, as well as new approaches in stylistics and in theories of literary genre, to characterize the recurrent lexico-grammatical patterns in contemporary fiction. In Sect. 3, we summarize our methodology and present our corpora. Section 4 highlights the book’s innovative features. This section also defines what sets the patterns called “motifs” apart from other types of phraseological units and how the present work advances research in ­linguistics and literary studies. I. Novakova (*)  Grenoble Alpes University, Grenoble, France e-mail: [email protected] D. Siepmann  University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 I. Novakova and D. Siepmann (eds.), Phraseology and Style in Subgenres of the Novel, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23744-8_1

1

2     I. Novakova and D. Siepmann

2 Scientific Background 2.1 Linguistic Approaches to Literature Previous research in stylistics (e.g. Barthes 1966; Leech and Short 2007), corpus stylistics (Stubbs 2005; Fischer-Starcke 2010; Mahlberg 2013) and textometry (Brunet 1981)1 concentrated on characterizing the style(s) of various authors (e.g. Flaubert, Proust, Dickens, Austen). It showed that the bulk of the theoretical literature focuses on recurrent schemas (e.g. Todorov 1980; Lits 2011) found in their novels. On the other hand, research is scarce when it comes to fiction-specific lexico-grammatical patterns based on large corpora, which the present volume centers on. Our study first differentiates these patterns before proceeding to distinguishing them from other types of phraseological units. While some literary scholars (e.g. Attridge 2004) and the general public tend to confer a special status on the language of literature, linguists generally agree that “literary language is not special or different, in that any formal feature termed ‘literary’ can be found in other discourses” (Burton and Carter 2006, 273). Countering the formalist claim that “defamiliarization” or “foregrounding” (Mukařovský 2014, 43) is the essence of literature and literary language, a strong case has been made that many works of literature contain “ordinary language” or have their “roots in everyday uses of language” (Leech 2014, 5–6). This has led to attempts at capturing the specificity of literary language in functional terms, using criteria such as medium-dependence, displaced interaction, and polysemy (Burton and Carter 2006, 272) or the “duplicity” (Scholes 1982, 23) of the various factors involved in the communication process (e.g. the difference between author and narrator). If we adopt this view, the subjective impression of “literariness” (литepaтypнocть, Jakobson 1921) conveyed by even the shortest passage of imaginative prose would merely be an incidental phenomenon subordinate to the unfathomable rules of the artistic craft. Yet, 1[Textometry is an approach that has been developed primarily in France since the 1970s. It makes use of a large range of linguistically significant and mathematically sound computations for the analysis of textual data];

1  Literary Style, Corpus Stylistic, and Lexico-Grammatical …     3

significantly, this assumption of a functional difference without a formal correlative—a kind of linguistic epiphenomenon—is without parallel or precedent in linguistics. It may simply be due to the fact that literary language or the language of a particular literary genre have never been examined in their entirety. As mentioned earlier, the investigations have usually focused on a particular author’s style or individual texts as well as on the stylistic devices handed down from Greek antiquity. By turning both literary and linguistic traditions on their heads as it were, we are assuming that literariness does not primarily reside in any stylistic features peculiar to literary texts (e.g. metaphor, irony), but rather in their adherence to genre-internal conventions of idiomaticity. In other words, it is the statistically significant over-representation of particular general-language features that creates the subjective impression of literariness. It will be argued here that the essence of imaginative writing is not idiosyncracy or originality but a certain unobtrusive conventionality common to all instantiations of a particular literary genre during a given period, regardless of their literary status. Any attempt to pin down the notion of literariness must therefore consider the habitual “norm” (Coseriu 1975, 85–88) or the “idiom principle” (Sinclair 1991, 113) underlying specific genres if we are to succeed in determining how the “creativity principle” (Siepmann 2011, 68) and the “open-choice principle” (Sinclair 1991, 175) variously operate in specific texts. Moreover, Stubbs and Barth (2003, 79) demonstrated that “text types are distinguished by lexical and grammatical patterns.” They found that fiction, for example, is “characterized by a verbal style, by past tense verb forms and by frequent vocabulary from the lexical fields of saying, looking, thinking and wanting.” However, the study in question, apart from being based on a small corpus, was limited by its exclusive focus on the 200 most-frequently occurring multi-word strings in each genre. The results showed little evidence of lexical units of meaning capable of significantly impacting the reader’s conscious perceptions of texts. Similarly, Biber et al. (1999) identified a number of general fiction-specific grammatical features, such as the absence of participial relative clauses (606) or the frequent use of double genitives (309). Biber (1988) and Conrad and Biber (2001) also provided detailed multidimensional analyses of register variation linking situational characteristics

4     I. Novakova and D. Siepmann

to linguistic features and their functions but in which they failed to consider fiction-specific keywords or multi-word units.

2.2 Approaches to Idiomaticity and Phraseology As we have just seen, while there is a dearth of studies on the lexico-grammatic nature of literary texts, many researchers have examined idiomatic combinations in other genres such as journalistic and scientific texts (Sinclair 1991, 2004; Hunston and Francis 2000; Hoey 2005; de Beaugrande 2005). While there is currently no consensus among authors on the resulting profusion of labels used to identify idiomaticity— such as “extended units of meaning” (Sinclair 2004), “constructions” (Goldberg 1995), “collostructions” (Stefanowitsch and Gries 2003), “collocations” (Hausmann 1979; Mel’čuk et al. 1995; Siepmann 2005), “lexical bundles” (Biber et al. 1999), “sequential patterns” (Quiniou et al. 2012), and “multi-words expressions” (Steyer and Brunner 2014)—there is nevertheless a growing convergence among these different approaches and labels that dispenses with the distinction between a grammar composed of rules and a lexicon consisting of words and phrases. Thus, the Neofirthian approach, whose most accomplished proponent is undoubtedly Hoey (2005), advocates for a grammatical lexicon containing both grammatical combinations (“colligations”: e.g. GN + to be + about + V-ing ) and lexical combinations (“collocations” clear motorway ). This theory uses the concept of collocational “nests,” where the meaning is not compositional (say a word => say a word against => won’t say a word against; Hoey 2005, 11). In addition, Hoey completes the description of “local” lexico-syntactic relationships, i.e. those internal to the sentence, by analyzing lexico-syntactic relationships in larger textual units called “textual colligations.” However, his study is based on a small number of English lexemes and needs to be expanded to larger corpora or performed from a cross-linguistic perspective.2

2Lexical priming theory was used for the analysis of the emotion lexicon in five European languages based on large multilingual corpora (see among others Novakova and Melnikova 2013; Novakova 2015).

1  Literary Style, Corpus Stylistic, and Lexico-Grammatical …     5

Construction grammars, on the other hand, treat language as an inventory of form/meaning pairs extending across a continuum, from lexicon to grammatical structures via idiomatic sequences (e.g. Goldberg 1995; Fillmore et al. 1988; Croft 2001). An obvious relationship exists between contextualism and certain construction grammars such as the “collostructions” of Stefanowitsch and Gries (2003). While the former starts from general constructions such as the ditransitive construction to identify its associated lexis, the latter instead start from individual lexemes (e.g. give) to arrive at general syntactic patterns. The strong convergence of these different approaches led to a shift in research focus from the fixed sequences of traditional phraseology (routine formulas, proverbs and binary collocations (Hausmann 1979; Mel’čuk et al. 1995) to all kinds of “pragmatemes” (Feilke 1996) and “extended” lexical units (Sinclair 2004). Three particularly promising concepts in this respect are “collocational frameworks” (Renouf and Sinclair 1991), “motifs” (Legallois 2006, 2012; Longrée and Mellet 2013) and “probabemes” (Herbst and Klotz 2003). The latter are polylexical sequences highly likely to be used by speakers in particular situations (e.g. “il n’avait pas de mots assez durs pour Vinf ” vs. “il avait des mots durs pour Vinf ”; Hausmann 2007, 136). In this volume, we venture beyond binary collocations by analyzing recurrent polylexical units automatically extracted from our contemporary fiction corpora. As such, we firmly position ourselves in the so-called “extended phraseology” framework (cf. Legallois and Tutin 2013), which includes a wide range of study objects, from collocations through paremiology or various pragmatics or discursive sequences to polylexical units. More generally, both the “continental” approach to phraseology and British contextualism (Sinclair 2004; Hoey 2005; Biber 2009) converge by no longer considering phraseology as a marginal phenomenon but rather as an essential structural element of human language. Several of the contributions in this volume aim specifically at clarifying how polylexical phraseological units form literary motifs as well as their functioning both linguistically and discursively in modern fiction.

6     I. Novakova and D. Siepmann

2.3 Stylistics and Theories of Literary Genre Textual genres are currently the subject of interdisciplinary studies in linguistics, literary theory, stylistics, and lexicometric analysis. In the theory of literature, several works on textual genres authored by, for example, Gymnich et al. (2007), Zymner (2003), Frow (2005), Duff (2000), and Monte and Philippe (2014) can be cited here. In addition, Adam (2005) proposed dealing with the question of text categorization in terms of dynamics, the effects of genericity and generic tensions: for him, a text is always in production, as in reception/interpretation, in relation with one or more genres. This content-based approach, which still needs to be complemented by linguistics and digital stylistics, opens new perspectives on the theory of genres (see also Beauvisage 2001; Rastier 2011). Furthermore, genre theory has traditionally tended to draw a relatively clear distinction between so-called highbrow and lowbrow fiction, that is, between “popular genres” and “literary fiction” (cf. Frow 2005, 128). This was chiefly done using criteria based exclusively on the content of the genres in question, such as the description of emotional states in a romance. Other approaches in genre theory have highlighted genres as being “rooted in institutional infrastructures” (Frow 2005, 128); that is, generic distinctions are perpetuated by institutions such as publishing houses and booksellers. Without question, such institutions are capable of promoting genres through various marketing strategies, say by using covers that readers perceive as typical of a particular genre. Still, the reader will ultimately always fall back on genre expectations when it comes to the content. For content to be deemed characteristic of a genre, it arguably also has to be couched in a genre-appropriate ­language that satisfies readers’ expectations. Traditionally, both content and language of lowbrow or popular genres, such as the crime news item, serial novels (Gonon 2012, 2015), detective stories3 (Eisenzweig 1983), and fantasy fiction, have been thought of as

3L’Affaire

Lerouge by E. Gaboriau (1866) is widely accepted as the first French crime novel.

1  Literary Style, Corpus Stylistic, and Lexico-Grammatical …     7

shaped by “the formulaic and the conventional” (Frow 2005, 2). In recent decades, however, in the wake of Postmodernism, the boundaries between popular and “literary” fiction have progressively blurred, and numerous factors “have contributed to closing the gap to a certain extent between highbrow literature and popular culture” (Nünning and Nünning 2018, 30). Genres like crime fiction, historical novels, fantasy, romance and science fiction are still intact and thriving. What has changed is the growing number of well-known “literary” or “highbrow” fiction writers who have adopted conventions of “generic fiction” in penning their novels. While Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel When We Were Orphans (2000) may still be a far cry from formulaic crime fiction, it nevertheless clearly draws on various traits proper to detective fiction. In France, a multi-awarded and acclaimed author like Jean Echenoz also plays with the rules of historical (14, 2012) or spy fiction (Envoyée Spéciale, 2016). Many further examples of this kind could be cited. Given these sorts of dynamics, literary genres tend to exhibit an extreme literary and stylistic heterogeneity: they range from works that are definitely categorizable as “lowbrow fiction” (such as the Mills and Boon/Harlequin romances) to intellectually demanding novels written by famous authors. Therefore, this categorization is ripe for reassessment using the tools of modern digital stylistics. The digital-stylistic approach provides a new type of quantitatively based evidence (see Herrmann et al. 2015). Consequently, large corpora are changing the stylistic studies paradigm by offering new heuristic tools to put subgenres into literary and stylistic categories and revisit the controversial distinction between highbrow and lowbrow fiction (see Boyer 2008).

3 Corpora and Methodology In all chapters of this volume, we adopt a corpus-driven methodology4 applied to large English and French literary corpora compiled in the course of the PhraseoRom project. The corpora consist of contemporary 4For

the distinction between corpus based and corpus driven approaches, see Tognini-Bonelli (2001).

8     I. Novakova and D. Siepmann

novels, subdivided into the six subgenres of crime, science fiction, fantasy, romance, historical and general fiction. Complementing them is a parallel corpus containing novels that have been translated from English into French or vice versa (see Appendix A). The corpora were automatically parsed to carry out lemmatization and part-of-speech tagging as well as marking syntactic dependencies between words. We used two different tools, Connexor (Tapanainen and Järvinen 1997) for the French texts, and XIP (Aït-Mokhtar et al. 2002) for the English texts, to extract lexical units (pivots) that combine with other words and these in turn provided two different methods of accessing textual motifs: – the RLTs5 (Recurrent Lexico-syntactic Trees) method, integrated into Lexicoscope (Kraif 2016; see Chapter 2 by Legallois and Koch in this volume); – the keyword approach tool (Scott and Tribble 2006), integrated into Sketchengine (Kilgarriff et al. 2014; see Chapter 3 by Novakova et al. in this volume) The RLTs methodology automatically extracts statistically significant nonlinear fiction-specific constructions from the literary corpora (LIT) that are then compared to newspaper, scientific texts and TED talks that we constituted as our reference corpus (CONT) (see Appendix A). Based on the complex pivot concept, this iterative extraction method provides recurrent expressions of length n around a given pivot that vastly improve on simple frameworks consisting of repeated segments or lexical chunks. They represent real syntactic sub-trees, which can be realized in different ways on the surface in the texts. The RLTs are then automatically clustered according to specificity, frequency, and dispersion criteria and analyzed syntactically, semantically, and discursively. The second approach using keywords is employed in analyzing fiction-specific adverbial constructions in English and French (see Chapter 3 by Novakova et al. in this volume). The keyword in its statistical sense

5The abbreviation RLTs (Recurrent Lexico-syntactic Trees) is the English equivalent for ALR (Arbres Lexico-syntaxiques récurrents; Kraif 2016).

1  Literary Style, Corpus Stylistic, and Lexico-Grammatical …     9

is by now a well-established concept in corpus linguistics: A word must exceed a minimum frequency level according to the statistical index log likelihood. Keyword searches capture two kinds of data: (a) what the text or texts being examined are about (“aboutness indicators”) and (b) what the predominant word choices are in a stylistic sense (“stylistic indicators”). The corpus-stylistic study of literary language is mostly concerned with the latter. We applied a complementary approach to analyzing the speech verbs in French and English novels (see Chapter 4 by Diwersy et al. in this volume). Here, the data sets were processed using what essentially are canonical methods in the tradition of French textometry (cf. Lebart et al. 1998) whose focus is on contrastive word specificities and corres­ pondence analysis. The contrastive specificities method (Lafon 1980) operates roughly on the same principle as the keyword method in the British tradition of corpus linguistics but, unlike the latter, runs its calculations using hypergeometric distribution.

4 Innovative Features of the Book In this section, we highlight what we believe is the unique contribution our research makes to stylistics by introducing the notion of “motif ” to bridge the gap between linguistics and literary studies. Our intent here is not to preempt the detailed discussions found in the remai­ning chapters of this book, but to preliminarily sketch what we mean by this relatively new idea. To begin with, we do not intend for the term “motif ” to be taken as referring to elements with symbolic significance that recur in a story, as has traditionally been the case in literary studies. Instead, in our usage, “motif ” denotes a sequence of either continuous or discontinuous units that may combine different types of elements (particular word forms, lemmas and/or morpho-syntactic categories, collocations). Our motifs thus – display lexico-syntactic regularities and variations at the syntagmatic and paradigmatic levels while simultaneously performing particular discursive/narrative functions. They are therefore recurrent linguistic

10     I. Novakova and D. Siepmann

units that can be described at the levels of lexico-grammar, semantics and pragmatics/discourse (Longrée and Mellet 2013; Legallois 2012); – furnish a link between linguistics and literary studies to the extent that they collaborate in the construction of scripts and schemas; and are situated—unlike traditional literary motifs—where social scripts and fictional scripts (see also Baroni 2002, 2007) intersect. Motifs as we understand them cannot be identified by fully automatic procedures but instead require the linguist and the literary scholar to make a judgment. The automatic extraction of recurrent ­lexico-syntactic trees (RLTs) or of keywords represents the first step in our general procedure and should be thought of as merely a heuristic process useful for detecting potential candidate motifs. To take a simple example, the sequence “Poss Det + N (thoughts/meditations…) + were + interrupted/cut short by N/as clause” (e.g. His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a key turning in the lock ) may qualify as a motif to the extent that it combines different types of elements ­(grammatical: the noun thought ) and displays paradigmatic variations (lexical: interrupt/cut short; thoughts/meditations/…) (Siepmann 2015). At the same time it also performs a particular narrative function: transitioning between an internal and an external narrative perspective and beginning a new narrative segment. The notion of motif lets us fill in the missing link between “­ macro-level” notions of script or schema that have traditionally been used in cognitive narratology (e.g. study of the plot, isotopies) and the “micro-level” elements that go into making up the script (specific phraseological recurrences). A straightforward example is afforded by what might be called the “cigarette script,” which, at its most basic, involves a sequence of actions such as lighting up, inhaling, exhaling, blowing smoke, etc. (for more details, see Chapter 5 by Grossmann et al. in this volume). A recurrent motif found in this script type is Pronoun/Noun He + V lighted + DET a + N cigarette + PP (prepositional phrase), where the PP “slot” is commonly filled by elements of the type “locative” (e.g. on the way down from the hotel), “source” (from a packet of Gauloises), “mode of lighting” (from the burning end of another), or “manner” (with trembling hands).

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The present volume is intended for linguists, translation and literary scholars, corpus stylistics scholars and lexicologists, as well as the lay reader outside academia. We believe that the book may also have a certain appeal for creative writing teachers and students because it explores the interrelationships between style and substance or between narrative intent and formulation, while also providing a wide-ranging catalogue of specific linguistic patterns that aspiring writers can use or adapt to their own purposes.

References Adam, Jean-Michel. 2008 (2005). La Linguistique textuelle: introduction à l’analyse textuelle des discours. Paris: Armand Colin. Aït-Mokhtar, Salah, Jean-Pierre Chanod, and Claude Roux. 2002. “Robustness Beyond Shallowness: Incremental Deep Parsing.” Journal of Natural Language Engineering 8 (2/3): 121–44. Attridge, Derek. 2004. Peculiar Language: Literature as Difference from the Renaissance to James Joyce. London and New York: Routledge. Baroni, Raphaël. 2002. “Le Rôle des scripts dans le récit.” Poétique 129: 105–26. Baroni, Raphaël. 2007. La Tension Narrative: Suspense, curiosité et surprise. Paris: Seuil. Barthes, Roland. 1966. “Introduction à l’analyse structurale des récits.” Communications 8: 1–27. Beauvisage, Thomas. 2001. “Exploiter des données morphosyntaxiques pour l’étude statistique des genres: application au roman policier.” TAL 43. http://www.revue-texto.net/Inedits/Beauvisage/index.html. Biber, Douglas. 1988. Variation Across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Biber, Douglas. 2009. “A Corpus-Driven Approach to Formulaic Language: Multi-word Patterns in Speech and Writing.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 14: 275–311. Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan. 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman. Boyer, Alain-Michel. 2008. Les Paralittératures. Paris: Armand Colin.

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Brunet, Etienne. 1981. Le Vocabulaire français de 1789 à nos jours. Geneva and Paris: Slatkine and Champion. Burton, Deirdre, and Roland Carter. 2006. “Literature and the Language of Literature.” In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., Vol. 7, edited by Keith Brown, Anne H. Anderson, Laurie Bauer, Margie Berns, Graeme Hirst, and Jim Miller, 267–74. Boston: Elsevier. Conrad, Susan, and Douglas Biber, editors. 2001. Variation in English: Multidimensional Studies. London: Longman. Coseriu, Eugenio. 1975. Sprachtheorie und allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft. München: Fink. Croft, William. 2001. Radical Construction Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press. de Beaugrande, Robert. 2005. “‘Corporate Bridges’ Twixt Text and Language: Twenty Arguments Against Corpus Research and Why They’re a Right Load of Old Codswallop.” http://www.beaugrande.com/Corporate%20Bridges. htm. Duff, David. 2000. Modern Genre Theory. London: Longman. Eisenzweig, Uri. 1983. Autopsies du roman policier. Paris: Union générale d’éditions. Feilke, Helmuth. 1996. Sprache als soziale Gestalt: Ausdruck, Prägung und die Ordnung der sprachlichen Typik. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Fillmore, Charles, Paul Kay, and Catherine O’Connor. 1988. “Regularity and Idiomaticity in Grammatical Constructions: The Case of Let Alone.” Language 64: 501–38. Fischer-Starcke, Bettina. 2010. Corpus Linguistics in Literary Analysis: Jane Austen and Her Contemporaries. London: Continuum. Frow, John. 2005. Genre. London and New York: Routledge. Goldberg, Adele. 1995. Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Constructions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Gonon, Laetitia. 2012. Le Fait divers criminel dans la presse quotidienne française du XIXe siècle. Paris: PSN. Gonon, Laetitia. 2015. “Stylistique du vengeur dans les mystères de Paris et quelques-uns de ses avatars, 1842–1847 [également disponible en anglais].” Médias 19, Poétique des Mystères, Publications. Les Mystères Urbains au XIXe Siècle: Circulations, Transferts, Appropriations, edited by Dominique Kalifa and Marie-Ève Thérenty. http://www.medias19.org/ index.php?id=17807. Gymnich, Marion, Birgit Neumann, and Ansgar Nünning, editors. 2007. Gattungstheorie und Gattungsgeschichte. Trier: WVT.

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Hausmann, Franz Joseph. 1979. “Un dictionnaire des collocations est-il possible?” Travaux de littérature et de linguistique de l’université de Strasbourg 17 (1): 187–95. Hausmann, Franz Joseph. 2007. Collocations, phraséologie, lexicographie: études 1977–2007 et bibliographie. Aachen: Shaker. Herbst, Thomas, and Michael Klotz. 2003. Lexikographie: Eine Einführung. Paderborn: Schöningh. Herrmann, J. Berenike, Christof Schöch, and Karina van Dalen-Oskam. 2015. “Revisiting Style, a Key Concept in Literary Studies.” Journal of Literary Theory 9 (1): 25–52. Hoey, Michael. 2005. Lexical Priming: A New Theory of Words and Language. London and New York: Routledge. Hunston, Susan, and Gill Francis. 2000. Pattern Grammar. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Jakobson, Roman. 1921. Новейшая русская поэзия. Набросок первый. Prague: Politika. Kilgarriff, Adam, Vít Baisa, Jan Bušta, Miloš Jakubíček, Vojtěch Kovář, Jan Michelfeit, Pavel Rychlý, and Vít Suchomel. 2014. “The Sketch Engine: Ten Years on.” Lexicography 1 (1): 7–36. Kraif, Olivier. 2016. “Le Lexicoscope: un outil d’extraction des séquences phraséologiques basé sur des corpus arborés.” Cahiers de lexicologie 108: 91–106. Lafon, Pierre. 1980. “Sur la variabilité de la fréquence des formes dans un corpus.” Mots 1: 127–65. Lebart, Ludovic, André Salem, and Lisette Berry. 1998. Exploring Textual Data. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Leech, Geoffrey. 2014. The Pragmatics of Politeness. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Leech, Geoffrey, and Mick Short. 2007. Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose, 2nd ed. London: Pearson. Legallois, Dominique. 2006. “Quand le texte signale sa structure: la fonction textuelle des noms sous-spécifiés.” Corela 5. https://journals.openedition. org/corela/pdf/1465. Legallois, Dominique. 2012. “La Colligation: autre nom de la collocation grammaticale ou autre logique de la relation mutuelle entre syntaxe et sémantique?” Corpus 11. http://corpus.revues.org/2202. Legallois, Dominique, and Agnès Tutin. 2013. “Présentation: vers une extension du domaine de la phraséologie.” Langages 189: 3–25.

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Lits, Marc. 2011. Le Roman policier dans tous ses états: d’Arsène Lupin à Navarro. Limoges: Pulim. Longrée, Dominique, and Sylvie Mellet. 2013. “Le Motif: une unité phraséologique englobante? Étendre le champ de la phraséologie de la langue au discours.” Langages 189: 68–80. Mahlberg, Michaela. 2013. Corpus Stylistics and Dickens’s Fiction. London and New York: Routledge. Mel’čuk, Igor, André Clas, and Alain Polguère. 1995. Introduction à la lexicologie explicative et combinatoire. Louvain-la-Neuve: Duculot. Monte, Michèle, and Gilles Philippe, editors. 2014. Genres et textes: déterminations, évolutions, confrontations. Lyon: PUL. Mukařovský, Jan. 2014. “Standard Language and Poetic Language.” In Chapters from the History of Czech Functional Linguistics, edited by Jan Chovanec, 41–53. Brno: Masarykova univerzita. Novakova, Iva. 2015. “Les Émotions entre lexique et discours.” In La Sémantique et ses interfaces: actes du colloque 2013 de l’ASL, edited by A. Rabatel, A. Ferara-Léturgie, and A. Létrugie, 181–204. Limoges: Lambert-Lucas. Novakova, Iva, and Elena Melnikova. 2013. “Vers un modèle fonctionnel pour l’analyse du lexique des émotions dans cinq langues européenne.” Le bulletin de la société de linguistique de Paris 108 (1): 131–60. Nünning, Vera, and Ansgar Nünning. 2018. “Cultural Concerns, Literary Developments, Critical Debates: Contextualizing the Dynamics of Generic Change and Trajectories of the British Novel in the Twenty-First Century.” In The British Novel in the Twenty-First Century: Cultural Concerns—Literary Developments—Model Interpretations, edited by Vera Nünning, and Ansgar Nünning, 21–52. Trier: WVT. Quiniou, Solen, Peggy Cellier, Thierry Charnois, and Dominique Legallois. 2012. “Fouille de données pour la stylistique: l’exemple des motifs emergents.” In Actes des 11es journées internationales d’analyse statistique des données textuelles, Liège, 13–15 June 2012, 821–33. http://lexicometrica. univ-paris3.fr/jadt/jadt2012/Communications/Quiniou,%20Solen%20 et%20al.%20-%20Fouille%20de%20donnees%20pour%20la%20stylistique.pdf. Rastier, François. 2011. La Mesure et le grain: sémantique de corpus. Paris: Honoré Champion. Renouf, Antoinette, and John Sinclair. 1991. “Collocational Frameworks in English.” In English Corpus Linguistics: Studies in Honour of Jan Svartvik, edited by Karin Aijmer, and Bengt Altenberg, 128–44. London: Longman.

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Scholes, Robert. 1982. Semiotics and Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press. Scott, Mike, and Christopher Tribble. 2006. Textual Patterns: Key Words and Corpus Analysis in Language Education. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Siepmann, Dirk. 2005. “Collocation, Colligation and Encoding Dictionaries. Part I: Lexicological Aspects.” International Journal of Lexicography 18 94): 409–44. Siepmann, Dirk. 2011. “Sinclair Revisited: Beyond Idiom and Open Choice.” In The Phraseological View of Language: A Tribute to John Sinclair, edited by Thomas Herbst, Susen Faulhaber, and Peter Uhrig, 59–86. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Siepmann, Dirk. 2015. “A Corpus-Based Investigation into Key Words and Key Patterns in Post-war Fiction.” Functions of Language 22 (3): 362–99. Sinclair, John. 1991. Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sinclair, John. 2004. Trust the Text: Language, Corpus and Discourse. London: Routledge. Stefanowitsch, Anatol, and Stefan Gries. 2003. “Collostructions: Investigating the Interaction Between Words and Constructions.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 8 (2): 209–43. Steyer, Kathrin, and Annelen Brunner. 2014. “Contexts, Patterns, Interrelations: New Ways of Presenting Multi-word Expressions.” In Proceedings of the 10th Workshop on Multiword Expressions (MWE 2014), Gothenburg, Sweden, 26–27 April 2014, 82–88. https://aclweb.org/anthology/papers/W/W14/W14-0814/. Stubbs, Michael. 2005. “Conrad in the Computer: Examples of Quantitative Stylistic Methods.” Language and Literature 14 (1): 5–24. Stubbs, Michael, and Isabel Barth. 2003. “Using Recurrent Phrases as TextType Discriminators: A Quantitative Method and Some Findings.” Functions of Language 10 (1): 61–104. Tapanainen, Pasi, and Timo Järvinen. 1997. “A Non-projective Dependency Parser.” In Proceedings of the Fifth Conference on Applied Natural Language Processing. Association for Computational Linguistics. Washington, DC, 31 March–3 April, 64–71. http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/980000/974568/p64-tapanainen.pdf. Todorov, Tzvetan. 1980. Poétique de la prose: choix, suivi de nouvelles recherches sur le récit. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Tognini-Bonelli, Elena. 2001. Corpus Linguistics at Work. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Zymner, Rüdiger. 2003. Gattungstheorie: Probleme und Positionen der Literaturwissenschaft. Paderborn: Mentis.

2 The Notion of Motif Where Disciplines Intersect: Folkloristics, Narrativity, Bioinformatics, Automatic Text Processing and Linguistics Dominique Legallois and Stefan Koch

1 Introduction In attempting to present and discuss the notion of motif in several disciplinary fields, we have set ourselves an ambitious goal in this ­chapter. While the distances that separate these disciplines represent a challenge they also enrich the task before us. So, why be interested in this notion of motif in the first place? It seems to us that this notion is one of the few to transcend the boundaries between various areas of intellectual inquiry which otherwise may have little in common. Then also, in recent years the notion of motif has enjoyed unquestioned success in linguistics, specifically in the subdisciplines concerned with semantic or stylistic characterisation of texts. D. Legallois (*)  University Sorbonne-Nouvelle, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] S. Koch  Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 I. Novakova and D. Siepmann (eds.), Phraseology and Style in Subgenres of the Novel, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23744-8_2

17

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This success can be gauged by the proposals and innovations advanced by various linguists in developing the concept or in creating tools that automate the extraction of motifs from texts. The present volume in this and the other chapters centers on applications of motifs. The term motif is extremely complex: Even when tackled within the same discipline and field of analysis, as in this volume, it is subject to varied interpretations. To put it another way, the definition of motif is still constantly evolving. This evolution is driven both by technical advances in computer technology and conceptual innovations. This dynamic compels us therefore to first equip linguists and literary text specialists with the historical, epistemological and methodological background on the use of motif in scientific research. Non-linguists, on the other hand, may discover elements in the linguistic approach that will let them reflect on and develop their own conception of motif. We thus regard the term motif in its various conceptions as a potentially solid basis for dialogue between subjects and disciplines that usually work siloed from each other. Our analysis begins with narratology and folkloristics, two fields in which the notion of motif has been well represented, especially in nineteenth-century research on popular traditions, and has been further developed since then by structuralists and narratologists/semioticians. Next, we delve into the role the term motif plays in information retrieval in science, both from the perspectives of Harris et al. (1989) and of bioinformatics. As we will discover, these techniques for analyzing various pattern types are somewhat akin to certain of the older methods in narratology. A third set of approaches to motif is the one undertaken by Natural Language Processing (NLP). Köhler (2006) had a seminal role in initiating recent work which developed the notion of motif as a discrete linguistic unit that makes computational processing of texts and corpora—characterization, clustering, classification, etc.—feasible. Lastly, we turn to a series of linguistic studies carried out in France during the past decade, including in the domain of computational linguistics but also designed to cover several dimensions related to stylometry, semantic characterizations, genre characterizations, etc. This body of research was generated to a great extent in the course of the

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PhraseoRom project on which all of the contributions in this book are based. At the end of this overview, the reader will have been presented with a set of designs from which to draw conclusions that should equip him or her to add value in assessing the possible ramifications of the concept of motif. Although motif frequently also crops up in music and painting, that is, in nonlinguistic or non-textual domains, we confine our scope to addressing and reflecting on textual motifs. Hence, we close this chapter by applying the notion specifically to literary texts.

2 Motif in Folkloristics and Narratology In cultural anthropology and folkloristics, the term motif refers to a recurrent element in the popular traditions of a cultural community. Several motifs combine to form patterns, allowing researchers to describe, analyze and interpret cultural differences. Thus, broadly speaking, motifs can be applied to the field of literature—including oral literature, such as folk tales—to visual and textile arts and to music. In the latter two, motif then is either, respectively, any repeated decorative element or the smallest distinctive recurring musical line from a melody or rhythm. This musical motif is different from the one proposed by Boroda (1982), which we discuss in more detail below.

2.1 Tales and Popular Narratives For our purpose, the study of motifs in tales or popular narratives is of particular interest. Here, motifs are recurrent microstories, recognizable thanks to a stable but malleable and adaptable physiognomy, depending on the texts in which they occur. More precisely, they are stereotypical narrative sequences whose identity is definable and irreducible (Vincensini 2000, 2), as shown by the following examples, some of which are taken from Vincensini’s work:

20     D. Legallois and S. Koch

(1) - “Punishment, sitting in the water”1, which appears in many novels of the Middle Ages but also in the Lives of the Saints. - “The perilous cemetery”: The hero is confronted at night by supernatural opponents (Cadot 1980). - “The constrained gift”: A donor makes unlimited offers without even being asked by the recipient. This motif appears in the Gospels of Saint Matthew as well as in the Arthurian legend. - “The accusatory bleeding”: A corpse starts bleeding in the presence of the murderer. This motif is used in many medieval texts but also appears in Le Second livre des Amours by Ronsard, in Richard III by Shakespeare, in Les Tragiques by Agripa d’Aubigné. - “The animal skin delimiting a territory”: This motif concerns a trick used by the hero to claim a large territory.

The conception of motif in ancient and traditional texts necessarily touches on intertextuality and collective memory. In a sense, motifs are always leitmotivs in a culture. Based on the first collections made by the Grimm brothers, in the Verzeichnis der Märchentypen, published in 1910 by the Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne (1867–1925; see Aarne [1961] for an English version), taletypes (Märchentypen ) are classified into categories, each assigned a number and a title in German. The concept of the taletype accommodates variations of the same tale in different countries or repertoires. The American folklorist Stith Thompson (for example 1946) continued this work, which ended up in the international classification of tales known as the Aarne-Thompson classification. But he also proposed a categorization of motifs that resulted in the famous Index of Motifs found in the six-volume Motif-index of folk-literature: a classification of narrative elements in folktales, ballads, myths, fables, mediaeval romances, ­exempla, fabliaux, jest-books, and local legends, published between 1932 and 1936.2 It sets up the following main categories:

1This

motif is also what was called an exemplum (pl. exempla), that is, a short moral narrative given as true and used for educational purposes in sermons in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. exempla were also used to “christianize” traditional stories. There were exempla repertories, for example, the scala coedi collection by Jean Gobi dated around 1300 (Vincensini 2000, 13). 2A revised and enlarged edition was published between 1955 and 1958.

2  The Notion of Motif Where Disciplines Intersect: Folkloristics …     21

a) mythological motifs, b) animals, c) tabu, d) magic, e) the dead, f ) marvels, g) ogres, h) tests, j) the wise and the foolish, k) deceptions, l) reversal of fortune, m) ordaining the future, n) chance and fate, p) society, q) rewards and punishment, r) captives and fugitives, s) unusual cruelty, t) sex, u) the nature of life, v) religion, w) traits of character, x) humour, and z) miscellaneous groups of motifs.

Thompson divided each category into subcategories. For example, the motifs related to the wise and the foolish he broke down into the following subcategories: - J0-J199 Acquisition and possession of wisdom/knowledge - J200-J1099 Wise and unwise conduct - J1100-J1699 Cleverness - J1700-J2799 Fools (and other unwise persons) In his book The Folktale (1946), Thompson described the many distinctive classes as follows:

22     D. Legallois and S. Koch

A motif is the smallest element in a tale having a power to persist in tradition. In order to have this power it must have something unusual and striking about it. Most motifs fall into three classes. First are the actors in a tale – gods, or unusual animals, or marvelous creatures like witches, ogres, or fairies, or even conventionalized human characters like the favorite youngest child or the cruel step-mother. Second come certain items in the background of the action – magic objects, unusual customs, strange beliefs, and the like. In the third place there are single incidents – and these comprise the great majority of motifs. (Thompson 1946, 415–16)

A current conception of motif in narratology seems to echo Thompson’s comments. The striking character of the motif, so to speak its expressive character, lies in its concrete value. In a recent reference book on narratology, Abbott (2008, 95) after Prince (2003, 55) states, that “[m]otifs are, in Gerald Prince’s words, the ‘minimal thematic unit’ (Dictionary, 55).” Abbott then goes on to contrast motif and theme (see Abbott 2008, 237, 242) as follows: Motif: A discrete thing, image, or phrase that is repeated in a narrative. Theme, by contrast, is a more generalized or abstract concept that is suggested by, among other things, motifs. A coin can be a motif, greed is a theme. (Abbott 2008, 237) Theme: A subject (issue, question) that recurs in a narrative through implicit or explicit reference. Along with motif, theme is one of the two commonest forms of narrative repetition. Where motifs tend to be concrete, themes are abstract. (Abott 2008, 242)

Abbott (2008, 95) also illustrated his definitions with the following example: “Windows, for example, are a motif in Wuthering Heights and, given the way Brontë deploys them, they support a highly complex interplay of three themes: escape, exclusion, and imprisonment. When, for another example, the character Barkis in David Copperfield continues to repeat his cryptic phrase, ‘Barkis is willin’,’ it becomes a motif, a signature phrase for the theme of shy, honest-hearted devotion in love that

2  The Notion of Motif Where Disciplines Intersect: Folkloristics …     23

Barkis exhibits in his pursuit of Peggotty.” The motif in contemporary narratology is therefore a minimal unit that “concretizes” the themes.3

2.2 The Russian Formalists Since the 1920s, the Russian formalists have also regarded the motif as a minimum unit but have also pointed out the difficulty of defining this minimality. Additionally, these researchers developed elements for articulating the relationship between motifs and linguistic forms. Thus, Tomaševskij (1925 [1965]) equated motif and clause (see also Ducrot and Todorov 1972). To our knowledge, this was the first time anyone reflected on the linguistic dimension of motif. We will elaborate on this point below. Tomaševskij (1925 [1965]) also proposes that some motifs can be dynamic in how they change the narrative situation or make it evolve. Motifs that do not change the narrative situation are termed stative motifs. We recognize this also as a first reflection on the gestalt complementarity between foreground and background or figure and ground. Tomaševskij also famously distinguished fabula from story, sometimes referred to as the story/narrative distinction. For Veselóvskij (1913a, b), each proposal had its own motif which he held to be the smallest unit of the thematic material. The notion of motif thus was radically redefined, further distancing it from the folklorist conception. However, according to Propp (1968 [1928]), by positing non-compositionality for the linguistic clause, we lose sight of all the possible substitutions that make up the richness and variety of tales: If a motif is something logically whole, then each sentence of a tale gives a motif. (A father has three sons: a motif; a stepdaughter leaves home: a motif; Ivan fights with a dragon: a motif; and so on.) This would not be so bad if motifs were really indivisible; an index of motifs would then be made possible. But let us take the motif ‘a dragon kidnaps the tsar’s daughter’ (this example is not Veselóvskij’s). This motif 3See

for example the helmet motif in L. F. Céline’s Casse-Pipe, studied by Richard (1979).

24     D. Legallois and S. Koch

decomposes into four elements, each of which, in its own right, can vary. The dragon may be replaced by Koščéj, a whirlwind, a devil, a falcon, or a sorcerer. Abduction can be replaced by vampirism or various other acts by which disappearance is effected in tales. The daughter may be replaced by a sister, a bride, a wife, or a mother. The tsar can be replaced by a tsar’s son, a peasant, or a priest. In this way, contrary to Veselóvskij, we must affirm that a motif is not monomial or indivisible. (Propp 1968, 13)

Propp sought to replace Veselóvskij’s (1913b, 9–12) motif with the notion of narrative function, that is, an action defined in terms of its meaning in plot development independent of the characters and how these functions are fulfilled. Following the French philologist Bédier, Propp (1968) differentiates constant patterns from the variable patterns, calling the former function and the latter attribute. The names of the characters may change but their actions or functions do not. The 31 narrative functions in the traditional Russian tale are certainly motifs—narrative atoms—but Propp prefers to dispense with a cumbersome terminology. The functions (for example: acceptance of the mission by the hero; departure of the hero; testing of the hero by a donor, etc.) find their place in sequences—they are ordered and arranged, as in these examples: lack—compensation for lack, prohibition—violation of the prohibition, combat—victory, and so on.

2.3 Some Developments of the Formalist Approach Propp’s model made an impact from the 1960s onwards. Thus, the American folklorist Alan Dundes (1934–2005) used Pike’s linguistic terminology (1967) in an attempt to apply Propp’s method to a corpus of Amerindian stories. Dundes (1962) proposed renaming the Proppian function motifemes. He also developed the term allomotif to designate the various forms in which the motif is realized in the tale. Allomotifs are to motifemes as allophones are to phonemes. The Czech researcher Doležel (1972) repatriated the notion of motif to the field of literary text analysis. He approached it on three levels: motifeme, structural motif and texture motif. The first level is

2  The Notion of Motif Where Disciplines Intersect: Folkloristics …     25

metalinguistic. It consists of assigning a series of expressions designating an action to another series of expressions defining the actant. Doležel in effect defines the motifeme as a clause similar to Propp’s function. The second level, also metalinguistic, focuses on the narrative segments by which an action is assigned to a character. Indeed, in Doležel’s conception the structural motif is limited to dynamic motifs only. Finally, at the third level, the texture pattern corresponds to a sentence in the text itself. In the author’s words: Examples of motifeme strings; (a) one-actant strings: The hero returned; the hero passed the test. (b) Two-actant string: The hero defeated the villain. A MOTIF (m) is a proposition predicating an action to a character. Examples of motif strings: Ivan killed the dragon; Yanko rescued from death a grandchild of Swaffer; the judge sentenced Meursault to death. A MOTIF TEXTURE is a narrative sentence (i.e. a sentence of the narrative text). (2) And suddenly, one fine morning in spring, he rescued from an untimely death a grandchild of old Swaffer (Conrad). Le president m’a dit dans une forme bizarre que j’aurais la tête tranchée sur une place publique au nom du peuple francais (Camus) (The president told me in a strange way that my head would be cut off in a public square on behalf of the French people). The motifeme/motif relationship will be called SPECIFICATION. We will say that a motifeme is specified by a motif (motif sequence) or that a motif (motif sequence) specifies a motifeme. The motif/texture relationship will be called VERBALIZATION. A motif will be said to be verbalized by a texture; a texture will be said to verbalize a motif. (Doležel 1972, 59–61; translation Camus DL)

These perspectives reflect a need to conceive of motif on several levels, including an abstract level (for example the motifeme ) of a stereotyped entity identifiable in a literary culture or tradition and which is linguistically embodied in various forms (for example the texture motif). To round up this—necessarily incomplete—narratology survey, we need to address a highly formal aspect of motif, which manifests itself

26     D. Legallois and S. Koch

especially in Propp’s criticism of Vólkov. Vólkov regards a motif as a ­quality of the heroes (e.g. |two wise sons-in-law and the third a madman|), an act by the heroes (e.g. |the injunction of a father for someone to watch over his grave after his death, an injunction that is executed by the madman alone|), an object (e.g. |houndstooths|, |talismans| ). In Vólkov’s annotation system, each motif is given a conventional sign consisting of a letter and one or two numbers. Similar motifs carry the same letter but different numbers. This formalization allows Vólkov to translate the motifs into alphanumeric signs and thus to compare combinations. This method seems naive to Propp (1968, 15): “The only ‘conclusion’ that can be drawn from this transcription is that similar tales resemble each other – a conclusion which is completely noncommittal and leads nowhere.” What interests us is not the conception of motif in Vólkov’s work, but rather his formalization process, which is strikingly analogous to recent research not into narratives or tales but into a completely different field, that of bioinformatics. How could bioinformatics and narratology possibly be related? The motifs of Russian or Amerindian tales after all take root in stories that are very different from those told by genome sequences. But just maybe they have something to say to each other regarding methodology.

3 From Narratology to Bioinformatics Using the notion of sublanguage, Harris et al. (1989) showed how scientific reports can be “translated” through a set of formal transformations into a sequence of formulas representing the information contained in the reports. It primarily involves forming classes of words that relate grammatically to specific other words. For example, words of class A may appear as subject of the phrase found in the lymph nodes after injection of an antigen: These “A” words could include antibodies, agglutinin, etc. With this as starting point, we can then form a class V of operators, such as is found in, is contained in, is produced by, that take A words as their subjects (e.g. antibodies, agglutinin ). Proceeding in this way, we find that specific word classes recur in a particular grammatical relation to certain other word

2  The Notion of Motif Where Disciplines Intersect: Folkloristics …     27

classes, e.g. A words as subjects of V operators with T objects or “complements” (lymph nodes, lymph, serum ). Together, they create a sentence type (structure) AVT. It is simultaneously generated with the process of setting up (by extension) the word classes A, V, and T, because these are defined from the start by their concatenation in the operator-argument, i.e., a sentence structure. The grammatical transformations applied earlier will have reinforced this result, since, for example, the sentence lymph nodes produce antibodies will have been recognized as a transform of antibodies are produced by lymph nodes, hence as an instance of AVT. (Harris et al. 1989, 8)

This procedure could be computerized to identify recurrent, informationally relevant patterns in scientific papers. Following Darányi et al. (2012), comparing it with the morphology of tales holds considerable interest for us: although tales have been digitalized, there is nothing in the literature to indicate they have been subjected to this sort of precise computational analysis. We believe it is feasible to analyze combinations of motifs from a very large data set of occurrences. The technique conceivably could emulate how Harris et al. used sublanguages or methods used for motif detection in infobiology to detect relationships between genes and rare diseases in biomedical texts for example. Since Frederick Sanger started DNA sequencing in the late 1970s, the technology has advanced by leaps and bounds, resulting in exponential increases in the volume of available DNA sequences. Infobiologists call the recurring sequences they detect by aligning sequences (analogous to the linguist’s concordances ) motifs that let them find similarities between two sequences and determine their possible homologies. For example, in the genome sequences in Fig. 1 a special pattern emerges (based on D’haeseleer 2006, 423). This domain-specific practice from the life sciences finds an analogue in formal descriptions of narrative content. Darányi et al. (2012) therefore proposed to deal with narrative motifs in the same way as motifs from biomedical texts: patterns extracted from a set of tales indexed in The Aarne-Thompson-Uther Tale Type Catalog receive an alphanumeric annotation, thus reducing each tale to a set of annotations such as the one in Table 1 for the The Dragon-Slayer tale and its variants showing a closed motif structure.

28     D. Legallois and S. Koch +(0 +(0 +(0 $1%  $1%  $1%  $1%  52; 

&&&$77*77&7& 777&7**77&7& 7&$$77*777$* &7&$77*77*7& 7&&$77*77&7& &&7$77*77&7& 7&&$77*77&*7 &&$$77*7777*

Fig. 1  Genome sequences Table 1  The Dragon-Slayer as a motif chain and its equally valid story variants (based on Ofek et al. 2013, 3) $787DOH7\SH7KH'UDJRQ VOD\HU %

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DNA motif sequences and narrative motif sequences are identical in several respects, including some transformations: Adding grammar and moving over to permutations, sequences start to play a role. Canonical nucleotide sequences generate secondary and tertiary – in fact spatial – structures such as the famed double helix; canonical motif sequences may contribute to the evolution of tale types, themselves representatives of tale variants. Whereas most mutations are

2  The Notion of Motif Where Disciplines Intersect: Folkloristics …     29

neutral and have little or no impact on the functionality of the product, their adding up can dramatically affect the survival rate of the outcome, leading to new genotypes and phenotypes in the course of evolution. In the same vein, deletion and translocation could be standard tools in the narrative building toolkit; inversion is suggested to play a central role in the Bible (Christensen, 2003), and duplication is evident, e.g. in the case of the Proppian narrative scheme where complete tale moves may be repeated several times or combined with one another by different ­embeddings (Propp, 1968). This indicates the need for a theory of text evolution as a series of narrative element recombinations, forming from simple to more complex structures by “mutation mechanisms”. (Darányi et al. 2012, 4)

These similarities in motif analysis in two very different scientific fields show the great collaborative potential that exists between natural scientists, computer scientists, narratologists and linguists.

4 Motifs in Automatic Text Processing Most recently, the term motif for use in automatic text processing has been defined especially on Köhler’s initiative (first in 2006; see also 2015). In his definition, a motif is the longest continuous sequence of equal or increasing values representing a linguistic unit’s quantitative property. Considering the motif as a unit that can reflect the sequential organization of a text without resorting to grammatical or linguistic analysis is the key here. Without going at length into the reasons why, let us present an example taken from Köhler (2015, 92) in which the sentence “word length studies are almost exclusively devoted to the problem of distributions” is analyzed in light of the above definition of motif as the “longest continuous sequence of equal or increasing values…” Counting the syllables in each word (word = 1, length = 1, studies = 2 and so on), yields a sequence of 5 motifs, so-called word length motifs: (1-1-2) (1-2-4) (3) (1-1-2) (1-4). A word with fewer syllables than the previous word becomes the first element of a new motif. Applied to an entire text, the method according to Köhler provides the

30     D. Legallois and S. Koch

insight that motifs display a rank-frequency distribution of the ZipfMandelbrot type. As such, they behave like traditional units of linguistic analysis. Hence, the method makes comparing texts and authors or performing textual classification possible. However, the example of “syllabic” patterns is not the only one: motifs can also be defined for any linguistic unit (phoneme, sentence type, type of clause, etc.). Here, Köhler (2015, 98) once again furnishes an example in a more semantic vein, that is, the segmentation of newspaper commentaries into argumentative relationships—[“elaboration”], [“elaboration,” “concession”], [“elaboration,” “evidence,” “list,” “preparation,” “evaluation,” “concession”], [“evidence,” “elaboration,” “evaluation”]. Again, these motifs serve as the basis for establishing textual typologies. A final example comes from Čech et al. (2017) who take verbal valence as elements of the motif. To each verb in a text they assign a number corresponding to the number of its arguments, which results in an array like the one shown in Fig. 2. The motifs and their frequency are then identified. Shown here are the first five in the upmost row (Fig. 3). >   @

Fig. 2  Verbal valence as elements of the motif (based on Čech et al. 2017, 16)

     DQGVRRQ

Fig. 3  Frequency of the motifs (based on Čech et al. 2017, 16)

2  The Notion of Motif Where Disciplines Intersect: Folkloristics …     31

Once again, the study shows that this motif type can be considered as a unit sharing the same distributional patterns as well-established traditional units, including the rank frequency and spectrum abide by the Zipf-Mandelbrot distribution. The authors emphasize that valency motifs can be considered regular language entities. Interestingly, Köhler based his approach and the design of “his” motif on the so-called F-motif conceived by the musicologist Boroda in the 1970s and 1980s (Boroda 1973, 1982) as a unit in music corresponding to a word in language. His F-motifs, just like Köhler’s linguistic motifs, are sequences of equal or increasing values, only that Köhler’s syllables are Boroda’s tones. Boroda had also tested the distributional patterns of his motifs against the ZipfMandelbrot law only to find that they matched nearly perfectly the distribution projected by it. Köhler imported Boroda’s concept— which, it should be noted, does not correspond to the classic notion of motif in musicology as a recurring melody, etc. (see above)—to linguistics. While this conception of motif as a unit of textual analysis is still limited to the formal level, this does not prevent its being extended to more semantic considerations, as the study on argumentative relationships makes clear. We will let Köhler (2015, 107) have the last word on this: Motifs provide a means to analyse texts for their sequential structure with respect to all kinds of linguistic units and properties; even categorical properties can be studied in this way. The granularity of an investigation can be adjusted by iterative application of motif-formation, and proven statistical methods can be used for the evaluation. The full potential of this approach has not yet been explored.

This method of automatic text processing proposed by Köhler and colleagues differs profoundly from the “bag-of-words” model prevalent in linguistics and stylistics, whose flaw lies in failing to deal with the sequentiality of the units composing a text or their topology.

32     D. Legallois and S. Koch

5 The Contribution of Computer Linguistics in the French Domain In recent years, several approaches have been developed in France, first independently and then collaboratively in part, that combine elements of both computer processing and text linguistics. The main objective was to create methods and tools for identifying what in these approaches are also called motifs. In the following, we provide an overview of these perspectives, all of which view motif as a statistically significant unit or a unit composed of statistically significant linguistic representations of it.

5.1 The Ganascia (2001) Approach Ganascia advanced his approach to textual motifs in one of the first works on the subject that he published in France in 2001. In this case, it is opportune to speak of textual motifs because it is indeed a question of characterizing speech. However, these characterizations are of a syntactic nature—in other words, texts are characterized by the syntactic specificities of the sentences that compose them. Ganascia automatically extracts recurrent sequences from syntactic trees. Applied to texts, his method, as implemented, makes it possible to identify their stylistic characteristics. More recently, Ganascia and his team at the Laboratoire d’Informatique de l’université Paris 6 have been working on a simpler model for identifying motifs of POS in texts by factor analysis. The text is first segmented into a set of sentences and then each sentence is mapped into a sequence of syntactic (PoS tag) items, as in the following sentence4: (3) “J’aime ma maison où j’ai grandi.” (I love my house where I grew up) This is first mapped onto a sequence of PoS tags:

4From

Frontini et al. (2018, 122).

2  The Notion of Motif Where Disciplines Intersect: Folkloristics …     33

In Frontini et al. (2018), the authors characterize the style of the ­dialogues between characters in Molière’s plays. Thus, the two comical protagonists Scapin and Harpagon are each characterized by patterns of lower syntactic complexity. This is especially the case with Harpagon, whose patterns convey the image of a self-centered person insistent on getting his way but frustrated by violent disappointments (especially when it comes to money): (4) - [PRO:PER] [PRO:PER] [VER:pres] [VER:pper] - on m’ a privé … [they have deprived me …] - on m’ a dérobé … [they have robbed me …] - on m’ a volée … [they have stolen from me …] - on m’ a pris … [they have taken me …]

The technique is partly implemented in the Eremos online platform (http://eremos.lip6.fr/index.php). Eremos is a web application capable of extracting and manipulating syntactic patterns via a simple, fast, user-friendly interface. Another platform called SDMC (https://tal.lipn.univ-paris13.fr/ sdmc/; see Sahraoui et al. 2017) which is also dedicated to the identification of syntactic patterns deserves mention here: it extracts regularities from a text or a corpus, that is, sequences of words, lemmas and POS tags that frequently appear together. A set of filters can be applied to constrain the extracted patterns: minimum frequency, or text-specific constraints like “contains an adjective, or a verb.” SDMC facilitates the analysis of these sequential motifs with a visualization. SDMC makes it possible to search not only for one motif but also for their co-occurrences. On the left side of the visualization appears the index of motifs while in the middle column we see the sentences containing the motif. On the right side of the screen, the tool proposes a compact version of the text with the sentences replaced by stars. In this way, SDMC facilitates analyzing the topological dimension of a pattern.

34     D. Legallois and S. Koch

5.2 The Approach of Longrée and Mellet Longrée and Mellet (2018, 156) argue for considering motif as a textual unit from the perspective of the textometry of Latin texts: What is a motif? In a formal way the motif is defined as an ordered subset of the textual ensemble, formed by the recurring combination of n elements provided with its linear structure. Thus, if the text is formed by a certain number of occurrences of elements A, B, C, D and E, a motif can be the recurring microstructure ACD or AAA, etc., without here prejudging the nature (lexical, grammatical, metrical, …) of the elements A, B, C, D and E in question: the ‘motif ’ is only the framework – or the collocational pattern – accommodating a range of parameters to be defined and capable of characterizing the diverse texts of a corpus or even the different parts of a text. The motif is involved in the temporal dynamics of the narration, in the relations between sentences, and between the different textual sequences, such as descriptions, narrations, argumentations and so on. As general pattern, the motif is able to characterize a genre; but its different realizations or tokens may be specific to different authors in a given genre.

The objective here is clearly the topological characterization of texts. The authors understand text as an ordered and multidimensional space and aim to highlight the units that contribute to organizing this space. Their definition emphasizes the nonlinear dimension of the pattern and its variability, as the following example5 shows: (5) here I would like/wish to specify however here, however, I would like to clarify Ø I wish to specify, however, that here I would like to specify Ø here I would like to specify however

The authors’ view currently tends toward a cognitive validation of motifs. It involves linking the associations between the lexical elements

5Our

example.

2  The Notion of Motif Where Disciplines Intersect: Folkloristics …     35

of a motif as measured by textual statistics and the priming effects of psycholinguistic analysis.

5.3 The RLTs Approach Also investigating the notion of motif is the PhraseoRom project for identifying lexical pivot patterns specific to six novel subgenres (crime, romance, historical, science fiction, fantasy and general fiction). The project participants use a method based on corpora of syntactic dependency trees involving the automatic extraction of recurrent lexicosyntactic trees (RLTs) (see Kraif 2016). RLTs are lexical units linked by syntactic dependency relationships. They are constructed from statistically significant series of co-occurrences based on a statistical association measure, which in this context means calculating the log-likelihood ratio (LLR) using the keywords method (Bertels and Speelman 2013). The Lexicoscope program (Kraif 2016) is the automatic extraction tool used. RLTs extraction starts with a lexical pivot (verbal or nominal) selected by frequency and dispersion criteria from among the authors composing the corpus and ends with producing a set of recurrent subtrees. The project uses the following criteria to extract RLTs specific to each of the novel subgenres in question: – A frequency threshold for nominal and verbal pivots relative to the sub-corpus size (greater than 5 or 10); – An RLTs size of at least 3 elements, with no upper limit; – An LLR greater than 10.83; – A variable dispersion according to the compared corpora, for example up to 50% of the authors making up the corpora. Figure 4 shows a sample extracted RLT corresponding to the expression il pousse la porte (he pushes the door open), specific to French crime novels when compared to contemporary French general literature (Gonon et al. 2018).

36     D. Legallois and S. Koch

Fig. 4  An example of the RLT pousser la porte (push the door open)

Compared to purely sequential approaches, such as n-grams, RLTs extraction has the advantage of associating only elements that are united by a syntactic relationship, which considerably reduces noise. Furthermore, RLTs make it possible to free oneself from linearity by exploiting syntactic relationships and thus limiting redundancy. Examples (6) and (7) correspond to a single RLT in which cœur (heart) is the subject of the verb battre (to beat). (6) Le coeur de Kurt battait à coups immenses. (Berthelot Khanaor 1 – Solstice de fer, 1985) (Kurt’s heart was beating with immense blows).6 (7) Le coeur encore battant, il se rendit compte que c’était lui qui avait crié. (Achard Tout seuls, 2012) (His heart still beating, he realized that it was he who had screamed).

These two examples also illustrate another special feature of RLTs: they allow gaps between the elements forming a pattern, which reduces the redundancy that inevitably accompanies a sequential approach. Other steps are thus still feasible. Indeed, since this method is based on the lexicon, as many RLTs can be extracted as there are paradigmatic and syntagmatic variations of the motif. For example, just like the RLT 6All

of the following translations are our suggestions, unless otherwise specified.

2  The Notion of Motif Where Disciplines Intersect: Folkloristics …     37 Table 2  Textual motif “discovery of a body” (based on Muryn et al. 2016, 9–11) N



The corpse of a little girl A man

Disarticulated Huddled up Naked Lying

∅ In the middle of a Unconscious forest In a house in the 13th arrondissement

“open the door” presented above, the RLTs “close the door,” “push the door,” “open the door” and “the door opens” are specific to crime fiction (compared to general literature fiction). A script to automatically group these RLTs based on a vectorial analysis of their similarity is under development in the PhraseoRom project. From these groupings, we can then study the discursive functions of motifs (see Chapter 1 by Novakova and Siepmann, Section 3, in this volume and Appendix B). In other words, the motif is not only automatically identified, it is also subjected to the analyst’s interpretation. Evidently, this conception of motif could be linked to more narratological perspectives, such as the one proposed by Muryn et al. (2016) in their work with the notion of semantic motif in crime fiction: “The semantic motif is an abstract representation of all structures realizing the same predicate-argument model … (it) can thus take the form of a complex sentence, a simple sentence, an SN, etc., or be inferred in whole or in part” (Muryn et al. 2016, 4). In our view, we are close here to the complex conception of Doležel’s (1972) motif as presented above. Thus, one of the motifs inherent in the crime scene in a crime fiction novel is the discovery of a body. This narrative moment (motifeme ) is expressed by various possibilities (texture motifs) but can be abstracted into a set of headings (Table 2). In this manner, Muryn et al. (2016) propose to create a semantic grammar for a particular literary genre.

5.4 Motifs and Constructions Certain approaches based on n-grams or lexical bundles (for example, Mahlberg 2012) aim to characterize, among other dimensions, how personae in novels are constructed without resorting to the term motif.

38     D. Legallois and S. Koch

This is no longer a matter of narratological motifs in the sense of minimal concrete themes but is a type of fundamental research into writing processes and to analyzing the specific features of textual genres. The following example is from Siepmann (2015, 381), who is interested in units that he considers to be lexically specific narrative patterns and which he calls key word patterns or syngrams: (8) PossDet + thoughts were on / of NP / V+ing

This pattern then introduces a passage depicting a character’s train of thought: Like the categories of discourse markers known as ‘announcers’ or ‘topic initiators’ (Siepmann 2005:93), which prepare the reader for the next step in the author’s exposition or reasoning (I will now briefly describe ) or initiate a new topic in the current text, this kind of unit frequently, though not systematically, serves to indicate a change in focalization, most typically a shift from external to internal focalization. It is notably common for this marker to be followed by a proper noun.7 (Siepmann 2015, 381)

The work carried out by Legallois (see Legallois et al. 2018) attempts to identify these types of patterns but also ones that are formally more abstract. We can thus speak of grammatical motifs, particularly with respect to the method first presented by Quiniou et al. (2012) with which the authors sought to identify recurring lexico-grammatical patterns in a corpus of nineteenth-century poetry. Since then, the method has been developed and applied to different corpora, especially in distinguishing textual genres, for example: between travel stories and fiction by the same authors (see also Diwersy and Legallois, forthcoming), the characteristics of the Harlequin novels (see Legallois et al. 2016) or the stylistic motifs in nineteenth-century French novelists (see Legallois et al. 2018). The method is based on a hybrid annotation of corpora, in which the set of labels corresponds to general morpho-syntactic categories for

7And, parting from them abruptly, he ran down the stairs and out into the air. He bolted into a hansom, and drove to the Goat’s Club. His thoughts were on Holly and what he must do before her brother showed her this thing in tomorrow’s paper (Galsworthy In Chancery, 1920).

2  The Notion of Motif Where Disciplines Intersect: Folkloristics …     39

nouns, adjectives and for most verbs and adverbs. The most common verbs (auxiliaries, modals, etc.) are reduced to their lemma. The form of invariable words (prepositions, conjunctions, certain adverbs, etc.) is preserved. For example, (9) “La lecture a ceci de magique qu’elle permet de remonter le temps” (Thilliez L’Anneau de moebius, 2008) (Reading is magical in that it allows us to go back in time)

is annotated as: (10) le N avoir ceci de ADJ que_SUB il permettre de INF le N.

Then, by extracting repeated segments of variable length, we obtain a set of sequential patterns. Finally, the specificity of each pattern for a given text relative to the other texts in the corpus is statistically calculated— the idea being to characterize these texts by units that are anything but lexical. We demonstrate the type of unity that can be captured this way by reverting to differentiating between the crime genre and romance novels. The relatively small corpus here includes: – 12 “detective” novels, written by Thilliez, Benacquista, Vargas and others (2 texts per author), 479,129 total words – 12 novels from the Harlequin collection, 336,902 total words We are only interested here in a few motifs related to the thriller. For us, these motifs have a construction value, in the sense of construction grammar (for example, Croft and Cruse 2004; Goldberg 2006). A construction is a linguistic unit (a sign), which can be a morpheme, a word, the argument schema of a verb, or a phraseological unit. Constructions can be generic (such as the transitive construction “subj V Obj”), semi-specific (“subj break obj”) or specific (give the Devil his due ). A construction is associated with a meaning that can be semantic, pragmatic or functional. The theoretical framework of construction grammar is an important contribution to understanding the role of motifs in texts. Here, the motif is a construction—a linguistic sign—considered not only from the grammatical point of view but from the perspective of its discursive

40     D. Legallois and S. Koch

dimension in a particular text or a particular genre. Nevertheless, these motifs, like the constructions studied in construction grammar, contribute to the linguistic competence of “speakers” (here writers and readers), a competence understood as knowing not forms as such but how to use them. Given the small size of the corpus, the number of occurrences of these motifs naturally is modest. Nevertheless, their distinctive dimension is obvious. This is how we remember: (11) Motif [Inf, inf, inf…] (8 occurrences) (a) Mettre le feu dans le passé, tout perturber, créer des failles, des incohérences, et, peut-être, permettre l’arrestation de l’assassin, avant qu’il s’en prenne à Sylvie (Thilliez L’Anneau de moebius, 2008) (Set fire to the past, disrupt everything, create loopholes, inconsistencies, and perhaps allow the murderer to be arrested before he attacks Sylvie). (b) Foncer à Méry-sur-Oise, faire le tour des établissements scolaires, comprendre quel rôle elle jouait dans cet incroyable micmac (Go to Méry-sur-Oise, visit all the schools, understand what role she played in this incredible little game). (Thilliez L’Anneau de moebius, 2008) (c) Fuir, faire demi-tour, trouver le réseau et alerter les renforts (Run, turn around, find the network and alert the reinforcements). (Thilliez La Chambre des morts, 2005)

Here the motif is an accumulation of infinitives referring to important trials in the narrative, a pattern we find essentially in all of Thilliez’s work. The content of these adverbial sentences is anchored in the character’s inner monologue, which urgently produces a reflection to determine a course of action. (12) Motif [N, N, N, …] (7 occ.) (a) Catacombes, laboratoires de biologie, nécropoles, hôtels bizarroïdes, et j’en fais ensuite une espèce de grosse soupe, dans mon cerveau (Thilliez La Chambre des morts, 2005). (Catacombs, biology laboratories, necropolises, weird hotels, and then I make a kind of big soup out of it, in my brain)

2  The Notion of Motif Where Disciplines Intersect: Folkloristics …     41

(b) Depuis l’automne, mélancolie, mutisme, brusquerie, insomnies et sautes d’humeur (Vargas Coule la Seine 2002). (Since autumn, melancholy, silence, abruptness, insomnia and mood swings)

This time we have an accumulation of nouns (concrete in example (a), abstract in (b)) that summarizes past dysphoric experiences. The motif also gives us access to the consciousness of the character who is in a state of complete confusion. (13) Motif [pas de N] (9 occ.) (a) En pleine nuit, pas de lumières, il n’avait aucune chance d’être vu. (Thilliez La Chambre des morts, 2005) (In the middle of the night, no lights, he had no chance of being seen.) (b) A priori, pas de traquenard (Benacquista Malavita, 2002) (A priori, no stumbling blocks.) (c) Il n’y a personne, ses volets sont baissés, pas de voiture (Thilliez La Chambre des morts, 2005). (There’s no one there, his shutters are down, no car.)

The above syntactic reduction creates an obvious effect: the expression is anchored in the inner discourse of the character observing a situation and evaluating if it presents danger. (14) Motif [Q alors que P?] (6 occurrences) (a) Que faisait-il au domaine accompagné de Victor, à boire des canettes, alors que toutes les polices de France le recherchaient? (What was he doing at the property with Victor, drinking from cans, when all the police in France were looking for him?) (Benacquista Tout à l’égo, 1999) (b) Pouvait-on imaginer qu’il épargnerait des témoins, alors qu’il avait étranglé une fillette innocente? Thilliez La Chambre des morts, 2005). (Could we have imagined that he would spare witnesses when he had strangled an innocent girl?)

This pattern expresses several values: the illogicality of a situation (drinking from cans—Q—when on the run—P—where P, normally, prohibits Q), or, on the contrary, its predictability (how could Q not happen in the future when P has happened in the past and yet P is less

42     D. Legallois and S. Koch

likely than Q?; P therefore “allows” Q). In a different form, because it is more absurd (killing animals is less likely here than killing people), Vargas exploits this motif whose form is no longer written Q whereas P, but P then why Q? (15) Je tue pas les bêtes, alors pourquoi je tuerais les gens? (I don’t kill animals, so why would I kill people?). (Vargas Sous les vents de Neptune, 2004)

These few examples show that the construction grammar method allows identifying patterns specific to a textual genre whose discursive function or functions can be described. We believe that these patterns are constructions insofar as they correspond to a pairing between (variable but identifiable) forms and meanings. Like the grammatical constructions, the motifs can be schematic, semi-specific or even specific in the case of phraseologisms.

6 Conclusion This article maps out the notion of motif, albeit very incompletely because many of its aspects are still blank or “uncharted.” Because of the word’s polysemy and its varied conceptions, it is obviously impossible—and indeed undesirable—to argue that there exists an object designated by the word motif that all the disciplines reviewed here have in common. Motif is a “crossroads” word, conveying a sense of which disciplines can and should intersect to share concepts, methods and tools. Beyond its primary purpose of presenting a heterogeneous notion of a term (motif ), this article pleads for a collaboration between varied perspectives. We are convinced it would facilitate refining certain definitions and identifying phenomena that certain approaches ignore. In short, it would serve to account for shared elements, each with its own specificities, that underpin the recurrent use of the word motif. Thus, we started from narratology and folklore, which conceive of the motif as a minimal unit. Initially independent of a particular form (the motif is a kind of concrete theme), the motif acquired a “morphology” in the

2  The Notion of Motif Where Disciplines Intersect: Folkloristics …     43

Russian structuralist tradition, where it is linked to generic proposals embodied in various statements but which are associated with defining functions of the story. The “import” of motif into modern literary criticism certainly is bearing fruit but can also be problematical: narrative functions are in principle less stereotypical. However, at the level of the analysis of literary genres as distinct as the crime or sentimental novel we can detect characteristic patterns, be they recurrent lexico-grammatic patterns (similar, in a way, to formal scientific patterns) associated with a particular semantics, or abstractions giving rise to concrete achievements. Eventually, it will be appropriate for the linguistic analysis of literary texts and for literary criticism itself to produce a higher-level analysis, namely the study of the articulation of these minimum units into more global units to assess the thematic developments of texts. Substantial work beckons!

References Aarne, Antti. 1961 (1910). The Types of the Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography. Helsinki: The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. Abbott, H. Porter. 2008. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bertels, Ann, and Dirk Speelman. 2013. “‘Keywords Method’ Versus ‘Calcul des Spécificités’: A Comparison of Tools and Methods.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 18 (4): 536–60. Boroda, Mojsej. 1973. “K voprosu o metroritmitsheski elementarnoj edinice v muzyke.” Soboshtshenija AN GSSR 71 (3): 745–48. Boroda, Mojsej. 1982 (1975). “Die melodische Elementareinheit.” In Sprache, Text, Kunst: Quantitative Analysen, edited by Jurij Orlov, Mojsej Boroda and Isabella Nadarejshvili, 205–21. Bochum: Brockmeyer. Čech, Radek, Veronika Vincze, and Gabriel Altmann. 2017. “On Motifs and Verb Valency.” In Motifs in Language and Text, edited by Haitao Liu and Junying Liang, 13–36. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Christensen, D.L. 2003. The Unity of the Bible: Exploring the Beauty and Structure of the Bible. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. Croft, William, and Alan Cruse. 2004. Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Darányi, Sándor, Peter Wittek, and Lázló Forró. 2012. “Toward Sequencing ‘Narrative DNA’: Tale Types, Motif Strings and Memetic Pathways.” In Proceedings of Computational Models of Narrative 2012, edited by Mark Alan Finlayson, 2–10. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. http://narrative.csail.mit.edu/cmn12/proceedings.pdf. D’haeseleer, Patrik. 2006. “What Are DNA Sequence Motifs?” Nature Biotechnology 24 (4): 423–25. http://146.6.100.192/users/CH391L/Handouts/ nbt0406-423-primer-whataremotifs.pdf. Doležel, Lubomír. 1972. “From Motifemes to Motifs.” Poetics 4: 55–90. Ducrot, Olivier, and Tzvetan Todorov. 1972. Dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences du langage. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Dundes, Alan. 1962. “From Etic to Emic Units in the Structural Study of Folktales.” Journal of American Folklore 75 (296): 95–105. Frontini, Francesca, Mohamed Amine Boukhaled, and Jean-Gabriel Ganascia. 2018. “Approaching French Theatrical Characters by Syntactical Analysis: A Study with Motifs and Correspondence Analysis.” In Grammar of Genres and Styles: From Discrete to Non-discrete Units, edited by Dominique Legallois, Thierry Charnois, and Meri Larjavaara, 118–39. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Ganascia, Jean-Gabriel. 2001. “Extraction automatique de motifs syntaxiques.” In Actes de la 8ème Conférence sur le Traitement Automatique des Langues Naturelles (TALN’2001). Tours (France), edited by Jean Véronis, Laurence Danlos, Pierre Zweigenbaum, Nathalie Gasiglia, and Pascal Amsili (Bureau et Conseil d’Administration de la ATAL), TALN’2001, Jean-Gabriel Gnascia, 1–10. Paris: ATAL—Association pour le Traitement Automatique des Langues. http://talnarchives.atala.org/TALN/TALN-2001/taln-2001-long-017.pdf. Goldberg, Adele. 2006. Constructions at Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gonon, Laetitia, Vannina Goossens, Olivier Kraif, Iva Novakova, and Julie Sorba. 2018. “Motifs textuels spécifiques au genre policier et à la littérature « blanche ».” In Congrès Mondial de Linguistique Française, 9–13 juillet 2018, Mons, Institut de Linguistique Française, [onligne]: https://doi. org/10.1051/shsconf/20184606007, Paris, 1–14. Harris, Zellig, Michael Gottfried, Thomas Ryckman, Anne Daladier, and Paul Mattick. 1989. The Form of Information in Science: Analysis of an Immunology Sublanguage. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Köhler, Reinhard. 2006. “The Frequency Distribution of the Lengths of Length Sequences.” In Favete Linguis: Studies in Honour of Viktor Krupa,

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edited by Jozef Genzor and Martina Bucková, 145–52. Bratislava: Slovak Academic Press. Köhler, Reinhard. 2015. “Linguistic Motifs.” In Sequences in Language and Text, edited by George K. Mikros and Ján Mačutek, 89–108. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Kraif, Olivier. 2016. “Le Lexicoscope: un outil d’extraction des séquences phraséologiques basé sur des corpus arborés.” Cahiers de Lexicologie 108: 91–106. Legallois, Dominique, Thierry Charnois, and Meri Larjavaara. 2018. “The Balance Between Quantitative and Qualitative Literary Stylistics: How the Method of ‘Motifs’ Can Help.” In The Grammar of Genres and Styles: From Discrete to Non-discrete Units, edited by Dominique Legallois, Thierry Charnois, and Meri Larjavaara, 164–93. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Legallois, Dominique, Thierry Charnois, and Thierry Poibeau. 2016. “Repérer les clichés dans les romans sentimentaux grâce à la méthode des ‘motifs’.” Lidil. Revue de linguistique et de didactique des langues 53: 95–117. Longrée, Dominique, and Sylvie Mellet. 2018. “Towards a Topological Grammar of Genres and Styles: A Way to Combine Paradigmatic Quantitative Analysis with a Syntagmatic Approach.” In The Grammar of Genres and Styles: From Discrete to Non-discrete Units, edited by Dominique Legallois, Thierry Charnois and Meri Larjavaara, 140–63. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Mahlberg, Michaela. 2012. Corpus Stylistics and Dickens’s Fiction. London: Routledge. Muryn, Teresa, Malgorzata Niziolek, Alicja Hajok, Wojciech Prazuch, and Katarzyna Gabrysiak. 2016. “Scène de crime dans le roman policier: essai d’analyse lexico-syntaxique.” In 5e Congrès Mondial de Linguistique Française (SHS Web of Conferences 27), edited by Franck Neveu, Gabriel Bergounioux, Marie-Hélène Côté, Jean-Marie Fournier, Linda Hriba, and Sophie Prévost, 06007: 1–14. Les Ulis Cedex A/London: EDP Sciences. https://www.shs-conferences.org/articles/shsconf/pdf/2016/05/shsconf_ cmlf2016_06007.pdf. Ofek, Nir, Sándor Darányi, and Lior Rokach. 2013. “Linking Motif Sequences with Tale Types by Machine Learning.” In Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative 2013, edited by Mark A. Finlayson, Bernhard Fisseni, Benedikt Löwe, and Jan Christoph Meister, 166–82. Wadern: Dagstuhl Publishing. http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2013/4150/pdf/p166-ofek.pdf.

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3 Key Adverbs and Adverbial Motifs in English Fiction and their French Functional Equivalents Iva Novakova, Dirk Siepmann and Marion Gymnich

1 Introduction The present chapter starts from the observation that the automated extraction of multi-word units, while being a worthwhile procedure for identifying motifs, may blind us to other essential facets of literary language or to the existence of synonymic motifs (“syngrams,” Siepmann 2015, 377, e.g. lost in reflection—absorbed in reverie—deep in thought ) whose lexical manifestations sometimes fail to exceed even a very liberal I. Novakova (*)  Grenoble Alpes University, Grenoble, France e-mail: [email protected] D. Siepmann  University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany e-mail: [email protected] M. Gymnich  University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 I. Novakova and D. Siepmann (eds.), Phraseology and Style in Subgenres of the Novel, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23744-8_3

47

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significance threshold. One such facet illuminated in pre-computer corpus work (see Snell-Hornby 1983) is the dense use literary authors make of a particular class of “descriptive” verbs,1 especially in English and German; the situation in French is less well-researched (see Dyka et al. 2017). Such verbs encode actions and movement (or movement combined with sound and light) as well as serving to characterize both main characters and minor ones. Thus, for example, Gollum in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is characterized with descriptive verbs such as crawl, paw, squeal, and hiss, all of which seek to arouse the reader’s suspicion and dislike, suggesting that he is more animal than human. The high keyness of descriptive verbs is confirmed by modern corpus-based enquiry. From verbs it is only a small step to adverbs, since the two word classes commonly combine. However, although certain adverbs are employed much more frequently in fiction than in other genres, they have not yet been paid the attention they deserve. The present chapter tries to remedy this situation by taking a detailed look at adverb use in English and French fiction, thereby complementing the work done by Snell-Hornby (1983) on verbs. Like Snell-Hornby’s investigation, this study considers linguistic, literary, and translational aspects as well as issues associated with the use of the word class under survey.

2 Method The notion of keyword in its statistical sense (see Scott and Tribble 2006; see Stubbs 2010 for other uses of keyword) is by now wellestablished in corpus linguistics. Words or word forms are said to be “key” if they meet two requirements: – A word, identified by the presence of a space or punctuation on either side of it, is used with outstanding frequency in a particular set of texts compared to a reference word list derived from a corpus representative of the general language or a particular subset thereof. Dunning’s Log Likelihood function (see Dunning 1993) determines 1Descriptive

verbs appeal to the five senses: taste, touch, sight, smell, and sound.

3  Key Adverbs and Adverbial Motifs in English …     49

if a difference in frequency between two corpora is statistically significant. – The word must surpass a minimum frequency level. For the present study, we used the following tool settings to determine it: minimum frequency = 3, maximum key words = 2000; p value = 0.000001; procedure = log likelihood. Keyword investigations surface two kinds of evidence: (a) what the text or texts being examined are about (“aboutness indicators”) and (b) which word choices predominate in a stylistic sense (“stylistic indicators”). The corpus-stylistic study of literary language is, by its very nature, mainly interested in the latter. This study is based on a keyword list of the English and French literary corpora compiled as part of the PhraseoRom project (all genres combined; corpus LIT, see Appendix A); keywords were generated by comparison with newspapers, scientific texts and TED talks that we used as our reference corpus (corpus CONT, see Appendix A). Additional examples were taken from a private collection of American novels. The analysis proceeded in six steps. First, we manually identified all adverbs up to keyness rank 2000 ending in the suffixes *ly and *ment as well as other adverbs. Next, we classified them according to type (manner, time, place, frequency, etc.) before computing and comparing their relative and absolute frequencies shown in Table 1. In the third step, we introduced a contrastive perspective while at the same time narrowing the focus to manner adverbs, which intuitively Table 1  Quantitative differences between different types of adverbs in English and French Types of adverbs

EN

FR

Overall Manner Time Place Frequency Viewpoint Degree Total

70 45 5 3 1 11 5 140

29 23 4 – – 1 1 58

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appeared to pose the most serious translation problems and which, from a stylistic point of view, can be expected to fulfil a primarily descriptive function. Moreover, they are apt to contribute to an implicit characterization of the novel’s personae. Thus, the choice of adverb may have a considerable impact on the way a reader perceives a particular character. The aim here was to explore qualitative differences between potential translation equivalents, such as nervously—nerveusement or slowly—lentement. In steps four and five, we sought to identify what we termed “natural” French equivalents of some English adverbs. By “natural equivalents” we mean French linguistic units that occur in a lexico-syntactic environment closely resembling that which is observable in a similar passage of an English-language novel. Space here precludes a detailed discussion of the complex issues surrounding equivalence (for an overview, see Kenny 2009). Suffice it to say here that equivalence increases with the length of the items involved (see Siepmann 2014, 152). Bearing this in mind, we decided that the safest way of identifying equivalents of adverbs was to start by classifying English manner adverb + verb collocations by semantic category (e.g. cautiously + verb of looking; briskly + verb of movement; step four). Step five entailed exploring the lexico-syntactic environment of French verbs of looking, motion, saying, etc. to identify adverbial expressions, which involved a list of motion verbs from the DinaVmouv database (Stosic and Aurnague 2017) as well as lists of other verb categories which we generated by relying on dictionaries such as Le Petit Robert. Finally, in step six, comparing natural interlingual correspondences (or their absence) with actual translator behaviour is a natural follow-on to the above contrastive analysis. Recently, a compelling case was made by Kraif (2017, 58, following Rastier 2006) that “translationese” in no sense differs from other forms of language variation since translated texts become part of an intertextual body of language. We, on the other hand, believe that it is precisely the comparison of original with translated texts that lets us ascertain to what extent the linguistic choices made by translators become stock-in-trade for mother-tongue writers, thus contributing to language change: “[la traduction] fait évoluer la

3  Key Adverbs and Adverbial Motifs in English …     51

langue: le corpus des textes traduits s’intègre au corpus de la langue” (Rastier 2006; cited in Kraif 2017, 58; [the translation] makes the language evolve: the corpus of translated texts is integrated into the corpus of the language; our translation). We hypothesize that this is probably true at the macro-level of generic structures, but less so at the microlevel of motifs. Moreover, we formulate two further hypotheses: First, we suppose that in literary language, English employs more adverbs than French, which often uses attributive adjectives instead of adverbs: glance nervously = jeter un coup d’oeil nerveux. In Comparative Stylistics of French and English: A Methodology for Translation, Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet claim that English, due to its “synthetic character,” favours adverbs and thus “allows a single word to be used where French prefers a phrase, or even has no alternative. Not only do adverbs ending in ‘-ment ’ seem cumbersome, they are restricted in their application. Conversely, the suffix ‘-ly ’ in English can be attached to any adjective and even to participles” (1995, 126). We will test this assumption by applying statistical methods to large corpora. We further hypothesize that adverbs of manner (*ly or *ment ) tend to co-occur with certain semantic verb classes (speech, gesture, cognition, movement, communication).

3 Results 3.1 Quantitative and Qualitative Differences A fitting point for embarking on a comparison of key adverbs in English and French resides in the fact that adverbs are generally more frequent in English than in French—adverbs ending in *ment are only about half as common as their direct English counterparts ending in *ly. Unsurprisingly, this lopsided distribution is reflected in the proportion of key adverbs found among the top 2000 keywords in English and French in the aforementioned corpora. By far the largest class consists of manner adverbs—39 in English and 23 in French. Interestingly, there

52     I. Novakova et al.

are fewer obvious correspondences in meaning between English and French adverbs than one would expect (see Table 2).2 Other major numerical differences (see Table 1) concern viewpoint or commenting adverbs (e.g. obviously 11 in English and franchement 1 in French) and degree adverbs (e.g. barely 5 in English vs. légèrement 1 in French). Since viewpoint adverbs tend to occur mainly in speech, it might be hypothesized that French authors tend to represent spoken language in accordance with somewhat different conventions than English authors, but an exploration of this question is beyond the scope of this article. A more detailed look at the relative frequencies of potential correspondences (see Table 3) reveals equally striking discrepancies that appear to provide some measure of support for the claim (to be investigated below) made in contrastive stylistics that English adverbs are often equivalent to “circumlocutory” structures in French (see Ballard 2003, 209; for a detailed pen-and-paper analysis of potential translation equivalents in German–French translation, see Grünbeck 1976, 174–95). More importantly, contrastive stylistics has overlooked the apparent idiosyncratic adverb use in each language. It may be hypothesized that novelists are guided by language-specific predilections in this context on the one hand but, on the other, may also have their personal preferences. To compound matters, the items in Table 3 that appear to be full equivalents usually differ in a number of uses or senses. In other words, quantitative differences often shade off into qualitative differences: slowly and lentement have similar uses with verbs of movement and gesture as well as with verbs expressing light effects, but whereas English slowly often occurs with speech verbs, collocations of the type “dire lentement” are comparatively rare in French novels (e.g. say + slowly: 10.3 per million; dire + lentement: 1.2 per million; the usual French equivalent is “dire/prononcer d’une voix lente”).3 Silently is closely similar in usage to silencieusement, except for its collocation with the speech verb scream, which has no direct equivalent in French (but see constructions 2Columns 2 and 6 of Table  2 correspond to the decreasing keyness index obtained in SketchEngine (see Kilgariff et al. 2014). 3For a discussion of verba dicendi and direct speech, see Chapter 4 by Diwersy et al. in this volume, which also stresses the productivity of the pattern say + Adv in the English literary corpus.

33046.15 14990.68

14509.43 11603.23 8567.98 7256.89 6434.74 4571.52 4347.54 4224.86 3885.38 3861.16 3663.98 3633.03 3523.09 3412.00 3394.61 3061.81 3002.09 2965.83 2958.04 2794.84 2741.90 2717.45 2532.41 2525.07

1 2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

quietly gently silently carefully abruptly tightly loudly thoughtfully calmly angrily faintly vaguely nervously impatiently grimly cautiously coldly perfectly hastily lightly intently casually wildly stiffly

slowly softly

précipitamment

froidement

nerveusement

calmement

doucement silencieusement

lentement tendrement/ mollement 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

27 28 2294.18 2292.10 2291.19 2210.31 2204.96 2166.08 2133.60 2096.07 2043.32 2025.31 2024.31

2443.83 2315.04

Table 2  English and French key manner adverbs with potential equivalents

brightly wearily dryly absently sharply neatly violently briskly dimly politely helplessly

swiftly momentarily

rudement tristement délicatement gaiement péniblement gentiment sourdement posément négligemment furieusement

machinalement

sèchement distraitement

3  Key Adverbs and Adverbial Motifs in English …     53

54     I. Novakova et al. Table 3  Quantitative differences between selected candidates for equivalence (occurrences per one million words) English key manner adverb

French “dictionary equivalent”

slowly (200.41) softly (71.40)

lentement (23.68) tendrement (9.40) doucement (88.34) silencieusement (1.56) calmement (13.24) nerveusement (2.13) froidement (7.95) distraitement (0.82)

silently (41.82) calmly (25.01) nervously (20.89) coldly (14.07) absently (9.14)

of the type “sa bouche s’ouvrit sur un cri muet”); calmly occurs far more significantly in combination with wait than calmement does with attendre. Absently frequently combines with speech and mental verbs, while distraitement does not. Coldly is the only English manner adverb that is frequently found alongside adjectives (coldly furious [see “rage froide ”], logical, calculating, angry, formal, efficient, polite [see “politesse glacée ”]), a use that has no direct parallel in French. The English construction coldly + adjective may serve to illustrate the possible implications of the differences between English and French use of manner adverbs for their descriptive function in a literary text. The lack of a direct parallel may have important repercussions on the way a character’s demeanour or attitude is described, thus also posing a potential translation problem. In the collocation coldly polite, for instance, the semantic modifier coldly can be expected to have a significant impact on the reader’s impression of the character’s demeanour. While polite is likely to give rise to a positive assessment of the character’s behaviour, coldly polite is a much more expressive and intense way of describing emotions and atmosphere (our “affective” discursive function [DFs]4, see Appendix B); the construction emphasizes the distance between characters interacting in a given scene and may convey attitudes ranging from scorn to wounded pride on the part of the character whose demeanour is described as coldly polite. 4In the PhraseoRom project, we distinguish between five basic DFs—that is, narrative, descriptive, cognitive, affective, and pragmatic DFs—with some subcategories. For more details, see Appendix B.

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The logic of frequency dictates that most of the differences noted so far reveal infrequent uses or gaps in French rather than English. However, we found a few instances that operated contrariwise: while both in English and in French nervously is used with verbs expressing movement of the hands, fingers,5 or feet as well as with verbs expressing smiling or laughter, verbs expressing a mental state appear to be more frequent in French (e.g. craquer nerveusement [have a nervous breakdown ], épuisé nerveusement [nervously exhausted ]); French froidement collocates with verbs expressing the action of killing, where English resorts to set expressions (kill in cold blood/cold-bloodedly ); also, the use of froidement with accueillir finds no direct parallel in English (give sb a frosty reception ).

3.2 Adverb Use According to Verb Semantics and Motifs Associated with Particular Uses As should have become clear from this brief overview of qualitative differences, some of the gaps found are lexicalized expressions (e.g. abattre froidement—kill in cold blood ) which have been recorded in unabridged bilingual dictionaries. Other gaps require more detailed investigation, the major prerequisite being a classification of adverb use according to verb semantics (step four in the methodology outlined above). Table 4 shows such a classification of manner adverbs. Many of these combinations may be described as motifs, c­ ombining as they do two lexical paradigms with a specific and recurrent descriptive function (see Adam 2011, 267) in the fictional discourse. As pointed out in the introduction, not all of the obviously literary combinations listed in the Table 4 may, however, be identified by using n-grams or lexico-syntactic trees. The combination of the motion verbs stride, walk, march, and step with the adverb briskly appears to be characteristically used to gender-stereotype the gait of a male agent as being purposeful and swift. It suggests that he is (or is pretending to be) on

5See

Chapter 5 by Grossmann et al. in this volume, which shows that V + nervously/nerveusement is a very productive pattern in the context of the cigarette script.

Specific collocations

Briskly, gently, Vaguely, faintly, Faintly, dimly, violently, wearily, grimly, intently, brightly, grimly, cautiously, violently, dimly, loudly swiftly, wildly, stiffly, carefully hastily, casually, lightly, impatiently, angrily, thoughtfully, tightly, abruptly, sharply Sniff, snore loudly

Lightly, dryly

Gently curving; sharply defined; tightly packed wrapped/ clenched; stiffly starched

Stiffly, hastily, casually, tightly, neatly, carefully, calmly, violently

Glimpse dimly

Cautiously intently, sharply, calmly

Observe, watch

State/description Looking

Light, illumiArrange, fold, nate, glow, sit flicker, gleam, glimmer, burn, blaze, flash, glitter, sneeze, inhale

Light/sound

Adverbial collocates

Remember, mock, wonder

Cognition

Rock, push, stride, walk, march, nod, salute, tremble, shake, veer, turn, stamp, trudge, shrug, climb, move, stroll, gesture, cling

Gesture/ Motion facial expression

Verbal nodes Frown, with several smile, collocates laugh

Verb semantics

Table 4  Distribution of manner adverbs by verb semantics (log dice >5)

Say, reply, speak, continue, announce, ask, remark, comment, add, murmur, pause Dryly, thoughtfully (almost all)

Speech

56     I. Novakova et al.

3  Key Adverbs and Adverbial Motifs in English …     57

an important and urgent mission (see also the following explanation in the OED, s.v. “stride”: “often with implication of haste or impetuosity, of exuberant vigour, or of haughtiness or arrogance”): (1) Landow got out of his car and strode briskly into a large apartment building. (Hammett The Assistant Murder, 1945) (2) … the captain resumed his mask of boyish confidence. He walked briskly to the radio control room. (Murphy Next of Kin, 2014) (3) They both turned to glare as he strode briskly through the door. “Well, gentlemen, sorry to keep you waiting,” said Phule. (Asprin A Phule and His Money, 1999)

In these examples, the collocation stride briskly is syntagmatically extended by means of a prepositional NP (into+NP). There is also a paradigmatic variation on NP (into a large apartment building, to the radio control room, through the door ). These extended lexical units correspond to our definition of motifs (see Chapter 1 by Novakova and Siepmann, Sect. 3, in this volume) because they display lexical and syntactic regularities at the syntagmatic and paradigmatic levels and, at the same time, are associated with particular narrative functions. Thus, the fact that the construction consisting of a motion verb + briskly is combined with adjuncts expressing a destination in the sentences above additionally serves to stress the notion that the character acts purposefully. The examples show that the widespread construction of literary characters in accordance with gender stereotypes is often triggered by linguistic items. While the decision to describe a character’s gait by employing the manner adverb briskly may at first sight seem negligible for the overall understanding of a text, the frequent use of this adverb to refer to the movement of male characters gives rise to a (comparatively subtle) form of gendering that is anything but irrelevant since it reiterates the traditional link between masculinity and being active. In other words, the type of linguistic analysis suggested here proves to be a vital tool for “approaches to fictional characters that include the category ‘gender’ in a systematic fashion” (Gymnich 2010, 506). To the reader, literary characters typically seem to be more than a combination of units of

58     I. Novakova et al.

textual information, as Uri Margolin (1990, 463) points out: “Although a possible individual is evoked or called into existence by a specific originating text, it is not reducible to words.” Yet, as the example discussed here shows, lexico-syntactic features may give rise to a construction of literary characters along the lines of gender stereotypes, for instance. Linguistic input serves as a trigger for activating cognitive patterns that are part of the reader’s general frame of reference, invoked for making sense of the world. Turning now to what we have called “natural” French equivalents of motion verb + adjunct combinations, we find that French authors opt for six regular choices, apart from the usually dispreferred adverbs formed from adjectives by means of suffixation (see Table 5). While the general syntactic choices in question have long been known to contrastive linguists and have been listed in some lesser known works (see Grünbeck 1976 on German and French), the specific lexical paradigms they constitute have never received detailed treatment. Table 5 gives a detailed picture of these paradigms. There are correspondences, within certain idiomatic constraints, between columns 2 and 3, to the extent that the meaning expressed by a noun following avec can sometimes be rendered by an adjective following a noun denoting a body part, a gesture or a movement, as in the following clauses: il laisse retomber les bras d’un mouvement las (pattern 1, Table 5) = il laisse retomber les bras avec lassitude (pattern 2, Table 5) (he lets his arms sink again with a tired movement). Typically, however, each syntactic paradigm involves specific lexico-semantic material, which in turn is dependent on the semantics of the verb (see Table 4). French motion verbs display the widest range of possible combinations, co-occurring with the six types of adjuncts (Table 5). Somewhat surprisingly in view of what standard grammars of French lead us to expect, adjuncts involving manière and façon are so infrequent with motion verbs as to be negligible, which explains why they are missing in the patterns described in Table 5. In addition to these syntactic patterns, which admit wide variation of lexis, a number of prepositional phrases exist that are more restricted in terms of their collocability: à longs/grands pas, à pas feutrés, à longues/ larges/grandes enjambées/foulées, en quelques enjambées rapides, à amples

(1) V + d’un(e) NOM + ADJ

Sound/light

Cognition

Looking Speech

blancheur, rougeur, éclat, lumière, lueur

oeil, air, regard voix, ton, rire

Motion verbs + (a) geste, (a) Gesture, ­ ouvement, m movement, allure, bond, body part saut, coup; (b) Difficulty, main, pied, speed, bras, doigt; liveliness, emotion (c) Emotion, state (d) Gaze, facial expression; sound, speed, liveliness, emotion

Verbs

(3) V + ADJ in apposition

force, gravité, douceur, colère, feu, entrain surprise, stupéfaction, soulagement, satisfaction, certitude, fierté

(b) p  eine, effort, (c) furieux, difficulté, lassitude, joyeux, lourdeur, raideur; penaud, fougue, vivacité, heureux, empressement, fourbu, précipitation; bredouille, lenteur, précaution, léger, ivre, méfiance, soin; souriant, insistance, détermiriche, nation; tendresse, radieux, curiosité, passion, malade, fureur, inquiétude, insatisfait, mollesse hagard, glorieux

(2) V + avec + NOM

Table 5  Natural French equivalents of English adverbs (5) en signe de * N (6) V + dans + noun (+ADJ)

satisfaction

(d) sourire, air, adieu, reconmouvement, regard; bruit, naissance, geste, bond, fracas; vivacité, acquiescement, salut hâte, vitesse, assentiment, rapidité, soupapprobation, lesse, puissance; dénégation, obstination, joie, impuissance, regret, crainte, soumission, bienhumeur, perfecvenue, ignorance, tion, effort protestation, remerciement, apaisement, reconnaissance, désapprobation, deuil, résignation, encouragement, négation

(4) V + avec + un(e) + NOM + ADJ

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60     I. Novakova et al.

foulées (with long/grand strides, with muffled steps, with long/large, grand strides, in a few quick steps, with wide strides); finally, we find set expressions of the type à la hâte, à toute allure (courir, déambuler ) sans rime ni raison or se lever comme un ressort (in haste, at full speed, (run, wander) nonsensically, or get up like a spring).

3.3 Motifs of Motion and Light This section is devoted to the search for equivalents for English and French adverbial motifs. For reasons of space, we will limit ourselves to two examples involving motion and light effects. In each case, we have selected typical sample sentences illustrating a motif, for which we then proceed to outline translation proposals, that is the sentences preceded by (a), and authentic French examples (preceded by b, c, etc.).

3.3.1 Verbs of Motion + Briskly/Stiffly Returning first to the aforementioned motif where a verb of motion is combined with briskly, often with a view to gender-stereotyping the behaviour of a male character, we are now in a position to suggest “natural” equivalents (e.g. 1a, 2a, 3a have been translated by us and 1b, 2b, 3b are authentic examples from our French literary corpora). Depending on whether the agent’s vigour, purposefulness (1a), haste (2a), or arrogance (3a) are emphasized, we find equivalents such as the following: (1a) Landau descendit de voiture et entra d’un pas résolu dans un immeuble. (1b) Il avança d’un pas résolu vers les bouleaux à l’arrière de sa propriété (Vann Désolations, 2016). (He advanced briskly towards the birchtrees at the back of his property.)6 (2a) Il gagna la salle de contrôle radio en quelques enjambées rapides. 6All

of the following translations are our suggestions, unless otherwise specified.

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(2b) Il descendit de voiture, referma tout doucement la portière. Il se glissa dans la trouée, gagna la terrasse en quelques enjambées rapides. (Ndyaie Trois femmes puissantes, 2009) (He left the car, closed the door very carefully. He crept into the hole, arrived at the terrace in a few brisk strides.) (3a) Ils se retournèrent tous les deux et le regardèrent fixement lorsqu’il franchit la porte à toute allure. “Messieurs, désolé de vous avoir fait attendre,” dit Phule. (3b) Sans rien dire à aucun de ses serviteurs et de ses écuyers, sans même prévenir Lubias, il franchit la porte à toute allure. (Blanchard Ami et Amile, 1985) (Without saying anything to one of his servants or his varlets, even without warning Lubias, he walked through the door at full speed.)

It is evident from these examples that the translation of such motifs from English into French requires great sensitivity both to the literary context and the different shades of meaning conveyed by descriptive expressions. This stands in sharp contrast to other types of motif, such as transition markers, which have comparatively fixed equivalents (e.g. his thoughts were interrupted as—il en était là de ses réflexions quand ). In the opposite translation direction, on the other hand, what is needed is an awareness of straightforward stereotypical combinations of, say, motion verbs and adverbs (e.g. il avança d’un pas résolu vers les bouleaux—he walked/strode/headed briskly towards the birches ). At this point, the search for equivalences could be broadened to include other adverbs, but an exhaustive survey is beyond the compass of this study. We will confine ourselves to another fairly complex example: the use of stiffly with motion verbs and adjectives expressing posture. Among the most significant collocates of stiffly, we find the verbs walk, bend, rise, pose, nod, stand, sit, climb, march, clamber, and stride as well as the adjectives erect and upright. Stiffly indicates difficult, clumsy, or even painful movement, which is sometimes associated with military drill, great age, anger, or fatigue. Here are some examples: (4) He suddenly looked tired again. He sat down stiffly, on the sofa … (Barker Darkmans, 2007)

62     I. Novakova et al.

(5) The Brig rose stiffly. He seemed to have aged ten years during the night. (Smith Eagle in the Sky, 2006) (6) I did not sleep again, but waited for morning, when I rose stiffly and went to a workman’s café … (Banville Shroud, 2003) (7) … he rose stiffly to his feet and stood by the chair, his body aching from having sat so long. (Campbell Scared Stiff: Tales of Sex and Death, 1987) (8) She walked stiffly, as if hurt somewhere deep inside, and met no one’s eyes. (Hambly Sold Down the River, 2001)

The most natural French equivalents that suggest themselves are combinations of type (2) in Table 5, with the nouns (avec ) raideur, lourdeur, lassitude, difficulté, effort, peine ([with] stiffness, heaviness, fatigue, difficulties, effort, toil) being obvious choices but lourdement (heavily) is also used frequently as equivalent: (4a) Il s’assit avec lassitude sur le sofa … (4b) Reprise soudain par sa douleur, elle s’assied lourdement sur le lit et se remet à pleurer. (Clavel La Guinguette, 1997) (Again seized by her pain, she sat down stiffly on the bed and started to cry.) (4c) Braguette déboutonnée, il s’assit lourdement sur une chaise … (Queffélec Désirable, 2014) (Fly unbuttoned, he sat down stiffly on a chair …) (5a) Le brigadier se leva avec gravité / difficulté. (5b) Elle se leva avec gravité. (Rochefort Encore heureux qu’on va vers l’été, 1975) (She stood up stiffly.) (5c) L’autre se leva d’un air offensé, prit son chapeau rond à la main … (Camus La Peste, 1947) (The other one stood up with an offended look, took his round hat in his hand…) (6a) De nouveau, je n’avais pas dormi, je me levai avec peine / péniblement / pesamment / non sans peine / avec effort / avec lourdeur / raide… (6b) Nicolas se leva avec peine du sofa et baisa Stépan Pokrovsky sur le front. (Troyat Tant que la Terre durera-1 [1947], 2007) (Nicolas stood up stiffly from the sofa and kissed Stépan Pokrovsky on the forehead.)

3  Key Adverbs and Adverbial Motifs in English …     63

(7a) Il se leva les pieds raides … le corps endolori d’avoir été assis si longtemps. (7b) Il se leva avec un peu de peine, défroissa sa veste, et derrière le vitrage vert de ses lunettes ses yeux paraissaient fatigués. (Jenni L’Art français de la guerre, 2011) (He stood up a little stiffly, smoothed his jacket, and behind his green-tinted glasses his eyes seemed tired.) (8a) Elle marchait avec raideur / avec peine / péniblement. (8b) Il vit entrer une femme d’un certain âge, les cheveux blancs coupés au carré, qui marchait avec raideur au bras d’une jeune fille. (Modiano L’Horizon 2010) (He saw a woman of a certain age enter, with her white hair cut into a rectangular shape, who walked stiffly on the arm of a girl.)

While these fill the bill quite neatly for examples (4)–(8), this is not the case for nod stiffly (example 9), which does not seem to have a natural counterpart in French. (9) Halleck allowed himself the thinnest of smiles, then nodded stiffly to them and stalked away. (Abercrombie The Blade Itself, 2006)

Wordings such as acquiescer avec raideur, hocher sèchement la tête, hocher douloureusement la tête or hocher lourdement la tête (nod stiffly, dryly, painfully, or heavily) constitute one-off occurrences in our French corpus; equivalents that could be constructed on the basis of translation proposals recorded in dictionaries, such as hocher la tête avec froideur or hocher la tête à contre-cœur (nod coldly or nod reluctantly) do not occur, and the comparatively common construction se contenter de hocher la tête parallels merely nod or nod briefly rather than nod stiffly. Thus, we are dealing here with a motif that is quite commonplace in English fiction but hardly ever found in French novels. Such lexical or “collocational” gaps (see Siepmann 2003) can be accounted for by either of two hypotheses: (A) writers of fiction use certain motifs for no other reason than that they are available in their language, or (B) in some cases, writers in one language perceive “slices” of reality that writers in another language fail to see or omit because they deem them irrelevant. (The absence of a straightforward French equivalent of nod stiffly may tempt one to look for an explanation in the realm of stereotypical national

64     I. Novakova et al.

characteristics; in other words, here the proverbial “British stiff upper lip” comes to mind.) In this sense, translations and “translationese” that render the motifs in question more or less literally may help readers who do not know a text’s source language gain access to new perceptions. There is also some rather compelling evidence for Hypothesis A in the converse direction: Having a natural predilection for the adverbial structures listed in Table 5, French writers also extend these structures creatively in ways that English is unlikely to adopt. Thus, we find se lever avec une lenteur majestueuse (rise with majestic slowness)/avec une grâce troublante (with disturbing grace)/avec une solennité bouffonne (with mock solemnity) or hocher la tête avec une brièveté calculée (nod with calculated brevity). While such expressions are systemically possible in English and were indeed used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in modern usage they are probably felt to be rather noun-heavy and generally overblown and thus tend to be avoided. In simple terms, we might say that French authors like to play with the subtle shades of meaning which can be conveyed by such prepositional phrases with adverbial meaning.

3.3.2 Verbs Denoting Light + Faintly, Dimly, Brightly This brings us to our second example, the use of faintly, dimly, and brightly with verbs denoting light, such as light, shine, glow, burn, gleam, illuminate, blaze, flash, flare, glitter, sparkle, glint, glimmer, and shimmer. Space does not allow us to treat this topic exhaustively, so we will confine ourselves to a number of typical examples. (10) There was a low fire glowing faintly on the hearth. (Burnett The Secret Garden, 1911) (11) He watched until the forest began to glimmer and then to glow faintly as the stars went out. (Campbell Midnight Sun, 1990) (12) There were a couple of people milling around, white T-shirts faintly glowing against the fade of the light. (Boyle Talk, Talk 2006) (13) The Exeter Hotel is a six-story limestone building in the middle of a block of discount shoe stores and dimly lit bars. (Auster Man in the Dark, 2009)

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(14) The kitchen in the empty lodge was large, dimly lit. (Abbott Panic, 2005) (15) The coal of the cigar glowed brightly for a moment. (Banks Canal Dreams, 1989) (16) It was late, almost eleven o clock, and the rows of bulbs on the superstructure of Chelsea Bridge glowed brightly in the navy-blue night, … like the lights on a circus’s big top. (Boyd Ordinary Thunderstorms, 2009) (17) It seemed in places that there were no breaks between the lights, as if the city were a carpet of pure light, a fragment of the sun. The clouds above the city glowed brightly. (Card Songmaster, 2002)

In physics, glow denotes light emitted by a substance or object at a high temperature, which conveys a sense of its metaphorical meaning, referring to a warm, intense, steady light that emits heat without flames. When combined with faintly, it would appear to imply less intensity and warmth but still a fairly steady emission of light and heat. The prototypical image here would be that of a fire that has burned to embers like the fire in sentence (10), and this is where the search for French equivalents might start. A trawl through the French corpus reveals that there is no equivalent capable of conveying the full range of nuances contained in the English collocation. Feu can be combined with bas or maigre, which renders the lack of intensity quite well, but it rarely collocates with luire and rougeoyer (glow), and even less frequently with luire/ rougeoyer + faiblement (glow + feebly) (no occurrences in our corpus; two occurrences in French originals in Google Books, see example 10b), a collocation which in any case fails to do justice to the connotations of warmth and steadiness radiated by the English collocation. (10a) Il y avait un maigre feu (rarely: un feu bas ) qui luisait faiblement dans l’âtre. (10b) Raynor la souleva telle une plume et alla la jeter rudement à côté du feu de bois qui luisait faiblement au centre de l’antre. (Lazareff Atlantis: Le Secret de l’Orphèdre, 2018) (Raynor picked her up like a feather and

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threw her roughly next to the wood fire which glowed faintly in the middle of the cave.) (10c) Simplement un maigre feu dans l’âtre géant. (Claudel Les Âmes grises, 2003) (Merely a small fire in the gigantic fireplace.)

In the next example (11) an unsteady, dim light (glimmer ) transitions into a steady light (glow faintly). Renditions using such direct but weak equivalents as luire faiblement/vaguement (glow weakly/feebly) are ruled out because they cannot be used to express the difference between intermittent and steady light. The noun lueur, however, enters into collocation with both faible (faint light) and vacillant or intermittent (flickering or intermittent light) and may be coordinated with a more precise descriptive noun such as rougeoiement (red glow). This is probably the closest match we can find for this complex combination of two sensory perceptions. Here too it should be noted that the French equivalents are less commonly used than their English counterparts; in a sense, we are dealing with a motif that is exclusively English: (11a) Il resta là, (sous les étoiles qui s’éteignaient,) figé dans sa contemplation, jusqu’à ce que la forêt se mît à projeter une faible lueur vacillante, suivie d’un dernier rougeoiement (au fur et à mesure que les étoiles s’éteignaient). (11b) La lueur vacillante du photophore à gaz éclairait vivement le sol … (Vian L’Automne à Pékin, 1947) (The flickering light of the gas lantern vividly lit up the ground …) (11c) … le soleil a sombré laissant dans le ciel, après un dernier rougeoiement, pendant un temps très court, une lueur diffuse de couleur imprécise, entre le rose et le gris. (Mosset Naufrage d’un amour sous les tropiques, 1999) (… the sun has gone down, leaving behind in the sky, after a last red glow, for a very short time, a diffuse light of an uncertain colour, in between pink and grey.)

Potential equivalents of example (12) admit some variation. Again, the most straightforward rendition of glow faintly is luire faiblement, which, as stated above, has the disadvantage of not capturing the specificity of

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English glow. A search for a more precise equivalent could be based on the noun lumière, which is commonly modified by colour adjectives suggesting warmth, such as orange/orangé/rouge/doré/jaunâtre (orange/ red/golden/yellowish), and collocates with such verbs as diffuser, projeter, or refléter (spread, project, or reflect). A third possibility, suggested by exploring the lexical field surrounding colour adjectives, is to combine the participial adjective doré with a complement introduced by par: (12a) Il y avait quelques personnes qui s’agitaient en tous sens. Leurs teeshirts blancs luisaient faiblement dans le crépuscule avancé. // Leurs teeshirts diffusaient une faible lumière dorée / orange / orangée / rouge / jaunâtre // (avec) leurs tee-shirts dorés par les dernières lueurs douces du crépuscule / par la dernière lumière du soleil. (12b) Il regarda le ciel où la lumière rouge déclinait. (Clavel Le Soleil des morts, 1998) (He watched the sky where the red light faded.) (12c) Debout sur le sable doré par les rayons encore brûlants du soleil, Gilbert le regarde s’éloigner. (Clavel Pirates du Rhône, 1957) (Standing on the sand that has been turned golden by the still glowing rays of the sun, Gilbert sees him move away.)

Unlike the previous examples, dimly lit has two direct equivalents in French (faiblement/pauvrement éclairé ): (13a) L’Hôtel Exeter est un bâtiment en roche calcaire à six étages entouré de solderies de chaussures et de bars faiblement/pauvrement éclairés. (13b) Dans le compartiment pauvrement éclairé, Maigret l’avait mal vu. (Simenon Maigret a peur, 1953) (In the dimly lit compartment, Maigret had scarcely been able to see him.) (14a) La cuisine qui se trouvait dans la maison vide du gardien était spacieuse et faiblement éclairée. (14b) Le hall était faiblement éclairé et le préposé dormait derrière le standard. (Vian Les Morts ont tous la même peau, 1947) (The hall was dimly lit, and the employee was sleeping behind the telephone switchboard.)

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The next three examples illustrate once more how contextual factors lead to subtly differentiated equivalence relations between a standard literary motif in English (glow brightly) and its counterparts in French. Sentence (15) effectively captures the brief moment when a cigar lights up, looking fleetingly like a miniature coal furnace. Although rare in French, this motif could be rendered adequately by rougeoyer or by jeter une lueur vive. (15a) L’espace d’un (bref ) instant, le tabac du cigare jeta une lueur vive. / Le charbon du cigare rougeoya un instant. (15b) La mèche rougeoya un instant. (Savatier L’Oeil du centre, 1962) (The wick glowed brightly for a moment.) (15c) Puis brusquement une bougie qui grésillait, jeta une lueur vive et expira. (Benjamin La Table et le verre d’eau, 1947) (Then, suddenly, a candle which hissed glowed brightly and expired.)

Whereas light bulbs are commonly depicted as glowing brightly in English, French ampoule does not usually co-occur with adverb + verb collocations; ampoule + éclairer/illuminer/briller (bulb + illuminate/ shine) in (16a) are used without adverbial modification. The collocational gap that arises as a consequence of this could be filled by resorting to one of the more common combinations of the verbs in question with adverbials, such as briller de mille feux (16b)/de tous ses feux/d’un éclat d’or/d’un éclat éblouissant/… (to shine with a thousand lights (16b)/ with all its lights/with a golden glow/with a dazzling glow). (16a) Il était tard, presque onze heures du soir, et les rangées d’ampoules qui ornaient la superstructure du pont de Chelsea brillaient / s’illuminaient / rayonnaient de mille feux / de tous leurs feux / d’un éclat d’or dans la nuit bleu marine, semblables aux lumières qui éclairent un chapiteau de cirque. (16b) La Grande Ourse brille de mille feux. (Vialatte Dernières nouvelles de l’homme, 1978) (The Big Dipper glows in a thousand lights.)

Sentence (17) basically illustrates the same contrast between English and French. Whereas English writers regularly portray the interaction

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between clouds and the sun with verbs such as glow or dim (the light), French writers think twice about using such constructions. A faithful rendition could be based on the verb flamboyer (“avoir l’éclat d’une flamme”) or rutiler (“briller d’un rouge ardent, d’un vif éclat”) (17a); an alternative rendition would shift the focus from the verb towards the noun, which could be modified by a colour adjective or noun (orange, rouge ) (17a, 17d). Taking this type of solution further, we also find more daring equivalents such as nuage incendié (17b, 17c)/ en feu.7 (17a) On eût dit qu’à certains endroits il n’y avait aucune solution de continuité entre les lumières, comme si la cité était un tapis de lumière pure, voire un fragment du soleil. Les nuages au-dessus de la ville flamboyaient / rutilaient. // Au-dessus de la ville flottaient des nuages d’un rouge vif / incendiés. (17b) Des nuages incendiés m’entraînaient ailleurs. (Geramys Le Reste du monde, 1987) (Glowing clouds took me with them to another place.) (17c) Une monumentale presqu’île de nuages incendiés surgit à l’horizon dont la splendeur fragile et fugace forçait la pensée vers d’autres voies. (Duras Moderato cantabile, 1958) (A huge near-island of glowing clouds suddenly appeared on the horizon, whose fragile and fleeting splendor forced one’s thoughts in other directions.) (17d) Enfin, sans qu’il fût question de lueur du couchant, en plein midi arriva un nuage rouge, exactement rouge comme un coquelicot. (Giono Le Hussard sur le toit, 1951) (Finally, without any hint of sunset glow, at noon a red cloud came that was as red as a poppy.)

The insights gained in this section collectively suggest that motifs are often language-specific, posing problems for translators which we will turn to in the next section. The collocational gap which has been detailed above proves to be very interesting for the analysis of texts from a literary studies perspective. After all, references to light (or a lack thereof ) are of the utmost importance for describing settings and,

7John

D. Gallagher, personal communication.

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specifically, for evoking a particular atmosphere. Descriptions of light are also apt to elicit an emotional and aesthetic response from the reader, for instance by referencing the sublime (La Grande Ourse brille de mille feux. ). In genres like fantasy or science fiction, which generally rely very much on text-internal world building, descriptions of light may also function as a potent world-building strategy. Cases in point include classics such as Tolkiens’s The Lord of the Rings and Lewis’ Narnia series. Beyond that, as the two examples just mentioned also illustrate, light, or more precisely the contrast between light and darkness, as well as fire are among the most common symbols in literature. Given the weight that references to light tend to have in literary texts, we can also assume that authors do not choose expressions like the ones listed above randomly and that translators do their utmost to fill collocational gaps, even if this means that the passage will sound unfamiliar to the readers’ ears.

3.4 Equivalents Found in Translation Corpora In this section, we compare the equivalents identified during our detailed comparison of original terms with those coined by translators.

3.4.1 Verbs of Motion + Briskly There are 491 occurrences of verbs denoting motion or speech in combination with the adverb briskly in our English–French translation corpus (67,949,032 words, see Appendix A). Verbs of motion (371 occurrences) constitute 75.5% of these combinations. The remaining 30% correspond to speech verb + briskly. The translation solutions are consistent with those suggested above. Thus, in combination with walk (57 occurrences), briskly is successfully rendered by arpenter, marcher d’un bon pas, se diriger d’un pas alerte/à grands pas (vers …), accélérer le pas, entrer d’un pas vif or partir d’un pas résolu (walk with an alert step/with fast strides [towards…], accelerate the step, enter with a brisk step or start with a determined step). The following example illustrates a possible transposition:

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(18) … and footsteps approaching briskly outside. (Estleman Kill Zone, 1991) (18a) Des bruits de pas rapprochés résonnèrent derrière la porte.

The translation here is obviously target-oriented. The sentence undergoes an important transformation: the verb (approached ) is translated by an adjective (pas rapprochés ) in French and the adverb (briskly ) by the French verb résonnèrent (resounded). Due to the less frequent use of adverbs in French, these transformed sentence structures can be related to the phenomenon of metataxis (see Tesnière 2015 [1959]). However, since rapproché means “close in time or space,” the French sentence fails to reproduce the gradual nature of the approach: des pas décidés/résolus s’approchaient. The next example is somewhat exceptional in that French here has a descriptive verb at its disposal that corresponds to an English verb + adverb collocation. On the other hand, stride (briskly) and arpenter are standard equivalents that the translator might have been aware of. (19) … for the better part of half an hour we walked briskly along Connecticut Avenue, neither of us speaking. (Cornwell All that Remains, 1992) (19a) Nous sortîmes de son immeuble et arpentâmes Connecticut Avenue pendant près d’une demi-heure sans prononcer un mot.

The solution proposed by the translator in (19a), again, is target-oriented.

3.4.2 Verb of Motion + Stiffly Interestingly, the translation corpus comprises almost exactly the same number of occurrences of the verb + briskly construction (490), distributed in about the same proportions as for briskly with verbs of motion (83%) or speech verbs (17%). Walk stiffly (20 occurrences) is usually translated quite felicitously by marcher (walk)/s’éloigner (move away)/se diriger (go towards)/se lever (stand up)/traverser (cross)/monter (climb) + avec raideur (stiffly)/d’un pas raide (with a stiff step). However, the frequent translation of rise stiffly (14 occurrences) by se lever avec raideur is not in keeping with the preferred way of putting this in authentic

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French (se lever avec lourdeur / peine / effort; se lever péniblement get up heavily/with toil/effort; get up painfully): (20) Tabita rose stiffly from her chair. (Coe What a Carve Up!, 2008) (20a) Tabita se leva de la chaise avec raideur.

Another interesting case discussed earlier (see Sect. 3.3.1) is the absence of a French expression corresponding directly to nod stiffly (7 occurrences). Most translators fall into the trap of rendering this with a literal hocher/incliner la tête avec raideur (nod/tilt the head stiffly) rather than with attested equivalents such as hocher sèchement la tête, hocher douloureusement la tête or hocher lourdement la tête, although acquiescer avec raideur (nodding drily, nodding painfully or nodding heavily, nodding stiffly) was found once in both original and translated works.

3.4.3 V of Light + Faintly, Dimly, Brightly French translators consistently render glow faintly by means of the verb + adverb collocation luire faiblement or by transposing this collocation to a noun + verb collocation (une faible lueur ). Examples: (21) The monitor was glowing faintly around the edges. (Brown Digital Fortress, 1998) (21a) L’écran était noir …: une faible lueur était visible sur le pourtour. (22) The surface of the sea glowed faintly with a reddish colour. (Jones Divine Endurance, 1984) (22a) La surface de la mer luisait faiblement avec une couleur rougeâtre. (23) The clouds glowed faintly from within. (Pullman The Amber Spyglass, 2000) (23a) Les nuages continuèrent à luire faiblement, de l’intérieur.

As we have seen, such renditions are perfectly acceptable: glowed faintly (22) is translated by luisait faiblement avec une couleur rougêatre (22a). Glow brightly, too, is rendered appropriately by rougeoyer when referring

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to fire or embers in the translation corpus. The translator of the following passage, however, appears to have been unaware of the connotations of warmth that glow is imbued with: (24) A street light glowed brightly, but without extending its light very far. (Highsmith Ripley’s Game, 1974) (24a) Un lampadaire projetait une lumière crue, mais dans un rayon restreint.

Cru is glossed as “violent, brutal” in most dictionaries, so that projeter une lumière vive (project a bright light) would have been a more appropriate choice. These examples provide further evidence suggesting that in cases where English authors use adverbs of manner, their French colleagues tend to prefer V + N + ADJ patterns such as projeter une lumière crue (project a raw light). As most translators are aware of this difference between English and French, the descriptive expressions under discussion are generally rendered in a manner which conforms to ­target-language norms (see also Dyka et al. 2017, 94).

3.5 Motifs Generated by V + Nervously Let us look now at an English adverb that was found approximately ten times more frequently in the English corpus (20.89 per million words) than the corresponding adverb nerveusement in the French corpus (2.13 per million). This result confirms our hypothesis regarding the more extensive use of adverbs in English (see also the previous sections). In addition, the statistics obtained from our corpora for nervously/ nerveusement corroborate—in accordance with Hoey’s Lexical Priming theory (2005) the preferential association between these adverbs and certain semantic verb classes (e.g. verbs that refer to facial expressions such as laugh, gaze ) or finger and hand movements (finger, fidget ). Thus, nervously/nerveusement most often co-occurs with laugh (8.71 per million), smile (7.51), giggle (7.80), rire (8.13), ricaner (7.80). The collocation laugh + nervously is used to introduce dialogues, thus assuming an infranarrative DF (see Appendix B):

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(25) Sheba laughed nervously. “He was supposed to phone an hour ago, but I haven’t heard a peep yet. Wretched boy.” (Heller Notes on a Scandal, 2003) (25a) Elle rit nerveusement. – Et je me suis retrouvée avec deux haines en moi. (Rufin Katiba, 2010) (She laughed nervously. —And I found myself with two objects of hatred in myself.)

In both languages, the adverb nervously/nerveusement occurs preferentially with verbs conveying finger movements: in English fidget (8.20), finger (7.78), tap (7.70), caress (6.54), rub (6.43); in French tapoter (9.05), pianoter (8.82), tripoter (8.54), feuilleter (8.19), frotter (8.38). In English, fidget or finger + nervously appear most often in scenes where security forces face a potential threat and are ready to shoot: (26) He was fidgeting nervously with his pistols. (Forester Young Hornblower, 1953) (27) One of the soldiers nervously fingered the blunt-snouted tube of an RPG-7, a Russian-made weapon almost certainly captured in years past from the Iraqis. (Douglass Seal Team Seven-2, 2011)

Unlike in English, the combinations of verbs of finger movement (tapoter, pianoter, feuilleter ) and nerveusement in French typically reflect a character’s emotional state and thus contribute to his/her implicit characterization: (28) Brolin tapota nerveusement son paquet de cigarettes. (Chattam La Trilogie du mal 3 Maléfices, 2004) (Brolin tapped nervously on his packet of cigarettes.) (29) Elle jeta sur la table un dossier sorti de sa serviette et le feuilleta nerveusement. (Jonquier Du passé faisons table rase, 1982) (She threw a folder from her briefcase on the table and leafed through it nervously.)

Furthermore, nerveusement co-occurs in French with verbs expressing mental states (craquer/have a nervous breakdown 7.56, être épuisé/be exhausted 7.29, sangloter/sob 7.37, étreindre/clasp 7.25). Such combinations are rare in English:

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(30) Parfois, lorsque ses journées de travail avaient été longues – et elles devaient devenir, au fil des mois, de plus en plus longues – je la sentais tendue, épuisée nerveusement. (Houellebecq Plateforme, 2001) (Sometimes, when her working days had been long – and they had to become, in the course of the months, longer and longer – I noticed her to be tense, nervously exhausted.) (31) Il a tenu trois jours puis a craqué nerveusement. (Lenteric La Gagne, 1980) (He persevered three days, then he broke down nervously.)

It is also interesting to note that in the parallel corpus, craquer nerveusement has been translated as having a nervous breakdown and not by means of a construction using nervously, which proves that nervously in English rarely or never co-occurs with verbs expressing mental states: (32) She might have had a nervous breakdown. (Patterson Kiss the Girls, 1995) (33) Peut-être qu’elle a craqué nerveusement.

However, in English, there are two uses of nervously that are conspicuously frequent: nervously + verbs of visual perception (glance [54 occurrences], peer, watch ); nervously + verbs of saying (e.g. say [27 occurrences], ask, mutter, murmur, suggest, whisper ). Such word combinations are rare in French: (34) The Grand Duchess glanced nervously at the officers standing in the doorway to the cell. (Ash Prisoner of Ironsea Tower, 2004) (35) “We thought you hadn’t come,” Mona said nervously but he didn’t answer. (McGahern Amongst Women, 1990)

Unlike the laughter motif, which typically introduces dialogue (infranarrative DF), the motif of looking appears often in descriptive passages (often in coordinated [36] or juxtaposed [37] sentences where two or more parallel actions follow one another): (36) Ace hissed air out between his teeth and looked around nervously. (King Needful Things, 1991)

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(37) Nicole éteignait les cigarettes à peine entamées, tirait d’interminables bouffées, parlait, se taisait, regardant nerveusement sur les côtés. (Queffélec Les Noces barbares, 1985) (Nicole extinguished the cigarettes she had hardly begun to smoke, took endless puffs, talked, fell silent, while looking nervously at the sides.)

In this particular instance, the DF of the adverb nervously is both narrative and descriptive. On the one hand, it conveys a sense of suspense; on the other, it reveals the character’s emotional state (affective DF) and enhances our understanding of his psychological make-up. We turn now to how nervously/nerveusement is distributed in our translation (parallel) English–French corpus. We find 834 occurrences (21.44 per million) of nervously and 585 (14.66 per million) of nerveusement. The number of cases (70%) where nervously is translated by its adverbial equivalent nerveusement is substantially higher than a comparison of French monolingual corpora suggests, where nervously is 10 times more frequent than nerveusement. Here, the overall translation behaviour is clearly source-oriented. Still, in 30% of the examples, the translation is target-oriented, that is, nervously is rendered by different periphrastic constructions. These equivalents are in accordance with the systemic specificities of French. The most frequent French periphrastic constructions follow the pattern V + N + ADJ. When combined with nervously, verbs of visual perception tend to be rendered by being transposed into a verb + noun + adjective combination of the type jeter un coup d’œil/take a look or un regard nerveux or crispé/a nervous or tense look (see also Table 5): (38) Kiukiu went in, glancing nervously around. (Ash Lord of Snow and Shadows, 2003) (38a) Entrez! Kiukiu obéit en jetant à la ronde des coups d’oeil nerveux. (39) He nervously eyed the sea. (Ash Lord of Snow and Shadows, 2003) (39a) Il surveilla la mer d’un oeil nerveux.

In combination with verbs of saying, nervously is most commonly translated into French by adjectival appositions (pattern 3, Table 5).

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(40) “Take care, my lord,” Sosia said nervously. (Ash Lord of Snow and Shadows, 2003) (40a) Attention, seigneur! souffla Sosia, nerveuse. (41) “Hi,” I said nervously. (Coe The Dwarves of Death, 1990) (41a) Salut, dis-je, mal à l’aise. (42) Bill said nervously. (King Insomnia, 1994) (42a) … expliqua Bill, embarrassé.

All of these examples show the great variety of periphrastic expressions used in French, most of which generate motifs. English prefers simpler binary collocations (V + nervously).

4 The Restructuring of Sentences Translators at times also restructure English sentences to bring them closer to the periphrastic structures preferred in French. Thus, the verbs laugh or glance, followed by nervously, are sometimes translated by verbs like riposter or adresser (ripostai-je avec un rire nerveux [43a]; il m’adressait un regard crispé [44a]). In other words, the English verb is transposed into a noun (un rire, un regard ) in French and the adverb nervously into an adjective (nerveux, crispé ). (43) I guess but I sort of showed you what it was about. I laughed nervously. – Oh, he said. (Meyer Revelation, 2008) (43a) D’accord, mais je t’ai montré sur quoi il portait, ripostai-je avec un rire nerveux. – Oh! Intéressant. (44) As I got up I noticed him glance nervously at our table and light another cigarette. (Barnes Talking it Over, 1991) (44a) Je remarquai, en me levant, qu’il m’adressait un regard crispé et qu’il allumait une nouvelle cigarette.

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Simple English binary collocations (e.g. laugh or glance nervously) are thus converted into a wide variety of patterns in French, as exemplified by the sentences quoted above.

5 Differences in Frequency Revisited To conclude, Table 6 summarizes the frequency of key adverbs in translation and comparable corpora. The table indicates that the translation of adverbs from English into French is a major source of “translationese.” Except for tendrement, we find huge differences in frequency between authentic French fiction and translated fiction, with adverbs such as silencieusement and lentement being more than seven times as frequent in the translated texts. This lends credence to our hypothesis (partly disproving Rastier’s (2006) Table 6  Frequency of key adverbs in translation and comparable corpora revisited Translation corpora English key manFrench “dictionary ner adverb equivalent”

Comparable corpora English key French “dictionmanner adverb ary equivalent”

slowly 8212 (211.10 per million) softly 2619 (67.32 per million)

slowly (200.41)

lentement (23.68)

softly (71.40)

tendrement (9.40); doucement (88.34)

silently (41.82)

silencieusement (1.56) calmement (13.24) nerveusement (2.13)

lentement 6689 (167.67 per million)

tendrement 334 (8.37 per million); doucement: 4436 (111.19 per million) silently 1524 (39.18 silencieusement 577 per million) (14.46 per million) calmly 847 (21.77 calmement 965 (24.19 per million) per million) nervously 834 nerveusement 585 (21.44 per (14.66 per million) million) coldly 568 (14.60 froidement 529 (13.26 per million) per million) absently 393 (10.10 distraitement 333 per million) (8.35 per million)

calmly (25.01) nervously (20.89) coldly (14.07) absently (9.14)

froidement (7.95) distraitement (0.82)

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assumption that translation “makes the language evolve”) that translated texts do not have a major impact on the ways in which original texts are written, at least at the micro-level of lexemes and constructions.

6 Conclusion Drawing upon large corpora, our approach has allowed us to identify both collocations and motifs that are specific to one of the two languages under discussion. The vast repertoire of structures that we have described could be used in lexicography, translation studies, contrastive stylistics, and in creative writing. The large amount of data constitutes an input for the lexicometric identification of motifs and, more generally, for digital stylistics. With respect to motifs, we observed significant syntagmatic (a higher frequency of periphrastic adverbial constructions in French) and paradigmatic variation, especially with respect to the different types of verbs combined with adverbs in French and English. Our results show that the motifs generated by manner adverbs are more complex in French, which empirically proves higher creativity in French literary language. The differences in creativity we observed could be explained by systemic differences between the two languages. We were able to verify our hypotheses regarding the much more frequent use of adverbs in English as well as preferences regarding combinations of adverbs and certain types of verbs (of motion, speaking, etc.). We hope to succeed in verifying these results by using a French–English translation corpus.

References Adam, Jean-Michel. 2011. Les textes: types et prototypes, 3rd ed. Paris: Armand Colin. Ballard, Michel. 2003. Versus: la version réfléchie. Paris: Ophrys. Dunning, Ted. 1993. “Accurate Methods for the Statistics of Surprise and Coincidence: Computational Linguistics.” Computational Linguistics 19 (1): 61–74.

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Dyka, Susanne, Iva Novakova, and Dirk Siepmann. 2017. “A Web of Analogies: Depictive and Reaction Object Constructions in Modern English and French Fiction: Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology.” EUROPHRAS 10596: 87–101. Grünbeck, Bernhard. 1976. Moderne deutsch-französische Stilistik auf der Basis des Übersetzungsvergleichs. Teil I: Ordnungsliebe und logisierende Präzision als Übersetzungsdominanten. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Gymnich, Marion. 2010. “The Gender(ing) of Fictional Characters.” In Characters in Fictional Worlds: Understanding Imaginary Beings in Literature, Film, and Other Media, edited by Jens Eder, Fotis Jannidis, and Ralf Schneider, 506–24. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter. Hoey, Michael. 2005. Lexical Priming: A New Theory of Words and Language. London and New York: Routledge. Kenny, Dorothy. 2009. “Equivalence.” In Routledge Enyclopedia of Translation Studies, edited by Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha, 96–99. London: Routledge. Kilgarriff, Adam, Vít Baisa, Jan Bušta, Miloš Jakubíček, Vojtěch Kovář, Jan Michelfeit, Pavel Rychlý, and Vít Suchomel. 2014. “The Sketch Engine: Ten Years On.” Lexicography 1: 7–36. Kraif, Oliver. 2017. “Traduire le polar: une étude textométrique comparée de la phraséologie du roman policier en français source et cible.” Synergies Pologne 14. http://gerflint.fr/Base/Pologne14/pologne14.html. Margolin, Uri. 1990. “The What, the When, and the How of Being a Character in Literary Narratives.” Style 24 (3): 453–68. Rastier, François. 2006. “La traduction: interprétation et genèse du sens.” In Le sens en traduction, edited by Marianne Lederer and Fortunato Israël, 37–49. Paris: Minard. Scott, Mike, and Christopher Tribble. 2006. Textual Patterns: Key Words and Corpus Analysis in Language Education. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Siepmann, Dirk. 2003. “Collocations in Trilingual Perspective: New Evidence from Large Corpora and Implications for Dictionary Making.” Cahiers de Lexicologie 83 (2): 173–96. Siepmann, Dirk. 2014. “Collocations Across Languages: Unity in Diversity?” In Zweisprachige Lexikographie zwischen Translation und Didaktik, edited by M. J. Dominguez, F. Mollica, and M. N. Curcio, 131–56. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter. Siepmann, Dirk. 2015. “A Corpus-Based Investigation into Key Words and Key Patterns in Post-war Fiction.” Functions of Language 22 (3): 362–99.

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Snell-Hornby, Mary. 1983. Verb-Descriptivity in German and English: A Contrastive Study in Semantic Fields. Heidelberg: Winter. Stosic, D., and M. Aurnague. 2017. DinaVmouv: Description, INventaire, Analyse des Verbes de MOUVement: An Annotated Lexicon of Motion Verbs in French. http://redac.univ-tlse2.fr/lexicons/dinaVmouv_fr.html. Stubbs, Michael. 2010. “Three Concepts of Keywords.” In Keyness in Texts, edited by Marina Bondi and Mike Scott, 21–42. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Tesnière, Lucien. 2015 (1959). Elements of Structural Syntax. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Vinay, Jean-Paul, and Jean Darbelnet. 1995. Comparative Stylistics of French and English: A Methodology for Translation. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

4 Speech Verbs in French and English Novels Sascha Diwersy, Laetitia Gonon, Vannina Goossens, Marion Gymnich and Agnès Tutin

1 Introduction Dialogue is one of the “typical narrative mode[s]” (Neumann and Nünning 2008, 34) and a virtually indispensable structural feature of S. Diwersy (*)  University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, Montpellier, France e-mail: [email protected] L. Gonon · V. Goossens · A. Tutin  University Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France e-mail: [email protected] V. Goossens e-mail: [email protected] A. Tutin e-mail: [email protected] M. Gymnich  University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 I. Novakova and D. Siepmann (eds.), Phraseology and Style in Subgenres of the Novel, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23744-8_4

83

84     S. Diwersy et al.

narrative texts. One factor which may help explain what makes direct speech a standard feature of novels is that it enlivens narratives, a point on which there is fairly widespread consensus among literary scholars. The narratologist Monika Fludernik for one highlights this effect when she argues that “speech representations are geared towards producing an effect of vivacity” (Fludernik 2005, 559–60). In a similar vein, Rose-Marie Weber opines that presenting “a character’s words in a narrative” serves to make the text “lively, memorable, and often colourful” (Weber 2008, 558; see also Neumann and Nünning 2008, 105; Thomas 2007, 80). Not only what the characters say produces this effect; it is also triggered by various linguistic features of direct speech, including exclamations, ellipses, the use of colloquial expressions, regional or social varieties of a language, verbal idiosyncrasies, the portrayal of speech defects, et cetera. Features of direct speech like these may serve to individualize literary characters and/ or to depict them as representatives of a certain region or social class. This implies that, beyond creating vivacity, direct speech typically also contributes to the so-called reality effect, prompting the observation that “direct speech in the realist novel significantly enhances the verisimilitude of the story” (Fludernik 2005, 562; see Page 1973, 3). In non-realist genres such as fantasy and science fiction, direct speech may render the world that is constructed within the narrative more complex and plausible for the readers, for instance by endowing inhabitants of different regions of an imaginary secondary world, such as Tolkien’s Middle-earth, with distinct speech characteristics or “dialects”. In narrative texts, direct speech fulfils a range of different functions on the story level and in particular for figural characterization. Dialogues have often been described as “advancing the plot” (Thomas 2005, 105; see Page 1973, 14; Neumann and Nünning 2008, 30). Indeed, climactic moments and turning points in novels (for example, quarrels between characters, declarations of love, confessions of guilt) tend to be presented through dialogue. Yet, direct speech, contrariwise, at times also slows down the action. This happens, for example, when characters are made to engage in idle talk—possibly as part of a strategy for presenting a speaker as a bore, a nuisance or a gossip. This device illustrates what is regarded as the first and foremost narrative function of direct speech, that is, enhancing both explicit and implicit figural

4  Speech Verbs in French and English Novels     85

characterization (see Thomas 2005, 105). In the words of Norman Page (1973, 14): the “more customary role [of direct speech] is to contribute to the presentation and development of character; and here its strength lies in its being more direct and dramatic than authorial exposition”. To put it another way, what characters say about themselves and/or about others as well as how they say it typically tells the reader much about the speakers and may engage the reader’s interest in the characters: “A vital aspect of how we remember and grow close to fictional characters is the way they speak: their accents and dialects place them geographically and socially, while their verbal idiosyncrasies and catchphrases help to make them memorable, even endearing” (Thomas 2007, 80). Even though direct speech is often seen as the “paradigmatic form of verbal mimesis” (Aczel 1998, 479), it is important to realize that dialogue in narrative texts is in fact far from being mimetic. The reader’s impression that direct speech is mimetic is part of the narrative illusion, the reality effect. After all, “[f ]ictional dialogue is an artificial version of talk, partly shaped by a variety of aesthetic and thematic intentions and conventions” (Toolan 1985, 193), even if it may imitate real-life conversations to a certain extent (see Fludernik 2005, 559). A further characteristic of direct speech in narrative texts is that it is by definition embedded in the narrator’s discourse. Even in so-called dialogue novels by authors such as Ivy Compton Burnett and Manuel Puig (see Neumann and Nünning 2008, 88), which “foreground speech and keep narrative input to a minimum” (Thomas 2005, 105), direct speech is still embedded in the narrator’s discourse, which is visible at least in speech tags. These are necessary for identifying the speaker but may fulfil various other functions beyond this basic one. This is precisely what we are interested in: the constructions that mark the narrative embedding of direct speech, that is, the speech tags or inquit phrases—a feature that has often been neglected by literary studies. Speech tags may differ considerably in terms of how “rich” they are with respect to their semantics, ranging from the simple inquit phrase he/she said to elaborate comments by the narrator. They often serve to provide what Page calls “stage-directions as to facial expression, movement, gesture, etc. – the expressive accompaniments of speech” (Page 1973, 26). Even though the examples Page chose are more complex (for

86     S. Diwersy et al.

example “here she began to sob ”, Page 1973, 26; original emphasis), the verb itself to a certain extent may also function as a “stage-direction”. Thomas (2005, 105), for instance, distinguishes between speech tags “providing paralinguistic and prosodic information (e.g., she whispered, he rattled on, moving closer to her )” and those that “provide an evaluation of the dialogue and/or the characters (e.g., she confessed, he said, unsure of himself )”. To achieve a more detailed and precise analysis of speech tags we have drawn upon the typology of speech verbs or verba dicendi developed by Harras et al. (2004). As stated at the outset, in this paper we aim to analyze patterns of direct speech that differentiate literary genres (specifically romance, crime and fantasy novels, abbreviated ROM, CRIM, and FY) in French and English. Direct speech is obviously omnipresent in these genres and plays a vital part on the story level, as exemplified by passages such as these: (1) Au FBI on appelle ça «technique proactive», expliqua Brolin à ses collègues. (CRIM, Chattam L’Âme du mal, 2002) (At the FBI, this is called “proactive methods”, Brolin explained to his colleagues.1) (2) “This is a Walther 7.65-mm. automatic and the magazine holds eight rounds,” Nield informed him in a conversational tone. (CRIM, Forbes The Power, 1994) (3) Qu’est-ce que tu racontes? s’alarma-t-elle. (ROM, Musso Demain, 2013) (What are you telling me? she worried.) (4) “I was kind of thinking just me and you, but sure, if you’re into that,” he grinned, that sneaky wink reappearing. (ROM, Kelk I Heart New York, 2009) (5) Tous les philtres de Khanaor ne le guériraient pas, soupira-t-elle en secouant la tête. (FY, Berthelot Solstice de fer, 1983) (All of the potions of Khanaor would not heal him, she sighed, shaking her head.) (6) “We’ve got to find it in its lair,” said Lady Ramkin. (FY, Pratchett DW 08 – Guards! Guards! 1989) 1All

translations in this article are ours, unless otherwise specified.

4  Speech Verbs in French and English Novels     87

As illustrated above, direct speech patterns may vary considerably, from a syntactic as well as lexical point of view. In (1), (2) and (6), the verbs are classical verba dicendi, while in (3), (4) and (5) the verbs express a psychological stance or attitude and thus cannot be considered standard speech verbs. In her corpus-stylistic study of Charles Dickens’s fiction, Mahlberg (2013, 82) observes that “[t]he character information conveyed by Speech clusters becomes most apparent when linked to other textual cues”. In the most basic sense, the verbs used in (3), (4) and (5) can be regarded as providing further “textual cues”, while those in (1), (2) and (6) essentially just mark the act of speaking. It seems likely that literary texts make more frequent use of the semantically “richer” types of verbs than do descriptive, non-fictional genres such as newspapers. The latter can be expected to privilege neutral speech verbs. More specifically, we assume that a comparative analysis of direct speech patterns can help us grasp some of the stylistic properties of literary subgenres such as romance, crime and fantasy novels. We further assume that there are likely to be significant differences between the patterns of direct speech occurring in French and English fiction due to general linguistic tendencies and different stylistic preferences. Because of the high frequency of adverbs ending in -ly in English (see Chapter 3 by Novakova et al. in this volume), we suspect that the verbs in English speech tags will often be modified by adverbs to convey additional information. French constructions, where adverbs are less common, by contrast, may vary more widely with respect to the verbs that are used for expressing semantic nuances. Our study will focus only on a single specific syntactic pattern, one in which direct speech occurs before the speech tag, as in examples (1)–(6) above. In the next section, we present our methodology, before moving on to a discussion of our study’s most prominent results in the article’s remaining sections. Our methodology is based on corpus linguistics and drew on the verba dicendi typology established by Harras et al. (2004). With its focus on the semantics of verbs occurring in speech tags, our approach differs from earlier corpus-stylistic work on the presentation of speech in literary texts (e.g. Semino and Short 2004). We selected this approach because it held out a particular promise for bridging the gap between linguistics and literary studies.

88     S. Diwersy et al.

2 Methodology 2.1 Corpora and Data Extraction Our study is based on three sub-corpora from the PhraseoRom corpus in French and in English described in Table 1. We annotated the French and English corpora syntactically with the XIP parser (Aït-Mokhtar et al. 2002) and then queried the annotated samples with regular expressions to extract direct speech and speech tags by means of CQP (Evert and Hardie 2011). A random sampling based on keeping a fourth of the query matches was performed, with a precision of 83.4% for the French corpus and 68% for the English corpus. The following sentence, for example, was extracted in error because the quotation marks did not enclose direct speech: (7) Mon coup de téléphone, émanant soi-disant de «Marceau», a été un fameux pavé dans la mare. (POL, Malet Des kilomètres de linceuls, 1955) (My telephone call, which supposedly came from “Marceau”, caused quite a stir.)

The following parameters were extracted: – direct speech – speech verbs (lemma and form) and pronouns (in particular reflexive pronouns) – metadata of the extracted items. As shown in Table 2, the elements were then checked and encoded manually for a large number of examples. Table 1  Corpora used for the study Genre

Number of tokens (French texts)

Number of texts (French)

Number of tokens (English texts)

Number of texts (English)

Fantasy (FY) Crime (CRIM) Romance (ROM)

13,323,976 17,859,351 9,802,410

104 194 112

17,814,599 13,561,947 13,295,474

142 115 96

4  Speech Verbs in French and English Novels     89 Table 2  Occurrences of direct speech Subgenre

Number of examples (French texts)

Number of examples (English texts)

Fantasy (FY) Crime (CRIM) Romance (ROM)

3051 2757 1716

3012 1778 2309

2.2 Linguistic Coding of Speech Tags To reiterate, we wanted to compare semantic variation in speech tags employed in English and French fiction in the three subgenres romance, crime and fantasy. We assumed that significant differences in how speech verbs were used would be observed. To describe this variation, we carried out a manual semantic coding of the data. Several classifications of speech verbs have been proposed in French linguistics. In a large corpus and dictionary study, Lamiroy and Charolles (2008) observed that most speech verbs in French are transitive verbs. Moreover, they were able to show that a significant number of intransitive verbs, especially those associated with the mode of expression or with attitudes, can be used in a transitive manner and as speech tags that enclose direct speech. Note, however, that the study by Lamiroy and Charolles is based on a semasiological approach, which is less suitable for our purpose of language comparison. Because of its onomasiological basis, we, instead, considered the typology of speech verbs proposed by Harras et al. (2004) as particularly well-suited for our purposes. Originally developed with a large number of speech verbs in German, it distinguishes between ten main classes of verba dicendi, which it then divides again into subclasses. In the following listing, we will only focus on the main classes, as follows2: Gen: generic speech verb—for example dire, parler, say, speak (8) Tu commences sérieusement à me casser les pieds, toi, fait la belle Mélissa. (ROM, De Buron Dix jours de rêves, 1982) (You are really beginning to get on my nerves, said the beautiful Melissa.) 2However,

not all speech verbs may be used in speech tags.

90     S. Diwersy et al.

(9) “Go and look for her,” he said. (CRIM, Haynes Into the Darkest Corner, 2011)

Repr: verbs that convey an assertive/representative act (as defined by Searle): for example, affirmer (affirm), constater (state), admit, agree (10) Il s’est porté volontaire pour entamer les travaux dans la crypte, expliqua le chef milicien. (FY, Grimbert Les Armes des Garamont, 1998) (He volunteered for beginning the construction work in the crypt, explained the militiaman in charge.) (11) “Yes, it would have been desirable,” Joshua agreed. (ROM, Balogh Simply Love, 2006)

Dir: verbs which convey a directive act (as defined by Searle): for ­example, demander (ask), prier (entreat), ask, demand (12) Seigneur, mon Dieu, cher doux Jésus, sainte Marie pleine de grâces, implore la brave vieillarde, … (CRIM, Dard Béru-Béru, 1970) (Lord, my God, dear gentle Jesus, holy Mary full of grace, prays the honest old women, …) (13) “Will you listen?” Strappi demanded. (FY, Pratchett DW 31 – Monstrous Regiment, 2003)

Com: verbs which convey a promissive/commissive act (as defined by Searle): for example, promettre (promise), menacer (threaten) (14) C’est quand vous voudrez, avertit l’ingénieur du son dans son micro. (ROM, Bourdin L’Homme de leur vie, 2000) (It’s whenever you like, the sound engineer announced into his microphone.) (15) “No names,” Newman promised. (CRIM, Forbes Deadlock, 1990)

Expr: verbs which convey an expressive act (as defined by Searle): for example, gronder (thunder), critiquer (criticize), saluer (praise), sigh (16) Vous voulez que je monte à pied? plaisanta Jeanne. (CRIM, Brussolo L’Enfer, c’est à quel étage? 2003) (Do you want me to climb up on foot? Jeanne joked.)

4  Speech Verbs in French and English Novels     91

(17) “You’re an amazing woman, Daisy,” he sighed. (ROM, Kelly Always and Forever, 2004)

Decl: verbs which convey a declarative act (as defined by Searle): for example, baptiser (baptise), stipuler (stipulate) (18) Tu remportes ce combat, Kira, proclama le Chevalier guérisseur pour que tous l’entendent. (FY, Robillard Piège au royaume des ombres, 2003) (You win this fight, Kira, announced the Knight and healer so that all could hear it.)

We did not find any examples of this class in the English sub-corpus. Struct: verbs which are used to structure the interaction: for example, répondre (answer), ajouter (add), reply (19) Un de mes hommes l’a confié à tes beaux-parents, indique Djamila. Ne t’inquiète pas. Nous avons quelques questions à vous poser madame, enchaîne Fabre … (CRIM, Giébel Les Morsures de l’ombre, 2007) (One of my men has told your parents-in-law about it in confidence, Djamila mentions. Don’t worry. We have to ask you some questions, Madame, Fabre continues …) (20) “And the Falls coffin is different from the others,” Ellen Wylie added. “I’m not saying otherwise,” Rebus interrupted. (CRIM, Rankin The Falls, 2001)

Mod: verbs which refer to the mode of expression: for example, ­balbutier (stammer), murmurer (murmur) (21) Je vous l’avais bien promis, qu’on se la jouerait à la Coppola! gloussa amèrement Phan Hong. (CRIM, Jonquet Ils sont votre épouvante et vous êtes leur crainte, 2006) (I had promised you that we would play it like Coppola! Phan Hong chuckled bitterly.) (22) “You poor, naive goddess,” the reedy voice wheezed into her ear. (FY, Pollock The Glass Republic, 2013)

92     S. Diwersy et al.

Med: verbs which are related to the medium of expression: for example, écrire (write), tweeter (tweet) (23) Il n’est pas rentré! lui téléphona la jeune femme. (CRIM, Brussolo Le Nuisible, 1982) (He hasn’t returned! the young woman told him on the phone.) (24) “The Man Who Can’t Commit will not want you in his own domain,” Jude was reading out as Shaz fiddled with the Pride and Prejudice video to try to find the bit where Colin Firth dives into the lake. (ROM, Fielding Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, 1999)

Obviously, some classification problems may occur when a speech verb is polysemous or when a verb can be assigned to different classes, as is often the case with Mod speech verbs. Many of these also have an expressive value, such as grommeler/grumble or gémir/moan. Relying on reference dictionaries such as Le Petit Robert or Le Trésor de la Langue Française, we decided to consider Mod verbs as expressive verbs when a specific expressive/emotive function was associated with the mode of expression. Grommeler, for example, is often associated with anger, but can be used in many other contexts as well (when an utterance is hardly intelligible for instance) and thus will not be considered as an expressive verb but as a Mod verb. By contrast, a verb such as tonner/thunder has been considered an expressive verb because, beyond the parameter of manner (speaking very loudly), anger and violence are closely linked to this particular verb.3

2.3 Lexicostatistical Set-Up To examine the distribution of the verb classes listed above in the two languages as well as in the different genres, we produced mainly three data sets:

3The Le Petit Robert defines it as: “Exprimer violemment sa colère en parlant très fort” (express one’s anger violently by speaking very loudly).

4  Speech Verbs in French and English Novels     93

– VxL based on the cross tabulation of verb class and language, – VxG_L based on the cross tabulation of verb class and genre, and – VxG+L based on the cross tabulation of verb class and language combined with genre. This data set appears in Table 3, whereas the other two can be found in the appendix (see Tables 7, 8, and 9 respectively). Table 3  Frequencies of verb classes cross-tabulated by genre combined with language Verb class Com Decl Dir Expr Gen Med Mod Repr Struct Total columns

Genre + Language CRIM.ena CRIM.fr

FY.en

FY.fr

ROM.en ROM.fr

Total rows

5 0 262 63 1053 0 94 115 179 1771

4 0 147 89 2144 1 328 109 189 3011

19 1 418 521 416 2 524 391 697 2989

7 0 269 185 1301 3 229 120 189 2303

77 1 1749 1344 6064 13 1771 1221 2208 14,448

22 0 387 312 762 4 353 286 571 2697

20 0 266 174 388 3 243 200 383 1677

aThe

category labels were conceived in accordance with the pattern [genre]. [language]; thus CRIM.en stands for English (en) crime fiction (CRIM), FY.fr for French (fr) fantasy fiction (FY), ROM.en for English (en) romance fiction (ROM), et cetera

We processed these data sets using quite canonical methods in the tradition of French textometry (see Lebart et al. 1998), that is, by focussing on contrastive word specificities4 and Correspondence Analysis (CA). Some of the results, which we will discuss in the next section, had us resort to lexical variation measures as well.

4The

method of contrastive specificities, as introduced by Lafon (1980), has roughly the same rationale as the keyword method applied in the British tradition of corpus linguistics (see, amongst others, Rayson 2003), but, in contrast to the latter, its computation is based on hypergeometric distribution.

94     S. Diwersy et al.

3 Results and Analysis The purpose of using Correspondence Analysis (CA) was to provide a global assessment of the distribution of the verb classes in relation to the configuration of literary genre and language. In applying CA to the VxG+L data set (see Table 3) we obtained the results shown in Fig. 1).5 They suggest that

Fig. 1  CA applied to the data set obtained by cross-tabulating verb class and the combination of language with genre (The verb class is shown in red, the combined category of genre and language in blue. Circle size represents contribution)

5Computation and plotting of the CA were done with the R packages FactoMineR (Lê et al. 2008) and explor (Barnier 2017).

4  Speech Verbs in French and English Novels     95

(i) the main opposition in our data set, as manifested on the horizontal axis,6 holds between the two languages and not the genres (see {FY. en, CRI.en, ROM.en} on the right-hand side versus {FY.fr, ROM. fr, CRIM.fr} on the left-hand side of the plot); this opposition parallels the contrast between generic speech verbs for one and the other verb classes for another ({Gen} on the right-hand side versus {Expr, Com, Struct, Repr, Mod, Dir} on the left-hand side); (ii) a secondary opposition, shown on the horizontal axis, pertains to English and French fantasy fiction ({FY.en, FY.fr}) in the lower half of the plot and English crime fiction ({CRI.en}) on the upper right quadrant; this opposition coincides with the contrast between expressive and manner verbs ({Mod, Expr}) in the lower left quadrant versus (mainly) directive and commissive ({Dir, Com}) verbs on the left upper quadrant. The computation of contrastive specificities provides a more detailed insight into the tendencies revealed initially by the CA. Table 4 shows the highly significant overuse of generic speech verbs in English compared with other verb classes in both languages. On the other hand, Table 4  Contrastive specificities of verb classes by language 9HUE&ODVV

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should be noted that this axis alone represents 93.3% of the variance in the data.

96     S. Diwersy et al.

Tables 5 and 6 document the configurations of both English and French fantasy fiction in comparison to the other two genres (CRIM and ROM), which result from different tendencies to over- and underuse certain verb classes. Perhaps the most striking finding is that the generic verb to say plays a very prominent role in speech tags in the English corpus. This verb accounts for roughly 63% of verbs occurring in speech tags in the English data set. The pervasiveness of this semantically unmarked or “neutral” speech verb suggests that the lexical variation in the verb slot Table 5  Contrastive specificities of verb classes by genre in the French data set 9HUE&ODVV

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Fig. 1  Distribution of the selected words in the French corpus (n.b. the OTH label refers to words that have not been categorized)

3.4 Morphological Annotation The distribution of lexical categories once again presents very similar profiles to the observer: overall, nouns clearly dominate, accounting for more than 82% of the fiction words, followed by adjectives and adjectives used as nouns corresponding to the FUNC and POP categories (posthuman, mentalic, hsai for English, or yrvène, sexomorph, gynoïde for French) (Table 3). Concerning the various modes of word formation, we annotate the following cases: – PCL: purely classical compounding (using only Greek and Latin roots) EN: ornithopter, subetheric, nutriphore FR: sexomorphe, transvers, lepidodendron

6  French and American Science Fiction During the Nineties …     163

'LVWULEXWLRQRIILFWLRQZRUGVE\VHPDQWLFILHOG(QJOLVKFRUSXV Kd,͕ϲ 'K͕Ϭ s'͕ϭ WK>͕Ϯ /K͕ϯ >K͕ϰ

Kd, 'K s'

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Fig. 2  Distribution of selected words in the English corpus

Table 3  Comparative distribution according to POS POS

EN

FR

Nouns Adjectives used as nouns Adjectives Verbs Adverbs

99 9 8 2 1

98 10 11 1 0

– HCL: hybrid classical compounding with a Greek or Latin root and an English or French root EN: posthuman, nervoplex, cyberlock FR: chromobéton, neuroséquenceur

164     L. Gonon and O. Kraif

– COMP: popular compounding with modern roots EN: flycar, passtouch, bublepak, datarodent FR: crédibloc

– PM: portmanteau words consisting of the fusion of two truncated words EN: fibrop (optical + fibre), graviscan (gravitational + scanner), tricomputer (3D computer), gravicab (gravitational cab) FR: plasticuir (plastique  +  cuir), vocodeur (codeur  +  vocal), plastacier (plastique + acier), holopub (publicité + holographique)

– PM2: opaque portmanteau words, formed in the style of a brand name EN: soltoxin, cavitron

– DER: derived words: EN: experiencer, optimizer FR: téléportatrice, exploreur, hégémoniaque

– ABR: abbreviations EN: grav FR: champ-neg, sim (for simulation), holo

– INI: acronyms FR: ucdu, fap

– PARO: paronymic distortions of attested words EN: jagernaut (for juggernaut) FR: dollus (for dollard), trax (tractor)

6  French and American Science Fiction During the Nineties …     165

– BOR: borrowings FR: sample (in the sense of avatar), outzone, outer

– NEO: lexical creations (to which some suffixes may be attached) EN: trank, hsai FR: yrvène, gleis, véism, sukmen

Figures 3 and 4 show the distribution of these types of formations in the French and English corpora. In this respect, the English and the French corpora profiles differ significantly: classical compounding, well-attested to in the French corpus (28 fiction words) plays only a minor role in the English corpus. On the 'LVWULEXWLRQRIW\SHVRIIRUPDWLRQ)UHQFKFRUSXV

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other hand, popular compounding, predominant in the English corpus, is mostly lacking in the French corpus. This may be a consequence of the overall structure of the scientific-technical vocabulary, which contains popular compounds more often in English than in French, particularly for digital technology and innovation (with words such as powerchip, mainframes ), but this hypothesis needs further investigation. Moreover, our decision to drop compounds with dashes or spaces from this study could explain the absence of popular compounds for French. However, in one respect the two corpora exhibit a striking similarity: truly opaque neologisms, such as hsiel (EN) or gleis (FR), are very rare. In most instances, derivational morphemes (FR yrvène, marsilien ) or flectional morphemes (callies ) provide clues for decoding the word even for the NEO categories. The strangeness effect of the xenoencyclopedic world is to be found more in referents and concepts than in morphemes.

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Another shared and rather striking practice involves the use of abbreviations. We encountered this phenomenon in both the PM and the ABR categories, which total 30 and 34 fiction words in the English and French corpora, respectively. The tendency to shorten words leads particularly to creating new abbreviated stems related to their classical or popular sources and placed in the prefix or suffix position. Heavily represented stems are nano- (with the meaning of nanotechnology), psy-, grav-, med-, cyb-, com-, holo-, info-, or -tron, -vid, -cog, -tech, -cyb, and -net. This may have two possible causes: on the one hand, shortening certain words, such as holo (for hologram ) or grav (for gravity ), produces a familiarity effect; on the other hand, it may indicate a dialectical game of juxtaposing the banal with the extraordinary. The inversion of these poles and the loss of reference points is one of the SF genre’s characteristics. As observed by Landragin (2018, 138), “l’abréviation sert clairement à nous montrer que le mot est tellement courant dans la langue du monde fictif qu’on l’emploie sous une forme abrégée, comme nous le faisons tous pour parler du métro, d’un resto ou d’un ciné” (abbreviation is clearly used to show us that the word is so common in the language of the fictional world that it is used in an abbreviated form, as we all do when talking about the métro [instead of métropolitain ], a resto [instead of restaurant ] or a ciné [instead of cinéma ]; our translation). In addition, it should be noted that this type of coinage is widespread in the context of industrial innovation, especially for brand naming, which makes extensive use of the truncated stems mentioned above. Indeed, several fiction words on our lists are attested to as names of products, organizations, companies, or laboratories (genemods, medtech, scalpnet, bublepak, cavitron, etc.).

4 The Contexts of  as a Pivot: Analyses of Four Prepositional Phrases Most of the extracted RLTs correspond to colligations, that is, co-occurrences of the units with grammatical units such as determiners, prepositions, auxiliary verbs, conjunctions, et cetera. This was to be

168     L. Gonon and O. Kraif

expected, because the class is very large and does not really correspond to a semantically consistent paradigm. As a preliminary observation, pivots appear to be frequently associated with coordination, in both the English and the French corpora: occur 86 times in English: (6) … only then did they remember that they had not brought their working tools, their handcomps and shirtcoms, to a quiet dinner in the small house. (Moon Remnant Population, 1996)

occurs 17 times in French: (7) Inutile de sonder le svøn ou l’urgal – tous deux s’avèrent d’une grande pauvreté lorsqu’il s’agit d’exprimer aussi bien des sensations que des concepts abstraits. (Wagner Le Chant du cosmos, 1999) (No need to probe the svøn or the urgal – both are very poor when it comes to expressing both sensations and abstract concepts.)

Coordination may have different functions: subsuming the various fiction words under the same hypernym, as in (6); sharing the same explanatory context, as in (7); or reinforcing the effect of a sense of wonder by means of an accumulation of exotic details, as in (8): (8) Les mercenaires de Pritiv poussèrent sans ménagement les danseurs de mazakawen, les agres, les féelles et les deux majikens, les officiants de magie, vers les coulisses. (Bordage Les Guerriers du silence, 1993) (The Pritiv mercenaries pushed the mazakawen dancers, the agres, the féelles and the two majikens, the magic officers, unceremoniously backstage.)

Another interesting finding is the recurrence of predicative structures in French, with 200 occurrences of : (9) La samsonite n’est ni contagieuse, ni mortelle. (Ligny Albatroys, 1991) (Samsonite is neither contagious nor deadly.) (10) Les sigres sont inoffensives. (Genefort Arago, 1995) (The sigres are harmless.)

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Most of these occurrences are encountered in dialogues or reported discourse, which would seem to be ideal for introducing explicitly “didactic” elements (see Sect. 4.2). This is confirmed by the frequency of the RLT , which appears 34 times, in completive subordinates such as: (11) On dit que les kroaz sont les pires des êtres vivants. (Bordage Les Fables de l’Humpur, 1995) (It is said that kroaz are the worst of living beings.)

By contrast, in the English corpus appears to be negatively correlated with the verb to be: the association score (loglike) is about −75, which indicates that the number of actual co-occurrences is far lower than one would expect. Is that kind of didactic segment regarded as too explicit in the English language? Is it a matter of stylistic preference? We defer to future investigations to provide a clear interpretation for this as-yet unexplained contrast. After these preliminary observations, the main finding is that for both English and French the clearest colligation statistics single out prepositional phrases. We will elaborate on these observations in the following section.

4.1 Description of the Contexts for Appearances of  Pivots 4.1.1 Methodology From the list of  pivot relationships, we chose the most frequently found one (and the one that seems most likely for linguistic reasons) for our analysis: the  noun used with a definite article (le, la, les and the ). From this very large group of units (6779 for EN and 3995 for FR), prepositional phrases formed according to the pattern in turn were selected for a more detailed analysis. This meant making a statistically based decision: the most representative prepositional phrases were chosen for study, that is,  (812 times,

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dispersion 48) and (396 times, dispersion 46) for the English corpus;  (by the , 112 times, dispersion 30) and  (on the , 114 times, dispersion 29) in French. These numbers had to be reduced for the following reasons: some  might have been incorrectly tagged because of noisy tokenisation (for instance “bricà” for bric-à-brac, “ing” for smil-ing ). Some words were not on our reference lists despite their existing in French or English albeit as seldom-used or outdated derivatives. Thus, we culled a number of unusual words from our lists (par les craillements, sur les putasseries ), including some expressions from specialized lexicons: sur les espars (nautical word), par le catgut (surgical suture), the different kinds of smectites (geological term), or, for English, compound names or borrowings such as of the amphitheater, of the demi-mondaine. For the French corpus, noise constitutes about 10% of the occurrences of the two prepositional phrases studied and approximately 25% in case of the English corpus. Based on these four lists of occurrences, we chose to keep 50 for each prepositional phrase. We aimed to vary the instances of  in a prepositional phrase in terms of both lexical morphology and referent: names of peoples, plants and not just technology or ships, those defining themes closely affiliated with the SF subgenre in the popular imagination.

4.1.2 Topics Represented by the Nouns   in the Four Prepositional Phrases For the three prepositional phrases , , and  it was easy to select fiction words referring to species of living beings (POP, ANI and VEG categories: names of “races”; FUNC category: social roles): par les deks (Bordage Abzalon, 1998), of the phytids (Bear Legacy, 1995). Fiction words may also refer to diseases or drugs (BIO and SUB categories): sur l’épidermie (Berthelot Rivage des intouchables, 1990), of the hyperdex (Silverberg Hot Sky at Midnight, 1994). The prepositional phrase  dominates the others in the representation of transportation (mainly ships: TECH category),

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and obviously of places (LOC category: buildings, rooms): in the dropship (Simmons The Fall of Hyperion, 1990), in the flawship (Bear Legacy, 1996). Each of the four prepositional phrases selected include words coined as references to power systems or their representatives (POL category): par les Éliges (Ayerdhal L’Histrion, 1993), in the areophany (Robinson Blue Mars, 1996). In the English corpus,  nouns designating virtual products are more likely to occur (TECH category: software, simulations, etc.): of the ractives (Stephenson Snow Crash, 1992), in the stimsim (Simmons Endymion, 1996).

4.1.3 The Most Frequent Syntactic Functions Among the 50 selected examples, the most frequent syntactic function for  is that of an agent phrase. It follows either a conjugated passive form or a past participle used as an adjective. Thus, the action is carried out : (12) Elle avait failli être emportée par l’estérionite un an plus tôt, et seul l’amour d’un jeune homme du nom d’Arel, l’arrière-petit-fils d’un dek qui avait bien connu Abzalon, l’avait raccrochée à la vie. (Bordage Abzalon, 1998) (She had almost been carried off by the esterionite a year earlier, and only the love of a young man named Arel, the great-grandson of a dek who had known Abzalon well, had kept her alive.)

The estérionite is probably an epidemic, a disease: être emporté par and the suffix -ite allow this inference (in French, the suffix -ite is used to form many terms in the field of medicine: appendicite, bronchite ). The stem of the derived word is the proper noun Ester, which refers to the fictional world in which this novel is set. The reader can therefore proceed on the basis of the principle of what Langlet (2006, 27) calls “abduction”: unlike deduction or induction, “abduction” here means formulating a hypothetical rule, which will be either confirmed or invalidated in the course of the reading process. Of course, the sentence

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quoted above is not necessarily the first appearance of this fiction word in the novel. For this prepositional phrase, few expanded noun phrases exist in the French corpus: the noun often stands alone, and this form seems generally more suitable for narration than description. The analysis of the 50 selected occurrences leads to the conclusion that this prepositional phrase provides an idea of the type of actions usually performed by unknown characters or of objects represented by a fiction word. The latter is typically described by its effects. This syntactic function is a dynamic component of the description, essentially oriented towards standard actions: (13) Outre son rôle de superviseur des enquêtes effectuées par les loyals de sa cellule, un justicier avait également pour mission de veiller à leur parfaite légalité, ainsi qu’au respect des droits imprescriptibles de tout être humain ou animal impliqué. (Wagner Le Chant du Cosmos, 1999) (In addition to his role as supervisor of investigations conducted by the loyals of his cell, a justiciar was also responsible for ensuring that they were perfectly legal and that the imprescriptible rights of any human or animal being involved were respected.)

In this example, the prepositional phrase par les loyals is an agent phrase of the past participle effectuées: the noun enquêtes indicates the standard activity of the loyals, and the complement de sa cellule specifies the organization of the investigators into units headed by a supervisor called a justicier. Thus, the agent phrase allows us to define a category of characters in action. The most frequent syntactic function of  is that of indirect object: (14) Virus entrouvre enfin ses paupières boursouflées, pose sur le decyb un regard empreint d’un soupçon de lucidité. (Ligny Cyberkiller, 1993) (Virus finally opens her swollen eyelids, glancing at the decyb with a hint of lucidity.)

Several prepositional phrases  also are used as noun complementation:

6  French and American Science Fiction During the Nineties …     173

(15) Pendrek contacta Plaike. Il lui parla d’un rêve qu’il avait fait à la suite de son discours sur les fulguriers. (Genefort Arago, 1993) (Pendrek contacted Plaike. He told him about a dream he had following his speech on the fulguriers.)

The fiction word when introduced by the preposition sur has more complementation than when introduced with par. These complements are in specific relative clauses and epithets, which make it possible to characterize the unknown noun. This is particularly true when it comes to descriptions: (16) Ils s’extasièrent bruyamment … sur les albotoès aux frondaisons multicolores, … et enfin les rarissimes arborivoles dont les cimes flottantes et reliées au sol par de fines et souples lianes transparentes surlignaient de mauve cette fabuleuse luxuriance végétale. (Bordage Les Guerriers du silence, 1993) (They were loudly ecstatic … about the albotoès with their multicoloured foliage, … and finally … the rare arborivoles whose floating tops linked to the ground by thin and supple transparent vines, highlighted with mauve this fabulous plant luxuriance.)

The fiction word albatoès has a complement that lets us deduce that it is a tree: this complement is frondaisons (foliage). The latter is part of the albotoès, and receives a qualification: multicolores (multicoloured). This is therefore an aspectualization operation (Adam 2017, 94–97), which consists of a descriptive sequence of fragmenting the whole into parts that are characterized. Similarly, arborivoles—another fiction word—is qualified by an adjective indicating a high degree—rarissime (rare)— which reinforces the unknown nature of the name, itself characterized by a relative clause detailing its parts (cimes, lianes, mauve ) in another aspectualization operation. However, the prepositional phrase  is no less narrative than : when it functions as an indirect object, it is most often the object of violence: braquer (aim), tirer (shoot), s’acharner sur (rage over)…; the goal of a movement: se précipiter sur (rush on); or the object of a look: les yeux se posent sur (eyes are set on), poser un regard sur (take a look at).

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The most frequent syntactic function of  is the complementation of quantifiers: quantity + , indicating that a certain number is singled out from a whole, which is represented by : (17) Edible after soaking in water and cooking, high in usable protein and sugars, sweet and meaty to the taste, diospuros had been one of the first phytids used successfully for food. (Bear Legacy, 1995)

The expression one of the first phytids used successfully for food indicates a part of the entire group of phytids. The fiction word has complementation: the adjective first and the participial phrase specify its characteristics. The noun phrase is the complement of diospuros, another fiction word, and a hyponym of phytids. To a lesser extent, the prepositional phrase  functions as a noun complementation. In the phrase , the fiction word has a specific complementation, especially with ordinal adjectives (earliest, first ) or adjectives relating the individual to a group (most common in the example below): (18) The Skroderiders were one of the most common sophonts in the Beyond. There were many varieties, but analysis agreed with legend: very long ago they had been one species. (Vinge A Fire Upon the Deep, 1992)

Here, we can observe the use of the noun phrase as a subject complement, the same as in example (17): the fiction word in the prepositional phrase  is a hypernym of the subject. Fiction words thus make it possible to define one another in an inclusive link, either because an individual or a group of individuals are part of a category or because they are not. These observations confirm the importance of the POP and FUNC fiction word categories (Sect. 3.3): science fiction often portrays an individual who represents his origins and his function and then liberates or tries to liberate himself from both. The most frequent syntactic function of the prepositional phrase  is that of a place adjunct:

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(19) Ry and I put on light pressure suits. He picked up a box not much larger than his head and tucked it under his arm. We nodded to an eye conveying our images to the pilot waiting in the flawship above; then we stepped outside. (Bear Legacy, 1996)

In several occurrences, the prepositional phrase is also a complement of the noun whose location it indicates: (20) If the psions in the powerlink were too similar, it set up a resonance like a driven oscillator, forcing their minds into greater and greater fluctuations until the link shattered. (Asaro The Veiled Web, 1999)

With this specific prepositional phrase, there is usually little complementation of the fiction word, which often appears alone. It is also more difficult to find fiction words referring to species using this construction: the fiction words mainly designate rooms, buildings, or modes of transportation, especially spaceships, some of which carry entire populations: freezatorium (Pohl The World at the End of Time, 1990), seedship (Simmons Endymion, 1996). The selected prepositional phrases, which are statistically representative of the use of a fiction word with a definite article, only rarely represent the first appearance of the unknown word in a novel. Still, some of the 200 occurrences we analysed were framed by explanatory contexts that are interesting to look at in more detail.

4.2 Didactic Segments The prepositional phrases selected for further analysis are sometimes inserted in explanatory contexts, which make it possible to understand the fiction word and determine its referent. The relevant passages in the narratives are “didactic segments”: coming in varying lengths, they accompany the fiction word to give a definition or at least “une clé de compréhension” (Langlet 2006, 27) (a key to understanding; our translation).

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4.2.1 Appositions The most straightforward of these didactic mechanisms is the apposition (Langlet 2006, 38–39): it is the simplest grammatical tool for incidentally defining a fiction word without disturbing the narrative flow. (21) Dans le lointain se profilait un océan de dunes, vagues blafardes et pétrifiées surmontées d’une écume de sable soulevée par le chounza, un vent sec et froid descendu des montagnes du grand Erg Brûlé. (Bordage Les Guerriers du silence, 1993) (In the distance lay an ocean of dunes, pale and petrified waves surmounted by a foam of sand raised by the chounza, a dry and cold wind coming down from the mountains of the Great Burnt Erg.)

The apposition un vent… assigns the fiction word chounza to a category (to a hypernym). The apposition thus allows the reader to fall back upon his general encyclopaedia to feed his xenoencyclopedia, thanks to an analogy suggested by the text. Appositions turn out to be such handy devices that some authors even use them in series: (22) Des chercheurs d’optalium, un métal rare très prisé par les sculpteurs-joailliers de Bella et les corporations de l’artisanat sacré de Marquinat. Des types rongés par la zénoïba, la fièvre des temps de pluie, une maladie incurable. (Bordage, ibid. ) (Searchers for optalium, a rare metal highly prized by the sculptors-jewellers of Bella and the guilds of the sacred crafts of Marquinat. Guys tormented by zénoïba, rainy season fever, an incurable disease.)

The first apposition defines optalium on the basis of the use of hypernymy: it is a type of metal. One can see the cliché of rarity—rare— reappearing (see in the same novel the use of rarissimes, example 16). The second apposition allows the reader to define zénoïba, for which the syntactic context makes an abduction possible even before reading the apposition: the agent phrase referring to individuals after a past participle suggests that the unknown name is either a passion, or a disease, a

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virus. The apposition then specifies the disease in question: la fièvre des temps de pluie (rainy season fever), only to be followed by another apposition, une maladie incurable (an incurable disease). At this point, the noun maladie (disease) is superfluous, but the adjective incurable adds a trait to the intensity of zénoïba. The following case is particularly interesting in the use it makes of the determiner introducing the apposition: (23) Et, d’ailleurs, que s’était-il passé à l’époque? Tem lui-même n’en avait qu’une idée très vague. Il disait que, pour des raisons inconnues, la Psychosphère avait commencé à déborder sur la Réalité consensuelle. Ce phénomène était peut-être dû à des perturbations causées par le semen of gods, cette drogue employée autrefois pour voyager télépathiquement. (Wagner Le Chant du Cosmos, 1999) (And, by the way, what had happened at the time? Tem himself had only a very vague idea of it. He said that, for unknown reasons, the Psychosphere had begun to overflow into Consensual Reality. This may have been due to disruptions caused by the semen of gods, this drug formerly used for traveling telepathically.)

The apposition is a noun phrase introduced by the demonstrative determiner cette (this); the noun drogue has complements. This expanded noun phrase is analogous to the form “ce… qui… + present tense” studied by Éric Bordas, who sees in it a realism marker (for example in Balzac’s novels). The construction above is a variant: the demonstrative determiner is a “démonstratif de connivence” (Bordas 2001, 33) (demonstrative of complicity; our translation). It refers to a memory supposedly shared by the narrator and the reader (in a memorial exophora), bringing the latter into the universe of the story. Thus, the narrator presents information about the SF world while suggesting that this knowledge has, in fact, already been established by the reader. All examples given in this section were taken from the French corpus; as it happens, the English corpus exhibits fewer appositions for defining fiction words, at least among the 200 occurrences that we retained. There are, however, some appositions in the corpus which define words borrowed from other languages:

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(24) Of all the members of their cabal, she had been the first struck personally by the lashing tail of the taniwha – the monster in the Earth’s core. (Brin Earth, 1990) (25) The stratiform copper deposit that they had been raking up ran dry, and it was time for another ráhla, the movement of the hejra to the next site. (Robinson Red Mars, 1992)

The taniwha is a creature borrowed from Māori mythology, and the ráhla is a movement of nomadic Arab tribes. However, these words can easily be (mis)interpreted as fiction words by a reader who has never heard them before. Samplings conducted in the English and French corpora showed that authors of SF novels coin fiction words but also borrow existing words from fields of expertise that are sometimes so specialized that the reader is likely to categorize them as fiction words (as mentioned in Sect. 3.2): cases in point include (in the English corpus) cyanophyte (type of bacteria), smectite (type of mineral), rectenna (for rectifying antenna ) and (in the French corpus) tores (type of moulding in architecture), carabes bombardiers (type of beetle). These words already have meanings in the readers’ world although the average reader is likely to draw a blank on encountering them. SF authors use appositions to make these words accessible in their narrative, and they do the same with fiction words, some of which are formed through precisely the same morphological mechanisms as specialized words (PLC and HCL formations, see Sect. 3.4). Thus, one may mistake a fiction word for a specialized word and vice versa: essentially, the same phenomenon occurs when a demonstrative determiner introduces the apposition.

4.2.2 Explanatory Context Fiction words can also be explained by using a segment that is longer than an apposition. Here are some examples of explanatory contexts suitable for embedding fiction words. Firstly, heterodiegetic narrators sometimes intervene directly, interrupting the action with an explanatory remark:

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(26) Là réside aussi la supériorité de Deckard sur les autres decybs: il n’a pas oublié l’ancienne culture, les façons de vivre de jadis, et en tire toujours un enseignement. (Ligny Cyberkiller, 1993) (This is also where Deckard’s superiority over the other decybs lies: he has not forgotten the old culture, the ways of life of the past, and he always learns from it.)

The prepositional phrase sur les autres decybs (over the other decybs) makes it possible to individualize the hero in relation to his peers (les autres decybs, plural). It stresses his supériorité to show his uniqueness. By explaining the quality that sets Deckard apart, the narrator simultaneously defines a whole category of characters in negative terms. Narrative heterogeneity is quite strong here as far as the contrast between the plot level on the one hand and the commentary of an extradiegetic and omniscient narrator on the other is concerned. Secondly, the explanatory statement can also be attributed to one of the characters, whether or not this character is the homodiegetic narrator: (27) Something had changed in the divaricates on their arrival in Lamarckia. Lenk had encouraged new births, of course. But divaricates had generally had no more children on Thistledown than other Naderites, no more even than most Geshels. On Lamarckia, having children had become a ruling passion, as if some hidden drive had been awakened, and the human race – isolated as this weak little seed on a huge world – had needed to spread its limbs and foliage far and wide once more. (Bear Legacy, 1995)

The section before this extract consists of Shirla’s reported speech. The narrator’s thoughts draw conclusions from this reported discourse. The explanatory context is based on general laws that are infringed on Lamarckia. And, the narrator proposes an analogy that makes it easier to understand the demographic phenomenon. In this case, the inner speech takes over from a character’s speeches to extend the explanatory segment. Thirdly, when the story is told in the first person by the protagonist, the explanatory speech probably fits more logically into the narrative: it embraces the hero’s questioning. The occurrences of  from the English corpus provide two examples of metalinguistic segments. In the first, the autodiegetic narrator develops a theory about the difficulty of describing unknown living organisms (before eventually describing them): (28) Before I attempt to describe the things, I have to say that little in the history of humankind’s expansion in this arm of the galaxy had prepared us to describe large alien organisms. On the hundreds of worlds explored and colonized during and after the Hegira, most of the indigenous life discovered had been plants and a few very simple organisms, such as the radiant gossamers on Hyperion. The few large, evolved animal forms – the Lantern Mouths on Mare Infinitus, say, or the zeplins of Whirl – tended to be hunted to extinction. The more common result was a world filled with a few indigenous life-forms and a myriad of human-adapted species. Humanity had terraformed all these worlds, bringing its bacteria and earthworms and fish and birds and land animals in raw DNA form, defrosting embryos in the early seedships, building birthing factories in the later expansions. The result had been much as on Hyperion – vital indigenous plants such as the tesla trees and chauna and weirwood and some surviving local insects coexisting with thriving Old Earth transplants and biotailored adapts such as triaspen, everblues, oak trees, mallards, sharks, hummingbirds, and deer. We were not used to alien animals. (Simmons Rise of Endymion, 1997)

The extensive explanatory segment includes the history of living organisms since “the history of humankind’s expansion in this arm of galaxy”. The prepositional phrase in the early seedships occurs in this segment, putting into perspective the history of galactic colonization, itself rich in fiction words; the historization appears in the adjective early, which places this episode at the beginning of the terraforming. In this example, only the beginning is metalinguistic: it is followed by an explanatory account of the origins. But in the other example, the whole didactic segment is metalinguistic. The fiction word is then treated first as an autonym whose definition the narrator provides: (29) I labored to memorize – and to forget some of what I had learned on the Lake of the Winds. / Fortunately, on the upper decks and belowdecks, the names had changed little. Fore and aft still applied: bow, midships,

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stern; forecastle, foredeck or maindeck, quarter deck aft of the maintree, but the poop aft of the mizzen had reverted to the original Latin, puppis. The long superstructure on the puppis, which appeared top-heavy to me, was called, with affection, the pupcastle. On the Vigilant, the captain, master, doctor, and researchers kept quarters here, and the two laboratories were also in the pupcastle. (Bear Legacy, 1995)

The final prepositional phrase is not the first time the fiction word is mentioned: we must go up a few lines to find the autonymous use, The long superstructure … was called … the pupcastle. The homodiegetic narrator comments here on the nautical terms on the ship he has just joined. The fiction word is therefore defined by a narrator who is not familiar with the terminology used on board either and is discovering it at the same time as the reader. More often, however, the narrator already has knowledge about the SF world and delivers it to the reader as soon as strangeness threatens understanding: (30) An archangel-class starship translated into God’s Grove space the day after Pope Julius’s death. … / Two men and a woman were aboard. Their presence in the dropship was a curiosity – the archangel-class starships invariably killed human beings during their violent translation through Planck space and the onboard resurrection crèches usually took three days to revive the human crew. / These three were not human. (Simmons Rise of Endymion, 1997)

The narrator here is able to introduce the presence of the three characters in the ship as a curiosity because he knows the usual trajectory of the dropship: the commentary commences after a dash, the threshold between the narration itself and the presentation of a general rule based on the adverb invariably, the generic plural the archangel-class starships and human beings. From this general rule, the narrator can draw a conclusion by deduction at the beginning of the next paragraph: the three characters are therefore not human. As Langlet (2006, 68) says, “les romans en ‘je’ sont une reserve inépuisable de ce que Saint-Gelais appelle le ‘didactisme honteux’, c’est-à-dire une articulation peu discrète, ‘cousue de fil blanc’, du novum et de son explication” (the ‘I’

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novels are an inexhaustible reserve of what Saint-Gelais calls ‘shameful didacticism’, that is, an unobtrusive articulation, ‘sewn with white thread’, of the novum and its explanation; our translation). Fourthly, the explanatory segment may be assigned to a character who instructs a less educated individual: “Plutôt que d’insérer dans le récit des discours didactiques pour expliquer les données d’un problème ou situer un lieu, les auteurs actuels préfèrent recourir aux dialogues” (Bozetto 2007, 61) (Rather than inserting didactic discourses into the narrative to explain the data of a problem or to locate a place, contemporary authors prefer making use of dialogues; our translation). It is therefore no coincidence that of the 200 occurrences selected, 33.5% of the prepositional phrases appear in fictional representations of speech (that is, direct speech: 21.5%, and indirect or internal speech: 12%)—the rest being narrative. Fiction words are therefore also found in fictional representations of speech, no matter if it is their first appearance or not. (31) Bon, soyons pratique: le danger, si danger il y a, réside dans la fusion provoquée par la sexomorphose, parce qu’elle vous altère en profondeur sans que vous puissiez percevoir les changements et que, à l’évidence, elle vous uniformise. (Ayerdhal Sexomorphoses, 1994) (Well, let’s be practical: the danger, if there is any danger, lies in the fusion caused by sexomorphosis, because it alters you in depth without you being able to perceive the changes and because, obviously, it makes you uniform.)

In this example, the speaker (a woman called Mesar) justifies her position (where the danger comes from) in the causal subordinate clause. The erudite character is either more experienced, as in this case, or has expert knowledge, as in the following example: (32) Prenez garde à vous: Point-Rouge est la plaque tournante des trafics de l’index, en particulier du trafic du bétail humain, des esclaves. Ne comptez pas sur les interliciers fédéraux pour vous aider en cas de pépin. (Bordage Les Guerriers du silence, 1993) (Be careful: Point-Rouge is the hub of the index traffic, especially the trafficking of human livestock, slaves. Don’t rely on federal interliciers to help you in case of problems.)

6  French and American Science Fiction During the Nineties …     183

The speaker is a travel agent who explains what he knows about PointRouge to the woman intending to go there. The prepositional phrase sur les interliciers fédéraux incorporates this didactic cautionary segment. Finally, the prepositional phrase containing the fiction word may appear in a narrative learning context. But, in the selected occurrences, only the English corpus contains this type of example. In the following excerpt, the speaker suggests an educational programme about the fiction word: (33) Each night, he began, I hope to continue our education on the goals of this journey, to discuss the nature of the ecoi and their benefits and potential dangers. (Bear Legacy, 1995)

The ship’s captain is giving his crew a little lesson. The speaker among the characters who utters the explanatory speech is thus sometimes a teacher. This is the case with the character named Hiroko, when he asks his students a question: (34) “All the names for Mars in the areophany are names given to it by Terrans. About half of them mean fire star in the languages they come from, but that is still a name from the outside. The question is, what is Mars’s own name for itself?” (Robinson Green Mars, 1993)

And finally, the explanatory segment which includes the prepositional phrases studied here may even appear outside the story: (35) HOMERS. “Ceux qui rentrent à la maison.” Surnom donné à la fraction de la population du Veld ayant choisi de se réinsérer au sein du Village. Les concours de la fonction publique – bien que le nombre de postes à pourvoir soit en chute libre depuis des décennies – constituent l’un des moyens les plus couramment utilisés par les homers pour parvenir à leurs fins. (Lehman F.A.U.S.T (1), 1996) (HOMERS. “Those who come home.” Nicknamed after the fraction of the Veld population that has chosen to reintegrate into the Village. Public service competitions – although the number of positions to be filled has been falling dramatically for decades – are one of the most common methods used by homers to achieve their goals.)

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This definition can be found in the second appendix of the novel titled “Lexique”. It is part of what Irène Langlet (2006, 105) calls “polytextualité cloisonnée” (compartmentalized polytextuality; our translation), that is, the non-narrative appendices of the novel, in this case the lexicon or glossary. In the example, the definition is provided as such, in encyclopaedic form. The present continuous—soit, constituent—suggests that the lexicon itself belongs to the fictional world, since the present refers to the enunciation moment of the narrative.

4.3 Summary of the Uses of the Four Prepositional Phrases  To begin with, it seems important to underline the lexical research carried out by authors of science fiction (more so than in other subgenres most certainly). Indeed, pivots are not necessarily fiction words: they can be uncommon or rare derivatives, borrowings from foreign languages, scientific words belonging to different technolects from diverse technology and natural science disciplines. The SF novel is therefore based on an erudition that borders on creation (or intertwines with it) to evoke the phenomenon of estrangement (Suvin 1979): the reader is totally immersed in a different world, thanks to this “lexical vertigo”. Science fiction is built on the technicality of its lexicon which gives an impression of mastery (even if the plot happens to be confusing), allowing the projection of an imaginary world. To return to the four prepositional phrases chosen by us for their specificity, it should be recalled that they are only samplings, 50 occurrences for each prepositional phrase , , , and  . The present study suggests that the works in the French corpus are based more on narrative than on explanatory or descriptive sequences (that is, characters defined by their actions expressed by agent phrases, complementing verbs and action nouns, and not, for example, adjuncts of place—whereas the preposition sur can have a spatial meaning, like in ). The four prepositional phrases all use fiction words representing political systems, social roles occupied by characters, species (human or analogous, animals, plants), and vessels carrying entire populations.

6  French and American Science Fiction During the Nineties …     185

We might add that the prepositional phrases, essentially from the English corpus, can show that the fiction words are integrated into categories (hypernymic relationships, aspectualization, singling out a group). These categories make it possible to structure the fictional world in a double movement of incorporation and singularization: to be distinguished from a whole, an individual (or an object, a machine, etc.) must first be related to a category; one might even argue that the latter is created by the author to highlight what the narrative sets apart from it. The contexts in which the prepositional phrases are embedded allow abductions, since the syntactic environment enables readers to formulate a hypothesis if the fiction word has not been defined yet (or has been poorly defined), and then the syntactic context allows an abduction to be transformed into induction. Among the 200 occurrences studied, we found many examples of didactic segments: in the form of appositions (especially for French), explanatory contexts (explanations provided by the heterodiegetic or homodiegetic narrator, or by a particularly erudite character); the contexts seem more varied in the English corpus. The samples may indicate that the works included in the English corpus are more ambitious than those selected for the French corpus (although this tentative conclusion may be biased by the sampling). Indeed, history is written over generations (Simmons, Bear), and the authors create worlds not only synchronously (in terms of their spatial extension), but also diachronically (with respect to their temporal dimension); moreover, it is especially in the English corpus that metalinguistic reflections on the fiction words themselves are assigned to the characters.

5 Conclusion The present study, based on a fairly small corpus of 98 novels, shows a certain convergence between American and French science fiction. Although French SF is part of a specific French literary tradition, described by Bréan (2012), which can be traced back to influential authors like Jules Verne, the universe created by science fiction works in American and French literary cultures has ended up merging in recent

186     L. Gonon and O. Kraif

decades. This fusion was perhaps inevitable given the strong influence of American literature in the field and the huge number of translations from (American) English into French (which is not reciprocated). Another factor of convergence may be found in what Damien Broderick (1994, 57–60) calls the megatext, a concept that the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (SFE) defines as follows: “Science fiction is written in a kind of code, a difficult vernacular learned through an apprenticeship. Its decoding depends importantly on access to a megatext – the huge body of established moves or reading protocols that the reader learns through immersion in many hundreds of sf short stories and novels (and, with significantly less sophistication, from movies, television episodes, and games). The sf megatext comprises a virtual encyclopaedia and specialized dictionary”.10 The presence of “transfuges”, fiction words that cross the boundaries of works by individual authors, but also the boundaries of languages (such as holo, psionic, terraform, astrogation, conapt, cyborg, etc.), highlights the great unity in this genre-specific imaginary, despite the diversity of inventions and findings. To explain the behaviour of these fiction words from a phraseological point of view, it should be noted that they are sometimes partially or even totally transparent, which limits a priori the need for explanatory intervention by the narrator. This (partial) transparency contributes to placing the readers in a position of abduction, by forcing them to establish hypotheses based on the contextual or morphological clues given to them. The marked tendency to insert fiction words in prepositional phrases may play a similar role: giving some clues without breaking the rhythm of the narration and relying on the reader to infer what is not explicitly detailed. Indeed, in science fiction, the reader is supposed to play an active part in the construction of the narration. Landragin (2018, 144) calls this involvement the sense of reading, which completes the more passive sense of wonder: “Le lecteur de SF doit ainsi passer d’une illusion à une autre, d’une hypothèse à une autre, ce qui nécessite un travail cognitif, c’est-à-dire une vigilance envers les indices qui sont 10http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/sf_megatext

(consulted on January 2018).

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autant d’éléments pouvant rejoindre sa xéno-encyclopédie. Ceci s’ajoute sans se confondre au plaisir procuré par l’immersion dans un monde imaginaire construit par l’auteur” (the SF reader must thus pass from one illusion to another, from one hypothesis to another, which requires cognitive work, that is, vigilance towards the clues, which are all elements that can join his xenoencyclopedia. This is added without compromising the pleasure provided by immersion in an imaginary world built by the author; our translation). Acknowledgements   Many thanks to Judith Chambre, who helped in the selection of the English and French novels of the corpus.

References Adam, Jean-Michel. 2017 (1992). Les Textes: types et prototypes. Paris: Armand Colin. Angenot, Marc. 1978. “Le paradigme absent. Éléments pour une sémiotique de la science-fiction.” Poétique 33 (2): 74–89. Bordas, Éric. 2001. “Un style dix-neuviémiste: le determinant discontinu un de ces… qui.” L’Information grammaticale 90: 32–43. Bozetto, Roger. 2007. La Science-fiction. Paris: Armand Colin. Bréan, Simon. 2012. La Science-fiction en France: théorie et histoire d’une littérature. Paris: PUPS. Broderick, Damien. 1994. Reading by Starlight: Postmodern Science Fiction. London: Routledge. Chambre, Judith, and Olivier Kraif. 2017. “Identification de traits spécifiques du roman policier et de science-fiction.” In JLC 2017, 9èmes Journées Internationales de la Linguistique de corpus, 3–6 July 2017, Grenoble. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01884804. Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., Istvan. 2013. “Que voulons-nous dire quand nous parlons de ‘science-fiction mondiale’.” Translated by Samuel Minne. ReS Futurae 3. http://journals.openedition.org/resf/411. Kraif, Olivier, and Julie Sorba. 2018. “Spécificités des expressions spatiales et temporelles dans quatre sous-genres romanesques (policier, sciencefiction, historique et littérature générale).” In JATD’18 Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Statistical Analysis of Textual Data, vol. 1, 392– 399, 12–15 June, Rome. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01844460.

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Kraif, Olivier, and Sascha Diwersy. 2012. “Le Lexicoscope: un outil pour l’étude de profils combinatoires et l’extraction de constructions lexico-syntaxiques.” In Actes de la conférence TALN 2012, 399–406, 4–8 June, Grenoble. http:// www.aclweb.org/anthology/F12-2033. Landragin, Frédéric. 2018. Comment parler à un Alien? Langage et linguistique dans la science-fiction. Saint-Mammès: Éditions du Bélial. Langlet, Irène. 2006. La Science-fiction. Lecture et poétique d’un genre littéraire. Paris: Armand Colin. Poix, Cécile. 2018. “Neology in Children’s Literature: A Typology of Occasionalisms.” Lexis 12. http://journals.openedition.org/lexis/2111. Prucher, Jeff (ed.). 2017. Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rolls, Heather, and Michael P.H. Rodgers. 2017. “Science-Specific Technical Vocabulary in Science Fiction-Fantasy Texts: A Case for ‘Language Through Literature’.” English for Specific Purposes 48 (October): 44–56. Saint-Gelais, Richard. 1999. L’Empire du pseudo: Modernités de la Sciencefiction. Montreal, QC: Nota Bene. Suvin, Darko. 1979. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Annex Authors in the French corpus: Ayerdhal, Barberi, Berthelot, Bordage, Brussolo, Colin and Gaborit, Curval, Dantec, Deff, Di Rollo, Dunyach, Fontana, Genefort, Lehman, Léourier, Ligny, Pagel, Pelot, Wagner, Walther, Werber. Authors in the English corpus: Asaro, Asimov, Barnes, Bear, Brin, Bujold, Butler, Cherryh, Crichton, Goonan, Haldeman, Kress, McCaffrey, Moon, Pohl, Robinson, Scott, Silverberg, Simmons, Stephenson, Gibson and Sterling, Sterling, Swanwick, Vinge, Williams, Willis.

7 Science Fiction versus Fantasy: A Semantic Categorization and its Contribution to Distinguishing Two Literary Genres Vannina Goossens, Clémence Jacquot and Susanne Dyka

1 Introduction This chapter proposes a methodological reflection on the analysis and classification of recurrent lexico-syntactic trees (RLTs, see Chapter 2 by Legallois and Koch in this volume) extracted from modern narrative corpora. We will show how those patterns can be used for defining and delimiting particular fictional subgenres in a contrastive approach. We will focus on the contribution of a semantic classification of the patterns that were extracted from the corpora in the PhraseoRom project. V. Goossens (*)  University Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France e-mail: [email protected] C. Jacquot  University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, Montpellier, France e-mail: [email protected] S. Dyka  Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 I. Novakova and D. Siepmann (eds.), Phraseology and Style in Subgenres of the Novel, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23744-8_7

189

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This classification allows us to compare two closely related narrative subgenres: science fiction and fantasy. Both fantasy and science fiction belong to the same editorial category the French call “littérature de l’imaginaire” (speculative fiction).1 This mixed-genre category shows us that the two are sometimes difficult to tell apart, causing some specialists to argue about their literary, thematic and structural differences. Besson (2007, 39) or Baudou (2005, 58), for example, discuss what sets these two genres apart and the porosity of the boundaries between them. Many literary experts also underline the increasing hybridization of the two genres (see Bazin 2015, 111) especially during recent decades. It affects, for example, subcategories of science fiction and fantasy like uchrony novels (alternative history novels in which a variation of an actual historical event is imagined), steampunk novels (whose plot takes place in the Victorian age of steam) or science fantasy novels (which mix science fiction and heroic fantasy by using modern technologies in an ancient or medieval world). This hybridization process is also intensified by attaching certain editorial labels which are sometimes just marketing ploys. This is exemplified by some novels when they are published several times and are relabeled (as science fiction or fantasy) between printings. For example, Francis Berthelot’s Khanaor, a two-volume cycle of heroic fantasy, was published in 1983 as a fantasy novel—only to be republished in 2010 under the label science fiction in the Folio-SF collection.2

1This label is, as we said, a French editorial category which includes science fiction, fantasy and a part of the French category called “fantastique” (see Hommel 2017, 9; Torres 1997). In the English editorial field, we also found the label “speculative fiction” including for example science fiction, fantasy and superhero fictions. These concepts and vocabulary are indeed used a bit differently by French and English critics. In any event, the basis of our theoretical framework is French. See Cornillon (2012, 15 ff). 2The Folio-SF collection presents stories and novels which take place in many different possible imaginary worlds. It includes several French literary genres such as “fantastique”, science fiction and fantasy, but also unclassifiable imaginary subgenres which mix these categories. See Folio-SF collection’s presentation here: http://www.folio-lesite.fr/SF-Fantasy.

7  Science Fiction versus Fantasy: A Semantic Categorization …     191

Our approach is based on a semantic categorization and addresses these literary questions by providing corpus-based data that are relevant in stylistics. We will first outline the methodology and describe the semantic categorization of the specific RLTs extracted from our corpora. Then we proceed to discussing some stylistic distinctions, which allows us to show linguistic similarities and differences between the two genres of science fiction and fantasy. Comparing these two genres here will also let us propose a broader reflection on the interpretative stance underlying the semantic classification of our corpus and its methodological implications. It raises these questions: What kind of results can the classification of RLTs with a grid yield? How identical are the profiles identified in English and French? But also: Do these categories provide food for thought for interpreting texts? To what extent can this annotation be designed to describe and highlight convincing results from the different narrative subgenres of the PhraseoRom corpus?

2 Corpora and Methodology Our analysis is based on the corpora created in the PhraseoRom project. The corpora of fantasy and science fiction are comparable, in French and in English as shown in Table 1 (see also Appendix A).

2.1 The French Corpora Our French corpus of science fiction novels includes among others authors like Y. Ayerdhal, R. Barjavel, P. Bordage, M. Dantec, and R. Merle. This corpus covers novels from 1952 to 2014 and thus integrates Table 1  French and English science fiction and fantasy corpora

Tokens Authors Books

FR SF

FY

EN SF

FY

13,173,618 39 147

13,323,976 43 104

12,962,491 39 116

17,814,599 41 142

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several subgenres of science fiction novels: utopian novels like G. Klein’s Les Seigneurs de la guerre, anticipation novels like Y. Ayerdhal’s Cybione cycle, planet opera like L. Genefort’s Omale cycle and dystopia like P. Boulle’s La Planète des singes. The French fantasy corpus contains authors like Ange, F. Berthelot, Ch. Bousquet, J.-L. Fetjaine, M. Gaborit, J.-Ph. Jaworski, A. Robillard and P. Pevel. This corpus includes an important range of novels in contemporary fantasy subcategories: the steampunk universe (for Albert’s Avant le Déluge ), heroic fantasy (such as Berthelot’s Khanaor ), dark fantasy (such as Bousquet’s Arachnae ) and Arthurian fantasy (such as L’Apprenti de Merlin by Clavel).

2.2 The English Corpora The English corpus of science fiction novels is reasonably comparable to the French science fiction corpus. It includes one of the most important references of post-Second World War British science fiction novels: E.C. Tubb and his epic SF cycle The Dumarest Saga. It also features several well-known prolific authors such as A. C. Clarke and S. Baxter, both representing the hard SF subgenre. Our corpus illustrates several trends in science fiction, for example, dystopian novels like Burgess’s The Clockwork Orange or the cycles and novels of J. G. Ballard, K. Amis, and B. Aldiss. Also found in it are some examples of space opera (I. M. Banks or P. F. Hamilton’s novels) and of “comedy” science fiction novels (that is, writings which play with traditional science fiction conventions by using satire and humor about the genre itself or about situations of the present society), such as the H2G2 cycle by D. Adams. The English corpus of fantasy novels integrates some of the greatest, most internationally representative authors in this genre. Their success is both economic and symbolic, since some of them such as J. R. R. Tolkien and his The Lord of the Rings cycle—which represents a model of high fantasy novels—and C. S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia ) are mentioned as references (especially by French writers). The corpus also includes J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter cycle (low fantasy novels)

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and T. Pratchett’s mixed heroic fantasy-cum-humor novels. Some other famous names and their iconic works are Ph. Pullman and His Dark Materials cycle (high fantasy also cited as science fantasy novels), E. Colfer’s Artemis Fowl cycle, R. Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, N. Gaiman’s Coraline (a dark fantasy reference) or C. Barker’s dystopian novels.

2.3 Extraction of Recurrent Lexico-Syntactic Trees (RLTs) The RLTs were extracted from the science fiction and fantasy corpora by the method used in the PhraseoRom project outlined in Chapter 2 by Legallois and Koch in this volume. We used a dispersion above or equal to 10 authors for selecting patterns specific to a subgenre and not just to a single author (a high level of dispersion provides more generic patterns). We added a morphological criterion by limiting ourselves to patterns implying a verb. Table 2 shows the specific pattern totals for each genre and the number of patterns we generated after applying our thresholds. The table shows that there are fewer RLTs in English than in French. We arrived at similar results for the other subgenres studied in the PhraseoRom project, indicating that this phenomenon is not just specific to the two genres studied here. Nor is it related to a specificity of the English language; more likely it stems from the differences in syntactic annotation (which is the basis of the lexico-syntactic patterns) Table 2  Cumulative thresholds and number of RLTs for each language and genre

LLR ≥ 10,83 Verb Dispersion ≥ 10

English SF

FY

French SF

FY

3731 920 154

5070 2006 174

6274 2474 405

7097 4029 864

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between the two languages. We chose not to raise the number of RLTs by lowering the dispersion for the English corpus because this criterion significantly impacts the structures identified: the more they are present in a large number of authors, the more generic they are, and vice versa. We realize that such a difference in the number of patterns analyzed between French and English can lead to non-significant quantitative differences but accept it because we do not propose a quantitative analysis here. It also bears stressing that the total number of RLTs does not matter because it is a highly redundant mass of data; moreover, all RLTs that revolve around a certain collocation are only a guide for identifying patterns. We also extracted fewer RLTs in science fiction than in fantasy in both languages even though the gap is more striking for French. The difference may be attributable to the lexical characteristics of science fiction, which employs many neologisms that in the ensemble constitute a xenoencyclopedia (see Chapter 6 by Gonon and Kraif in this volume). These fiction words occur too infrequently and, above all, are specific to authors and not to genres: they did not pass our dispersion thresholds and therefore did not enter the specific RLTs. For categorizing the large number of patterns extracted for each genre in the project, we settled on applying a semantic grid to the list of extracted RLTs as our preferred methodological approach.

3 Presentation of the Semantic Grid As mentioned in the previous section, the prerequisite for developing the grid was that the RLTs we would work with had to contain a verb. This lets us reduce the amount of data to manageable levels while excluding RLTs corresponding to strictly referential entities that were not really analyzable from a semantic point of view. But, it also made for better coherence with respect to the complexity of the patterns and guided our choice of semantic dimensions.

7  Science Fiction versus Fantasy: A Semantic Categorization …     195 Table 3  Semantic dimensions and values used in the PhraseoRom project

Dimensions

Values

Action

Undefined Movement Travel Other

Communication

Undefined Verbal Physical

State

Undefined Animate Inanimate Abstract

Cognition Qualia

Undefined Sensation Perception Affect

Time Place Event Other –

As shown in Table 3, we developed a semantic classification comprising eight dimensions3 and up to four values for each dimension. Additionally, we set up the category “other” for unclassifiable cases and a category (“-”) for filtering out the RLTs that did not fit the criteria and thus constituted noise, for example, in cases of bad syntactic annotation. All our multi-value dimensions have one value (“undefined”) in common out of necessity because in some cases we were unsure which of the other values in a dimension applied: the “undefined” value thus became the default option for these ambiguous situations. The pattern , for example, could not be analyzed as either “state:animate” or “state:inanimate”—both in fact are possible (and do occur in our corpus), hence it was analyzed as “state:undefined”.

3See

Mahlberg (2007, 228), who uses functional groups to classify her findings.

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If we encountered a pattern with a complex meaning, we permitted a two-fold classification: for example 4 (look up to the sky) is categorized as “action:other” and “qualia:affect”. A dual categorization was also acceptable for verbs that belonged into one meaning dimension, like follow in where its complement into the kitchen fit into a different category. This particular pattern we analyzed as “action:travel” and “place”. In cases of polysemy, a pattern’s possible meanings are also assigned to two categories. For instance, was analyzed as “action:other” or “state:undefined” as it could either be someone having a look at something or something having a look (for example a face). illustrates another potential two-fold categorization. Going the wrong way as in choosing the wrong path is analyzed as “action:travel”, whereas if something goes the wrong way, as when something gets stuck in the wind pipe, it is tagged as “event”. A similar case in French is as “action:travel” or as “cognition”.

3.1 “Action” and “Communication” The “action” dimension comprises all actions performed by an agent in a dynamic situation. The category contains the four values of “undefined”, “movement”, “travel” and “other”. – “Action:movement” describes actions that imply some sort of movement without changing place horizontally (vertical movement). This includes movements with the whole body (), movements toward another person (), movements of or with body parts () and movements of the face or part of the face (, , ). Often these cases have a communicative aspect, which is considered in our analysis by adding a second category “communication”. Cases such as (“sur la table” for example) (the fist hits the

4All

of the following translations are our suggestions, unless otherwise specified.

7  Science Fiction versus Fantasy: A Semantic Categorization …     197

table) or (his head bows), where the body part is the subject, were categorized as “event” (see Sect. 3.2). With verbs denoting an action as well as a state, we focused on the semantics of the verb and classified it as both: for example was classified as “action:movement” and “state” but as “state”. – “Action:travel” implies movement from a point A to a point B (on a horizontal axis), even if the two points are not made explicit. These include patterns like , , . “Place” very often is indicated as a second category. – “Action:other” captures all actions not indicating (body) movement but also a movement along the horizontal axis. The category includes a vast variety of actions: , , (and “communication”), , , , , , , . This huge category calls for more detailed analysis to identify subcategories that could be important for one genre without being relevant for all the subgenres (see Sect. 4.1 on the warlike actions specific to French fantasy). Into the communication category with its three values of “undefined”, “verbal” and “physical” fall patterns that express either the intention to, or the act of, sharing information, feelings, thoughts, et cetera, with another person: – “Communication:verbal” receives patterns that imply using the articulatory organs for communicating regardless of whether intentional or not. Possible entries under this category include , , . Sounds made by animals are also categorized as verbal communication. – “Communication:physical” is reserved for patterns that express non-verbal contacts initiated for sharing information, feelings, thoughts, et cetera, with another person (physically), for example or .

198     V. Goossens et al.

3.2 “State” and “Event” The “state” dimension has four values (“undefined”, “animate”, “inanimate”, “abstract”) and mainly describes states of animate, inanimate and abstract agents. The state might be permanent, for example , or it might be temporary, for example . – “State:inanimate” applies to states of an inanimate object, for example . – “State:animate” refers to animate subjects, like or , or to the description of personality traits like . – “State:abstract” classifies patterns that include an abstract subject like (the situation is serious). Weather phenomena which are static— for ­example—are classified as “state:inanimate”. Changes of states like certain other weather phenomena (, , ) on the other hand would be categorized as “event”. “Event” as a dimension describes dynamic processes or actions without an agent, such as , , .

3.3 “Cognition” and “Qualia” “Cognition”, a category devoid of values, is about gaining or losing knowledge.5 Belonging in this category are RLTs like (and “time”) and . The “qualia” category (with the values of “undefined”, “sensation”, “perception” and “affect”) is reserved for feelings, emotions and their perception. 5The Oxford Dictionary Online defines it as: “The mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.”

7  Science Fiction versus Fantasy: A Semantic Categorization …     199

– “Qualia:sensation” accommodates feelings that are experienced physically or perceived with the body, as for example , or . – “Qualia:perception” is designed for mental representations of a sensation. It includes activities by which a subject or being experiences objects and activities based on inputs from the sense organs: seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling, for example or . – “Qualia:affect” categorizes patterns involving feelings and emotions as well as psychological states which vary in their intensity and are generally experienced as positive or negative by an animate subject (being). They may be connected to a source (a cause or an object), inserted in a temporal frame and incapable of being observed directly: , , .

3.4 “Place” and “Time” The category “place” classifies a place or location. Objects (for example pieces of furniture: ) are mostly excluded, except when they imply a place, for example, doors and windows when they are used with a verb and a preposition of location to imply a place ( but not ). “Place” frequently is a second category, as for example in , or . “Time” categorizes patterns which are about time or have at least a temporal component: , . In the latter case they are classified as “time” as a second category: , .

3.5 “Other” The category “other” is a mixed bag category of patterns without an identified suitable category, even though they may be of interest otherwise. This often includes highly polysemous patterns, for example, NP + is which could be classified as a state (), an action () or a qualia (). Idiomatic and other fixed expressions like

200     V. Goossens et al.

find a home in this category. We will discuss the content of the category “other” for English science fiction in the next section. It bears repeating here that we developed this semantic classification on the basis of our data not as a theoretical exercise but as a practical tool for an initial categorization of the large number of patterns we extracted during the project. Like any annotation, this categorization necessarily emphasizes certain semantic characteristics of our patterns (actions for example, important in analyzing fiction) while it deemphasizes others. Simply put, the grid had to remain manageable, given that the RLTs had to be annotated manually.6 The RLTs we extracted from our corpus are first in the queue as the project team begins the semantic analysis. Categorizing them necessarily precedes the identification and analysis of motifs (see Chapter 2 by Legallois and Koch in this volume) with discursive functions (see Appendix B for definitions and Chapter 8 by Sorba et al. in this volume for an exemplary analysis) and a second phase of semantic description. In the following section, we will show how this first rough semantic categorization can serve as a relevant space for negotiation between disciplines in a project like ours and thus provide a basis for further analysis of specific patterns in contemporary literature.

3.6 Application of the Semantic Grid to Science Fiction and Fantasy in French and in English We had the semantic grid manually applied to the French and English extractions (described in Table 2) by three annotators and then double-checked by one of them. As Table 4 shows, for the semantic classification of French patterns7 some categories appear more frequently

6We

are currently working on the development of a script which will allow semi-automatic annotation of RLTs based on the first annotations performed on genre pairs and using a vector analysis of the similarity of our RLTs. 7We note that the total number of semantic dimensions is higher than the number of extracted RLTs presented in Table 2: this is due to the double categorization of some RLTs presented in Sect. 3.

7  Science Fiction versus Fantasy: A Semantic Categorization …     201 Table 4  Classification of patterns by semantic dimension for French science fiction and fantasy 'LPHQVLRQV

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relative to some genres than others. While some dimensions— “action:other” (although in greater numbers in fantasy than in science fiction), “event” and “communication:verbal”—occur quite frequently for both genres (highlighted in green in the table), other categories are over-represented in one genre as opposed to the other, namely: “action:movement” and “action:travel” for fantasy (highlighted in yellow) and “cognition” for science fiction (in pink). Finally, between

202     V. Goossens et al.

10–15% of patterns wound up in “other” or “-”. We found similar distributions of those two last categories for other pairs of genres (see, for example, Goossens et al. 2018; Gonon et al. 2018 for application of a previous version of the semantic grid). The results for the English corpus shown in Table 5 turned out similar to those for the French corpus albeit with slight differences: the Table 5  Classification of RLTs by semantic dimension for English science fiction and fantasy 'LPHQVLRQV

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7  Science Fiction versus Fantasy: A Semantic Categorization …     203

“action:other” category, while frequently occurring for both genres, as in French, did so more often for fantasy. The “event” category is rarer (but, as in French, nearly identical for fantasy and science fiction); however, the incidence of “state” is quite high for both science fiction and fantasy (almost always with “place” as a second category). The “place” category, almost non-existent in French, is prevalent in English. As in French, the “action:movement” category is highly specific to fantasy in English but “action:travel” is not important. “Communication:verbal”, a common dimension for French, in English is specific to fantasy. As in French, “cognition” is the only over-represented dimension for science fiction. The most voluminous category for English science fiction is “other”, capturing more than 38% of RLTs. This is a much higher proportion than was found for both French science fiction and other genres in previous studies. We will have more to say about RLTs in this category in Sect. 4.1.3. We follow this overview of semantic dimension classifications with a contrastive approach to demonstrate the grid’s potential contribution to distinguishing science fiction from fantasy. The two tables above seem to show that the major differences exist between science fiction and fantasy rather than between French and English. In the next sections, we will propose both a stylistic analysis of these genre differences and discuss what the classification of RLTs with our semantic grid revealed.

4 Contribution to Differentiating Science Fiction and Fantasy in French and in English In our introduction, we labeled the science fiction and fantasy genres as belonging to the “littérature de l’imaginaire”, an editorial category that emphasizes the similarities of novels whose plot and characters help construct an imaginary world. But there are also important theoretical distinctions between these two genres, for example, in the way each of them represents the world.

204     V. Goossens et al.

The traditional elements invoked to establish distinctions within the massive and disparate corpus are often simplistic. The main difference claimed is a conflict between the science in science fiction and the magic in fantasy. Also implied is the perhaps more convenient opposition between rational sense on the one hand and imagination on the other that Besson calls “régimes de sens” (that is, opposing schemes for representing reality and its comprehension, Besson 2007). But, more recent literary analysis points out that the difference may instead lie in the way we read the genres (Saint-Gelais 1999). This difference would seem to let us examine the specificities of each of these genres most effectively. Saint-Gelais explained that science fiction and fantasy offer readers opposite experiences: where science fiction initiates awareness or attentiveness in the reader’s mind, fantasy books play with his confidence and his euphoria. For instance, while a science fiction reader is often on the look-out for clues to understand and discuss the scientific explanation of a story based on the strange and unusual, a reader of fantasy is supposed to accept magic and supernatural events as factual. The reader must therefore trust the writer’s fiction as a valid experience. For this type of analysis, linguistic and stylistic criteria seem to be somewhat secondary despite the fact that lexical creativity is really important in both of these genres. Obviously, science fiction novels are expected to resort much more to scientific expressions, while fantasy novels are more likely to draw from mythical and historical references (medieval ones, for example, in heroic fantasy). Hence, thematic elements could really be discriminative here and some lexical studies (Eco 1979; Saint-Gelais 1999, see also Chapter 6 by Gonon and Kraif in this volume) show more precisely which xenoencyclopedia is used in each case. We assume here that our phraseological approach will allow us to go beyond a lexical study by highlighting recurrent RLTs specific to several different novels of the same genre. In the course of our semantic annotation, several important categories emerged as specific to fantasy or science fiction. Therefore, we can draw a distinction between results that we called generic markers and other results that were less expected than those.

7  Science Fiction versus Fantasy: A Semantic Categorization …     205

4.1 Generic Markers Because they belong to popular fiction, science fiction and especially fantasy are often considered as more stereotypical than what is normally understood by literary fiction. Stereotyped structure and form are frequently associated with popular novels. They are considered to be part of “successful recipes”, and it would probably be interesting to discuss these stereotypical ideas and expressions given the importance ascribed to building a reader’s encyclopedia (see, for example, Baroni on crime novels, 2003, 145). But, our aim here is not to draw out clichés about these two genres, rather it is to analyze how the phraseological approach based on the semantic grid allows us to compare science fiction and fantasy by using linguistic criteria. We therefore define generic markers as RLTs that are specific to science fiction or fantasy, that are expected to be specific, and furthermore are included in certain topical actions or referential description that immediately allow us to distinguish between the two genres.

4.1.1 Traveling in Science Fiction and Fantasy The fantasy corpus in French especially is characterized by a greater number of RLTs than the science fiction corpus. These RLTs cover a wide variety of actions, both in French and English, and particularly in the French “action:travel” category, where they account for 13% of the RLTs whereas with 2% this category is almost absent in English. These types of actions heavily involve prototypical situations and places: many relevant RLTs, at times suitable for grouping as motifs, signal travel through or within a specific landscape like forests, woods, occasional castles or battlefields, et cetera. For instance, as in this motif: – s’enfoncer | sortir | pénétrer dans la forêt | les bois (to disappear into | to leave | to enter the forest | the woods)

The forest appears here as a particularly wild, mysterious or frightening place; the functions performed by these motifs bear comparison with

206     V. Goossens et al.

certain contrasting actions that characterize leaving a city (RLTs like , leave the city). The French corpus also points to the importance of the different stages of the travel and includes mentions of trips to an inn (l’auberge the hostel) or to a room (la chambre the room). However, this contrasting travel through the woods and through cities is not evident in the English corpus. Here we find as the only specific RLT showing a character’s movement. Just like the inn and the room, it serves as a quiet interlude and, in this latter instance, as a break when people prepare something to eat. Several RLTs point to another specific locational aspect: the French corpus often shows specific movements on stairs (both up and down). It serves especially to underline the characters’ haste and excitement: – grimper | descendre | dévaler | les marches | escaliers (climbing | going down | running down steps | stairs)

Similarly, from the English corpus we extracted the motif walk up | climb the steps | stairs (with three RLTs out of four in this category). The “action:travel” category is much less present in the French science fiction corpus (5%) and, once again, nearly absent from the English one (5 RLTs representing less than 3%). In the French corpus, the RLTs point in a very different direction: people are crossing the sky, moving into space, or traveling in time (traverser | flotter | voyager dans l’espace | le temps, to cross | to float | to travel in space | time). Science fiction characters also set a course for new destinations: (set a course), (put into orbit). The English corpus includes one thematic generic marker () but, once again, the RLTs here are not as varied as in the French corpus and therefore play less of a role. Various “action:travel” items focus especially on speed: , or . However, understanding these less diversified results in the English corpus requires analyzing another important category: “place”. A considerable number of the English corpus RLTs code as “place” both for fantasy (7%) and science fiction (8%). In French, these RLTs only

7  Science Fiction versus Fantasy: A Semantic Categorization …     207

represent 3% of science fiction and 1% of fantasy RLTs. This label almost always appears in tandem with a second category, mainly “state” ( for example). Although it is not the main category (the place not being conveyed by the verb), it plays an important role in our two genres as a generic marker. It serves to emphasize in particular the landscapes we previously described (for example woods, mountains and roads for fantasy), which is characteristic of science fiction. The xenoencyclopedia described by Saint-Gelais plays a major role here as the following motif shows: be in | on orbit | cabin | system | galaxy | universe | board | the surface | planet | the ship.

4.1.2 “Action:movement” as a Category for Distinguishing Between Genres and Between Languages At first glance, this category seems to be distributed in a similar way in the two genres in both French and English: it constituted 12% of the RLTs in fantasy (in French and in English), 3% (English) and 4% (French) for science fiction. But, on closer examination, we realize that once again the French corpus presents a large number of very specific RLTs; especially striking is the over-representation of aggressive and warlike movements, from the hostile RLT (to clench your fist), to putting [the hand] on the sword hilt), , and (he takes up a defensive stance, ducking to avoid [something] and dodging the attack). These kinds of movements are quantitatively as well as qualitatively relevant in this context, and we can consider them as generic markers. However, we exclude the English fantasy corpus from this because there they did not emerge as RLTs. Similarly, many movements in the French fantasy corpus express deference or submission (whether granted or imposed). Their expression involves several actions of the gaze direction, such as baisser les yeux | le regard (look down) and movements implying more or less ritualized gestures of prostration: (curtsy),

208     V. Goossens et al.

(to bow down before him), (to kneel [before]), baisser | incliner la tête (to bow the head). In the English corpus, such acts of submission are not specific, as we found earlier in the case of warlike actions. The only exceptions may be the two RLTs and . Most of the specific RLTs for English fantasy are parts of interactions and are highly expressive, especially since they imply movements of the face (eyes, nose, lips, teeth, etc.). They express contentment (to clap | rub his hands (together) ), enthusiasm or empathy ( often followed by cheerfully ), amazement (, ), disappointment and pain () or bitterness (). These kinds of expressive movements are also reflected in the French RLTs but our results indicate that the French corpus offers more intense and varied examples than the English corpus. Therefore, this category appears as more generically marked in French than in English. To conclude, the results in English fantasy are quite comparable to the science fiction corpora, both in English and in French. They mostly share features, such as movements to reinforce interactions between two characters, for instance, or in the English science fiction corpus and, in the French science fiction corpus, (to shrug one’s shoulders), (I shake my head), (he turns to me) and (turns his back on me) and actions to sit down somewhere.

4.1.3 “Action:other” and “State”: Two Other Categories Supporting the Theory of Generic Markers These two categories can also be analyzed as a pair because they contain a large number of RLTs that converge in building a typical universe. In effect, they combine various subcategories of RLTs, several of which qualify as generic markers in both French and English. In the fantasy corpus we observed numerous other RLTs related to war activity. The “action:other” category contains a lot of fight actions that form several motifs like dégainer | sortir | tirer | lever | lâcher son épée (to draw a sword) and trancher | briser la gorge | la nuque | le cou | les os

7  Science Fiction versus Fantasy: A Semantic Categorization …     209

(slit | break the throat | neck | bones). We also find some RLTs evoking the effects of the fights in “state”: être couvert | maculé | éclaboussé de sang (be covered | stained | splashed with blood), (to riddle with arrows). These war activities are also very well represented in the “event” category (over-represented for fantasy and also for science fiction, but only in French): la lame | flèche s’enfonce | s’abat | tranche | se fiche (the blade | arrow goes in | slices | crashes | embeds itself in), (blood is flowing), (to bleed out), et cetera. A second set of interesting RLTs, emerging from the latter two categories in the French corpus, designate a set of characters related to royal or religious institutions and functions: être le roi | la reine | le fils | l’Élu | le Seigneur | l’héritière and the like (to be the king | the queen | the son | the chosen one | the Lord | the heir). This set of RLTs, which relate to characters typical of fantasy, could be expanded if we look at the category “other” which includes a large number of semantically unclassifiable RLTs of the type la sorcière | le mage | la princesse | le chevalier | la souveraine est | a (the witch | the magician | the princess | the knight | the sovereign is | has). In this category, we also find RLTs containing topical clues such as dragons or monsters. Finally, the “action:other” category offers us descriptive elements related to clothing (, to wear on the belt, porter une armure | tunique | robe, to wear armor | a tunic | a dress) that also tend to be quite typical. In the fantasy English corpus, some RLTs in “action:other” offer up a medieval vocabulary: , , , or . The “state” category does not feature social or religious positions; all the states in the English corpus, both in FY and SF, indicate geographical positions. Nevertheless, the category “other”, like in French, offers a great diversity of characters and functions characteristic of the genre: the horse | dragon | beast | demon | warrior rider | king | priest is. The science fiction corpus shows other similarities between French and English. Indeed, in both languages, we find many similar RLTs in the “action:other” category that are linked to acts involving technological objects, for example appuyer | presser | pianoter (sur) le bouton | les touches | le clavier | la détente (press | touch (on) the button | the keys |

210     V. Goossens et al.

the keyboard | the trigger) and , , to look | stare | point at the screen; couper | mettre le contact | moteur (turn off | switch on the ignition | engine). We also find equivalent motifs for both languages in the “event” category, such as l’écran | la lampe | le voyant | la lumière s’allume | s’éteint (the screen | the lamp | the indicator | the light comes on | goes off) and the lights came | reflect; or (the screen shows); la porte | portière | le sas s’ouvre | coulisse (the door | the airlock opens | slides) and . Unlike in the fantasy corpus, very few references to clothing or social positions are found in French science fiction and then only in the categories “action:other”, “state” and “other”, for example: (dressed in a jumpsuit), le president est | fait (the president is | does), être le directeur | un spécialiste (to be the director | a specialist). Suffice it to note that these are important functions and indicators of competence or responsibility. In English, the category “action:other” does not contain any elements relating to clothing and the category “state” contains only geographical positions. Moreover, we find only two examples referring to a social position (, ). Similar to Sect. 3.6, the category “other” is also much bigger here compared to the other genres regardless of language. Also, to be found here are RLTs containing the extremely polysemous verbs to be and to have. This unfortunately does not allow us to make a semantic classification, but it nevertheless does offer a fairly typical panorama of science fiction usage, with characters (the crew | government | captain is ), equipment (camera | pod | computer | building is ), space references (the moon | stars is/are ) and a set of RLTs relating to space travel (the temperature | pressure | atmosphere | gravity is ). From this panorama stems the rather stereotypical aspect of fantasy RLTs, especially in French, which immediately guides our reception of the reading material towards fantasy medievalism, a phenomenon well-described in various studies. As the medieval universe is not the only source of inspiration for fantasy (refer to the other subcategories represented in our corpus in Sect. 2), we should not conclude that fantasy is more stereotypical or more generically marked than science fiction. This is why we focus on generic markers: nothing about these observations is really novel, but they allow us to emphasize some

7  Science Fiction versus Fantasy: A Semantic Categorization …     211

topical motifs. In the next section, we will show that the proposed semantic categorization also sets the stage for less predictable results to emerge.

4.2 Less Expected Similarities and Differences In our semantic profiles (see Tables 4 and 5) two categories appear that we did not expect to be significant: “cognition”, which is more frequent in science fiction, and “communication:verbal”, which is found equally in both genres in French and is specific to fantasy in English.

4.2.1 Decision-Making in Science Fiction and Fantasy The “cognition” category is a dimension specific to science fiction, both in the French corpus (18.5% of RLTs) and in the English corpus (8.67%). The first observation regarding this category in science fiction reveals a specific “profile” which seems to support the opposition of reading postures—the reader’s “awareness” in science fiction and his “confidence” in fantasy (Besson 2007; Saint-Gelais 1999)—which serve as a criterion for distinguishing science fiction from fantasy. This is of interest to us because of how – the RLTs highlight a certain definition of thinking (they can be contrasted with the RLTs of the fantasy corpus), – they emphasize the mobilization of thinking and, more specifically in the case of science fiction, how thinking is a rational process involving the construction of logical reasoning. The RLTs in the French science fiction corpus do not take the noun pensée (thought) as their nominal pivot. Instead, they focus more on acts of analyzing things: (he calculated), (he’s trying to understand), (he deduced from it). Thinking is therefore a tool of rationality that makes it possible to

212     V. Goossens et al.

assume, know and invent: , , . The RLTs most representative of our science fiction corpus highlight the development of intellectual reasoning: (to devise), trouver la solution | le moyen (to find the solution | the way to) and (he becomes aware of something). These various features are shared with the English corpus, where we find , or to construct a reasoning or argumentation, as in this example: (1) Fedotik said, quickly, We have considered the possibility and have a solution which we hope will meet with your approval. (Tubb Angado, 1984)

It is noteworthy that the French fantasy corpus contains very different information on all aspects of the representation of thinking. Very much akin to imagination and dreams, it is a territory in which one can travel and even lose oneself: plongé | perdu dans ses pensées (immersed | lost in his thoughts), (pull him out of his thoughts), (he comes to his senses) or reporter | attirer son attention (report | draw his attention). The time and memory dimension also confirms this interpretation, since it concerns (to imagine the worst), (take time to think) and (to keep a memory). The English corpus of science fiction, while more or less sharing the traits of the French corpus, differs by also pointing to the intellectual results of reasoning with, for example, or . As demonstrated by our extracted RLTs, fantasy leaves room for instinct, whereas science fiction relies on the construction of knowledge through intentionally factual clues. It should also be noted that awareness in French science fiction is pervaded by essentially dysphoric feelings or thoughts. It does not highlight hope or joyful discovery, but rather relates the character to a (sad) reality of deficiencies, gaps and errors that are sometimes difficult to admit, hence the temporal leap underlined by the motif.

7  Science Fiction versus Fantasy: A Semantic Categorization …     213

The absence of the “cognition” category from the fantasy corpus raises questions about how the decision-making process works in these novels. The observation of the other categories of RLTs recurrent in fantasy possibly furnishes an answer: decision-making is linked to actions leading to a perception. That is, the characters take in perceptual clues to interpret and understand a situation and choose a path to follow. For example, in the French fantasy, the motif humer l’air (sniff the air) takes place before someone decides which road to take or which stance to adopt (hostile or friendly), as shown in example (2). (2) La reine se remit en marche, consciente, cette fois, guettant les bruits, humant l’air tel un chien de chasse, s’orientant au soleil ou à la mousse des arbres pour sortir de Brocéliande. (Fetjaine La trilogie des elfes 2 La nuit des elfes, 1999) (The queen set off again, wide awake this time, alert to noises, sniffing the air like a hunting dog, orienting herself by the sun or the moss on the trees to get out of Brocéliande.)

Finally, a set of fantasy RLTs mixing action and perception clearly stands out in the category “action:other” in French, with and inspirer profondément | prendre une (profonde | grande) inspiration (inhale deeply | take a (deep) breath), (take a look), (observe the scene), scruter l’horizon | les alentours (scan the horizon | the surroundings). Similar examples occur in the English fantasy corpus with have | give a look, look | stare for a moment | a bit, and . Hence, we can say that the analysis of this category is quite productive and rich in generic markers.

4.2.2 “Communication” in Science Fiction and Fantasy RLTs we found in the “communication” category generated a number of unanticipated observations. In French, the “communication” category is equally represented in both genres but focuses on two different ways of communicating in them.

214     V. Goossens et al.

Physical communication is sparsely represented, especially in science fiction, but raises some interesting points of difference. In science fiction the most specific RLTs are (shaking the head) and (shrugging the shoulders) that are communicative movements not necessarily directed at anyone and not involving physical contact. This RLT type is much more diverse in fantasy. We found communication without physical contact but directed to another person: adresser | jeter | échanger | accorder un regard | signe de tête (address | throw | exchange | give a look | nod), (do a curtsy), et cetera. We also discovered a good number of RLTs implying physical contact: (he kisses him), (kissing (on the forehead)), (caress his cheek), (put a hand on a shoulder), et cetera. Verbal communication, by contrast, is a prominent category in both subgenres. Examining the patterns in this category reveals very different modes of communication: in science fiction we find patterns around distance communication—laisser | recevoir un message (leave | receive a message), établir le contact | couper la communication (establish contact | disconnect the call). We also noticed many generic verbs or interaction-structuring verbs: dire d’une voix | sur un ton (say in a voice | in a tone of voice), (I want to talk about), (ask the question), mettre au courant | signaler | faire allusion | faire la remarque (inform | report | refer to | make the remark). Fantasy offers us a much more diversified panorama, especially in terms of sound volume. Naturally, we have motifs built around neutral communication verbs: dire, parler, demander, prendre | reprendre la parole, et cetera (say, speak, ask, begin to speak (again)). We also have RLTs involving moral commitment: je (te le) promets | j’en fais le serment | la promesse, je (dois) avouer (I promise you, I swear to you, make the promise, I must confess). Finally, we can note a whole range of speaking modalities: – Silences: garder | imposer le silence (to remain silent), le silence tombe | s’installe (the silence falls | settles in), (mark a pause time), – Murmurs: (murmurs rise),

7  Science Fiction versus Fantasy: A Semantic Categorization …     215

– Shouts: pousser un cri de guerre | rage | douleur | un hennissement | rugissement | grognement, hurler de terreur | rage (shout a war cry | rage | pain | neighing | roar | growl, scream with terror | rage), étouffer un cri (mute a scream), et cetera. This over-representation of the affects and attitudes of FY characters, as illustrated in the following example 3, is consistent with the results presented for French in Chapter 4 by Diwersy et al. in this volume for the study of direct speech verbs in three subgenres including fantasy (as opposed to romance and crime novels). (3) Il poussa d’abord un cri de surprise, puis de dégoût, et lança les reptiles grouillants sur le sol en cherchant le coupable des yeux. (Robillard Les Chevaliers d’émeraude 3. Piège au Royaume des ombres, 2003) (First he shouted with surprise, then with disgust, and threw the swarming reptiles on the ground, looking for the culprit.)

In English, the landscape of RLTs denoting verbal communication (physical communication is almost completely absent) differs on two levels from the French. First, the “communication:verbal” category contains RLTs only for fantasy, almost none specific to science fiction, like (alongside “communication:undefined” RLTs such as and able | try to communicate ). Before attempting to explain this phenomenon, we must first look at the RLTs specific to fantasy. Unlike in the French corpus, in English 17 of the 30 RLTs annotated as indicating verbal communication are built around the verb to say: the boy | girl | old man, et cetera says, to say the words, to say (in) a voice. Furthermore, the other RLTs do not reveal semantically homogeneous subgroups as is the case in French, even if there are these similarities: moral commitment ( and ) and speaking modalities (, , ). These two findings once again are consistent with the results presented in Chapter 4 by Diwersy et al. in this volume. Where, on the one hand, fantasy in both French and English seems to differ from other

216     V. Goossens et al.

genres in terms of communication verbs, English, and in particular English fantasy, on the other hand diverges from French by overusing generic verbs and especially the verb to say. This preference for the verb to say is a possible explanation for the absence of RLTs denoting verbal communication in science fiction.8 These initial results concerning both convergences and divergences with regard to communication in the fantasy genre in the French and English-speaking traditions merit being developed further in the rest of the project. Having completed our analysis of fantasy and science fiction using semantic categorization, we will now turn to the methodological implications of our approach.

5 Methodological Outlook The semantic grid we presented in this article, while admittedly suffering from some limitations, is nevertheless an effective tool for analyzing fiction. Negotiated within a multidisciplinary team of researchers, it raises the following issues: – Methodological: how to put into perspective and apply achievements and concepts of corpus semantics to the statistical extraction of RLTs? – Practical: how to describe the results and problems specific to each pilot study which used the semantic grid? – Interpretative: how to find interesting and relevant items for the extended stylistic study of the selected corpus? The complexity of the semantic classification is also driven by that of the PhraseoRom project itself, whereby the latter applies the statistical research methodology of extracting lexico-grammatically complex RLTs

8Since French is characterized by a great lexical diversity around the verbs of speaking, we can observe a distribution of RLTs in the different genres. The fact that the English novel gives prominence to the verb to say means that, if we compare two corpora as in this article, the RLTs built around this verb, although found in both sets of novels, are considered specific to fantasy because of a greater number of occurrences.

7  Science Fiction versus Fantasy: A Semantic Categorization …     217

in studying the heterogeneous corpora of multilingual narrative fiction (see Chapter 2 by Legallois and Koch in this volume). The complexity of the semantic grid in turn raises a number of other questions: 1. Should we use and/or adapt existing semantic grids, singly or in combination, that were proven and tested on other projects? We were unable to find grids that we could use “as is” for our project, which forced us to develop a methodology that would integrate pre-existing semantic typologies (for example Mahlberg 2007), but, above all, would let us devise our own semantic categories. The main issue was that the categories we selected, even if they did not per se present an impeccable semantic typology, had to be relevant and effective for working on our specific PhraseoRom corpus while also reflecting its inherently complex multilingual and contrasting dimension. 2. How should the semantic grid allow for and integrate the results of the pilot studies that it was used for? Our answer here is that the grid will benefit from the results of studies which use it and will be adapted accordingly. 3. How and to what extent should the semantic grid deal with the discursive specificity of the texts in the PhraseoRom corpus, which is composed of several subgenres that differ greatly from contemporary narrative fiction. For example, should we create a semantic subcategory based on the analysis of a specific subgenre or not? 4. How to analyze sometimes incomplete structures (for example (that she wears/carries/holds), which can correspond to sequences as varied as l’enfant qu’elle porte (the child she is carrying)/qu’elle porte la main à son coeur (that she holds her hand to her heart)/qu’elle n’a jamais porté de chaussures (that she’s never worn shoes before), et cetera) or, on the other hand, very rich structures (for example (she adds with a smile)) that combine verbal and physical communication and facial movement? Or, for that matter, how should we approach structures that combine polysemy and complex meanings (for example , which can refer either to an action that combines movement with

218     V. Goossens et al.

another type of action (he starts again) or a qualia that combines sensation and affect (he recovers))? Indeed, our methodology for extracting RLTs implies giving consideration to both the lexical basis of the structures and a more abstract morpho-syntactic framework for them (see Chapter 2 by Legallois and Koch in this volume). The available space for this article precludes our addressing all these questions in detail here, but we will take up some of them in what follows. The current version of the semantic grid reflects the experience gathered in the course of its practical application. It benefited from the negotiations with and feedback from its users relating to its categories. Part of the process consisted of holding corpus harmonization meetings for solving annotation problems specific to each language and subgenre we studied. The bottom line is that the semantic grid is well on its way to becoming one of the essential tools for harmonizing the PhraseoRom project in its multiple contrasting dimensions. The example of the “action” category can be instructive in this regard. We divided it into four different subcategories: “action:travel”, “action:movement”, “action:other” and “action:undefined”. The distribution into those four action categories relates to the specificity of the PhraseoRom corpus and, indeed, dovetails with that project’s inherent interpretative choice of analyzing works of fiction. As normally happens in any annotation process (Rastier 2001; Bachimont 2014), the choices we made in ours may have filtered out a certain number of results yet they also produced just as many new ones. To summarize, our results are conditioned by corpus-specific research issues and the above-mentioned steps involved in negotiating the semantic grid. To recap, the “action:movement” and “action:travel” subcategories make it possible to describe in detail actions that seemed characteristic of the subgenres analyzed by the PhraseoRom project. This distribution within the “action” category also holds the potential for making our annotation system interoperable: to reflect the different semantic characteristics of such different fiction subgenres as historical novels, romance, crime fiction, fantasy, science fiction or general literary fiction without overwriting them.

7  Science Fiction versus Fantasy: A Semantic Categorization …     219

To sum up, the heuristic contribution of our semantic grid confirms hypotheses created by extant literary analyses. This is particularly evident in our section on generic markers. Admittedly, some of the results are expected but, thanks to our extraction methodology, they can be seen as confirming the reading hypotheses that allow us to distinguish science fiction and fantasy in that respect. Furthermore, it brings out other, less expected categories such as “cognition” and “communication:verbal”. Finally, it allows us to discuss some results (such as the contents of the categories “action:other” and “event”), to examine them more closely, and to refer to the meaning of certain RLTs and their discursive function in context. For instance, it makes the distinction between English and French as well as the discursive and lexical particularity of fantasy especially interesting to describe.

6 Conclusion Our analysis of RLTs and motifs in this article has allowed us to distinguish the two subgenres science fiction and fantasy that make up the “littérature de l’imaginaire”. In follow up, we propose to refine these literary “profiles” by comparing each specific subgenre with the entire PhraseoRom corpus. This will better highlight their phraseological similarities and question their common points by problematizing them. Literary critics do not rely on linguistic differences to distinguish between science fiction and fantasy but instead on an opposition of the imaginary and of reader experience. Our semantic analyses yielded the following: they made it possible to highlight what we term generic markers (the medievalism of fantasy, the salience of specific spaces (space, forest) and certain so-called stereotypical actions—for instance, the warlike dimension of fantasy actions). Our analyses also confirmed the distinction between two “régimes de sens” expressed in the two distinct categories of cognition in science fiction and the perceptual dimension of “action:other” in fantasy. Finally, we observed that the line separating the two genres is generally respected in both the French and English corpora. However, if

220     V. Goossens et al.

we examine certain categories closely (such as “cognition” and especially “communication”), we see specificities pertaining to each language emerge between the English and the French corpus. Going forward, we plan to study the PhraseoRom’s remaining genres using the methodology developed for the present analysis. After completing this project, we will be in a position to determine if our semantic grid is a suitable tool for surfacing distinctions between other genres as relevant as those we were able to draw between science fiction and fantasy.

References Adam, Jean-Michel. 2005. Les Textes: types et prototypes. Récit, description, argumentation, explication et dialogue. Paris: Armand Colin. Bachimont, Bruno. 2014. “Le Nominalisme et la culture: questions posées par les enjeux du numérique.” In Digital Studies: Organologie des savoirs et technologies de la connaissance, edited by Bernard Stiegler, 63–78. Paris: FYP Editions. Baroni, Raphaël. 2003. “Genres littéraires et orientation de la lecture: Une lecture modèle de ‘La mort et la boussole’ de J.L. Borges.” Poétique 134: 141–57. Baudou, Jacques. 2005. La Fantasy. Paris: PUF. Bazin, Laurent. 2015. “Pluralité des mondes, porosité des genres: poétique du possible dans les littératures contemporaines de l’imaginaire.” In Poétiques du merveilleux: Fantastique, science-fiction, fantasy et littérature et dans les arts visuels, edited by Anne Besson and Évelyne Jacquelin, 107–20. Arras: Artois Presses Université. Besson, Anne. 2007. La Fantasy: 50 Questions. Paris: Klincksieck. Cornillon, Claire. 2012. Par-delà l’infini: La Spiritualité dans la sciencefiction française, anglaise et américaine. PhD diss., Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris III. Eco, Umberto. 1979. Lector in fabula. Paris: Livre de Poche. Gonon, Laetitia, Vannina Goossens, Olivier Kraif, Iva Novakova, and Julie Sorba. 2018. “Motifs textuels spécifiques au genre policier et à la littérature «blanche».” In 6ème Congrès Mondial de Linguistique Française, edited by Franck Neveu, Bernard Harmegnies, Linda Hriba, and Sophie Prévost.

7  Science Fiction versus Fantasy: A Semantic Categorization …     221

SHS Web of Conferences 46: https://www.shs-conferences.org/articles/ shsconf/pdf/2018/07/shsconf_cmlf2018_06007.pdf. Goossens, Vannina, Clémence Jacquot, and Iva Novakova. 2018. “Distinguer les genres de la littérature de l’imaginaire par les motifs textuels.” Journée d’étude Lexique et frontières de genres. Pau, 22 March 2018. Hommel, Élodie. 2017. Lectures de science-fiction et fantasy: enquête sociologique sur les réceptions et appropriations des littératures de l’imaginaire. PhD diss., Université de Lyon. Mahlberg, Michaela. 2007. “Corpus Stylistics: Bridging the Gap between Linguistics and Literary Studies.” In Text, Discourse and Corpora: Theory and Analysis, edited by Michael Hoey, Michaela Mahlberg, Michael Stubbs, and Wolfgang Teubert, 219–47. London: Continuum. Oxford Living Dictionaries English. “Cognition.” Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/cognition (Oxford dictionary online). Rastier, François. 2001. Arts et science du texte. Paris: PUF. Saint-Gelais, Richard. 1999. L’Empire du pseudo. Modernités de la sciencefiction. Québec: Nota Bene. Torres, Anita. 1997. La science-fiction française, Auteurs et amateurs d’un genre littéraire, Logiques sociales. Paris: L’Harmattan.

8 Reading and Writing as Motifs in English and French General Fiction Julie Sorba, Laetitia Gonon, Susanne Dyka and Vannina Goossens

1 Introduction To study the phraseology of literary fiction in this chapter we use the crime novels corpus as a contrast corpus. Previously, Gonon et al. (2018) identified specific phraseological units for literary fiction (GEN) as opposed to those of crime novels (CRIM) in French. These units take the form of Lexico-Syntactic Constructions (LSC) with the core verb J. Sorba (*) · L. Gonon · V. Goossens  University Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France e-mail: [email protected] L. Gonon e-mail: [email protected] V. Goossens e-mail: [email protected] S. Dyka  Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 I. Novakova and D. Siepmann (eds.), Phraseology and Style in Subgenres of the Novel, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23744-8_8

223

224     J. Sorba et al.

écrire: écrire_DET_lettre (write_DET_letter ) and écrire_DET_roman (write_DET_novel ). Their study revealed that these constructions implement specific motifs in literary novels. The way authors depict fictional (roman ) or intimate (lettre ) writing activities in them clearly shows the attention they pay to how the language works. Building on those previous results, in this paper we aim to compare the LSCs centred on the French verbs lire and écrire to similar constructions around read and write in English novels. This will let us analyze the role they play in the structuring of French and English novels. We begin by presenting first the theoretical framework of our study (Sect. 2), then the corpora and the text mining methodology we applied to them (Sect. 3) and, finally, our results (Sect. 4).

2 Theoretical Framework Since Sinclair’s pioneering approach (1991) to studying phraseological units, the field has evolved from dealing with “lexical sequences perceived as preconstructed” (Legallois and Tutin 2013, 3, our translation) to one expanded with diversified objects of study: La phraséologie intègre désormais des objets d’étude très variés, allant des collocations aux séquences discursives en passant par la parémiologie, ou encore, les schémas syntaxiques. Les approches proposées s’étendent maintenant au-delà des disciplines traditionnelles de la lexicologie, de la syntaxe et de la sémantique, et abordent largement la linguistique du discours, la psycholinguistique ou la linguistique informatique (Legallois and Tutin 2013, 3). (Phraseology now includes a wide range of study objects, from collocations to discursive sequences, paremiology and syntactic patterns. The proposed approaches now extend beyond the traditional disciplines of lexicology, syntax and semantics, and broadly address the linguistics of discourse, psycholinguistics or computer linguistics, our translation.)

This diversification has been accompanied by an exponential growth in the terminology as recently surveyed by Zaharieva and KaldievaZaharieva (2017). We adopt here for our purpose an expansive

8  Reading and Writing as Motifs in English and French General …     225

approach to the phraseology that Novakova and Sorba (2018, 55) in their study on the emotional lexicon showed was relevant for analyzing discursive phenomena: “Le sens des lexies d’affect en discours peut être envisagé comme un phénomène continu opérant sur différents niveaux qui interagissent entre eux et qui mettent en jeu des unités de rangs différents (syntagme, phrase, paragraphe, texte).” (The meaning of the emotional lexicon in discourse can be seen as a continuous phenomenon operating on different levels that interact with each other and involve units of different levels (phrase, sentence, paragraph, text), our translation). Therefore, since we are interested in the functioning of phraseological units at both the microstructural (phrase, sentence) and macrostructural (paragraph, text) levels, we adopt a global approach inspired by British functionalist and contextualist models (Sinclair 2004; Hoey 2005; Mahlberg 2007). At the microstructural level, we consider phraseology, as Grossmann et al. (2017, 7) do, as “la congruence à la fois syntaxique et sémantique qui lie les unités lexicales entre elles pour donner lieu à des unités polylexicales qui se distinguent par une fixité d’emploi conditionnant leur fonctionnement interne et leur combinatoire externe.” (The syntactic and semantic congruence that binds lexical units together to give rise to polylexical units that are distinguished by a fixed use conditioning their internal functioning and external combinatory, our translation.) Consequently, we propose as the first step in our analysis a detailed study of the lexico-syntactic combinations of the different units in both corpora. Following Blumenthal, we consider the combinatory of a lexeme to be its statistically significant association with specific collocates (Blumenthal 2006, 15). This will allow us to determine how the LSCs operate phraseologically and how each of them “prime to occur” with particular other lexical units (Hoey 2005). Our goal is to discover whether these LSCs are part of an extended phraseological unit that we call motif after Longrée and Mellet (2013, 66): [L]a notion de motif est conçue comme un moyen de conceptualiser la multidimensionnalité (ou le caractère multi-niveau) de certaines formes récurrentes qui sollicitent à la fois le lexique, les catégories grammaticales et la syntaxe, éventuellement la prosodie, la métrique. … un motif admet

226     J. Sorba et al.

toutefois divers types de variations et sa micro-structure combine à la fois des éléments de stabilité assurant sa mémorisation et sa reconnaissance, et des éléments de transformation assurant le jeu inhérent aux divers usages en discours. … Sur le plan fonctionnel, le motif est un “cadre collocationnel” accueillant un ensemble d’éléments fixes et de variables, susceptible d’accompagner la structuration textuelle et, simultanément, de caractériser des textes de genres divers, voire de permettre la détection, au sein d’un même texte, des passages de registres différents. (The notion of motif is conceived as a way of conceptualizing the multidimensionality (or multi-level aspect) of certain recurring forms that involve the lexicon, grammatical categories and syntax, possibly prosody, and metric. … a motif, however, admits different types of variations and its microstructure combines both elements of stability, ensuring its memorization and recognition, and elements of transformation ensuring its various uses in discourse. … Functionally, the motif is a “collocational framework” containing a set of fixed elements and variables, capable of accompanying textual structuring and, at the same time, characterizing texts of various genres or even allowing the detection, within the same text, of passages from different registers, our translation.)

Next, our analysis highlights the paradigmatic and syntagmatic variations of LSCs to establish the first criterion for identification of motifs. Once this has been accomplished, we propose to establish the second criterion for identification of motifs by analyzing the discursive functions of these units. Indeed, as a phraseological phenomenon, the motif is of crucial importance in the complexity of linguistic arrangements (Legallois and Tutin 2013, 9). The discursive function of a unit depends on its role in relation to the cotext: it maintains thematic coherence and continuity in a text (Martin 1983, 15–16). In our study, we understand discursive function as relating to fiction discourse (see Appendix B). Indeed, in the novel, discursive functions are above all narrative and descriptive (Adam 2011, 267): “[U]n texte à dominante narrative est généralement composé de relations d’actions, d’événements, de paroles et de pensées représentées, mais … il comporte aussi des moments descriptifs plus ou moins développés” (a predominantly narrative text is generally composed of related actions, events, words and thoughts represented, but … it also includes more or less developed descriptive

8  Reading and Writing as Motifs in English and French General …     227

moments, our translation). That said, motifs can have other discursive functions in the novel: for example, the so-called commentary function1 in which the motif is part of a reflective statement about the writing practised by a character, or the so-called cognitive function in which the motif is found in a cotext reflecting the thoughts, questions and hypotheses formulated by a character (Gonon et al. 2018; Gonon and Sorba, forthcoming). With the data collected during these three stages, we can proceed with characterizing how these phraseological units operate in the literary fiction corpora. This will enable us to contribute to “an operating theory of genres,” in Rastier’s words (2011, 72, our translation), since the fact of a text belonging to a genre conditions the lexical, morphosyntactic and discursive variations found as compared with other genres (see, for example, Biber 1993; Malrieu and Rastier 2001; Siepmann 2015, 2016).

3 Corpus and Methodology The French and English fiction corpora on which we base our study are presented in detail in Appendix A. To explore these corpora, we used the Lexicoscope2 text mining tool for annotated corpora in syntactic dependencies (Kraif 2016). This interface uses an iterative method for extracting Recurrent Lexico-Syntactic trees (RLTs) whose relevance for detecting significant statistical associations linking several words by a syntactic relationship was demonstrated by Tutin and Kraif (2016). It calculates the specificity of associations on the basis of the statistical index log-likelihood ratio (LLR), whose utility for text mining Dunning (1993) has shown.3 We used the Lexicoscope to contrast the GEN and CRIM corpora by extracting RLTs filtered for a length greater than 3 words, dispersion

1An

exhaustive list of the discursive functions with their definition can be found in Appendix B.

2http://phraseotext.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/lexicoscope/. 3On

this methodology, see also Chapter 2 by Legallois and Koch in this volume.

228     J. Sorba et al. Table 1  Specificities of the recurrent lexico-syntactic patterns of our study in the GEN corpora RLT

f CRIM

f GEN

Disp CRIM

Disp GEN

LLR







20 26 13 13 23 4 11 3

98 123 83 94 77 33 52 38

13 11 10 7 16 3 7 3

51 42 43 45 35 14 30 19

17.5864 20.8373 21.2678 27.4631 18.7635 19.2308 19.6612 27.2125

greater than 3 novels, and frequency greater than 5 occurrences. This first step yielded a total of 32,699 such patterns for English and 71,635 for French.4 To target specific patterns we next applied the following filters to the French corpora in a previous study (Gonon et al. 2018): (i) a 10.83 LLR threshold, above which the association cannot be considered as random; (ii) a dispersion criterion to keep only the patterns present in at least 50% of the CRIM texts and 25% of the GEN texts; (iii) a grammatical criterion for the mandatory presence of a verb to exclude collocations already identified as commonly found ones (for instance, scène de crime in the CRIM).

This second stage produced 264 patterns in the French GEN corpus. In this list, we observed several patterns organized around the pivots lire and écrire. We therefore opted for studying them in detail and contrasting them with the patterns of the English corpora. We applied identical criteria of specificity and presence of a verb for GEN English corpora to search for patterns with the verbs read and write. The specificity of each of these patterns is presented in Table 1.5

4To explain this significant difference between the results, see Chapter 7 by Goossens et al. in this volume. 5Legend: f  =  frequency of the recurrent lexico-syntactic pattern (number of occurrences); disp = dispersion of the recurrent lexico-syntactic patterns (number of authors).

8  Reading and Writing as Motifs in English and French General …     229

In the next section, we begin the presentation of our results by analyzing the potential lexico-syntactic combinations of the constructions containing lire/read and écrire/write to show how these phraseological units are employed in discourse. We then proceed to analyze the syntagmatic and paradigmatic variations of the LSC to establish their motif status. Lastly, we examine the discursive functions of these motifs.

4 Results 4.1 Study of Lexico-Syntactic Constructions and Variations To reiterate, we studied the potential lexico-syntactic combinations of the RLTs to see how they are implemented in discourse to acquire the status of LSCs. Table 2 lists the statistically significant collocates we extracted with Lexicoscope for each construction (in brackets, the LLR; the last column shows the total collocates count). Lexicoscope revealed that the specific combinations with grammatical collocates exceed those with lexical collocates in both the French and English GEN corpora. For LSCs with a verbal core, as in this case, specific combinations with subject pronouns (il, je, tu, vous, he ) or object pronouns (lui, vous ) and with auxiliaries allowing conjugation (avoir, have ), are quite predictable. Even so, these results already indicate some initial trends. In the French corpus, we notice in fact that when realized in discourse écrire_ un_roman prefers the first person (LLR 90.5592): (1) Moi aussi j’ai écrit un roman: mon unique roman, rédigé à l’âge de neuf ans, un an après la mort de mon père, dans un cahier d’écolier à couverture rouge. (Millet La Fiancée libanaise, 2011) (I too wrote a novel: my only novel, composed at the age of nine, a year after my father’s death, in a school notebook with a red cover.6)

6All

of the following translations are our suggestions, unless otherwise specified.

230     J. Sorba et al. Table 2  The lexical and grammatical collocates of the eight patterns Lexical collocates

Grammatical collocates

Total

French

avoir (30.6636), il (38.3204), je (20.3531), pas (10.8956) devoir (13.9155) je (90.5592), vous (30.7597), tu (15.5508), de (12.3343), que (11.3022)

long (54.6962), un (181.6025), ce (54.5553), pouvoir (20.7878) lui (50.0148), vous (16.1732)

vouloir (20.2510), avoir (100.5728), un savoir (14.6914) (44.3225), tout le (33.0541) English

4

8



0

again (32.3000), begin (25.7419), write (19.2003) 0 0 0

through (34.9124), when (21.0263), he (12.0410), that (11.5422), and (11.4589) which (26.3315) all (32.2536), have (29.1302) 0

6

6 5

1 2 0

This preference for the first person in the French corpus is striking: not only do the two patterns and from the extraction phase display this preference but so does the Lexicoscope, listing the French pronoun je among the most specific collocates of the other two LSCs (LLR 90.5592 for écrire_un_roman and LLR 20.3531 for lire_le_lettre ). In addition, the presence of the collocate avoir reflects the frequent use of compound tenses, marking a completed aspect for the two LSCs containing the French verb lire (2), which is not the case for the two LSCs containing the French verb écrire. Reading is often the trigger for another action (in the narrative sequence), and the completed aspect of the verb shows its anteriority in relation to subsequent actions. (2) Elle avait lu la lettre et l’avait fourrée dans sa poche. (Modiano L’Herbe des nuits, 2012) (She had read the letter and stuffed it in her pocket.)

In the English GEN corpus, these initial results testify to a specific link between the LSCs read_the_letter and write_the_word and the syntactic

8  Reading and Writing as Motifs in English and French General …     231

subordination structure (when LLR 21.0263, that LLR 11.5422, which LLR 26.3315). (3) When Omar Khayyam read the letter, his first reaction was to whistle softly with something very like admiration. (Rushdie Shame, 1983). (4) A sheet of blank notepaper on which were written the words. (Woodward I’ll Go to Bed at Noon, 2004)

Concerning lexical collocates, three of the four LSCs in the French corpus come with modal verbs (devoir, pouvoir, vouloir ). (5) Je voudrais bien lire les livres que vous me donnez, et la nuit, dès que vous êtes parti, elle éteint la lampe et se met à parler, interminablement, sur les uns et les autres… (Déon Un taxi mauve, 1973) (I would like to read the books you give me, and at night, as soon as you leave, she turns off the lamp and starts talking, endlessly, about everyone…)

The example (5) links this observation to the one previously made about the privileged use of the first person. It would seem that the LSCs including the verbs lire and écrire in the French GEN corpus strongly involve the enunciator in his or her discourse.

4.2 From Lexico-Syntactic Constructions to Motif: Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic Variations Our analysis of syntagmatic and paradigmatic variations affecting LSCs shows that they meet the first condition that qualifies them as potential motifs.

4.2.1 The Syntagmatic Variations Within LSCs, the syntagmatic variations can affect the verbal form as well as the nominal form and its determiner. The data presented in Table 3 show that the determiner varies across the eight LSCs.

232     J. Sorba et al. Table 3  Syntagmatic variations of the article across the eight LSCs Definite article

Indefinite article

Other article

Total

92 (72%) 10 0 34 (36%)

12 123 (89%) 62 (75%) 30

23 4 20 30

127 137 82 94

60 (55%) 33 (91%) 44 39

3 3 50 145 (78%)

45 0 175 (79%) 0

108 36 219 184

French lire_le_lettre écrire_un_roman je_écrire_lettre je_lire_livre English read_the_letter write_the_word read_the_book write_the_letter

As it turns out, in the two French LSCs, the verb lire favours the definite article (la lettre 72%/le livre 36%) while the verb écrire favours the indefinite article (une lettre 75%/un roman 89%). On the other hand, in the English corpus, the verb to write does not express a clear preference for associating either the indefinite article (a letter 78%) or the definite article (the word 91%). In the English GEN corpus we cannot find a clear preference for the definite article for read_the_letter and for read_ the_book. Both patterns occur with other articles; with read_the_book we found 52 cases without article, which, of course, is a consequence of the English plural. Table 4 summarizes the variations of the grammatical number of nouns. In the French corpus, the noun lettre favours the singular form with the two verbs lire (66%) and écrire (75%) as does roman with écrire (78%). By contrast, in the LSC je_lire_livre, the noun appears mainly in the plural form (61%), a difference that requires further investigation to be interpreted. In the English corpus, the noun after the verb write favours the singular form (56% for word and 97% for letter ), whereas letter occurs more often in singular with read than in plural and book roughly does so evenly in singular and plural. The third variable element is the verbal core. As shown in Table 5, the verbal core of each LSC can be found either at a conjugated tense or at the infinitive or participle.

8  Reading and Writing as Motifs in English and French General …     233 Table 4  The syntagmatic variations of the noun across the eight LSCs Singular

Plural

Total

84 (66%) 107 (78%) 62 (75%) 36

43 30 20 58 (61%)

127 137 82 94

83 (76%) 20 (56%) 107 179 (97%)

25 16 112 (51%) 5

108 36 219 184

French lire_le_lettre écrire_un_roman je_écrire_lettre je_lire_livre English read_the_letter write_the_word read_the_book write_the_letter

Table 5  The syntagmatic variations of the verb across the eight LSCs Tense

Infinitive

Participle

Total

77 (61%) 58 65 (79%) 86 (91%)

41 79 (57%) 17 8

9 0 0 0

127 137 82 94

89 (82%) 31 (86%) 170 (77%) 131 (71%)

18 3 47 29

1 2 2 24

108 36 219 184

French lire_le_lettre écrire_un_roman je_écrire_lettre je_lire_livre English read_the_letter write_the_word read_the_book write_the_letter

The verb in the LSC is mostly conjugated—most often in a predictable way—to a past tense, which is the tense par excellence of the narrative. Only the LSC écrire_un_roman favours the infinitive form in its occurrences. For the English patterns, the verbs occur more often in one of the tenses, very often in the past tense, which is the narrative tense in English as it is in French. The infinitive is also found quite often with read and write with the exception of write_the_word where cases of infinitive use are scarce. The syntagmatic study of the eight distributions shows that their constituent elements do vary but that this variation does not apply in the same proportions.

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4.2.2 The Paradigmatic Variations The paradigmatic variations affect the core of the LSCs; it can be: – a modifier of the noun (see example 6, spirited nonchalant letters, which I have such difficulty in answering; and elsewhere in the English corpus love letter, long ~, brief ~, formal ~, fierce ~, stilted ~, suitable ~, similar ~, business like ~, careful ~, finely argued ~, big ~, hysterical ~ for instance; and in the French corpus lettre d’amour (love letter) ~ qui m’a coûté des jours et des nuits (that took me days and nights), ~ de sa fiancée (from his fiancée), ~ d’Algérie (from Algeria); nouveau roman (other novel), roman dans lequel les révolutionnaires mexicains pourchassent et fusillent les curés (novel in which Mexican revolutionaries chase and shoot priests), roman à l’eau de rose (cheesy novel) for instance), or – a circumstant (see example 7, souvent (often) and elsewhere in the English corpus never write a letter, simply ~ for instance; and in the French corpus lire une lettre fort attentivement (read a letter very carefully), ~ à mi-voix (mid-voice); écrire un roman en cachette (write a novel in secret), ~ en deux jours (~in two days) for instance). (6) Melissa still writes the spirited nonchalant letters which I have such difficulty in answering save by whining retorts about my circumstances or my improvidence. (Durrell The Alexandria Quartet, 1962) (7) M. Bentley avait un vrai talent d’écriture et le révérend nous lisait souvent ses lettres avant que nous ne priions pour lui. (Autissier L’Amant de Patagonie, 2012) (Mr. Bentley had a real talent for writing and the reverend often read his letters to us before we prayed for him.)

Table 6 summarizes how much the variation for each LSC affects the right and left contexts of the noun: Mostly, it is the right context of the noun that varies. It is then necessary to specify: – the circumstances of the act of writing or reading: (8) George wrote the letter rapidly, straight out, in a state of excitement as if inspired. (Murdoch The Philosopher’s Pupil, 1983)

8  Reading and Writing as Motifs in English and French General …     235 Table 6  The paradigmatic variations across the noun in the eight LSCs Left context

Right context

Bare

Total

11 22 19 12

76 (60%) 53 63 (77%) 48 (51%)

40 62 (45%) 6 34

127 137 82 94

10 2 26 29

89 27 (75%) 165 133 (72%)

9 8 109 22

108 36 219 184

French lire_le_lettre écrire_un_roman je_écrire_lettre je_lire_livre English read_the_letter write_the_word read_the_book write_the_letter

– the properties of the letter, word or book (source, origin, content, author), – an axiological judgement: (9) Il écrivait un roman très compliqué: c’était délicieux. (Defalvard Du temps qu’on existait, 2011) (He was writing a very complicated novel: it was delightful.)

Left context for the English patterns reveals mostly adjectives and some nouns in the case of read_the_book as premodification of letter and book. All of our observations on syntagmatic and paradigmatic variations confirm that these eight LSCs fulfil the first criterion for qualifying as motifs. We can now analyze the discursive functions of all eight by contrasting the two corpora.

4.3 Discursive Functions of the Motifs The discursive functions (DFs) of the studied motifs are presented in a way that allows comparing the EN corpus and the FR corpus. Comparing the discursive functions across languages can help determine whether the motifs are common to the literary fiction or whether they instead represent a specificity of French novels as opposed to English ones, and vice versa.

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The discursive functions most represented in the novel genre are narrative and descriptive: they describe places, time periods, and characters whose story is told. However, in CRIM, the plot is dominated by investigation and therefore by action. By contrast, the specific patterns of GEN FR show that these novels of French literature often stage a reflection about themselves, with a statistically significant metafictional dimension (Gonon et al. 2018): the discursive functions of the motifs are less often narrative or descriptive, even if the latter remain highly represented. In the following sections, we analyze the variety of DFs for the motifs in the two GEN corpora.

4.3.1 Reading as Motif Lire_DET_lettre and read_DET_letter The discursive function of the motif lire_DET_lettre in GEN FR is often narrative in nature: (10) Quand Véro est accourue, ce sale matin de janvier 17, venant d’apprendre par quelqu’un du quartier que son amant était mort, Petit Louis lui a fait lire la dernière lettre de l’Eskimo [où il exprime ses dernières volontés] et demandé de s’expliquer. Elle était en larmes, à genoux sur le sol, effondrée. (Japrisot Un long dimanche de fiançailles, 1991) (When Véro came running, on that bloody morning in January 17, after hearing from someone in the neighbourhood that her lover had died, Petit Louis made her read the Eskimo’s last letter [where he expressed his last wishes] and asked for an explanation. She was in tears, kneeling on the ground, devastated.)

The motif in its expanded version (lui a fait lire la dernière lettre de l’Eskimo: made her read the Eskimo’s last letter) here establishes a coherence between the different characters through the causative construction. Petit Louis is the subject, the indirect object lui designates Véronique, and the epithet dernière and the possessive structure de l’Eskimo are nominal expansions that make the voice of the departed heard (Kleber, called l’Eskimo ). The motif therefore has a direct consequence in the

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narrative sequence: it provokes the reactions of Petit Louis (in the clause coordinated by et ) and Véronique (in the following sentence). In this way, it advances the plot, as is often the case with this motif in GEN: the letter reveals something, which has consequences for the reader. For the same reason it is also the most represented discursive function in the English corpus: (11) She turned over the other letter. It was addressed to herself. As she instantly recognised the writing, she stood for several moments very still. Then breathing deeply she moved into her bedroom and closed the door. She sat down on the bed, opened the envelope, and read the letter through carefully. (Murdoch The Green Knight, 1993)

The motif in the past tense appears in a list of actions that lead to the reading of the letter itself, apparently feared by the character, and which will influence events later in the novel. However, the image of a character reading a letter also lends itself to description in GEN FR. For example, in this passage, the narrator reads a book while observing the woman who shares his room: (12) Un doigt posé sur la bonne ligne, j’attendais pour continuer ma lecture. En tournant sur elle-même, Edmondsson lisait des lettres, classait des documents. Elle s’éloignait du bureau, revenait vers moi. Elle s’asseyait sur le fauteuil et, en bougeant les lèvres, prenait connaissance d’un imprimé; puis elle décroisait les jambes, se relevait et faisait des commentaires. (Toussaint La Salle de bain, 1985) (One finger on the right line, I waited to continue my reading. Turning around, Edmondsson read letters, filed documents. She walked away from the desk, came back to me. She would sit in the chair and, moving her lips, read a printout; then she would straighten her legs, stand up and make comments.)

The protracted reading (by the narrator) of a book is interrupted by Edmondsson’s agitation: she reads letters while also doing small actions without any consequence for the plot, but the narrator tracks her movements. The motif therefore has a descriptive discursive function, like the other clauses in imperfect tenses in which Edmondsson is the subject.

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The indefinite plural article des, on the one hand, signifies agitation (she passes quickly from one letter to another), and, on the other, hints at the lack of importance she ascribes to this act of reading, since the content of the letters remains unknown to the reader. In GEN EN, on the other hand, there are far fewer significant occurrences of this descriptive discursive function: reading a letter is a dynamic motif rather than a justification for describing a character. Admittedly, some uses of this motif are more difficult to identify in terms of discursive function. In the following example, the narrator has dinner with a woman he wants to seduce. He apologizes for not being able to cook by highlighting his cultural knowledge when recounting his trip to the shops: (13) Je pense à Diogène qui offrit des figues à Platon, et à La Rochefoucauld qui envoyait des Maximes inédites à une amie sans prétendre pour autant mériter son potage de carottes. Quand il ne réussissait pas à trouver les truffes qu’elle lui demandait, il lui envoyait à la place quelques Maximes qui, s’excusait-il, ne valaient pas de bonnes truffes. Si nous nous revoyons, je vous lirai les lettres qu’il écrivit à cette femme, la marquise de Sablé. (Weyergans Trois jours chez ma mère, 2005) (I think of Diogenes who offered figs to Plato, and La Rochefoucauld who sent original Maximes to a lady friend without claiming to deserve her carrot soup. When he couldn’t find the truffles she asked him for, he sent her some Maximes instead which, he apologized, were not worth good truffles. If we meet again, I will read the letters he wrote to this woman, the Marquise de Sablé, to you.)

The motif of reading letters creates a link between two characters (je subject, vous object) around the act of reading in the story, but the discursive function is not narrative: the sentence is indeed hypothetical, and the future is not preordained. It is subject to how successful François is in seducing Juliette. It even has no value except as seduction for its own sake (once his goal is reached, François will probably never read these letters to Juliette). The motif is therefore a false promise (but its utterance is not a lie, it is still a promise, see Austin [1970, 45]): the discursive function of the motif is pragmatic, considering that the cause is an act of language initiated by one character in the novel for another.

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The pragmatic discursive function is also well represented for the motif read_DET_letter of the corpus GEN EN: the motif occurs within a dialogue between two characters and is part of a language act directly oriented towards the addressee (however, not all occurrences of read_ DET_letter in the direct speech have a pragmatic discursive function). (14) Abruptly Fritz leaned towards her and said, “You know that I have only one thing to ask. Has he read my letter? ” (Fitzgerald The Blue Flower, 1988)

The motif here is the heart of an interrogative sentence, whose illocutionary status is indeed the request (from a son to his mother). The answer to the question is important for the character, and it will have an impact on the rest of his actions. Thus, for lire_DET_lettre and read_DET_letter, the discursive function is often narrative because reading the letter allows the action to progress, either directly or through interactions that will then advance the action; for GEN FR, reading the letter sometimes allows a character to be freeze-framed for a description. One does not find here the metafictional temptation of the literary novel. However, people read more letters in GEN than in CRIM (and, presumably, than in other subgenres): these novels are more dominated by the written word, and by the intimate interactions between the characters, some of which go through the letter exchange.

Lire_DET_livre and read_DET_book There are more occurrences of this motif in GEN (FR and EN both) than of the previous ones. Clearly, since the 1950s, we have been reading fewer and fewer letters, and receiving more and more calls and messages. An excerpt from the GEN EN corpus shows that: “It’s a weird thing to do, isn’t it, writing a letter in these days of t’internet!” (Nicholls One Day, 2009). Moreover, as mentioned above, since the reflective writing of the novels in the GEN corpus is quite specific, there will be more mises en abyme of the reading of a book. The book is not addressed like the letter: the latter establishes links between the characters, it is

240     J. Sorba et al.

written by one of them for another, and as such very often has a narrative function. Reading a book, on the other hand, is a solitary activity (such as writing) and willingly free (in terms of narrative), which encourages introspection rather than action. It is not the title of the book that matters: for GEN FR, more than half determiners of book are indefinite (57.5%). And in French, the reference of the read letters is more often determined (by the definite article and the complements) than for this motif. Thus reading a book would be more of a pose than a narrative element advancing action. In fact, the simple past is less used than to lire_DET_lettre and the discursive function of the motif is less often narrative: reading a book mainly disrupts the reader’s inner life, while the letter also has an impact on his actions. (15) … lisant, à quelque temps de là, un livre dont l’auteur, à un détour de page, disait qu’il regardait, “à l’horizon, comme un point qui grossissait”, je m’étais promis que si j’écrivais un jour, plus tard, jamais je n’userais, dans les livres que j’affabulerais à dessein d’un grand texte efflorescent, de ces expressions qui avaient été, à leur naissance (et dans une rhétorique naïve), aiguës, mais que la répétition, au fil des siècles, avait émoussées. (Berger Les Matins du Nouveau Monde, 1987) (…reading, at a certain time from there, a book whose author, at a detour, said that he was looking “at the horizon, like a point that was growing”, I promised myself that if I wrote one day, later, I would never use, in the books that I would intentionally elaborate with a large efflorescent text, those expressions that had been, at birth (and in naïve rhetoric), sharp, but that the repetition, over the centuries, had blunted.)

Here the discursive function is narrative (in terms of inner life), since this reading advances the narrative of the literary vocation: the narrator chooses to take a different path from the author of the book he mentioned for the work of his style. The EN corpus also presents occurrences of this motif with a narrative discursive function, quite similar to the FR corpus, but the narrative discursive function remains much less used than lire une lettre and read a letter.

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For this motif, a cognitive discursive function could be found, which is not the most represented either: (16) Il n’aime pas la musique. Il trouve que ça gêne. Que c’est une servitude. Parce que, quand on en écoute, on est obligé d’entendre le morceau sans l’interrompre, alors que quand on lit un livre, on peut le lire dans le désordre, sauter des pages, que la liberté est totale. Il aime cette liberté et ne supporte pas d’en être privé. (Angot Une semaine de vacances, 2012) (He doesn’t like music. He thinks it disturbs him. That it’s a servitude. Because, when you listen to it, you have to hear it without interrupting the song, whereas when you read a book, you can read it in disorder, skip pages, that freedom is total. He loves this freedom and cannot stand to be deprived of it.)

The example starts off as descriptive: it describes the tastes of the male character. However, the motif in its minimal form is introduced by an indefinite subject (on ): it belongs more explicitly to the reported speech of this same character, who sets out his opinion. The subordinate clause quand on lit un livre is a circumstance to which he attaches a practice: the motif has a cognitive discursive function, it is a reflection formulated by the character. The same motifs can be found in the EN corpus: (17) Will I ever be able to read a book again? Will I ever be able to talk like old friends with my wife? (Parks Europa, 1997)

In this case, the discursive function of read a book is cognitive: it intervenes in a projection, a hypothesis of the narrator. It is only fantastically part of the fiction action, but is also a part of the inner discourse. In the EN corpus, the DF of this motif is as often pragmatic as it is cognitive and narrative: (18) “But I’m bored. Can’t I come?” “Not this time,” says my mother. “Read a book, or watch the television.” (Hyland Carry Me Down, 2006)

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The motif takes an imperative form: it reflects the speech act—order or advice given by the mother to her son (the narrator). But this pragmatic DF is less present, relatively, in the FR corpus, even if it is encountered there; it is doubtful that this disparity is really significant, because in both EN and FR corpora, the DF of the lire_DET_livre and read_ DET_book motifs is more massively descriptive. In direct speech, characters describe themselves as readers, or are described as never reading a book; in the story, their habits are described (lying down with a book for example) especially if the character’s profession is to wait (as a guard, a driver). In the following example, the narrator climbed on a bus: (19) Je m’étais assis en face d’une fille qui lisait un livre. (Laurent Les SousEnsembles flous, 1981) (I had sat across from a girl reading a book.)

The motif occurs in a relative clause epithet of the name, which characterizes it. The imperfect tense lisait is secant, the action has no final limit: thus the reading lends itself to description (the narrator tries to know what she is reading, and the girl is physically described on this occasion). Very similar examples can be found in the EN corpus: (20) The interior was expensively, even tastefully furnished. At a round table in the centre of the room, reading a book, sat Marjorie. (Storey Pasmore, 1972) (21) Wherever it was I met Ceel, she was always there, always waiting, almost always reading a book – usually something recent I’d heard of. (Banks Dead Air, 2002)

A character busy reading (the verb has a durational aspect in its form lisait and reading ), whether a letter or more willingly a book (which encourages more immobility by its length), is a subject often taken up in painting for example; the novel of literary fiction, which shows a greater reflection on the practice of writing, also uses more cultural references than can be found in the CRIM corpus. The representation of reading shows these two tendencies: the importance given to the written word and the claim to legitimate culture.

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4.3.2 Writing as Motif Écrire_DET_lettre and write_DET_letter The results presented in Gonon et al. (2018) for the motif écrire une lettre in GEN FR can be compared to the results for the motif write a letter in the GEN EN corpus. This motif in GEN EN has a discursive function that varies according to the context: it can be descriptive, when the motif makes it possible to evoke the behaviour of a character (who does not write letters, who writes them in such and such a way), but this descriptive discursive function concerns relatively few occurrences; it occurs a little more often in the GEN FR corpus, without this difference being really significant. Pragmatic discursive function is fairly well represented in English (and a little less so in French), particularly when it appears in direct speech. Pragmatic discursive function then readily fits in with the use of the personal pronoun tu as the subject of the verb and with interrogative sentences. The write_DET_letter motif is part of a speech act directed at the addressee, another character in the novel: (22) “Will you write a letter for me? “What sort of a letter?” “A crook letter. From Charles Morgan to myself.” (Spark The Girls of Slender Means, 1963)

The speaker, an author, proposes to the young collaborator of the publisher Charles Morgan to write to the latter a very enthusiastic bogus letter from a fictional publisher, so that Morgan will offer a more advantageous contract to the speaker. The discursive function is pragmatic: it makes it possible to carry out an act of language (the request for a service) that links two characters in the story. It is less used in the GEN FR corpus, probably because the French GEN novels allow a more descriptive and reflective realization of this motif (that is, writing a letter can portray a writer’s character as having a particular affinity with the act of writing).

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Like écrire_DET_lettre in GEN FR, the motif in the GEN EN corpus is very often captured on an aspectual or modal level: its discursive function is often cognitive in both corpora. It reflects assumptions or projections by a character, who imagines that he is writing a letter, or wondering who wrote it, et cetera. In the example below, Mr. Bhoolabhoy, manager of the hotel owned by his wife Lila, must give the brush-off to the Tusker couple, but he appreciates the husband: (23) Writing the letter would put the seal on his total and abject surrender to Lila. He knew he had already surrendered. But it was still a difficult letter to write. It was like composing a warrant for the execution of an old friend. (Scott Staying On, 1977)

The motif is linked to what the act of writing the letter means for the character, the consequences he projects for the rest of the action. However, the most represented of the discursive functions is narrative, as is the case for the equivalent motif of the FR corpus: (24) He himself would need from Schlinker details of where the arms shipment was supposed to be heading, so that the captain could draw up the appropriate manifest. … He wrote a long letter to Mr. Stein as chairman of Tyrone Holdings, instructing him to prepare the papers for a board meeting of the company in his office four days hence, with two resolutions on the agenda. (Forsyth The Dogs of War, 1974)

Cat Shannon, a mercenary, organizes in this passage the delivery of weapons and ammunition, via a holding company he created in Luxemburg. The motif is part of a series of actions performed by the character in order to recover the cargo of firearms. Thus, when it comes to écrire une lettre and write a letter, pragmatic and narrative discursive functions reflect the fact that the letter plays a role in the action (such as reading it) or is the object of interactions between characters. Cognitive function itself may correspond to the course of the plot, since a character wonders what it means to write a letter to another character: when the writing is transitive (directed at someone or something), relatively fewer metafictional considerations are involved.

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Écrire_DET_roman and write_DET_word Here we can distinguish the two GEN corpora FR and EN: as quantitatively equivalent as the previous motifs turned out to be in the two fiction traditions French and English, écrire_DET_roman seems much more characteristic of GEN FR. Could a possible hypothesis be that it is due to the French literary novel being more metafictional than the EN literary novel? To briefly recap the results presented in Gonon et al. (2018) for the GEN FR corpus: the motif écrire_DET_roman occupies a descriptive discursive function (the character presents himself as a writer, for example), at other times a narrative discursive function (the action of writing a novel is inserted in the plot). But, the altogether characteristic discursive function of this corpus is a so-called commentary function, one indicating a reflexive approach to writing that takes place in a pause in the narrative (a writer then talks about the writing process). This motif hardly appears in the GEN EN corpus. Nevertheless, write_DET_word is representative of it, and its discursive function is more narrative. Its context is indeed much less metafictional than for the motif écrire_DET_roman: (25) When nobody answered, she turned to Jetta: “Perhaps Roddy knows the answer.” Jetta looked at me and then replied, “I’m sorry. Roddy does not know and nor do I.” Miss Galbraith looked disappointed and turned to write the word on the board. (Burnet His Bloody Project, 2016)

Since student Roddy does not know the answer—according to Jetta—the teacher acts accordingly. The motif enters a narrative chain, in the broader sequence of the geography course. Here the two corpora frankly diverge.

4.3.3 Conclusions About the Discursive Functions of Reading and Writing as Motifs Comparing GEN FR and GEN EN Points in Common For the motifs écrire/lire_DET_lettre and read/write_DET_letter, the most representative discursive function is often narrative. The narrative function is also present for the other realizations of the motifs built with lire/read and écrire/write, which is no surprise for the novel. Write and

246     J. Sorba et al.

read denote actions that advance the plot: in this case, writing and reading are transitive, they cause an action and integrate themselves in a narrative causality chain. For these reasons, pragmatic and cognitive discursive functions reflect a specificity of GEN, which very often deal with the relationships between the characters, their intimate life and what they say about it. Thus letters and books become objects of discussion which intensify the questions and assumptions of the characters and the actual written interactions that the letter implies. Finally, the descriptive discursive functions for lire_DET_livre and read_DET_book show the mise en abyme of the reading act, quite typical of reflective GEN writing (the reader reads a book that also features a reader). It further reflects GEN’s tendency to represent a character in the process of reading and to institute reading as a descriptive attribute: to say that one reads or does not read is to give an image of oneself and others in which reading becomes a value—to which one either subscribes (it is positively connoted) or which one derogates (the judgement is then pejorative).

Characteristics of Each GEN Corpus In general, the PhraseoRom’s GEN FR corpus is much more reflective than the GEN EN corpus: it features more writers, more mises en abyme of reading and writing practices. Its metafictional dimension is more important. Foremost, this shows the importance of the pragmatic discursive function in GEN EN for read_DET_book and write_DET_ letter: these activities are perceived as more static (descriptive and cognitive discursive functions) in GEN FR and more dynamic in GEN EN (as the object of verbal interactions). Then, lire_DET_lettre performs a more descriptive discursive function in GEN FR; in GEN EN, the discursive function of read_DET_letter is more likely to be narrative or pragmatic: the same conclusions can be drawn. Lastly, the motifs constructed around écrire/write diverge statistically in both corpora: write_DET_word is specific to the GEN EN corpus, and it has a mainly narrative discursive function: no reflective dimension here. But écrire_DET_roman is significant for GEN FR: the motif

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sometimes has a commentary discursive function specific to GEN (and more precisely to GEN FR) since it introduces a reflexive pause into the plot, letting the character wonder or discuss what writing is or projects a novel. The mise en abyme is more typical of the GEN corpus, and especially of GEN FR, for what concerns not only the reader but above all the novelist himself: this could explain the preference for the verbal first person for realizing the motif écrire_DET_roman, or even for the other motifs built around lire and écrire, which also have a connection with the written language.

5 Conclusion The data used in this study are based on the contrast of phraseological elements in two genres, the crime novel and literary fiction. Crime novels were solely chosen for statistical reasons to serve as contrasts to the novels of literary fiction. We then studied the statistically significant LSC that included the verbs écrire and lire (une lettre, un roman/un livre ) for French and read and write (a letter, a word/a book ) for English. Our study therefore contrasted the English and French PhraseoRom corpora of the two literary genres crime novels and literary fiction to answer two research questions: Would the constructions around lire/ read and écrire/write allow us to define the novel of literary fiction? And how are motifs of the French and English corpus which centre around these verbs characteristically realized? We were able to establish that écrire/lire_DET_lettre, write/read_DET_letter and écrire/lire_DET_roman, write_DET_book and write_DET_word are indeed motifs. Since these significant LSCs show many syntagmatic and paradigmatic variations, we can designate them as motifs for more detailed analysis. The variations of the discursive functions and the role the motifs play in the literature show the richness of their stylistic realizations. The statistical significance of these LSCs (compared to crime novels) shows that reading and writing is specific in literary fiction (GEN). The discursive functions of motifs are narrative and descriptive but other functions (cognitive, pragmatic, and commentary) highlight the importance of

248     J. Sorba et al.

this subject to an author—and for the characters portrayed as readers and writers. The reading and writing of a letter, of a book or of words may be transitive (directed from one person to another) but one of the characteristics of the French GEN corpus is “intransitive” writing (Barthes 2002), thus reflecting an author’s own practice.

References Adam, Jean-Michel. 2011 (1992). Les Textes: types et prototypes, 3rd ed. Paris: Armand Colin. Austin, John Langshaw. 1970. Quand dire, c’est faire. Translated by Gilles Lane. Paris: Seuil. Barthes, Roland. 2002 (1970). “Écrire, verbe intransitif?” In Œuvres Complètes, 1968–1971, Vol. 3, edited by Éric Marty, 617–26. Paris: Seuil. Biber, Douglas. 1993. “Using Register-Diversified Corpora for General Language Studies.” Computational Linguistics 19: 219–41. Blumenthal, Peter. 2006. “De la logique des mots à l’analyse de la synonymie.” Langages 150 (2): 14–31. Dunning, Ted. 1993. “Accurate Methods for the Statistics of Surprise and Coincidence.” Computational Linguistics 19 (1): 61–74. Gonon, Laetitia, Vannina Goossens, Olivier Kraif, Iva Novakova, and Julie Sorba. 2018. “Motifs textuels spécifiques au genre policier et à la littérature ‘blanche’.” In 6e Congrès Mondial de Linguistique Française, edited by Frank Neveu, Bernard Harmegnies, Linda Hriba, and Sophie Prévost. SHS Web of Science. https://www.shs-conferences.org/articles/shsconf/pdf/2018/07/ shsconf_cmlf2018_06007.pdf. Gonon, Laetitia, and Julie Sorba. Forthcoming. “Phraséologismes spécifiques dans les romans historiques et les romans de littérature blanche.” Journal of French Language Studies. Grossmann, Francis, Salah Mejri, and Inès Sfar. 2017. “Présentation. Phraséologie: sémantique, syntaxe, discours.” In La Phraséologie: sémantique, syntaxe, discours, edited by Francis Grossmann, Salah Mejri, and Inès Sfar, 7–12. Paris: Honoré Champion. Hoey, Michael. 2005. Lexical Priming: A New Theory of Words and Language. London and New York: Routledge.

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Kraif, Olivier. 2016. “Le Lexicoscope: un outil d’extraction de séquences phraséologiques basé sur des corpus arborés.” Cahiers de lexicologie 108 (1): 91–106. Legallois, Dominique, and Agnès Tutin. 2013. “Présentation: Vers une extension du domaine de la phraséologie.” Langages 189 (1): 3–25. Longrée, Dominique, and Sylvie Mellet. 2013. “Le Motif: une unité phraséologique englobante? Étendre le champ de la phraséologie de la langue au discours.” Langages 189 (1): 65–79. Mahlberg, Michaela. 2007. “Clusters, Key Clusters and Local Textual Functions in Dickens.” Corpora 2 (1): 1–31. Malrieu, Denise, and François Rastier. 2001. “Genres et variations morphosyntaxiques.” Traitement automatique des langues 42 (2): 547–77. Martin, Robert. 1983. Pour une logique du sens. Paris: PUF. Novakova, Iva, and Julie Sorba. 2018. “La Construction du sens autour des lexies d’affect: proposition d’un modèle fonctionnel.” Langages 210: 55–70. Rastier, François. 2011. La Mesure et le grain. Sémantique de corpus. Paris: Honoré Champion. Siepmann, Dirk. 2015. “A Corpus-Based Investigation into Key Words and Patterns in Post-war Fiction.” Functions of Language 22: 362–99. Siepmann, Dirk. 2016. “Lexicologie et phraséologie du roman contemporain: quelques pistes pour le français et l’anglais.” Cahiers de lexicologie 108 (1): 21–41. Sinclair, John. 1991. Corpus Concordance Collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sinclair, John. 2004. Trust the Text: Language, Corpus and Discourse. London: Routledge. Tutin, Agnès, and Olivier Kraif. 2016. “Routines sémantico-discursives dans l’écrit scientifique de sciences humaines: l’apport des arbres lexico-syntaxiques récurrents.” Lidil 53: 119–41. Zaharieva, Radostina, and Stefana Kaldieva-Zaharieva. 2017. “Des principaux termes dans le domaine de la phraséologie.” In La Phraséologie: sémantique, syntaxe, discours, edited by Francis Grossmann, Salah Mejri and Inès Sfar, 15–37. Paris: Honoré Champion.

9 Dans un état de NP and in a state of NP: Bridging the Syntagmatic Gap in English and French Fiction Susanne Dyka, Ludwig Fesenmeier and Marion Gymnich

1 Introduction In checking the lexicographic description of the meaning of nouns designating states against their collocational behaviour in authentic ­ French newspaper texts (Le Monde 1994), Peter Blumenthal points out that certain nouns do not simply combine with prepositions (such as “Dans la solitude, on a davantage de respect pour les autres” [In solitude, one has more respect for others1] or “être dans l’embarras ” [be in trouble ]). 1All

of the following translations are our suggestions, unless otherwise specified.

S. Dyka (*) · L. Fesenmeier  Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany e-mail: [email protected] L. Fesenmeier e-mail: [email protected] M. Gymnich  University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 I. Novakova and D. Siepmann (eds.), Phraseology and Style in Subgenres of the Novel, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23744-8_9

251

252     S. Dyka et al.

Instead, they occur in combination with lexical items such as état (state), moment (moment) or période (period), for example: “mort dans un état de déchéance physique extrême” (died in a state of extreme physical degeneration); “Primo Levi écrivait dans un moment de découragement” (Primo Levi wrote in a moment of discouragement); “dans une période de crise, les compagnies ont accueilli favorablement l’A340” (in a period of crisis, the companies have welcomed the A340) (see Blumenthal 2004, 148, 152–53). This phenomenon assumes particular interest for us when the noun combined with état, moment or période itself designates, at least according to the lexicographic definition, a state or a certain lapse of time: in the Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé, for example, crise (crisis) is defined as “[m]anifestation brusque et intense, de durée limitée ” (sense I.B; emphasis added) (sudden and intense manifestation, of limited duration ) and confusion (confusion) as “[é ]tat de ce/celui qui est confus” (senses A/B; emphasis added) (state of something/somebody which/who is confused). One should thus expect—and indeed finds—examples such as in (1) below but also where the “state” can be made explicit, as in (2). (1) L’idée que mon siège de DS s’était vu transpercé était elle aussi très douloureuse, et achevait de me plonger dans une confusion mentale rageuse. (GEN, Chamoiseau Hyperion victimaire: Martiniquais épouvantable, 2013) (The thought that my DS seat had holes in it equally hurt very much and managed to throw me into a furious mental confusion.) (2) Cela ne dura guère, mais l’expérience me laissa dans un état de confusion mentale absolue. (FY, Héliot Reconquérants, 2001) (It did not last long, but the experience left me in a state of total mental confusion.)

While temporal expressions such as moment or période seem to be used especially for expressing the limited duration of the state or offering a temporal reference point for a given event (see Blumenthal 2004, 153), the use of dans un état de NP is explained by the widespread tendency to add this prepositional phrase as a way of bridging a kind of syntagmatic gap.2 2Obviously, the expression “syntagmatic gap” is not to be confused with the term coined by Teich (1999) and defined as the “lack of means to express generalizations about syntagmatic structures and their morphosyntactic properties” (1999, 221).

9  Dans un état de NP and in a state of NP: Bridging …     253

This is the kind of gap that seemingly opens when the aim is to designate the final state or at least an advanced stage in an ongoing process, or, more generally, when trying to evoke the idea of a paradigm of different steps considered to be relevant in such a process (see Blumenthal 2004, 152).3 Nevertheless, while such an explanation can account for examples such as (3), it disregards constellations such as (4), which invoke a rather metaphorical reading of sommeil (sleep).4 (3) Il plongea dans un sommeil profond et retrouva cet atelier imaginaire qu’il avait créé selon son bon vouloir. (FY, Gaborit Les Chroniques des Féals 2: Le Fiel, 2001) (He fell into a deep sleep and returned to this imaginary studio that he had created completely on his own.) (4) La vision romane était différente, bien plus unanimiste: à sa mort le croyant entrait dans un état de sommeil profond, et se mêlait à la terre. (HIST, Houellebecq Soumission, 2015) (The Romanesque vision was much more communal: at his death, the believer fell into a deep sleep and was laid in the earth [Houellebecq 2016, 136].)

In this article, however, we will not concern ourselves with possible differences between dans NP and dans un état de NP, but instead do a more detailed analysis of the occurrences of dans un état de NP as well as its English counterpart in a state of NP in French and English literary texts across different subgenres. More precisely, while Blumenthal’s results from his analysis of a newspaper corpus appear to be confirmed by an analysis of French literary texts (see example 2), examples such as (4) suggest that dans un état de NP may also fulfil other functions. 3Blumenthal

(2004, 152) points out that this is true of the majority of the occurrences of dans un état de NP; indeed, there are only very few examples which do not fit the case, see for example “La centrale d’achat d’espace Carat … est la plus lourdement frappée, … pour avoir notamment placé les supports journaux, radios, télévisions dans un état de dépendance économique ” (The advertising agency Carat is the one most affected, since it has put in a state of economic dependency in particular the newspapers, radio and TV stations). In this case, the adjective économique specifies the domain for which the état de dépendance is asserted. 4According to the Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé, sommeil is an “[é]tat dans lequel se trouve un être vivant qui dort” (sense A.1; emphasis added) (a state in which a living being that sleeps finds itself ) or an “[é]tat d’inertie, d’inactivité momentané où se trouve quelque chose” (sense B.1; emphasis added) (a state of indolence, of momentary inactivity in which something finds itself ).

254     S. Dyka et al.

Therefore, since the expressions dans un état de NP/in a state of NP are not only “an ordered subset of the textual ensemble, formed by the recurring combination of n elements” (Longrée and Mellet 2018, 156), but also fulfil certain identifiable functions on the semantic, pragmatic and rhetorical levels (see Longrée and Mellet 2013, 66), we treat them as motifs (see Chapter 2 by Legallois and Koch in this volume). Their concrete manifestations and functions in the different French and English literary sub-corpora will now be investigated.

2 The Motifs dans un état de NP and in a state of NP in the Corpus: Statistical Findings We begin with a look at the frequency and collocates of dans un état de NP and in a state of NP in the different literary sub-corpora of the PhraseoRom project. Using Lexicoscope’s “lexicogram” tool (see below), we located statistically significant collocates of dans un état de NP and in a state of NP in the respective languages and corpora (Sect. 2.1). The findings will then be analyzed in more detail (Sect. 2.2).

2.1 Frequency of  dans un état de NP and in a state of NP and the Number of Statistically Relevant Collocates As a first step, we analyzed the frequency of the pattern dans un état de NP in the French sub-corpora and of in a state of NP in the English sub-corpora (tokens) as well as the number of statistically relevant collocates (types). The pattern for dans un état de NP corresponds to the search represented by the Recurrent Lexico-Syntactic Tree (RLT) shown in Fig. 1; the pattern for in a state of NP corresponds to a search for the RLT shown in Fig. 2. As some of the sub-corpora differ quite considerably in size, the frequencies were normalized to make the results comparable (see Appendix A for the corpora). A collocate is considered to be statistically relevant if

9  Dans un état de NP and in a state of NP: Bridging …     255

Fig. 1  Recurrent Lexico-Syntactic Tree for dans un état de NP in the French sub-corpora

Fig. 2  Recurrent Lexico-Syntactic Tree for in a state of NP in the English sub-corpora

its log-likelihood ratio (LLR) is greater than or equal to 10.83. In addition, we assigned a value of “3” as the threshold of dispersion, meaning that the statistically significant co-occurrences must be found in at least three different texts. The results are shown in Table 1. The statistically relevant collocates were identified by the abovementioned co-occurrence analysis with Lexicoscope. It produces “lexicograms” that list the most frequent collocates of a given node word or expression “weighted by frequency values (for occurrences and

256     S. Dyka et al. Table 1  Frequency of dans un état de NP and in a state of NP with statistically relevant collocates and number of statistically relevant collocates (LLR ≥10.83) Sub-corpus French Frequency per million words CONT CRIM FY GEN HIST ROM SF

Number of statistically relevant collocates (tokens)

0.79 3.30 3.45 5.83

47 59 46 200

2.75 6.91

27 91

English Frequency Number of statistiper million cally relevant collowords cates (tokens)a 3.75 10.39 9.32 15.26 12.16 5.60 5.86

267 76 111 210 138 48 49

aThe

lexicogram included punctuation marks in the collocates, but these were not included in the number of collocates. Punctuation marks and what they might signify will be discussed below (see Sect. 2.2.4)

co-occurrences) and association measures” (Kraif and Diwersy 2014, 384; see also Kraif and Diwersy 2012, 400). We generated lexicograms for the motifs dans un état de NP and in a state of NP for every subgenre to give us an overview of the most relevant collocates occurring with the motifs. This proved helpful as it revealed the occurrences of a number of different nouns, adjectives and verbs with the motif dans un état de NP/in a state of NP. The results of this co-occurrence analysis will be discussed in more detail in the next section, but Table 1 already shows interesting differences between the subgenres: for French, the subgenres crime, fantasy, general and science fiction show the highest number of statistically relevant collocates, while these are completely absent from historical fiction. By contrast, in English the subgenres general, fantasy and historical fiction provide the highest number of statistically relevant collocates. The genre with a high count of relevant collocates in both the English and French corpus therefore turns out to be general fiction. When we compare English and French, as in Table 1, we find that in all subgenres except for science fiction the construction in a state of NP occurs with greater frequency (normalized) in the English sub-corpora than the French expression dans un état de NP does in the French sub-corpora. At first glance, this might be at least partly due to the fact that in French there also exists en état de NP (literally “in state of ”;

9  Dans un état de NP and in a state of NP: Bridging …     257 Table 2  Frequency of en état de NP Sub-corpus

Number of occurrences (tokens)

Frequency per million words

CONT CRIM FY GEN HIST ROM SF

30 20 5 20 5 2 14

0.50 1.12 0.38 0.58 0.34 0.20 1.06

see Table 2) alongside dans un état de NP for expressing more or less specific psychological states such as depression, shock or dementia (être en état de depression/choc/démence [be in a state of depression/shock/dementia]; see Blumenthal (2004, 153)). The English equivalent would also be in a state of NP (for example, in a state of shock ), since in English there is no alternative construction like en état de NP.5 Nevertheless, in the final analysis, en état de NP turns up more frequently in expressions such as en bon/mauvais/parfait état de fonctionnement/marche (in good/poor/perfect working order), which would not be rendered by *in a good/poor/perfect state6 in English. These differences in frequency between the French and the English sub-corpora need further investigation.

2.2 Statistical Analysis of dans un état de NP and in a state of NP The statistically significant collocates (types) that occur with the motifs in a state of NP and dans un état de NP are shown, respectively, in Tables 3 and 4. The findings here are grouped by word classes, allowing us to compare relevant collocates in the different subgenres.

5An

alternative in English would be be in shock, which does not contain any “linking” element. rarely, one finds also examples such as “Exceptionellement, parce qu’il se sentait en léger état de faiblesse, Marc accepta de déroger au travail” (CRIM, Vargas Un peu plus loin sur la droite, 1996) (Exceptionally, because he was feeling rather weak, Marc agreed to put aside his work [Vargas 2014, 102]); see, however, “… je me sentais dans un état de faiblesse épouvantable …” (GEN, Djian Zone érogène, 1984) (… I found myself in a state of terrible weakness …).

6Very

258     S. Dyka et al. Table 3  Statistically significant collocates of in a state of NP sorted by word classes Sub-corpus Collocates’ word class Verb Noun Adjective Quantifier Conjunction Punctuation mark Total

CONT

CRIM

5

2

2 1 2 8 + 2

1 2 3 + 2

FY

GEN 2

HIST

ROM

5 1

6 1 5 1

2 1 3

1 2

2 8 + 2

2 16 + 2

3 6 + 3

1 3 + 1

SF 4

2 4 + 2

Table 4  Statistically significant collocates of dans un état de NP sorted by word classes Sub-corpus Collocates’ word class

CONT

Verb Noun Adjective Total

1 4 5

CRIM

FY

GEN

6 2 8

1 5 1 7

6 20 2 28

HIST

ROM

SF

2 2 4

2 5 4 11

As can be seen in Tables 3 and 4, the range of collocates is widest in general fiction for both languages. In the English sub-corpora, verb collocates appear in all sub-genres. Only one noun collocate was found in English general fiction.7 The highest number of adjective collocates can be found for GEN and FY; for HIST and ROM, respectively three and two adjective collocates exist. In SF and CRIM, no adjective collocates were specific. In the French sub-corpora, noun collocates are prevalent in all sub-corpora except ROM, while the most verb collocates appear in GEN but are completely absent from CRIM and ROM. Adjectives turn out to be rare, except in SF, which contains the highest number of adjective collocates. Some findings are specific to the English corpora: one quantifier (some ) was found for GEN and FY and one conjunction (and ) seems to 7The second noun collocate that was found was near. It seems to be wrongly classified by the parser: in all cases it is an adjective (near collapse, near exhaustion, near mutiny ) premodifying the noun that occurs with in a state of. Therefore near was not counted as noun collocate.

9  Dans un état de NP and in a state of NP: Bridging …     259

occur quite often in CRIM. Punctuation marks were identified as relevant “collocates” for all genres—although their numbers differed. These findings will be discussed in Sect. 2.2.4.

2.2.1 Verb Collocates of dans un état de NP and in a state of NP Turning to a more detailed analysis (see Table 5) of the statistically significant verbal collocates of dans un état de NP, we learn that verbs denoting a change of state clearly predominate, in particular plonger dans un état de NP (see examples (5a/b)), while the simpler “being in a state” (trouver/vivre dans un état de NP, see examples (6a/b)) is much less in evidence. However, the subgenres differ when it comes to verbs used to express a “change of state” versus “retention”: trouver/vivre dans un état de NP, which denote “being in a state”, are statistically significant only in GEN, while “change of state” is expressed by mettre, plonger and tomber; the only verb present in both FY and SF is plonger, which is also statistically most significant overall. The verb laisser is found only in SF and with weak statistical relevance. (5a) Cette léthargie mystérieuse avait plongé la cour des Burgondes dans un état de profonde perplexité. (FY, Brasey La malédiction de l’anneau, 2008) (This mysterious lethargy had plunged the Burgundy court in a state of deep perplexity.) Table 5  Statistically significant verb collocates of dans un état de NP (LLR ≥10.83) Sub-corpus Collocate

CONT

être (be) laisser (let) mettre (put) plonger (plunge) retrouver (find) tomber (fall) trouver (find) vivre (live)

12.64

CRIM

FY

GEN

HIST

ROM

SF

13.72 43.87

19.01 81.34 19.64 15.43 21.50 20.27

105.46

260     S. Dyka et al.

(5b) … je plonge dans un tel état de mélancolie que je réalise que je n’ai dû faire que ça … (GEN, Jenni L’Art français de la guerre, 2011) (I fall into such a state of melancholy that I realize that I had to do just that.) (6a) Mais ce soir-là, il se trouvait dans un état de lassitude extrême. (GEN, Sabatier Le roman d’Olivier 1: Les Allumettes suédoises, 1969) (But that evening, he found himself in a state of extreme tiredness.) (6b) Je vécus durant de nombreuses semaines dans un état de félicité et de douceur et d’excitation et d’évidence et de luminosité que je n’avais jamais connues si longtemps. (GEN, Quignard Le Salon du Wurtemberg, 1986) (I lived for many weeks in a state of bliss and of placidity and of agitation and of evidence and of radiance which I had never known to last for such a long time.)

In the English subgenres, unlike in the French corpora, be is significant as a collocate for every genre (see Table 6). ROM is the only genre in which be alone seems to be a significant collocate of in a state of. This may simply result from the fact that be is the most common collocate of in a state of in general; using the verb be is presumably the most general or “neutral” way of embedding in a state of into a sentence. In this construction, the focus of interest is the NP following in a state of and not the verb. In CRIM, FY and HIST two verb collocates were found: be in all three and either keep or live (see example (7)). SF shows four verb collocates, three of which are not specific to the other genres: leave, remain, and seem. GEN seems to have the widest variety of specific verb collocates, some of which do not seem to be specific in the other genres, for example exist, find and spend. In contrast to our findings for the Table 6  Statistically significant verb collocates of in a state of NP (LLR ≥10.83) Sub-corpus Collocate

CONT

CRIM

FY

GEN

HIST

ROM

SF

be exist find keep leave live remain seem spend

114.16

73.60

31.26

75.05 26.40 17.01 14.76

85.79

34.73

19.77

46.41

41.17

15.55 44.07 114.42 39.98

11.05

15.47 35.51

35.83 13.96 27.83

9  Dans un état de NP and in a state of NP: Bridging …     261

French corpus, all of the English verbs seem to express remaining in a specific state, even leave, which always occurs in the construction exemplified by (8). (7) It will keep yesterday’s memories in a state of flux for a few hours. (FY, Pratchett The Dark Side of the Sun, 1976) (8) They’d also left the room in a state of complete disarray; the whole place had clearly been picked over for evidence. (FY, Barker Galilee, 1998)

2.2.2 Noun Collocates of dans un état de NP and in a state of  NP In looking at the statistically significant nouns occurring with dans un état de NP (see Table 7), the presence of conscience, nerf and légume may at first seem surprising from an onomasiological point of view. But a pattern emerges when we look at where they occur: conscience appears most often in expressions like dans un état de semi-conscience (in a state of intermittent consciousness) and nerf is always used in the plural, for example, in dans un état de nerfs épouvantable (in a dreadful state of nerves ). Finally, as the entry “légume” in the Petit Robert suggests, état de légume (state of vegetable) indirectly connotes a state, since as a calque on the English vegetable,8 légume can also designate a “[m]alade dans un état végétatif chronique” (ill person in a chronic vegetative state) (légume, sense III): (9) … mon père est resté dans un état de légume pendant 26 ans dans un hôpital. (CONT, Toute une histoire ) (… my father remained in a vegetable state for 26 years in a hospital.)9

The crime novels show a certain clustering of nouns related to nervousness (tension, nervosité, nerfs ), while science fiction novels seem to be characterized instead by descriptions of physical exhaustion (faiblesse, 8See

OED, “vegetable”, noun, sense 2 (b): “A person likened to a plant, spec. … one who is incapable of normal mental or physical activity, esp. as a result of brain damage”. 9See below, Sect. 3, for further discussion.

coma (coma) conscience (consciousness) crise (crisis) délabrement (decay) détresse (distress) faiblesse (weakness) fatigue (tiredness) fébrilité (feverishness) fraîcheur (freshness) légume (vegetable) manque (lack) nerf (nerve) nervosité (nervousness) panique (panic) perplexité (perplexity) prostration (prostration) rage (rage) saleté (dirt) stress (stress) stupeur (stupor) tension (tension) tristesse (sadness)

Sub-Corpus Collocate

56.06

71.09

66.98

112.69

CONT

85.44 60.25

109.28 73.18

66.00

132.65

CRIM

63.20 90.62

94.30

70.08

76.00

FY

97.04 105.01 47.58

88.77 138.23 92.83

71.59 59.16

72.26

300.12 47.90 100.24 87.11

67.14 102.15

GEN

Table 7  Statistically significant noun collocates of dans un état de NP (LLR ≥10.83) HIST

97.82

64.19

ROM

125.58

86.63 55.12

41.50 269.67

SF

262     S. Dyka et al.

9  Dans un état de NP and in a state of NP: Bridging …     263 Table 8  Statistically significant noun collocates of in a state of NP (LLR ≥10.83)a Sub-corpus Collocate

CONT

CRIM

shock aSee

FY

GEN

HIST

ROM

SF

64.25

Footnote 7 with regards to near

fatigue, prostration ). The preference in fantasy fiction seems to be for nouns indicating a kind of helplessness coupled with a negative form of excitement, such as fébrilité, panique and perplexité: (10) Le sire Marten était de plus en plus nerveux. … Il était dans un tel état de fébrilité que Zétide finit par s’en émouvoir. (FY, Grimbert La malerune 1: Les armes des garamonts, 1998) (The sire Martin became more and more nervous. … He was in such a state of feverishness that, in the end, Zétide was annoyed.)

In contrast to the French findings, noun collocates in the English subcorpora were only significant in one genre (see Table 8): general fiction. The only significant noun collocate in the English sub-corpora is shock (see examples (11a/b); but see also below, Sect. 4). (11a) Most days we found her in a state of prostration and sleepy shock, like a survivor who has been pulled out of the rubble a week after an earthquake. (GEN, Banville Shroud, 2003) (11b) Anger would come later, but for the moment he was in a state of shock. (GEN, McEwan Solar, 2010)

2.2.3 Adjective Collocates of dans un état de NP and in a state of  NP The incidence of statistically significant adjectives occurring with dans un état de NP (see Table 9) in our results confirms Blumenthal’s observation (Blumenthal 2004, 152) that the motif dans un état de NP is often used to indicate a (highly) advanced step in an ongoing process (see parfait and profond ). However, we also found the statistically very significant adjective tel, which is used quite systematically to state the

264     S. Dyka et al. Table 9  Statistically significant adjective collocates of dans un état de NP (LLR ≥10.83) Sub-corpus Collocate parfait (perfect) proche (near) profond (deep) tel (such) voisin (near)

CONT

CRIM

FY

79.25 77.49

76.07

GEN

HIST

ROM

SF

38.06

65.65

62.18 69.85

137.99

72.96

68.38 89.10

prerequisite for a subsequent state of affairs, specified in a subordinate clause introduced by que (that) (examples (12a/b); see below, Sect. 3, for more on this subject). (12a) … il se sentait dans un tel état de fureur qu ’il décida de rentrer chez lui sur-le-champ. (ROM, Bourdin Les Années passion, 2003) (… he was in such a state of rage that he decided to return home immediately.) (12b) L’événement l’avait laissé dans un état de prostration tel qu ’il se sentait incapable de penser à autre chose … (SF, Curval En souvenir du futur, 1983) (The event had left him in such a state of prostration that he felt unable to think about anything else …)

The most striking result, however, was the presence in most of the subcorpora of adjectives such as proche and voisin to express the non-typicality of the specific state of affairs that normally the noun would express (see examples (13a/b); see below, Sect. 3, for further discussion). (13a) Il se rappela que Noël était dans quelques jours et cette réalité le plongea dans un état proche de la panique. (ROM, Musso Demain, 2013) (He remembered that it would be Christmas in a few days, and this reality plunged him in a state close to panic. ) (13b) La révélation de cet épouvantable péril les plongea dans un état de prostration voisin de l’hébétude. (SF, Guieu Opération Aphrodite, 1955) (The revelation of this horrible danger plunged them in a state of prostration close to boredom.)

Among the English sub-corpora (see Table 10), CRIM and SF do not show any significant adjective collocates; ROM only shows two

9  Dans un état de NP and in a state of NP: Bridging …     265 Table 10  Statistically significant adjective collocates of in a state of NP (LLR ≥10.83) Sub-corpus Collocate complete constant extreme great high permanent perpetual such total

CONT

133.12

CRIM

FY

GEN

59.17 154.99

50.08

HIST

ROM

SF

65.03 63.80

22.69 25.21

48.00 76.81

94.54

66.85 90.66 38.86

91.54

47.76

90.08

adjective collocates—constant and such—that premodify state (see examples (14) and (15)). (14) She supposed it was the fumes from the wine that kept them all in a constant state of lust. (GEN, Bainbridge The Bottle Factory Outing, 1974) (15) Or if he did they would be in such a state of confusion that no one … (HIST, Unsworth Pascali’s Island, 1980)

FY, HIST and GEN show many different adjective collocates which premodify state or the noun in the NP. The collocates complete, extreme, great, high, perpetual, permanent and total suggest that Blumenthal’s findings also hold for English, since these adjectives signify the end of a state or a high degree of its development (see Blumenthal 2004, 152). These adjectives always premodify the noun in the NP which follows in a state of (see example (16)). (16) I am in a state of permanent distress. (HIST, Byatt The Children’s Book, 2009)

2.2.4 Collocate Findings Specific to English In contrast to the French data, only two specific collocates were found in the English corpus: and as a conjunction is a collocate of in a state of in CRIM and some as a quantifier in GEN. The conjunction functions as a coordinator

266     S. Dyka et al.

between two noun phrases10 that follow in a state of (see example (17)) but can also coordinate other clause elements or clauses (see example (18)). (17) Whatever the outcome, it could not be worse than living in a state of perpetual uncertainty and inchoate terror. (CRIM, Dibdin Medusa, 2003) (18) Kathleen was in a state of shock and trembling uncontrollably when Avedissian examined the wound. (CRIM, McClure The Trojan Boy, 1988)

Some always premodifies the noun following in a state of and very often is used as a hedge (see example (19)). (19) In contrast to the clipped and orderly vines, the garden was in a state of some neglect, as indeed was the outside of the house. (GEN, Mayle A Good Year, 2004)

Other “collocates” which are highly specific for English are punctuation marks. This indicates that in a state of NP occurs frequently at the end of clauses followed by a comma or full stop. This might stem from the English word order (as part of the verb valency the complement and often adverbials follow the verb; see Sect. 3).

3 The Motifs dans un état de NP and in a state of NP in the Corpus: A Functional Perspective The results from analyzing the lexicograms (see Sect. 2.2) confirm the functional sketch of dans un état de NP given in Blumenthal (2004), but closer examination of the specific co-occurrences also reveals a range of other functions. First, as pointed out earlier (see Sect. 2.2.2), dans un état de NP allows for using nouns which do not designate “states” themselves 10It seems that and in some of these coordinated noun phrases is counted twice (once with the first noun and once with the second noun). So the results might not be exact.

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(even in the widest sense of the term), such as dans un état de nerfs ­épouvantable, but which can function metonymically. In a similar vein, dans un état de légume also represents a figure of speech based on a relation of similarity11; while dans un état de légume is a statistically significant co-occurrence only in the contrast corpus, the NP état de légume can also be found in the literary sub-corpora, where (in a few examples at least), while not statistically significant, it occurs as the prepositional complement of réduire (reduce)12: (20) L’action narcotique … avait … diminué sa coordination motrice en le réduisant à l’état de légume, un légume souriant. (CRIM, Giesbert L’Immortel, 2008) (The narcotic action … had … diminished his motor coordination by reducing him to the state of a vegetable, a smiling vegetable.)

Expressions such as dans un état de nerfs épouvantable and dans un état de légume clearly demonstrate that sometimes état cannot be considered as a hypernym of the entity designated by the noun following the ­preposition de (as for example in état de perpléxité [state of perplexity]). On the other hand, prostration (prostration) is defined as an “[é ]tat de très grand abattement physique et moral” (state of great physical and moral dejection) in the Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé (sense B.2.b; emphasis added) or as an “[é ]tat d’abattement, de faiblesse et d’inactivité” (state of dejection, weakness and inactivity) in the Petit Robert (sense 2; emphasis added), whereas the lexicographic definitions of fureur (rage) do not contain this element. Nevertheless, we find dans un état de fureur, see example (12a), repeated here for convenience as (21a), together with (12b)/(21b): (21a) … il se sentait dans un tel état de fureur qu’il décida de rentrer chez lui sur-le-champ. (ROM, Bourdin Les Années passion, 2003) (… he was in such a state of rage that he decided to return home immediately.)

11See

OED, “vegetable”, adjective, sense 5: “life or lifestyle … resembling that of a plant, esp. uneventful, featureless, passive, monotonous”. 12Note, however, that (réduire ) à l’état de NP ([reduce] to the state of NP) does not represent the same motif as (rester ) dans un état de NP ([remain] in a state of NP).

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(21b) L’événement l’avait laissé dans un état de prostration tel qu’il se sentait incapable de penser à autre chose … (SF, Curval En souvenir du futur, 1983) (The event had left him in such a state of prostration that he felt unable to think about anything else …)

Despite the parallelism that emerges from examples 21a/b, it must be borne in mind that fureur is a noun which currently designates an emotion and appears with collocates such as être (be), mettre (put) or entrer (enter), whereas prostration does not come into play—see the examples in (22): (22a) Il ne m’écoutait pas. Il était en fureur. Un homme fier. (GEN, Cusset Une éducation catholique, 2014) (He did not listen to me. He was furious. A proud man.) (22b) Cette indifférence me mettait en fureur … (GEN, Orsenna Madame Ba, 2002) (This indifference infuriated me …) (22c) Alors, Skirnir entra en fureur et se mit à invectiver la géante… (FY, Brasey La Malédiction de l’anneau, 2008) (So, Skirnir became furious and began to insult the giant…)

In the case of dans un état de fureur, thus, the motif dans un état de NP functions as a kind of “classifier” which shifts fureur from the realm of emotion to that of a state—a strategy resorted to regularly when this “state” is the reason for a certain behaviour (for a similar case in point, see Augustyn and Grossmann (2014) as well as Novakova et al. (2018)). Another factor which appears to trigger the use of dans un état de NP is the function of hedging, as in constructions with proche or voisin in French and some or near13 in English (see also above, Sects. 2.2.3 and 2.2.4, examples (13a/b) and (19)) as well as with prefixed nouns of states: (23) Parfois, cette révélation altérait sa conscience, et l’entraînait dans un état proche de l’ivresse. (SF, Lehman Le Cycle de F.A.U.S.T 2: Les défenseurs, 1996) (Sometimes, this revelation changed his consciousness and put him in a state near inebriation.) 13As

stated before (see above, Sect. 2.2, Footnote 7) in all cases of near (near collapse, near exhaustion, near mutiny ) it premodifies the noun that occurs with in a state of and functions as a hedge.

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(24) Quant à Jean Daumale, il était entré dans un état voisin de la catalepsie. (SF, Curval Rut aux étoiles, 1979) (As for Jean Daumale, he had entered a state similar to catalepsy.) (25) … il prenait soin de maintenir son petit appartement du quartier Montorgueil dans un état de quasi-limpidité. (CRIM, Bruckner La Maison des anges, 2013) (… he took care to maintain his small apartment in the Montorgueil district in a state of almost crystal clarity.) (26) Yet when I finally awoke it was in a state of some agitation, … (GEN, Brookner Undue Influence, 1999)

Difficulties of clear-cut categorization of a given situation can also be expressed by a coordination of different state nouns, which is another situation frequently observable in the literary corpus (see also above, Sects. 2.2.1 and 2.2.4, examples (6b) and (17)): (27) La suite se déroula dans un état de confusion et de colère, dans un brouillard de cris et de sang. (ROM, Musso Je reviens te chercher, 2008) (The following took place in a state of confusion and of fury, in a fog of shouts and of blood.) (28) By the time they got back to the pick-up, Yongli was there in a state of anger and frustration. (CRIM, May The Firemaker, 1992)

Another previously mentioned important function (see above, Sect. 2.2.3) is that of introducing a state of affairs representing the precondition for a subsequent state of affairs specified in a subordinate clause that is introduced by que/that (see above, examples (12a/b)/(21a/b) and (15)). Although less frequently, we also find examples in which the current state of affairs is itself the consequence of a previous event: (29) Pourquoi Kevin était-il dans un tel état de panique? (FY, Robillard Les chevaliers d’émeraude 7: L’enlèvement, 2005) (Why was Kevin in such a state of panic?)

A further important function of dans un état de NP seemingly relates to the possibility of adding adjectives that serve to qualify the (usually extreme) situation designated by the noun. This qualification may

270     S. Dyka et al.

reflect a character’s point of view but is simultaneously conveyed—with adjectives instead of (for example) relative clauses—as not depending on an individual point of view: (30) Dès qu’elle eut refermé la porte, il eut l’impression de recommencer à respirer. Cette femme le mettait dans un état de stress inimaginable [~ “que l’on n’aurait pu imaginer” (which one would not have been able to imagine) as opposed to “qu’il n’aurait pu imaginer” (that he would not have been able to imagine)]. (CRIM, Aubert Funérarium, 2002) (Since she had closed the door again, he had the impression of beginning to breathe again. This woman put him in a state of unimaginable stress.) (31) Et je dois dire que je les ai trouvés dans un état de fatigue et d’abattement alarmant [~“qui aurait alarmé tout le monde” (that would have worried everyone) as opposed to “qui m’alarmait” (that worried me)]. (SF, Bordage Les Griots célèbres 2: Le Dragon aux plumes de sang, 2003) (And I have to say that I found them in a state of alarming tiredness and weariness.) (32) Cependant, cette fois-ci, il était dans un état de fureur indescriptible [~“que l’on n’aurait pas su décrire” (that one would not have been able to describe) as opposed to “qu’il n’aurait pas su décrire” (that he would not have been able to describe)] et tremblait de rage … (FY, Bujor La Prophétie des pierres, 2002) (Admittedly, this time he was in a state of indescribable anger and trembled with rage …)

In considering the level of information structure, the point can also be made that the prepositional phrase dans un état de NP/in a state of NP appears much more frequently in the right-hand context of the sentence (see examples (33a/b) and (34a/b)), thus making it part of the rhematic information, than in the sentence-initial position (see examples (35a/b)) where it expresses the “framework within which the main predication holds” (Chafe 1976, 50).14 (33a) Il se laisse choir sur un fauteuil, dans un état proche de la stupeur. (CRIM, Brussolo La Main froide, 1995) (He slumped down in an armchair, in a state of near consternation.) 14See Riegel et al. (2014, 264–66), for the distinction between “function scénique” (framework function) and “function rhématique” (rhematic function).

9  Dans un état de NP and in a state of NP: Bridging …     271

(33b) … j’étais bien parti pour terminer ma vie comme je l’avais commencée: dans la déréliction et dans la rage, dans un état de panique haineuse encore exacerbé par la chaleur de l’été. (GEN, Houellebecq La Possibilité d’une île, 2005) (… I was well on the way to ending my life as I had begun it: in dereliction and rage, in a state of hateful panic, further exacerbated by the summer heat [Houellebecq 2005, 290].) (34a) Ralph sat in his office assessing the reports in a state of weary disbelief. (SF, Hamilton The Naked God—Flight & Faith, 1999) (34b) Lizzie arrives for our Monday evening together in a state of very high excitement. (ROM, Mason Playing James, 2003) (35a) O’Brien surexcité, dans un état voisin de l’hystérie, commença de nous noyer d’un flot de paroles que Taubelman accueillit avec calme … (GEN, Déon Un taxi mauve, 1973) (Overwrought, in a state close to hysteria, O’Brien started to drown us in a flood of words which Taubelman received calmly …) (35b) The following afternoon, in a state of high agitation, Julia set off to the station. (ROM, James The Queen of New Beginnings, 2010)

In summary, an important common denominator of the French motif dans un état de NP seems to be the great morphosyntactic flexibility it allows. This ability makes it useful for performing a rather broad range of functions on the textual level to the point of complete syntactic independence, as in the following—admittedly extreme—example: (36) Tous les crimes de Schaltzmann s’étaient déroulés selon un modus operandi analogue. Agression armée à partir de sa voiture. Carabine, arme blanche ou cocktail Molotov au napalm. Victime choisie au hasard, à partir de ses interprétations paranoïaques du monde. Éventuellement, prélèvement du sang et de certains organes vitaux de la victime. Pas de kidnapping, jamais. Pas d’utilisation de liens ou d’entraves diverses. Pas de transport des corps. Il ne restait jamais plus de deux minutes avec chacune de ses victimes. De l’improvisation totale, dans un état de terreur cauchemardesque, d’hallucination psychotique. Une structure fractale bien déterminée, que le Schizo-Processeur pistait jusqu’aux échos les plus infimes de sa personnalité dérangée. (CRIM, Dantec Les racines du mal, 1995; emphasis added) (All of Schaltzmann’s crimes happened according

272     S. Dyka et al.

to an analogous modus operandi. Armed attack from his car. Rifle, knife or napalm Molotov cocktail. Randomly chosen victim, starting from his paranoid interpretations of the world. If necessary, removal of the victim’s blood and of certain vital organs. No abduction, never that. No ropes or chains were used. No transportation of the bodies. He never stayed for more than two minutes with each of his victims. Complete improvisation, in a state of nightmarish terror, of psychotic hallucination. An exact fractal structure, which was followed by the Schizo-Processor to the tiniest echoes of his deranged personality.)

The quoted passage in (36) presents an interesting syntactic pattern: a first, complete sentence is followed by seven nominal expressions which describe in more detail Schaltzmann’s “modus operandi ”; the next sentence informs the reader about Schaltzmann’s timeline, which is again described by three phrases without verbs, among them dans un état de terreur cauchemardesque, d’hallucination psychotique. The use of the motif dans un état de NP allows for maintaining the elliptical style, describing a kind of “mixed” state (see also cauchemardesque 15) and re-classifying terreur and hallucination as “states”, which are thus presented as reasons for the improvisation totale (which in turn is in opposition to the rather precise “modus operandi ”).

4 Stylistic Analysis of Results At first sight, the motif dans un état de NP and its English counterpart in a state of NP might not seem to be the most obvious starting point, on the one hand, for seeking to link a corpus-linguistic approach and, on the other, for asking the type of questions that scholars in the fields of literary studies and narratology typically pursue. Our study shows, however, that corpus-linguistics can be an eye-opener, drawing our attention towards linguistic mechanisms that, while they may 15In

the Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé, cauchemardesque is defined as what produces “l’impression d’un cauchemar” (the impression of a nightmare) (entry “cauchemard”, derivations, 3); see also the entry “-esque”: “Suff. formateur d’adj[ectives] dér[ivés] de noms communs, de noms propres et d’adj[ectives] et qui indiquent une ressemblance” (Suffix used to form adjectives derived from common nouns, proper nouns and adjectives and which indicate a similarity).

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significantly affect how literary texts work, often still go unnoticed in traditional literary and stylistic analyses. Dans un état de NP and in a state of NP, for instance, can be shown to play a significant role in the textual construction of literary characters. In particular the nominal collocates identified for dans un état de NP and in a state of NP in our corpus (see above, Sect. 2.2.2, Tables 7 and 8) point to what likely is one of the most important roles this motif plays from a literary perspective: the affective discursive function (see Appendix B), given that the majority of the nominal collocates of dans un état de NP identified for the French corpus refer to emotional or mental states. What also strikes us is that most of the French nominal collocates are nouns referring to negative emotional or mental states (crise, détresse, fatigue, ­fébrilité, nervosité, panique, perplexité, rage, stress, stupeur, tension, tristesse ). As pointed out previously (see Sect. 2.2.2), the use of nerf implies that this collocate also fits into the general pattern of using dans un état de NP to express a negative emotional state. Conscience is the only nominal collocate referring to a mental state that appears to have a neutral meaning. However, depending on the modifiers combined with this particular noun, it may turn out to have a negative meaning in specific examples after all. Even if shock is the only statistically relevant nominal collocate for English, it at least appears to confirm the tendency we observed in the French data. The English corpus shows a variety of other negatively connoted nouns following after in a state of, as the following examples illustrate: (37) Late that night, he wakes up; he is sweating, and in a state of high anxiety. (GEN, Bradbury Rates of Exchange, 1983) (38) Continued observation of colourful characters took Mather frequently down cellar steps and he became in the course of time a colourful and visionary character himself, dying at last in a state of delirium in a Jacksonville sanatorium in 1841. (HIST, Unsworth Sacred Hunger, 1992)

Even if the noun has overall positive implications, modifiers may still make the portrayal of a character’s mind sound more negative: (39) He had taken an early supper with Willy, who appeared to be in a curious state of euphoria. (GEN, Murdoch The Nice and the Good, 1968)

274     S. Dyka et al.

Use of the adjective curious here suggests that the state of euphoria might not be an entirely positive experience. Due to the lack of statistically relevant nominal collocates in the English corpus, we relied on a manual analysis of three English sub-corpora (CRIM, GEN and ROM) to test if our hypothesis concerning the prevalent meaning associated with the motif would hold up—and it did so, in two respects: First, in the majority of the examples in CRIM, GEN and ROM, the motif fulfils an affective discursive function. More specifically, in the majority of examples the motif does indeed express a negative emotional or mental state. Hence, our second proof: although there are instances where a character’s mental state described by the NP following dans un état de or in a state of can be positive or at least neutral, an important function of dans un état de NP and in a state of NP is the depiction of emotional or mental states, with a discernible bias towards a description of negative states. Presenting characters in (unpleasant) emotional and mental states in literary texts is bound to be interesting for a literary analysis for a variety of reasons. Foremost, in constructing literary characters the depiction of their emotional and mental states arguably constitutes one of the major building blocks of fictional narratives. Providing readers with an insight into a character’s consciousness has traditionally been deemed a strategy that is apt to invite the reader’s empathy with, or even sympathy for, these fictional “paper beings”. Arguably, texts that construct a complex impression of the characters’ psychology are more likely to make (and keep) readers interested in the characters, their reactions and motivations. Authors may of course draw upon a host of different strategies to achieve this effect. The motif dans un état de NP/in a state of NP turns out to be just one of these but one that can be nuanced by filling the non-obligatory slots of the motif with a wide range of different modifiers. This makes the motif a highly versatile device for describing, fleshing out and varying the depiction of emotional and mental states of characters and for expressing states that could not be captured in a single lexeme. Moreover, the adjectival collocates in English as well as in French (see above, Sect. 2.2.3, Tables 9 and 10) suggest that the motif describes especially a heightened or advanced degree of a particular emotional

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state. Thus, the basic linguistic function of the motif dans un état de NP and in a state of NP—potentially bridging a syntagmatic gap—also renders them interesting subjects for literary studies from the aspect of the affective discursive function. Hedging by means of proche and voisin, which are statistically relevant for the French corpus, and near may also contribute to rendering more flexible and variable the description of the characters’ emotional and mental states. Given the motif ’s pervasive link with the depiction of negative emotional or mental states and, even more, its tendency to refer to heightened or advanced states, it is particularly likely to occur in dramatic and suspenseful moments in the developing narrative whenever characters experience an extreme situation (more often than not in a negative sense). Some of the verbal collocates are also of interest in this regard. In particular, the verbal collocate plonger in general fiction as well as in fantasy and science fiction in the French corpus supports the hypothesis that the motif lends itself to providing information on the characters’ psychological state at turning points, in moments of crisis, and in other extraordinary situations. The verb plonger is ideally suited for conveying an impression of a sudden change in the character’s state of mind or situation. In addition to nouns referring to mental or emotional states, the French corpus yielded up a number of nominal collocates that may refer to the physical states of characters: coma, faiblesse, prostration, saleté (see above, Sect. 2.2.2, Table 7). Again, the nouns clearly have negative connotations. If these nouns occur in the construction dans un état de NP, the motif is likely to have a descriptive discursive function, which may also serve to flesh out the description of a literary character indirectly by providing information on his/her environment. Beyond that, some of the nominal collocates also suggest that the motif dans un état de NP may have a more broadly descriptive discursive function, potentially serving to describe a setting. This seems to be particularly likely with the nominal collocates saleté, manque and délabrement. In this context, it seems interesting that délabrement is statistically relevant as a collocate in crime fiction, where one might expect the expression dans un état de délabrement to refer to a crime scene or even to a corpse.

276     S. Dyka et al.

5 Conclusion Our analysis of the expression dans un état de NP and its English counterpart in literary texts of different subgenres (CRIM, FY, GEN, HIST, ROM, SF) confirmed Blumenthal’s observations concerning its use in French newspaper texts. But, it also revealed a broader range of functions that seem to be specific to literary texts and thus justify categorizing dans un état de NP/in a state of NP as a motif. The differences we found in the usage of this motif—including that it appears to be used more restrictively in certain subgenres—concern both the linguistic level and the level of the different subgenres. French and English seem to employ this expression differently, ranging from the absence of statistically significant verbs denoting “change of state” in the English corpus to the systematic statistical significance of be in the English corpus whereas its equivalent être is absent in the French corpus. As for the differences between subgenres, undoubtedly further investigation is needed in order to identify what is specific to a certain subgenre written in one language as opposed to its counterpart in the other language. Of relevance here will be contrasting adjectives in English fantasy novels with their French counterparts. We also found evidence of tendencies that both languages share: the motif is used with more verbs, adjectives and nouns in GEN than in (almost) any of the other subgenres (see Table 9 for adjectives in French SF). This suggests that GEN indeed shows (a set of ) specific features which require still more detailed investigation using corpus-linguistic tools. More generally speaking, since the psychology of fictional ­characters tends to play a vital role in literary texts captivating readers in the first place, the linguistic and stylistic strategies used to construct these “paper beings” clearly deserve more attention from literary studies. The present study highlights the practical possibilities offered by corpus-linguistic approaches in this context. As we have shown, the construction dans un état de NP/in a state of NP contributes a certain variety to the presentation of a character’s psychology—highly desirable for writers of fiction. Thus, the functions of the motif dans un état de NP/in a state of NP which we identified beyond those discussed by Blumenthal (2004) appear to be driven by stylistic considerations.

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While our analysis has demonstrated a notable difference in the textual functions of the motif dans un état de NP/in a state of NP between literary and non-literary texts (see Blumenthal’s results versus those obtained from the contrast corpus), we could not do more than add another piece to the complex jigsaw puzzle of literary subgenres. Nevertheless, taken together with the other motifs discussed in this volume, which have turned out to be equally useful categories for comparing (sub)genres, it makes a contribution to the larger picture gradually starting to take shape.

References Augustyn, Magdalena, and Francis Grossmann. 2014. “Entre hyperonymie et spécification: un drôle de sentiment.” In Les émotions dans le discours – Emotions in discourse, edited by Peter Blumenthal, Iva Novakova, and Dirk Siepmann, 123–34. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Blumenthal, Peter. 2004. “Definition und Wortgebrauch: Zustandsnomina im Französischen.” In Romanische Sprachwissenschaft: Zeugnisse für Vielfalt und Profil eines Faches. Festschrift für Christian Schmitt zum 60. Geburtstag, vol. 2, edited by Alberto Gil, Dietmar Osthus, and Claudia Polzin-Haumann, 143–78. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Chafe, Wallace. 1976. “Givenness, Contrastiveness, Definiteness, Subjects, Topics, and Point of View.” In Subject and Topic, edited by Charles Li, 25–55. New York, San Francisco and London: Academic Press. Houellebecq, Michel. 2005. The Possibility of an Island. Translated by Gavin Bowd. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Houellebecq, Michel. 2016. Submission. Translated by Lorin Stein. London: Vintage. Kraif, Olivier, and Sascha Diwersy. 2012. “Le Lexicoscope: un outil pour l’étude de profils combinatoires et l’extraction de constructions lexico-syntaxiques.” In Actes de la conférence conjointe JEP-TALN-RECITAL 2012, Volume 2: TALN, edited by Georges Antoniadis, Hervé Blanchon, and Gilles Sérasset, 399–406. Grenoble: Association Francophone pour la Communication Parlée and Association pour le Traitement Automatique des Langues. http:// www.aclweb.org/anthology/F12-2033.

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Kraif, Olivier, and Sascha Diwersy. 2014. “Exploring Combinatorial Profiles Using Lexicograms on a Parsed Corpus: A Case Study in the Lexical Field of Emotions.” In Les émotions dans le discours – Emotions in discourse, edited by Peter Blumenthal, Iva Novakova and Dirk Siepmann, 381–94. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Le Petit Robert de la langue française. 2019. Version numérique 5 (2). http:// pr12.bvdep.com. Lexicoscope. http://phraseotext.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/lexicoscope. Longrée, Dominique, and Sylvie Mellet. 2013. “Le motif: une unité phraséologique englobante? Étendre le champ de la phraséologie de la langue au discours.” Langages 189: 65–79. Longrée, Dominique, and Sylvie Mellet. 2018. “Towards a Topological Grammar of Genres and Styles: A Way to Combine Paradigmatic Quantitative Analysis with a Syntagmatic Approach.” In The Grammar of Genres and Styles: From Discrete to Non-discrete Units, edited by Dominique Legallois, Thierry Charnois, and Meri Larjavaara, 140–63. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. Novakova, Iva, Julie Sorba, and Agnès Tutin. 2018. “Les noms généraux sentiment et émotion.” Langue française 198: 83–97. Oxford English Dictionary Online. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed. com. Riegel, Martin, Jean-Christophe Pellat, and René Rioul. 2014. Grammaire méthodique du français, 5th ed. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Teich, Elke. 1999. Systemic Functional Grammar in Natural Language Generation: Linguistic Description and Computational Representation. London and New York: Cassell. Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé. http://www.atilf.fr/tlfi. Vargas, Fred. 2014. Dog Will Have His Day. Translated from the French by Siân Reynolds. London: Harville Secker.

10 Towards an Interdisciplinary Approach for Differentiating Contemporary Fiction Subgenres Iva Novakova and Dirk Siepmann

To conclude our exploratory journey through contemporary French, English and American literature using modern lexico-statistical m ­ ethods and an exhaustive corpus-driven approach, we summarize here our main results and the perspectives on productive future research in digital humanities they have opened. All the contributions in this ­ ­volume converge into three major avenues of research that examine: (1) the importance of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and the new methodology we developed in the PhraseoRom project for a linguistic and stylistic analysis of contemporary literature;

I. Novakova (*)  Grenoble Alpes University, Grenoble, France e-mail: [email protected] D. Siepmann  University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 I. Novakova and D. Siepmann (eds.), Phraseology and Style in Subgenres of the Novel, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23744-8_10

279

280     I. Novakova and D. Siepmann

(2) the viability of using statistically significant expressions and textual motifs in identifying literary subgenres; and, (3) the comparison of these expressions and textual motifs in English and French literary subgenres. Let us briefly recap the stages of the journey that brought us to this point. We started out by discussing previous research into phraseology, stylistics and the theories of literary genre, each of which makes a specific contribution to describing recurrent lexico-grammatical patterns in contemporary fiction. We also presented our newly designed methodology based on lexical statistics approaches to extracting recurrent lexico-syntactic patterns (Chapter 1) and then moved on to an overview of the term “motif ” in different disciplines (Chapter 2). Despite the apparent diversity in the use of this “crossroads” term, it has emerged that the concept of motif essentially refers to recurrent patterns in folkloristics, narratology, bioinformatics, NLP and linguistics. Pivotal in our attempt to characterize such recurrent patterns (i.e., our recurrent lexico-syntactic trees or RLTs) was Longrée’s and Mellet’s definition of the term (2013, 2018), which holds that motifs are “an ordered subset of the textual ensemble, formed by the recurring combination of n elements” (Longrée and Mellet 2018, 156) and which fulfil specific, identifiable functions on the semantic, pragmatic and rhetorical levels (see Longrée and Mellet 2013, 66). Taking two different approaches (keywords analysis and correspondence analysis), the next two Chapters 3 and 4 converge in their finding that the writing style is more variable and creative in French novels than in British or American novels. For example, while—sometimes rather banal—adverbs ending in -ly (to walk briskly) are very frequently used in British and American novels, manner adverbs ending in -ment tend to be avoided in French novels and are replaced by various periphrases, as in this case, by marcher (walk)/s’éloigner (move away)/se diriger (go towards)/se lever (stand up)/traverser (get out)/monter (climb)+ avec raideur (with stiffness)/d’un pas raide (with a stiff step) (see Chapter 3 by Novakova et al. in this volume). Our results show that in French the motifs generated by manner adverbs are more complex, furnishing

10  Towards an Interdisciplinary Approach for Differentiating …     281

empirical proof of French literary language’s higher variability. French writers also embellish these structures in ways that English is unlikely to adopt. Thus, we found motifs like se lever avec une lenteur majestueuse (rise with majestic slowness)/avec une grâce troublante (rise with disturbing grace) or hocher la tête avec une brièveté calculée (nod with calculated brevity). While such expressions are systemically possible in English— and indeed were used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—they are probably rather noun-heavy for modern tastes and thus tend to be replaced by more succinct constructions, e.g. nod briefly/stiffly in this instance. To put it in colloquial terms, we might say that French authors “are into” the subtler shades of meaning that such prepositional phrases can pack in lieu of adverbs. Another striking finding the book owes to Chapter 4 is how pronounced a role the generic verb to say plays in English corpus speech tags—it accounts for no less than 63% of verba dicendi in the English data set. The pervasiveness of this semantically unmarked or “neutral” verb suggests that lexical variation in the speech tag construction’s verb slot is significantly lower in English than in French novels. The “dogma of avoiding repetition” of the same word (Philippe 2016, 69) has undoubtedly played an important role in heightening the creativity of French writers since the nineteenth century. For English novelists, on the other hand, this lexical variation so prevalent an ideal in the French tradition is not a prime stylistic consideration. Our results suggest, therefore, that the distributional configurations of speech verbs in English and French fiction as well as in the different genres (crime, fantasy and romance) can be accounted for in part by stylistic preferences of the two languages. Also, the predilection for generic verbs like say can be interpreted as trying to hold narrator intervention to a minimum, to foster the illusion of the narrator not filtering the characters’ utterances. The high frequency of expressive speech verbs in French popular fiction (fantasy, romance, crime) suggests a strong tendency to specify the speaker’s attitude. Conversely, several scholars have observed that English fantasy tends to favour a comparatively simple language. English and French fiction also differ in how each depicts alcohol and tobacco consumption, as observed in Chapter 5. French writers, for instance, are more likely to use the generic term “alcohol”, while

282     I. Novakova and D. Siepmann

English authors seem more disposed to using specific references (to different types of alcohol). In French crime fiction and romance ­novels, references to alcohol typically serve to portray addiction or personal decay or evoke a medical context. This chapter delved into scripts related to alcohol and tobacco consumption and the motifs generated by the expressions light a cigarette/allumer une cigarette and have a drink/boire un verre in English and French. It revealed that the expression take a sip is characteristic of romance novels in English whereas its French near-equivalent boire une gorgée is not. Despite alcohol and tobacco consumption having been a staple in literary texts since the 1950s, as shown by our corpus-driven approach, it has so far not been examined systematically—either from a literary or linguistic perspective. Smoking a cigarette or drinking an alcoholic beverage is mainly used, across all genres, for representing common forms of human interaction. Having characters imbibe or light up is also a device for announcing or suspending dialogue or action. Therefore, the motifs in this chapter were systematically related to their—descriptive, affective, cognitive or infra-narrative—discursive functions (see also Appendix B). Chapters 6 and 7 moved on to considering the role that “fiction words” and collocations play in distinguishing literary subgenres. Focusing on two comparable sets of randomly drawn fiction words, in Chapter 6 the authors examined how these words are created morphologically as well as the semantic fields they belong to in 1990s American and French science fiction. Using data obtained with the RLT extraction technique, the authors of this chapter compared their syntactic distributions. The presence of “transfuges” or fiction words—neologisms such as holo, psionic, terraform, astrogation, conapt and cyborg that leap not only across the boundaries of works by individual authors but also hurdle language barriers—revealed a great unity in this genre-specific imaginary landscape where inventions and findings abound. A compa­ rison between an American and a French science-fiction corpus here also showed that the two different literary traditions may share a common background of fictional references. Although French SF is part of a specific French literary tradition dating back to influential authors such as Jules Verne, the separate science fiction universes created by works in American and French literary cultures in effect ended up merging in

10  Towards an Interdisciplinary Approach for Differentiating …     283

recent decades. This fusion was perhaps inevitable, given the outsized influence epitomized by the huge, unreciprocated one-way flow of translations from (American) English into French. Chapter 7 applied a semantic categorization of lexico-syntactic patterns (RLTs) to distinguish between two closely related narrative subgenres, science fiction (SF) and fantasy (FY). The RLTs extracted from the two corpora were classified in an exhaustive semantic grid. It served, for example, for classifying the recurrent lexico-syntactic trees specific to the SF corpus, such as s’enfoncer | sortir | pénétrer dans la forêt | les bois (to go deep into | to emerge from | to enter the forest | the woods), in the semantic category. These RLTs generate different motifs related to a journey through a specific landscape, which could be a forest, a wood, a castle or a battlefield. Literary critics do not distinguish between science fiction and fantasy based on linguistic differences, but instead on an opposition of the imagined and the reader’s experience. Our methodology can highlight these “generic markers” (the medievalism of fantasy, for example, or the salience of specific spaces (space, forest) and certain “stereotyped actions” like the martial dimension of characters in fantasy novels). The results for both the French and English corpora showed that the boundary between the two genres is generally respected in them. However, a more detailed analysis of certain categories (such as cognition and, especially, communication) revealed specificities in each language. This grid, developed for the purposes of PhraseoRom, represents one of our project’s key achievements. After analyzing microstructures (fiction words or collocations) in the two previous chapters, the focus in Chapters 8 and 9 shifts to specific motifs defined as characterizing and structuring elements (Longrée and Mellet 2013) within the fictional world. Chapter 8 covers the motifs of writing écrire/lire_DET_lettre/roman, write/ and reading read_DET_letter/_novel specific to general fiction (GEN) as opposed to crime novels (CRIM). These structures revealed that characters in GEN are depicted reading more letters and books than those in CRIM (and we would probably find the same situation in other subgenres). General literature is replete with this type of action and personal exchanges between the characters. The results also revealed that écrire_DET_roman/write_ DET_novel is most characteristic of French general fiction, leading to

284     I. Novakova and D. Siepmann

the hypothesis that the French literary novel is more metafictional than the English one. The recurrent lexico-syntactic constructions found in our corpora show significant syntagmatic and paradigmatic variations. They also perform various discursive functions which may be narrative and descriptive but can also be cognitive, pragmatic or commentary. More generally, we regard the identification of specific motifs and their discursive functions as potentially contributing to the elaboration of “an operating theory of genres” (Rastier 2011, 72). In Chapter 9, other interesting motifs generated by the collocations “dans un état de NP/in a state of NP” undergo analysis. Comparing the two languages showed that in a state of NP is more frequent in English corpora than dans un état de NP in French corpora in all subgenres except science fiction. The results for crime novels demonstrated a clustering with nouns related to nervousness: tension (tension), nervosité (nervousness), nerfs (nerves), while science fiction novels instead tend to be characterized by depictions of physical exhaustion: faiblesse (weakness), prostration (prostration) and fatigue (tiredness). Fantasy fiction, in turn, favours nouns indicating a kind of helplessness dans un état de fébrilité (in a state of anxiety). Motifs like dans un état de nerfs épouvantable (in a dreadfully nervous condition), dans un état de fureur indescriptible (in a state of indescribable fury) indicate how characters’ emotional states are depicted. Another interesting result related to general fiction revealed that the motifs here are used with more verbs, adjectives and nouns than in any other genre, possibly indicating that in general fiction they are endowed with less specific features than in other genres. To sum up, we undertook our exploration in this volume to demonstrate the heuristic power the notion of motif—a notion not wellknown in Anglo-Saxon phraseology—holds for linguistic and stylistic analysis of literary texts. Our methodology has contributed to advan­ cing how we think about the textual motif as a structural element of literary texts and as a distinctive marker of (the) fiction genre(s). This idea has proven to be especially fruitful for our research since it allows us to relate the micro-level of recurring multi-word units to the macrolevel of fictional scripts. We hope that the journey detailed in this book will help guide future research towards refining a functional typology of motifs and formalizing the distinction between literary fiction

10  Towards an Interdisciplinary Approach for Differentiating …     285

and popular fiction (given that authors of literary fiction, for example, gleefully rework motifs supplied by popular fiction, as for example by replacing “there was silence” with “an extraordinary, ringing silence descended” [John Banville]). Finally, we are confident that our corpuslinguistic approach based on the identification of recurring linguistic patterns can provide both the tools and the evidence needed for a better understanding of fictional scripts. This approach thus may prove to be an important contribution to cognitive narratology.

References Longrée, Dominique, and Sylvie Mellet. 2013. “Le Motif: une unité phraséologique englobante? Étendre le champ de la phraséologie de la langue au discours.” Langages 189: 68–80. Longrée, Dominique, and Sylvie Mellet. 2018. “Towards a Topological Grammar of Genres and Styles: A Way to Combine Paradigmatic Quantitative Analysis with a Syntagmatic Approach.” In The Grammar of Genres and Styles: From Discrete to Non-discrete Units, edited by Dominique Legallois, Thierry Charnois, and Meri Larjavaara, 140–63. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. Philippe, Gilles. 2016. French Style. L’Accent français de la prose anglaise. Brussels: Les Impressions Nouvelles. Rastier, François. 2011. La Mesure et le grain. Sémantique de corpus. Paris: Honoré Champion.

Appendix A: Corpora

See Tables 1, 2, 3, and 4.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 I. Novakova and D. Siepmann (eds.), Phraseology and Style in Subgenres of the Novel, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23744-8

287

aAut

43 170 39 84 40 39 365

= author, Nov = novel

FY GEN HIST CRIM ROM SF Total

104 445 114 194 112 147 1,116

13,323,976 34,334,554 14,868,273 17,859,351 9,802,410 13,173,618 103,362,182

41 89 48 55 35 39 274

English Aut.

Tokens

Aut.a

Nov.

French

Table 1  Size of the entire comparable corpora

142 147 116 115 96 116 732

Nov. 17,814,599 17,442,917 17,764,261 13,561,947 13,295,474 12,962,491 92,841,689

Tokens

German 40 41 38 34 46 38 201

Aut.

Nov. 109 90 149 97 208 91 744

Tokens 15,800,178 8,413,707 22,932,408 10,415,128 17,715,657 8,094,857 83,371,935

288     Appendix A: Corpora

FY GEN HIST CRIM ROM SF TOTAL

35 79 38 52 40 38 253

38 79 47 56 58 58 336

LIT (French) Aut. Nov. 4,937,890 5,021,345 5,186,613 5,355,426 4,535,997 4,963,265 30,000,536

Tokens 36 46 35 46 34 36 214

36 46 35 46 39 39 241

LIT (English) Aut. Nov. 5,149,855 4,902,324 5,010,151 5,071,283 4,961,251 5,117,483 29,212,347

Tokens

34 41 36 34 46 38 162

34 53 36 50 56 47 276

LIT (German) Aut. Nov.

5,047,280 5,092,698 5,063,660 5,075,617 4,996,205 4,948,965 30,224,425

Tokens

Table 2  Size of the samples in the literary corpora (LIT) (Samples of literary corpora (LIT) versus reference corpora [CONT] [cf. Table 3])

Appendix A: Corpora     289

290     Appendix A: Corpora Table 3  Size of the contrast (non-literary) corpora (CONT) Tokens

CONT (French)

CONT (English)

TV subtitles TED talks Debates (Parliament) Science papers News Press TOTAL

9,867,437 3,225,622 12,695,516 14,392,200 4,579,020 20,283,232 65,043,027

21,867,400 – 15,106,386 17,821,043 4,062,972 20,183,187 79,040,988

Table 4  Size of the parallel corpora Source language: French FY GEN HIST CRIM ROM SF OTHER TOTAL

Source language: English

Aut.

Nov.

Tokens FR

Tokens EN

Aut. Nov.

Tokens EN

Tokens FR

3 45 9 15 6 5 5 88

7 68 18 25 7 5 5 135

1,058,007 5,786,001 2,924,227 2,311,310 494,371 539,868 488,030 13,601,814

840,055 5,977,204 2,276,972 2,353,667 561,120 527,136 480,543 13,016,697

48 56 38 30 17 33 36 258

20,986,290 8,775,209 11,591,960 5,296,693 3,407,815 8,486,630 8,453,438 66,998,035

20,568,205 10,056,224 10,843,217 5,669,642 3,548,149 8,284,597 8,978,998 67,949,032

139 75 66 49 24 69 71 493

Appendix B: Discursive Functions

Synthesis on Discursive Functions Definition The discursive function (DF) of a motif depends on the role it plays in the context, such as in maintaining “textual coherence” and “thematic continuity” (Martin 1983, 15–16). In the PhraseoRom project, we understand “discursive” as “related to fiction discourse”. The same motif may have different DFs, again depending on its context. Thus, merely identifying the motif is not the same as analysing it stylistically: it must still be interpreted in the sentence that contains it or, even more broadly, by contextualizing its uses (see Adam 2011, 50; Baroni 2015, 140).

Method Consistent with the corpus-driven approach, we followed an inductive method. In pilot studies conducted in recent years on the French © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 I. Novakova and D. Siepmann (eds.), Phraseology and Style in Subgenres of the Novel, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23744-8

291

292     Appendix B: Discursive Functions

corpora, we worked on several motifs. Based on the RLTs provided and grouped by the computer program, here we identify as motifs the LSCs that demonstrate syntagmatic (right and left contexts) and paradigmatic variations (several instances of a single motif, as in | immediately | ragingly | lighting | crushing | a | his | new menthol | cigarette | gitane | against a wall |) and that also perform discursive functions in the text. These functions are often codified as playing the same routine roles in novels. Stylisticians determine the different discursive functions a motif performs by observing how it occurs in several different contexts. The list of discursive functions below is therefore culled from a variety of sources. It is a work in progress and as such will likely need to be developed further. The examples, extracts from French corpora that we have translated into English, are merely illustrative here. The motifs in the examples are italicized.

Discursive Functions (i) Narrative and descriptive DFs are encountered mostly in novels (Adam 2011, 267). (1) “the driver consulted his watch: 8:15 a.m.” (Narrative DF, with the motif playing an active role in the plot.) (2) “He looked out the window again. Cooking colours, that’s what the colours of Italy were…” (then follows a descriptive sequence, triggered by the motif ). (ii) Affective DF: a motif referring to affects represents a special case of the descriptive function. (3) “Sarah nervously crushed her cigarette.” (iii) Indirectly descriptive DF: a repeated action, a typical gesture describing the character. For instance, a heavy smoker in CRIM novels; with increased awareness in FY. (iv)  Infra-narrative DF: refers to DFs in the background of the action. The motifs serve to embellish the conversation in a script, without narrative consequences for the main action. (4) “‘You’ll do better next time,’ Alexandre asserts, lighting a cigarette.”

Appendix B: Discursive Functions     293

(v) Infra-descriptive DF: the motif provides a minimal, often stereotypical descriptive precision. (5)  “Now they were silent, looking out the window at the reflections of a sinister sky in the waters of the lagoon.” (vi)  Cognitive DF: these motifs apply to cognitive processes (hypotheses, apprehension of events, reflections, etc.). (6) “‘I don’t know what’s going to happen to him. I can’t afford to change him from one school to another.’” (vi 1) Remembrance DF: this is a special case of the cognitive function used to relate cognition to the expression of memories. (vi 2) Commentary DF: another special use of the cognitive function that relates cognition to a reflection on writing activity (found only in the GEN FR corpus). (7) “‘Of course, one could have considered writing a jet set Proustian novel …; it would have had no interest.’” (vii)  Pragmatic DF: applies to motifs that express speech acts between the characters in the novel (mainly direct speech). These motifs establish coherent relationships between characters within the stated discourse integrated into the narrative text. (8)  “‘Do not do anything about it, Madam, I beg you,’ Eudeline cried.”

References Martin, Robert. 1983. Pour une logique du sens. Paris: PUF. Adam, Jean-Michel. (1992) 2011. Les Textes: types et prototypes, 3rd ed. Paris: Armand Colin. Baroni, Raphaël. 2015. “Temps, mode et intrigue: de la forme verbale à la fonction narrative.” Modèles linguistiques, 71: 125–142.

Index

A

Aarne-Thompson classification 20 Alcohol and tobacco consumption vii, 115, 116, 124, 281, 282 Allomotif 24 Argument schema 39 B

Bioinformatics vii, 18, 26, 280 Brightly 53, 56, 64, 65, 68, 72, 73 Briskly 50, 53, 55–57, 60, 61, 70, 71, 280 British contextualism 5 C

Clause 10, 23, 25, 30, 173, 182, 237, 241, 242, 264, 266, 269 Collective memory 20

Colligations 4, 167, 169 Collocates 55, 56, 61, 65, 67, 225, 229–231, 254–260, 262–266, 268, 273–275 Collocational “nests” 4 Combinatory 225 Computational linguistics vi, 18 Construction grammar 5, 39, 40, 42 Corpus analysis 98 Corpus and dictionary study 89 Corpus linguistics 9, 48, 87, 93, 99, 123, 153, 154, 272, 276, 285 Corpus stylistics vii, 9, 49, 87 Correspondence analysis 9, 93, 94, 280 Creative writing 11, 79 Creativity 79, 118, 204, 281 Creativity principle 3 Crime fiction viii, 6–8, 35, 37, 39, 43, 86–89, 93, 95, 98, 101, 108, 109, 120, 123, 124, 130,

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 I. Novakova and D. Siepmann (eds.), Phraseology and Style in Subgenres of the Novel, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23744-8

295

296     Index

132, 135, 142, 144, 205, 215, 218, 223, 228, 247, 256, 261, 275, 281–284

Fiction words vii, 105, 152–160, 162, 165, 167, 168, 170, 172–178, 180–186, 194, 282, 283 Functional equivalents vii, 47

D

Digital humanities vi, viii, 279 Digital stylistics 6, 7, 79 Dimly 53, 56, 64, 65, 67, 72 Direct speech vii, 52, 84–89, 99, 100, 102–104, 106, 110, 182, 215, 239, 242, 243, 293 Discursive function vii, 37, 42, 54, 73, 76, 120, 121, 126, 128, 129, 131, 134, 147, 200, 219, 226, 227, 229, 235–241, 243–247, 273–275, 282, 284, 291, 292

G

General fiction vi, 3, 8, 102, 104, 110, 124, 132, 145, 256, 258, 263, 275, 283, 284 Genericity 6 Generic markers 204, 207, 208, 210, 213, 219, 283 Grimm brothers 20 H

Extended lexical units 5 Extended phraseology 5

Highbrow literature 6, 7 Historical novel vii, viii, 110, 218, 256 Hybridization of genres vi, 190

F

I

Fabula 23 Faintly 53, 56, 64–66, 72 Fantasy viii, 6, 7, 8, 35, 70, 84, 86–89, 93, 95, 96, 98, 101–109, 123, 124, 145, 146, 190–194, 197, 200–216, 218–220, 256, 263, 275, 276, 281, 283, 284 Fictional genres v–vii, 87, 110, 152 Fictional scripts 10, 284, 285 Fiction-specific adverbial constructions 8 Fiction-specific keywords 4

Idiomaticity vii, 1, 3, 4 Idiom principle 3 Index of Motifs 20 Intertextuality 20

E

K

Key adverbs vii, 51, 78 Key manner adverb 54, 78 Keyword 8, 48, 49 Keyword approach 7–9, 35, 93, 280 Key word patterns 38

Index     297 L

Lexical bundles 4, 37 Lexicoscope 8, 35, 154, 227, 229, 230, 254, 255 Literariness vi, 2, 3 Literary fiction 6, 205, 218, 223, 227, 235, 242, 247, 284 Literary language 2, 3, 9, 47, 49, 51, 79, 109, 151, 281 Literary translation vi Log likelihood 9, 49 Log-likelihood ratio (LLR) 35, 227, 255 Lowbrow fiction 6, 7 M

Manner adverbs 49, 51, 53–56, 79, 280 Märchentypen 20 Minimal thematic unit 22 Minimum unit 23 Motif detection 27 Motifemes 24 Motifs 1, 5–10, 17–43, 47, 51, 55, 57, 60, 61, 63, 64, 66, 68, 69, 75, 77, 79, 116, 129, 136, 143, 146, 151, 152, 200, 205– 208, 210–214, 219, 224–227, 229, 231, 235–247, 254, 256, 257, 263, 267, 268, 271–277, 280–285, 291–293 dynamic 23 F-motif 31 sequential motifs 33 stative 23 valency motifs 31 world length motifs 29

Motifs of Motion and Light 60 Motif texture 25 N

Narrative function 10, 24, 84, 128, 129, 240, 245 Narratology vii, 10, 18, 22, 23, 25, 26, 42, 123, 272, 280 cognitive narratology 285 Natural equivalents 50 Natural Language Processing (NLP) vi, 18, 279 Neologisms vii, 151–153, 155–157, 166, 194, 282 Nervously 50, 51, 53–55, 73–78, 131, 292 N-grams 36, 37, 55 O

Occasionalisms 156 Open-choice principle 3 P

Phraseological unit 1, 2, 5, 39, 223–225, 227, 229 Phraseology v–vii, 1, 5, 152, 154, 223, 225, 280, 284 PhraseoRom v, 7, 19, 35, 37, 49, 54, 88, 110, 124, 151, 152, 154, 155, 189, 191, 193, 195, 216–220, 246, 247, 254, 279, 283, 291 Popular genres 6, 102

298     Index R

Recurrent fiction-specific patterns v Recurrent lexico-grammatical patterns vii, 1, 280 Recurrent lexico-syntactic trees (RLTs) 8, 10, 35–37, 124, 125, 128, 129, 131, 134, 136, 139, 144, 148, 154, 155, 167, 169, 189, 191, 193–195, 198, 200, 203–216, 280, 283, 292 Romance viii, 6, 7, 8, 20, 86–89, 93, 98, 101, 102, 105, 108, 109, 124, 142–146, 148, 215, 218, 281, 282 Russian Formalists 23 S

Science fiction viii, 7, 8, 35, 70, 84, 110, 123, 124, 145, 149, 151–153, 159, 160, 174, 184–186, 190–194, 200, 201, 203–216, 218–220, 256, 261, 275, 282–284 Semantic categorization 191, 200, 211, 216, 283 Semantic grid 160, 194, 200, 202, 203, 205, 216–220, 283 Sketchengine 8 Social scripts 10 Speech verbs 9, 52, 70, 71, 86–89, 92, 95–100, 102, 104–106, 108–110, 215, 281 Stiffly 53, 56, 60–63, 71, 72, 281 Story/narrative distinction 23 Stylistics vi, vii, 1, 2, 6, 9, 11, 31, 52, 79, 124, 191, 280

Subgenres viii, 7, 8, 35, 87, 89, 151, 153, 154, 184, 189–193, 197, 214, 215, 217–219, 239, 253, 256, 257, 259, 260, 276, 277, 280, 282–284 Syngrams 38, 47 Syntactic dependency trees 35 Syntagmatic and paradigmatic variations 229, 231, 235, 247, 284 T

Taletypes 20 Textometry 2, 9, 34, 93, 153 Textual colligations 4 Theories of literary genre vii, 1, 280 Theory of genres 6, 227, 284 Translation equivalents 50, 52 V

Verba dicendi. See Speech verbs Verb of motion 60 Verbs denoting light 64 X

Xenoencyclopedia 152, 154, 166, 176, 187, 207 Z

Zipf-Mandelbrot distribution 31 Zipf-Mandelbrot type 30