Irrealis und die Hierarchie der verbalen Kategorien. Elemente einer funktionalgrammatischen Analyse

Pierre-Yves Modicom (1)

1 CeLiSo - Centre de Linguistique en Sorbonne

The contribution is a discussion of Givon's (1994) proposal to treat the Realis/Irrealis distinction as a 'mega-category'. Following Fourquet (1972), it is argued that the function of grammatical diathesis, aspect, tense and mood is to map a predicate onto a domain of validity in order to determine the referentiality of the predication, thus triggering (or blocking) the ontological commitment to the validity of the predicate. The hypothesis that this degree of ontological commitment or referentiality is what the Realis / Irrealis distinction corresponds to. I first discuss aspectual matters from French and more marginally German and Bulgarian in order to show that the correlation between imperfectivity and Irrealis resp. perfectivity and Realis should not be treated as an implicature or an interface, but as intrinsic to the essence of aspectuality. The demonstration combines insights from formal semantics (Altshuler 2013), cognitive linguistics (Gosselin 2006) and an implementation of the Aristotelian theory of causation and change as passage from potentiality to actuality. I then turn to the future tense in French and English to expose a similar view. In a third step, I take on with Reichenbach's (1966) three-dimensional model to argue that its 'speech-act time' variable should be replaced by an 'enunciation time' variable in the sense of Benveniste (1966b), the relationship between the speech act situation and the enunciative origo being itself at the core of the semantics of mood. The last part is devoted to regressive diathesis as a generic and modal strategy. It is claimed that Aristotle's theory of potentialities best fits with Benveniste's insights on voice to provide a reliable explanation for phenomena illustrating the modal dimension of voice, such as the alternation between medium and passive in Scandinavian languages. I conclude with the idea that the Realis/Irrealis distinction is a key to the referential dimension of grammar in a functional perspective, and with the question of the deictic nature of modality.

Domaines: Linguistique

Pierre-Yves Modicom. Irrealis und die Hierarchie der verbalen Kategorien. Elemente einer funktionalgrammatischen Analyse. Philologie im Netz: Beihefte, 2016, Les modalités en discours : constructions, avatars et interfaces, 9, pp.46-74. ⟨halshs-01345470⟩