Les Adverbes d'énonciation. Comment les définir et les sous-classifier ?

Abstract

General works on adverbs, but also textbook grammars in their chapter on this part of speech, all recognise a category whose most neutral label, theoretically speaking, is that of“utterance-level adverbs”. The most representative of these are the adverbs franchement( “frankly”), honnêtement ( “honestly”), sincèrement ( “sincerely”), etc. These works also agreeon the over all definition of the category : these are adverbs which serve to refer to theparticular conditions of production of a speaker’s utterance. Within this category ofutterance-level adverbs, which in large part is constituted differentially in relation to the others, we argue for the following semantic sub-categories : 1. Adverbs denoting the speaker’s psychological or moral stance with respect to the addressee. For example, franchement, honnêtement, sincèrement, entre nous ( “between youand me”), etc. 2. Adverbs expressing some kind of comment by the speaker on the make-up of theutterance (e.g. concrètement ( “concretely”), objectivement ( “objectively”), en clair( “specifically”), en gros ( “in general terms”), etc.). 3. Adverbs having to do with the source of the information at issue : 3.1. Adverbs of personal opinion (e.g. à mon avis ( “in my opinion”), à mon sens ( “in myview”), à mon sentiment ( “what I feel is...”), etc.). 3.2. Modally-distancing adverbs (e.g. autant que je sache ( “as far as I know”), à ma connnaissance ( “to my knowledge”), si j’ai bonne mémoire ( “if I remember rightly”), sauf erreurde ma part ( “if I’m not mistaken”), etc.). 3.3. Evidential adverbs (e.g. à ce que j’ai entendu dire ( “from what I’ve heard”), à ce qu’on raconte ( “from what they say”), de source (sûre + bien informée + diplomatique) ( “fromreliable/well-informed/diplomatic sources”), etc. 3.4. Individuating adverbs (e.g. personnellement ( “personally”), en ce qui me concerne ( “as faras I’m concerned”), pour ma part ( “for my part”)). In this article, we list and briefly summarise this set of forms.

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