Prédication et interaction cognitive en basque

Didier Bottineau (1)

1 CRISCO - Centre de recherche inter-langues sur la signification en contexte

The agglutinating conjugation of the Basque verb forms consists in affixing in the verb or the auxiliary (according to the chosen type of conjugation, synthetic or periphrastic) a series of pronominal marks specifying a rank, a number and case values which anaphorically refer to those of the explicit or implicit noun phrases (in the absolutive, the ergative and the dative) which they represent and incorporate into the verb. In standard Basque (euskara batua), in constrast with what is to be observed in other dialects of this language, the system seems to be redundant when the cluster of pronouns staged by the verb reflects the distribution of the arguments previously cast by the noun phrases, but actual predication makes it possible either to neutralize one participant (which results into the passive and the two antipassives if the case morphology of the corresponding argument is deleted), or to include as an uninvited, non-participating guest the figure of the addressee (which originates the allocutive conjugation). This study contends that this morphosyntactic apparatus is motivated by a cognitive strategy consisting in displaying the way and order in which the speaker invites, as it were, the hearer to process the profiling and construction of the predicative relation supporting the semantic representation of the event. This cognitive procedure falls into two phases, to be uttered successively for sentences following the canonical order (barring negation, forefrontings etc.) : an analysis of the scene, discriminating the arguments marked by the noun phrases, is followed by a synthesis, the verbal merger of previously separated participants into one network enacting their confrontation and bearing the aspectual, temporal and modal marks that determine their referents. In the field of the cognitive typology of the linguistic interaction between human subjects, this procedure is to be set into contrast with that characterizing the French language, based on the subject / predicate division, whose foundation is presented in introduction. In both languages, the morphosyntax of verbal predication is motivated by the profile of the cognitive procedure the speaker is indicating to the hearer.

Domaines: Linguistique

Didier Bottineau. Prédication et interaction cognitive en basque. Les constituants prédicatifs et la diversité des langues, tome XIV (nouvelle série), Peeters, pp.97-132, 2005, (Mémoires de la Société de linguistique de Paris), 9789042916357. ⟨hal-00012388⟩