WHEN ‘POSSIBLE’ IS POSSIBLE IN FRENCH TEXTS

WHEN ‘POSSIBLE’ IS POSSIBLE IN FRENCH TEXTS

Author:  V.Z. Demyankov

Affiliation:  Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences

Abstract:  The article presents observations on the frequency of occurrence of lexical units in the immediate left position of the adjective ‘possible’ in the corpus of original French literary, scientific and scholarly texts from the 17th to the 21st century. These frequencies indicate both standard and innovative “expressive needs” and the relevance of the concept “possible” within the framework of the average French discourse.
The concept of expressive needs lies on the border between language as a system of linguistic expressions and the use of these expressions in speech in a given culture. This concept fits into the Darwinian approach to the evolution of species: a hare with short hind legs will not be able to survive when agile predators appear, from whom the hare will have to escape.
What makes Francophones use the word ‘possible’ in some contexts and pay less statistical attention to others? The material presented here suggests several possible answers to this question in cognitive terms.
Thus, the predicates of the class “to be possible” stating rather than assuming the possibility, are much more frequent than the belief predicates. Classes of attributes, as well as nouns denoting possible objects, logical connectives and auxiliaries demonstrate the tendency manifested in French discourses to speak about “desired possibilities” rather than about “absolute possibilities”.

Keywords:  cognitive sciences, contrastive corpus-statistical investigation, ‘possible’ in French, context, corpus design.

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Acknowledgments:  The research is financially supported by the Russian Science Foundation, project No. 19-18-00429 at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences (sections 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7) and project No. 19-18-00040 at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences (sections 1 and 3).

For citation:  Demyankov, V. Z. (2023). When ‘possible’ is possible in French texts. Voprosy Kognitivnoy Lingvistiki, 4, 5-14 (In Russ.).

Pages:  5-14