L’adverbe or dans les Mémoires de Philippe de Vigneulles (fin 15e - début 16e siècle)

Abstract

The adverb or, of temporal origin, is very present in various uses in Old and Middle French. It is still very much alive at the beginning of the 16th century in the autograph Memoirs of Philippe de Vigneulles: besides a few attestations as an enunciative adverb in direct speech and in numerous authorial interventions, it is mostly used massively instead of lors in the past tense. As it is still mostly starting the proposition, it causes the subject-verb inversion. Nevertheless, several tendencies can be identified even if they concern only few examples: the addition of temporal complements between or and the following verb, the use of other tenses than the simple past following or, as if or was not only expressing temporal succession anymore. We are perhaps witnessing the genesis of the modern coordinator in the hesitation between temporal value and logical value.

Keywords

• temporal or
• enunciative or
• discursive or
• adverbial or
• argumentative coordinating or
• authorial interventions
• grammaticalization