Les sens procéduraux intersubjectifs de la particule UP

Abstract

In this paper I adopt the tenets of historical pragmatics and make use of previous scholarly work on the adverbial particle up to present hypotheses on the existence in PDE and historical development of two intersubjective procedural meanings of the particle.One of these meanings is not in fact specific to up, but can be expressed by all particles in transitive phrasal verbs. It is encoded syntactically by the word-order adopted by the speaker for organizing verb, particle and object into a sequence.The other meaning I posit to have developed more recently and to be specific to up as a component part of a discourse verb, whether transitive or not. It is encoded morphologically by the form chosen by the speaker – compound with up vs. simplex.The linguistic relationship at stake in each case is not the same (it is the relation between phrasal verb and object for the first meaning, as opposed to the relation between verb and linguistic context for the second), but in both cases a variation in the form of the relation registers a variation in the speaker's attitude to the addressee.

Keywords

• particle UP
• procedural meaning
• intersubjectification
• historical pragmatics
• word order
• semantic development