Studii de Lingvistica (Dec 2011)
Relations actantielles, généricité et engagement énonciatif: le pronom indéfini on et ses correspondants roumains
Abstract
The French pronoun on, stemming from the Latin noun homo, is considered to be indefinite, as it refers to an unspecifiedhuman agent; it can only function as subject.Romanian speakers have difficulties in translating it or in employingit in oral or written discourse, since Romanian doesn’t have a similarpronoun. Moreover, a subject pronoun is not compulsory in Romanian,since the agent of the verb can be identified by the verbal ending, asin Latin.A comparative approach has enabled us to make a list of Romanianstructures that are equivalent to the French structures with on. Ouraim is to explain the different types of equivalence existing betweenthe French indefinite pronoun on and its Romanian correspondents.In order to do so it is necessary to define the syntactic and thesemantic characteristics of the contextual classes that are specificto the indefinite pronoun on, the actantial configuration of theFrench structures with on and of their Romanian equivalents aswell as the degree of enunciative engagement or non-engagement ofthe agent, expressed in French by on. The enunciative engagementdepends mostly on the type of discourse and on the intentions of theenunciator.
