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Copyright of Etudes Romanes de Brno is the property of Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

To obtain a joke with homophonic resources requires that ambiguity is perceived in the mind of the person you are speaking to. Therefore you bind him/her to choose one of the two (or more) potential meanings, and he/she is responsible for the -- right or wrong -- choice he/she makes. Three main rules explain the high number of sentences containing homophonies in French: the end of a word moves according to the syllabic structure of its environment; written -e- ; low or high number of syllables of prosodic groups. I analyse different cases where homophony may occur -- daily life, playing time, gender, age, job, leisure, cultural activities, place of birth, etc. -- to attempt to give responses to the following questions : Since when, where, when, who, for whom is it realized ? What are the means taken by speakers to 'make' them, and for what purposes? For the speakers, what are the differences -- if there are -- between deliberate homophonies and unintentional ones? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To obtain a joke with homophonic resources requires that ambiguity is perceived in the mind of the person you are speaking to. Therefore you bind him/her to choose one of the two (or more) potential meanings, and he/she is responsible for the – right or wrong – choice he/she makes. Three main rules explain the high number of sentences containing homophonies in French: the end of a word moves according to the syllabic structure of its environment; written -e-; low or high number of syllables of prosodic groups. I analyse different cases where homophony may occur – daily life, playing time, gender, age, job, leisure, cultural activities, place of birth, etc. – to attempt to give responses to the following questions : Since when, where, when, who, for whom is it realized ? What are the means taken by speakers to 'make' them, and for what purposes? For the speakers, what are the differences – if there are – between deliberate homophonies and unintentional ones?

This article is part of a larger study aiming at showing that Sanskrit poems with multiple meanings, far from being obscure or utterly difficult to understand were quite an important and appreciated genre of Indian literature. The understanding of such poems was based upon common literary practices, shared by poets and readers and the latter were perfectly able to decipher the various meanings because they were at the same time aware of the rules of the work they were going to read and duly informed of the different stories it referred to. Focusing on one famous double meaning poem, the Rāghavapāṇḍavīya, "Story of the Scion of Raghu and the Sons of Pāṇḍu", composed by Kavirāja around 1175 AD and summarising the two major epics of India, the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata, through the very same words. Two aspects of the method the poet has recourse to in order to facilitate his work's understanding, both in the very beginning of it, will be analysed. The first consists in the introductory statement, quite explicit and many times repeated, that the poem conveys two meanings and that these two meanings are the story of Rāma and that of the sons of Pāṇḍu. The second consists in a kind of short treatise of poetics displayed in two stanzas of the poem's first chapter, from which the readers may learn some of the poetical and linguistic devices by which two meanings may be conveyed at the same time: inversion of the qualifying property and the qualified object, inversion of the subject and the object of comparison, double segmentation of the same phrase and use of polysemic words. Each device will be closely analysed, examples will be given and commented on. Of course, other factors contribute to the understanding of poems with multiple meanings, which will be dealt with in another more extensive study.

Polysemy appears to be an artefact of traditional ontology in the philosophy of language. To reconsider it, we must dethrone the concept of the single sign and uphold the interpretative perspective. By analyzing the semantic liberation of set expressions in context, we can examine the variety of interpretative paths that establish or promote ambiguous meanings. Interpretative semantics thus significantly limits the issue of polysemy, and without pretending to resolve it, helps to dissolve it by revealing why it is poorly expressed.

Classical India is a multilingual area where Sanskrit and Prakrits live side by side. Sanskrit and Prakrit speakers are next to each other in the classical drama; Prakrit poetry composed in Māhārāṣṭrī, the literary Prakrit par excellence, is known from Sanskrit poeticians who quote it extensively. This contiguity provides situations for passages between the languages. They take the shape of translations, total superpositions producing one meaning, superpositions to be decoded as they correspond to more than one language and have different meanings in each one. These phenomena are possible only because the concerned languages have enough common features. The current linguistic usage, which we can access through the dialogues of the theatre, shows how linguistic closeness between Sanskrit and Prakrits occasionally gives birth to comic ambiguity or how total superposition is subordinate to disguise while enabling to respect the traditional linguistic distribution between Sanskrit and Prakrit speaking characters. Prakrit poetry in its own right, represented by the Sattasaī, does use the traditional stock of words with double-entendre (śleṣa) in connection with similes (upamā) which force the reader to consider distinct interpretations. These interpretations involve double meanings of words within Prakrit, or double meanings which are due to the merge of etymologically distinct Prakrit and Sanskrit words. But this usage is not pervasive. Rather, polysemic discourse is the main feature of this poetry which creates its specific codes. Thus Prakrit poetry needs to be taken into consideration in order to precise the history and progressive development of the Indian double-entendre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whoever deals with double-entendre in antic divination seems to refer exclusively to the topos of enigmatic oracular answers. But however famous, the oracular tradition represents only a small part of divination literature, and oracular ambiguity is only a particular instance of the use of polysemy in divination practice and discourse. By focusing on the interpretation and the pragmatics of interpretation in imperial Latin historiography -- Suetonius especially, but also Quintus Curtius, Tacitus, and Ammianus -- I want to highlight three things. First, that a sign is a compound of three distinct levels of meaning, which correspond to three distinct cognitive operations -- description, identification, and interpretation. Second, that in the meantime, the abundance of analogical meanings is an obstacle to establish the genuine meaning of an omen. Third, that an interpreter nevertheless builds up a convincing interpretation precisely by handling numerous levels of meaning. From this point of view the exegesis of signs -- whose very purpose is to decipher the future -- is, under the appearance of learned, playful speculation, an actual rhetoric of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the problem of the present tense (indicative mood) and mainly with its capacity of referring either to the past or to the future, as it can be seen in most linguistic works on the question of tenses. The paper adopts as a starting point typical sentences cited by grammar books (J’arrive à l’instant), and tries to prove by giving a large number of examples that, on the one hand, adverbials of time are not always relevant as far as the temporal orientation of the process is concerned, and that, on the other hand, all verbs are not likely to be used in such constructions. Those verbs that can be used this way owe this capacity to their sense and mainly to aspectual characteristics such as perfectivity. These observations lead to the following findings: 1. these verbs express movement and have direction as a semantic feature, 2. their orientation towards future or present will be chosen according to the relevant spatial point of the utterance (cf. final point: J’arrive à l’instant. vs initial point: Je pars.), 3. if the characteristics of the verb lead to ambiguity, the relevant point will be determined by the localization of the speaker at the moment of the utterance, 4. clues considered essential by grammar books are often missing, optional or different (apart from adverbials of time, adverbials of space and other types of adverbials can be used). This analysis taking into consideration both time and space shows that the interpretation of the present tense depends on aspectual characteristics of verbs and also on the localization of the speaker at the moment of the utterance; thus, we are dealing with a phenomenon that is determined by both aspectual and semantic characteristics of verbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literary genre cannot be conceived of as an unequivocal and unidimensional notion. It appears in the field of literature and criticism in a multiplicity of ways, meanings and functions. One aspect creating the variety of manners in which genre occurs, is that of duration, i.e. the extent to which genre is determined by co-ordinates of time (historical moment) and space (cultural environment). Together with duration varies the measure in which a genre is specified by distinguishing features: the novel is characterized by more specific features than the novellistic, but less specific than the naturalist novel. These dimensions of time and space are here called ‘genre’, ‘mode’, ‘poetics’. The time-space dimensions of literary genre play an essential role in critical discourse, both historical and contemporary. In critical studies different dimensions of genre should not exclude one another but rather be integrated in a pluridimensional concept. Moreover, adeguate reconstruction of historical debates requires an analysis of the ambiguity and complexity caused by diverse meanings of genre. These assumptions are illustrated by analyzing the use of the notion of prosa d’arte in the anthology Capitoli (1938) by Enrico Falqui, in which polemic argumentation depends in part on the intertwining of different dimensions of prosa d’arte. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Etudes Romanes de Brno is the property of Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Classical India is a multilingual area where Sanskrit and Prakrits live side by side. Sanskrit and Prakrit speakers are next to each other in the classical drama; Prakrit poetry composed in Māhārāṣṭrī, the literary Prakrit par excellence, is known from Sanskrit poeticians who quote it extensively. This contiguity provides situations for passages between the languages. They take the shape of translations, total superpositions producing one meaning, superpositions to be decoded as they correspond to more than one language and have different meanings in each one. These phenomena are possible only because the concerned languages have enough common features. The current linguistic usage, which we can access through the dialogues of the theatre, shows how linguistic closeness between Sanskrit and Prakrits occasionally gives birth to comic ambiguity or how total superposition is subordinate to disguise while enabling to respect the traditional linguistic distribution between Sanskrit and Prakrit speaking characters. Prakrit poetry in its own right, represented by the Sattasaī, does use the traditional stock of words with double-entendre (śleṣa) in connection with similes (upamā) which force the reader to consider distinct interpretations. These interpretations involve double meanings of words within Prakrit, or double meanings which are due to the merge of etymologically distinct Prakrit and Sanskrit words. But this usage is not pervasive. Rather, polysemic discourse is the main feature of this poetry which creates its specific codes. Thus Prakrit poetry needs to be taken into consideration in order to precise the history and progressive development of the Indian double-entendre.

Whoever deals with double-entendre in antic divination seems to refer exclusively to the topos of enigmatic oracular answers. But however famous, the oracular tradition represents only a small part of divination literature, and oracular ambiguity is only a particular instance of the use of polysemy in divination practice and discourse. By focusing on the interpretation and the pragmatics of interpretation in imperial Latin historiography – Suetonius especially, but also Quintus Curtius, Tacitus, and Ammianus – I want to highlight three things. First, that a sign is a compound of three distinct levels of meaning, which correspond to three distinct cognitive operations – description, identification, and interpretation. Second, that in the meantime, the abundance of analogical meanings is an obstacle to establish the genuine meaning of an omen. Third, that an interpreter nevertheless builds up a convincing interpretation precisely by handling numerous levels of meaning. From this point of view the exegesis of signs – whose very purpose is to decipher the future – is, under the appearance of learned, playful speculation, an actual rhetoric of power.

This article is part of a larger study aiming at showing that Sanskrit poems with multiple meanings, far from being obscure or utterly difficult to understand were quite an important and appreciated genre of Indian literature. The understanding of such poems was based upon common literary practices, shared by poets and readers and the latter were perfectly able to decipher the various meanings because they were at the same time aware of the rules of the work they were going to read and duly informed of the different stories it referred to. Focusing on one famous double meaning poem, the Rāghavapāṇḍavīya, “Story of the Scion of Raghu and the Sons of Pāṇḍu”, composed by Kavirāja around 1175 AD and summarising the two major epics of India, the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata, through the very same words. Two aspects of the method the poet has recourse to in order to facilitate his work’s understanding, both in the very beginning of it, will be analysed. The first consists in the introductory statement, quite explicit and many times repeated, that the poem conveys two meanings and that these two meanings are the story of Rāma and that of the sons of Pāṇḍu. The second consists in a kind of short treatise of poetics displayed in two stanzas of the poem’s first chapter, from which the readers may learn some of the poetical and linguistic devices by which two meanings may be conveyed at the same time: inversion of the qualifying property and the qualified object, inversion of the subject and the object of comparison, double segmentation of the same phrase and use of polysemic words. Each device will be closely analysed, examples will be given and commented on. Of course, other factors contribute to the understanding of poems with multiple meanings, which will be dealt with in another more extensive study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Vedic lexicon is essentially polysemic. Our case study concerns the uses of the concrete noun samudrá- in the ksaṃhitā. This word is currently translated by “ocean, sea, flood” by lexicographers and Western translators. However, samudrá- is also used to refer to ‘the oblation of soma’. This paper explores the factors which might have led to these semantic variations. Methodologically, we will formulate the combinatorial profile of this lexie by examining its verbal valence (i.e. complements which surround it), the lexical associations in which it appears (especially epithets) and also verbs and prepositions with which samudrá- is syntactically connected. We will also examine the semantic integration of the lexie in the whole strophe or the whole text (especially by studying the isotopic networks). In this way we hope to validate a dynamic approach to meaning i.e. how context constructs a lexie’s meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polysemy appears to be an artefact of traditional ontology in the philosophy of language. To reconsider it, we must dethrone the concept of the single sign and uphold the interpretative perspective. By analyzing the semantic liberation of set expressions in context, we can examine the variety of interpretative paths that establish or promote ambiguous meanings. Interpretative semantics thus significantly limits the issue of polysemy, and without pretending to resolve it, helps to dissolve it by revealing why it is poorly expressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the problem of the present tense (indicative mood) and mainly with its capacity of referring either to the past or to the future, as it can be seen in most linguistic works on the question of tenses. The paper adopts as a starting point typical sentences cited by grammar books (J'arrive à l'instant), and tries to prove by giving a large number of examples that, on the one hand, adverbials of time are not always relevant as far as the temporal orientation of the process is concerned, and that, on the other hand, all verbs are not likely to be used in such constructions. Those verbs that can be used this way owe this capacity to their sense and mainly to aspectual characteristics such as perfectivity. These observations lead to the following findings: 1. these verbs express movement and have direction as a semantic feature, 2. their orientation towards future or present will be chosen according to the relevant spatial point of the utterance (cf. final point: J'arrive à l'instant. vs initial point: Je pars.), 3. if the characteristics of the verb lead to ambiguity, the relevant point will be determined by the localization of the speaker at the moment of the utterance, 4. clues considered essential by grammar books are often missing, optional or different (apart from adverbials of time, adverbials of space and other types of adverbials can be used). This analysis taking into consideration both time and space shows that the interpretation of the present tense depends on aspectual characteristics of verbs and also on the localization of the speaker at the moment of the utterance; thus, we are dealing with a phenomenon that is determined by both aspectual and semantic characteristics of verbs.

Literary genre cannot be conceived of as an unequivocal and unidimensional notion. It appears in the field of literature and criticism in a multiplicity of ways, meanings and functions. One aspect creating the variety of manners in which genre occurs, is that of duration, i.e. the extent to which genre is determined by co-ordinates of time (historical moment) and space (cultural environment). Together with duration varies the measure in which a genre is specified by distinguishing features: the novel is characterized by more specific features than the novellistic, but less specific than the naturalistnovel. These dimensions of time and space are here called "genre", "mode", "poetics". The time-space dimensions of literary genre play an essential role in critical discourse, both historical and contemporary. In critical studies different dimensions of genre should not exclude one another but rather be integrated in a pluridimensional concept. Moreover, adeguate reconstruction of his-torical debates requires an analysis of the ambiguity and complexity caused by diverse meanings of genre. These assumptions are illustrated by analyzing the use of the notion of prosa d'arte in the anthology Capitoli (1938) by Enrico Falqui, in which polemic argumentation depends in part on the intertwining of different dimensions of prosa d'arte.