Faut dire  : variation et sens d'un marqueur parenthétique entre connectivité et (inter)subjectivité

Résumé 0

This article aims to contribute to the study of discourse markers (DMs) which arise out of structures which are syntactically (pseudo-) subordinated ; such markers are also known as “parentheticals” or “propositional discourse markers”. A working corpus of examples was built up on the basis of a thorough examination of several corpora of spoken French (mainly European varieties). First of all, the morpho-syntactic variation of the expression ( il) faut dire ( que) is analyzed, specifically in terms of the presence or absence of the neutral subject pronoun il and the complementizer que, and of the positional variability of ( il) faut dire ( que) with regard to the complement clause that it is supposed to govern. Then, the question is raised whether ( il) faut dire ( que) actually functions as a DM or if it is more akin to a textual connective, comparable in this to the expression je dois dire que studied by Kronning (1988). This part of the analysis leads to the conclusion that, although ( il) faut dire ( que) may occur in contexts permitting a connective reading, in most of the attested oral examples it works indeed as a real DM with an interlocutive value involving explicativity and subjectivity.