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Studies at the Grammar-Discourse Interface: Discourse markers and discourse-related grammatical phenomena
Edited by Alexander Haselow and Sylvie Hancil
[Studies in Language Companion Series 219] 2021
► pp. 275–298

Chapter 10
A just amazing marker in French: “Juste”

“Juste excellentissime!” “Juste super heureux!” “Juste irréel!” “Juste pas possible!”

| Université de Franche-Comté

Juste belongs to those words (justement, limite, grave, côté, question, niveau…) that today one cannot do without, both in everyday conversation and in the media! After pointing out that juste, from the Latin justus, is a transcategorial unit par excellence, as it can be an adjective, a noun, or an adverb, this article deals with its recent adverbial use, identified orally in the early 2000s, officially registered in Le Petit Robert de la Langue Française in 2014. I propose that juste is a metalinguistic marker which creates double modalisation: it has scope both over an element X which can be an extreme (non-gradable) adjective, a non-gradable noun phrase (verb phrase or prepositional phrase), and over the utterance act. This recent adverbial use of juste is analysed in the following configurations: (1) juste and extreme adjectives (extreme adjectives formed by the suffix -issime, and extreme adjectives formed by the private prefix -in); (2) juste and non-gradable sequences [pas + gradable adjectives]; (3) juste and two non-gradable sequences ([très / trop + gradable adjectives]; [super / hyper / ultra / supra / mega / giga + gradable adjectives]); (4) juste and non-gradable [noun / verb / prepositional] phrases.

Keywords: juste , extreme adjectives, metalinguistic use, transcategorial marker, magnifying glass effect
Article outline
  • 1.A general outline of juste in French: Juste is not really just
  • 2. Juste, a transcategorial marker
    • 2.1 Juste as an adjective
    • 2.2 Juste as a noun
    • 2.3 Juste as an adverb
  • 3. Juste, a double modal adverb
    • 3.1Profile of très, vraiment, juste with scalar (gradable) and extreme (non-gradable) adjectives
    • 3.2Characteristics of juste with extreme (non-gradable) X
  • 4. Juste and extreme adjectives
    • 4.1 Juste and extreme adjectives
    • 4.2 Juste and extreme adjectives with the suffix -issime
    • 4.3 Juste and extreme adjectives with the prefix -in
  • 5. Juste and non-gradable sequences [pas + gradable adjectives]
  • 6. Juste and two other non-gradable sequences
    • 6.1 Juste and non-gradable sequences [très / trop + gradable adjectives]
    • 6.2 Juste and non-gradable sequences [hyper / super / méga / ultra / supra / giga + gradable adjectives]
  • 7. Juste and non-gradable [noun / verb / prepositional] phrases
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 3 June 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.219.10doh
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