Publications

Publication details [#8910]

Ballard, Michel. 1996. Enoncés sans verbe et registres en traduction [Statements without verb and registers in translation]. In Gadet, Françoise. Niveaux de langue et variation intrinsèque [Register and intrinsic variation]. In : 17–35. : 179–206.
Publication type
Article in jnl/bk
Publication language
French

Abstract

Contrastivists have frequently stressed the fact that verbless structures or clause were a characteristic feature of French compared with English. The aim of this paper is first of all to qualify this perception of the two languages. An examination of a corpus of various English texts leads to noting that verbless sentences appear with a certain frequency in connection with certain registers; strangely enough, although a number of patterns are translatable literally, it is to be noted that a portion of them require the introduction of verbs in French. Reversely, the examination of a corpus of texts containing sentences with verbs leads to a double observation: translators do not always use the possibility of constructing a verbless sentence; when they do, it is again in connection with a certain register, or the creation of a certain register. Although verbless sentences may appear as a linguistic characteristic, this opinion should be cautiously qualified through the notion of register.
Source : Abstract in journal