Transparency and opacity of pronominal forms of address and interjective forms in three Romance languages ​​(French, Italian, Spanish)

Abstract

This study is set within the framework of enunciation and subjectivity in particular. We will analyze, in a contrastive way, the opacity of some pronominal forms of address and of some interjections deriving from verbal forms such as Allez ! (Fr.), Dàgli! (It.), ¡Vaya! (Sp.). French, Italian and Spanish use an array of linguistic processes that allow them to express a type of reverence producing a distancing effect. The latter can be more or less frequent depending on the language, age, hierarchic and social status of both the speaker and the interlocutor, but also depending on the context and “the interlocutors’ good or bad mood” (Ćosić 2017, 205), which both determine the choice of pronominal forms of address. Sometimes those forms are absolutely transparent as regards identification, sometimes they are really opaque in terms of interpretation (eg Tu parles anglais ? – interrogative mode (modality?) – / Tu parles ! – set phrase). Both Spanish and Italian quantify the aforesaid terms in a way which is different from that of French. By doing so, they present striking facts of language which cannot be reduced to either the French pronominal system or to its notion of address. Those facts affect not only the intrinsic inter-roman contrastive analysis but also the phenomenological dimension of interpersonal relationships.