Métalinguistique is an adjective, well-known linguists, who qualifies the technical terms belonging to the field of linguistics.
For example, the words Grammar , Verb , Name , Adjectif are terms metalinguistics .
The same word can sometimes be and sometimes not be not metalinguistics. For example, name indicates sometimes the word by which one calls a person (the word name forms then part of the Onomastique), for example This name is not foreign for me or Which your family name? ; sometimes the word name indicates the grammatical nature of a word, for example in French , the name precedes the verb in general. It is in the latter example that the word name is a metalinguistics term.
As opposed to what one could believe, any word can become metalinguistics. Example:
- the “had” “They had already eaten” is the auxiliary of the verb to eat .
In this sentence which one could find in a school handbook, the word “had” , at the beginning of the sentence, does not function more like one verb, but rather like a noun, brought up to date like the majority of the names by an article ( “the” ); it is consequently about a metalinguistics use.
The use of a word in a register metalinguistics is accompanied by a Neutralization (one will say: the “beautiful” of “This girl is beautiful” is an adjective ). Moreover the word becomes invariable. Examples:
- All the “beautiful” of the sentences “I am beautiful” , “You are beautiful” , “It is beautiful” , are qualifying adjectives ).
- It convinced me, just like the chimpanzee which dies to be alone taught me that “I” exist' e' only if “you” exist' E (the verb exists is with the 3ère nobody of the singular in both cases).
Starting from a certain level of complexity of a speech, one can wonder whether the difference between metalinguistics and not metalinguistics is simply dichotomic, where if one rather should not consider the possibility of an indefinite number of lexicons used jointly. It is the case in particular in the social sciences, when one refers to a term which has different meanings according to the authors (one will be able to say: term N within the meaning of X ). One leads then to the concept of Espace of names, used in particular in the data-processing language XML.
One also speaks about negation metalinguistics when the negation carries, not on the dictum (what is asserté), but on the expression, presupposed, etc Exemples:
Jean does not have cessé to smoke: he smoked forever
The word metalinguistics could have in the past (the Sixties) the same significance as that of English metalinguistics , “study of the relationship between the language and all the psychological and cultural characteristics of the users of this language” (for example, study of the relation between the grammatical structure of a language and vision of the world specific to the speakers of this language). It is seen that this significance, now obsolete, is much broader than the preceding one; one will prefer to him the term D Exolinguistique .
| Random links: | Island of Planier | Boids | Rouffignac-of-Sigoulès | Schaumbourg-Lippe | Sailing ships of the sun |