Page 13 - Oswald Ducrot, Slovenian Lectures, Digitalna knjižnica/Digital Library, Dissertationes 6
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ture I
December 9
To begin, I would like to say that I am extremely happy to be here in
Ljubljana. This is my first visit to Slovenia, and I already hope it will
not be the last. If I am lucky enough to come here a second time, I hope I
will be able to say two, perhaps even three words in Slovenian to you, but I
am not making a promise on that point.
I would also like to thank all those who have collaborated with me on
this seminar: to begin with, those who invited me and who have organ-
ised this meeting, particularly Igor Žagar. I would also like to thank both
the Slovene and French institutions which have made this seminar possible.
In the hand-outs which outline the seminar, you are told that I am going
to present one of the most interesting (I am quoting, of course) linguistic
theories of our times. I am afraid that Igor may have been slightly optimistic
in writing that, but, in any case, what I am going to speak to you about are
things which, personally, I find interesting and which, I can even say, have
fascinated me for around twenty years now – perhaps even more – that is
to say, ever since I became involved in linguistics and especially that part of
linguistics called semantics.
In the five lectures of this seminar, I am going to try to give you an over-
all view of the work I have been doing and which, in fact, I am continuing
to do even as I present it to you in its most recent form: in the first lecture,
the one I am going to give today, I will develop a certain number of gener-
al topics; in the second, I will speak about a particular theory, the theory of
polyphony, which is the basis of all my work, and then, in the last three lec-
December 9
To begin, I would like to say that I am extremely happy to be here in
Ljubljana. This is my first visit to Slovenia, and I already hope it will
not be the last. If I am lucky enough to come here a second time, I hope I
will be able to say two, perhaps even three words in Slovenian to you, but I
am not making a promise on that point.
I would also like to thank all those who have collaborated with me on
this seminar: to begin with, those who invited me and who have organ-
ised this meeting, particularly Igor Žagar. I would also like to thank both
the Slovene and French institutions which have made this seminar possible.
In the hand-outs which outline the seminar, you are told that I am going
to present one of the most interesting (I am quoting, of course) linguistic
theories of our times. I am afraid that Igor may have been slightly optimistic
in writing that, but, in any case, what I am going to speak to you about are
things which, personally, I find interesting and which, I can even say, have
fascinated me for around twenty years now – perhaps even more – that is
to say, ever since I became involved in linguistics and especially that part of
linguistics called semantics.
In the five lectures of this seminar, I am going to try to give you an over-
all view of the work I have been doing and which, in fact, I am continuing
to do even as I present it to you in its most recent form: in the first lecture,
the one I am going to give today, I will develop a certain number of gener-
al topics; in the second, I will speak about a particular theory, the theory of
polyphony, which is the basis of all my work, and then, in the last three lec-
