Page 40 - Oswald Ducrot, Slovenian Lectures, Digitalna knjižnica/Digital Library, Dissertationes 6
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Slovenian Lectures
a phenomenon which it would often be very difficult to understand with-
out a polyphonic analysis. Let us suppose that someone, having said “John
won’t come”, adds ... “and I regret it, because it would have been nice”. In
the second utterance we have two anaphoric pronouns, the it in “I regret
it” and the it in “it would have been nice”. You can see immediately that the
two occurrences of it do not refer back to the same thing at all. The it in “I
regret it” refers back to the idea that “John won’t come”: what is regretted is
that “John won’t come”. I will say therefore that it refers back to enunciator
E2’s point of view. On the other hand, the second it refers back to enunci-
ator E1’s point of view, that is to say, it refers back to John’s future coming:
what would have been nice would have been John’s coming. If, within the
“John will come” utterance, one has not distinguished the positive and the
negative parts, it is extremely difficult, it seems to me, to explain the phe-
nomenon of anaphora.
That is true for explicit anaphora, like the one I have taken as an exam-
ple, but it is true also for anaphora that one could call implicit. On that
point, I am going to analyse a small text I found in a newspaper concern-
ing the civil war in the Philippines. The journalist said that the Philippine
rebels were completely independent and were not set on or supported by
foreign powers but in the following utterance, the journalist said: “No state
(I am thinking of China) is supporting the rebels”. That is exactly what he
wrote, I assure you. At first sight, that utterance is an extremely surpris-
ing one. If no state is supporting the rebels, how can the journalist think of
China in particular? For that parenthesis, “I am thinking of China”, to be
understandable, it must (I can see no other solution) be analysed polyphon-
ically. In “No state is supporting the rebels”, there are two points of view:
the E1 point of view, according to which “A state is supporting the rebels”,
and an E2 point of view, which disagrees with E1’s. The “I am thinking
of China” does not concern the whole of the negative utterance but only
the positive component which represents E1’s point of view or opinion, ac-
cording to which a particular state is supporting the rebels: that is the opin-
ion which the journalist is alluding to when he puts in “I am thinking of
China”. If one does not have a polyphonic analysis, I fail to see how one can
understand that kind of anaphora.
Now, I will use examples which, properly speaking, are no longer syn-
tactic but rather, let us say, pragmatic. Let us imagine a family quarrel be-
tween Mr A and Mrs A. Mrs A asks her husband, Mr A, to make himself
useful about the house and do a certain number of things, for example clear
the table, do the washing-up, then take the rubbish down. Mr A, annoyed
a phenomenon which it would often be very difficult to understand with-
out a polyphonic analysis. Let us suppose that someone, having said “John
won’t come”, adds ... “and I regret it, because it would have been nice”. In
the second utterance we have two anaphoric pronouns, the it in “I regret
it” and the it in “it would have been nice”. You can see immediately that the
two occurrences of it do not refer back to the same thing at all. The it in “I
regret it” refers back to the idea that “John won’t come”: what is regretted is
that “John won’t come”. I will say therefore that it refers back to enunciator
E2’s point of view. On the other hand, the second it refers back to enunci-
ator E1’s point of view, that is to say, it refers back to John’s future coming:
what would have been nice would have been John’s coming. If, within the
“John will come” utterance, one has not distinguished the positive and the
negative parts, it is extremely difficult, it seems to me, to explain the phe-
nomenon of anaphora.
That is true for explicit anaphora, like the one I have taken as an exam-
ple, but it is true also for anaphora that one could call implicit. On that
point, I am going to analyse a small text I found in a newspaper concern-
ing the civil war in the Philippines. The journalist said that the Philippine
rebels were completely independent and were not set on or supported by
foreign powers but in the following utterance, the journalist said: “No state
(I am thinking of China) is supporting the rebels”. That is exactly what he
wrote, I assure you. At first sight, that utterance is an extremely surpris-
ing one. If no state is supporting the rebels, how can the journalist think of
China in particular? For that parenthesis, “I am thinking of China”, to be
understandable, it must (I can see no other solution) be analysed polyphon-
ically. In “No state is supporting the rebels”, there are two points of view:
the E1 point of view, according to which “A state is supporting the rebels”,
and an E2 point of view, which disagrees with E1’s. The “I am thinking
of China” does not concern the whole of the negative utterance but only
the positive component which represents E1’s point of view or opinion, ac-
cording to which a particular state is supporting the rebels: that is the opin-
ion which the journalist is alluding to when he puts in “I am thinking of
China”. If one does not have a polyphonic analysis, I fail to see how one can
understand that kind of anaphora.
Now, I will use examples which, properly speaking, are no longer syn-
tactic but rather, let us say, pragmatic. Let us imagine a family quarrel be-
tween Mr A and Mrs A. Mrs A asks her husband, Mr A, to make himself
useful about the house and do a certain number of things, for example clear
the table, do the washing-up, then take the rubbish down. Mr A, annoyed
