Les dÉlocutifs en revue

The present study of delocutives, a class of derivatives that entered the active linguistic consciousness in the'50s of the twentieth century (although sporadically surfacing much earlier), deals with the reach of this phenomenon over all classes of parts of speech. While originally verbal derivatives have been the central focus of research, and verbs and nominals do in fact constitute the most populated sets of these derivatives, it emerges from my study, drawing upon a variety of ancient and modern Indo-European and Semitic languages, that this rather marginal process of derivation - and lexicalization - generates tokens belonging to all parts of speech, including even function words. A morphologically and syntactically arranged synopsis demonstrates the infinite array of utterances that may, subject to no limitation, underly delocutives, from the most unautonomous and synsemantic bases, to the ones most developed, syntactically and semantically - the sentential bases. A delocutive often starts off as an on-the-spot creation; as such, in order to grasp the derivative's genesis and to evaluate correctly the span of its meaning, one needs - everywhere and particularly when dealing with lacunar dead languages - to hunt for its base form and to track down its context. Above are presented numerous detailed case studies that delineate such often intricate evolvement. Nevertheless, I make a point of stating here that the often held pragmatic motivation for the process is much overrated: the initial situational conditioning is in many cases unjustifiedly generalized to the entire range of usage as a whole. The volume of base components put to use in the process of a given language, and the nature of the tools employed, both form part of the typological profile of that language. Differing language preferences in translating (Biblical) delocutives also point to typological predisposition or aversion towards delocutivity. Typological distinctions also emerge from the regularity of these derivatives and their rate of occurrence, on which, as is well known, language cognacy has no bearing. On the other hand, the exemplification here reaffirms the generally valid penchant, shared by many languages, for certain registers, notably for the markedly familiar and, conversely, the markedly elevated one. Further issues discussed include: the disparity between delocutives involving nondescript, 'light' function words as against lexemes involving explicit quotative elements; partial delocutives (verbal ones that function within part of the paradigm) vis-à-vis full-fledged ones; and the - perhaps not quite resolved - issue of the dividing line between derivation stemming from sonic mimicry and morphologically motivated language-internal delocutivity involving an all-inclusive signe.