Le que médiatif du français contemporain: Perspectives diachronique et comparée

Abstract

Resume The French construction heureusement que shows a que that has been recently analyzed as a very specific relative pronoun, an evidential que, which introduces a proposition considered as having been previously uttered. On the other hand, the pronoun qui – apart from its common use as an anaphoric relative – had a specific function until the end of the 17th century: it could be used with no antecedent, and with an indefinite and suppositive value meaning ‘if one’. The first part of this study draws up a full list of both constructions in French. The second part of the study is mainly diachronic, and explores the origins of these two pronouns in classical Latin, as well as their evolution through Romance languages, namely French, Italian and Spanish.