L’infinitif indépendant dans des discours d'incitation à l’action. Étude comparative polonais-français

Abstract

This paper discusses the Polish and French infinitive operating as a predicate in a sentence and one appearing in some call-to-action speech genres. The analysis was made in three steps. In the first one, the author describes the Polish and French infinitive based on the criterion of syntax dependencies. The use which is of interest to her, constituting a distribution equivalent of the imperative mode, is presented as one of semantic values of independent infinitives. The chapter devoted to interpretation of an acting entity not expressed in the argumentation structure – the subject of the infinitive – connects the syntax part with the description referring both to the methodology of speech acts theory and to discourse analysis. Thus part two shows utterances built around an infinitive as an execution of various types of directive acts, while the third part focuses on call-to-action speech genres whose textual executions contain the here-discussed form.