Le subjonctif dans les expressions parémiques

Abstract

The article is concerned with the use o f the subjunctive mood in paroemic expressions, i.e. proverbs, maxims, or quotation. In the first part the author tries to define what paroemic expressions are. This is followed by the analysis of the use o f the subjunctive mood by means o f two notions derived from the cognitive theory, viz. the ‘prototype’ and the ‘semantic invariant’. The author believes that the category o f doubt is prototypical for the use o f the subjunctive, while the semantic invariant is the notion of distantiation defined as the speakers’ distance from their commitment to the truth value o f their utterances.