Modern syntactic research consists generally of analyses that are oriented towards formal properties of sentences and of their constituents. Sentences are then analyzed as autonomous without any enunciative (discursive) or generic dimension. Within this perspective, syntax does not consider as central neither the phenomena of grammatical variation nor the specificities of different types of linguistic performance. As to the textual approaches - such as textometrics or discourse analysis -, they have not been interested in syntactic characteristics of the genres they study, being more attentive to the particular lexical or enunciative particularities. As a result, textual genre is rarely characterized by its specific syntactic properties. On the other hand, stylistics, the discipline most likely to study the linguistic particularities, has too academic an anchoring and is in a lack of tools, which often limits the range of analyses to relevant but often limited and isolated units.

However, since a few years, automatic analysis allows to better identify lexical and grammatical characteristics of texts, and furthermore the genre of the texts. There are two main approaches, the first being far more developed than the other:

• The "paradigmatic" approach based on the quantification of morpho-syntactic categories used. For example, in his analysis of spoken discourse in academia, Biber (2006) highlights the over-employment (in contrast to written discourse) of first person pronouns, evaluative expressions (“mental” verbs, enunciative adverbs, etc.), WH-questions, etc. By means of factorization, it is possible to find beams of generic properties enabling the mapping of a textual genre. 

• The "syntagmatic" approach emphasizing combinatorial lexical units, identifying preferred (or avoided) syntagmatic sequences in a given genre. For example, a lexico-grammatical pattern (Larjavaara et Legallois work in progress) which is sometimes referred to as a“motif”(Quiniou et al.): “ce N si Adj et si Adj”(that N so Adj and so Adj). This pattern, semantically evaluative, is typical to the Memoirs genre in the 19th century (when compared to other genres: Travel, Novel, Correspondence, Essay of the same period):

Oh ! Tant mieux, tant mieux de n' être pas bornés par ce temps si court et si triste ! E. de Guérin, Journal (1834-1840) (lit : that time so short and so sad)

Seulement, pour ne pas faire acte de désobéissance et de bravade envers cette mère si tendre et si aimée, Maurice lui annonça […]  un petit voyage au Blanc. G. Sand, Histoire de ma vie, 1855 (lit : that mother so tender and so loved )

On éprouve aujourd'hui encore, comme autrefois, une grande douceur intérieure à voir ces lieux si bénis, et maintenant si abandonnés. Mgr Dupanloup, Journal intime, 1876 (lit : these places so blessed and now so abandoned)

The Conscila day is devoted to the analysis of grammar and stylistics of discourse genre and it aims to bring together researchers in linguistics or NLP whose work focuses on the identification of lexico- grammatical features of texts. The submitted papers must take into account the constraints of exhaustivity: we will not focus on one type of form, but on a maximum of specific elements of a genre. The following points will be discussed:

-        Techniques for identification of generic properties;

-        The complementarity or competitivity between paradigmatic and syntagmatic approaches;

-         The ways to interpret the data.

Paper proposals will therefore focus on the characterization of discursive genres (be they literary or not) or styles, in a comprehensive perspective; they will discuss methods, without neglecting the linguistic description. They can be extended to the comparison between authors, or focus on registers, practices, or on forms such as text type (narrative, argumentative, descriptive, etc.).

The work may be on any language, and genres discussed can be oral or written.

Prospects can be variable: dealing with computer science, didactic, stylistic, discursive, syntactic...

Communications will be held in French or English.

An intention to submit a paper will be sent by mid-September to the organizers. An abstract of at least one page must be submitted by November 1st 2014. Response will be sent to authors by November 20th 2014.

Organization

Thierry Charnois (University of Paris 13, LIPN)

Sascha Diwersy (Universität zu Köln)

Meri Larjavaara (Åbo Akademi)

Dominique Legallois (University of Caen, Crisco)

Submission

1- An intention to submit a paper will be sent by mid-September at dominique.legallois@unicaen.fr

2- A detailed proposal of at least 1 full page should then be submitted by 1 November 2014. Selected papers will be notified by 20 November 2014 .

References

Biber D. (2006)  University language:  A corpus-based study of spoken and written registers.  Amsterdam:  John Benjamins

Biber, D. and S. Conrad 2009: Register, genre and style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dorgeloh, H. and A. Wanner (eds) 2010: Syntactic variation and genre, Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton.

Larjavaara M et Legallois D. (en prép.) « Les genres discursifs et leur grammaire »

Longrée D. et Mellet S. (2013. « Le motif : une unité phraséologique englobante ? Étendre le champ de la phraséologie de la langue au discours », Langages 189 (D. Legallois et A. Tutin, coord.), p.68-80

Martin, J. R. and Rose, D. (2008) : Genre relations. Mapping culture. London: Equinox.

Quiniou S., Cellier P., Charnois Th. and Legallois D. (2012)«  What About Sequential Data Mining Techniques to Identify Linguistic Patterns for Stylistics ? » in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Vol. 7181, pp 166-177

Revue Linx, n° 64-65, « Les genres de discours vus par la grammaire », sous la direction de M. Krazem.