Evolution de la pensée prosodique à travers la notion de mouvement (France, 1600-1740)

Abstract

The grammatization of languages first occured through a transfer of the model developed for Latin and Greek, and its application to different object languages. However, this model barely considers prosody, seen at its origin, among the Greeks, as an accompanied song with a melodic movement of the voice, noted by the different accents. In the Latin traditi on, the study of intonati on, stress and quantity is integrated into rhetorics, and reflections on vocal efficiency in poetries. For a long time, the French authors interested in prosody were concerned with versification, and not grammar. The introduction of the new theoretical program of general grammar, with the aim of writing the universal bases of languages, triggers a new interest among grammarians in the prosody of languages in general, and that of French in particular. Slowly, the discipline found its autonomy and a place within French grammar. In this process, the new conception of time and mo vement, which emerged throughout the seventeenth century in other fields such as physics, philosophy or even music, played a significant role: movement was viewed as being in close connection with the soul, and time became the measure of movement.