False friends

  • Lucie GOURNAY (Paris-Est Créteil)
    Connectors and the expression of contrast: a French-English comparative study
    2011, Vol. XVI-2, pp. 75-89

    This paper focuses on the contribution supplied by a cross-linguistic approach of the diversity of discourse connectives. It includes two case-studies, which aim at implementations in the lexicological and teaching fields: first, the non equivalence of mais / but when sentence-initial mais does not mark an argumentative opposition; second, false cognates actually / actuellement which hardly ever correspond. These two complementary case-studies illustrate two cases of non direct translation.