Alice's Adventures in French: What the Linguist Found There

The comparison of multiple translations of a single work provides significant insights into the syntax and semantics of the languages involved, and also offers a new approach to evaluate some key concepts in general linguistics, such as competence and performance, linguistic relativity, and logical form. Through the study of seventeen professional translations of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, Professor Kibbee will analyze those features which reveal a basic difference in world view of the two languages, comparing the assertive nature of French with the attenuative nature of English.