TY - JOUR AU - Gómez-Jordana, Sonia PY - 2018/12/26 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - A diachronic analysis of visiblement/visiblemente: contemporary false-friends JF - Linguistik Online JA - LO VL - 92 IS - 5 SE - Articles DO - 10.13092/lo.92.4504 UR - https://bop.unibe.ch/linguistik-online/article/view/4504 SP - AB - <span lang="EN-GB">The aim of this paper is to establish how the French adverb <em>visiblement </em>has evolved, and to find the most accurate translations of this adverb in Spanish. Dictionaries tend to give literal translations, whereby <em>visiblement </em>is translated as <em>visiblemente</em>. A diachronic analysis of this adverb will enable us to see whether they are indeed false-friends. In Old French and in Pre-classical French, it was used as a clause element adverb, before being used as a disjunct adverb from the 17<sup>th </sup>century onwards. Eventually, it goes on to appear by itself, or, accompanying an affirmative, like <em>oui</em>, in the 20<sup>th </sup>century. We will demonstrate that the adverb undergoes a process of pragmaticalisation as described by Dostie (2004), with the adverb becoming more subjective, going from a literal sense, to a disjunct or pragmatic adverb. Nevertheless, in Spanish, since Old Spanish until nowadays, there are almost no examples other than its use as a clause element adverb. That’s the reason why we cannot propose a literal translation of the adverb.</span> ER -