Chaînes de référence et narration: analyse d’un corpus médiéval diachronique

The study aims to describe reference chains (successive references to the same discourse entity) in a corpus of narratives written between the early twelfth and the late fifteenth century. The research is based on an annotated digital corpus and frequency indicators, which encompasses text coverage by chains, the lengths of the chains, their referents and grammatical categories. Frequencies are measured thanks to the textual analysis platform TXM. The results are linked to text internal division (structural units, direct discourse) and to textual progression in order to provide an overview of the discourse function that chains may have in diachrony.