- Home
- e-Journals
- Lingvisticæ Investigationes
- Previous Issues
- Volume 25, Issue, 2002
Lingvisticæ Investigationes - Volume 25, Issue 2, 2002
Volume 25, Issue 2, 2002
-
Prépositions françaises en diachronie: une catégorie en question
Author(s): Christiane Marchello-Niziapp.: 205–221 (17)More LessSummarySince the 17th century, French has had both the categories of adverbs and prepositions, each represented by specific morphemes. In Old French however, this situation was different : one morpheme could then function as preposition, adverb, particle, verbal prefixe and subordinating element. In the light of recent theories concerning changes of grammatical categories and the notion of ‘emergent grammar’, a matter of concern should be whether these different categories have to be distinguished for Old and Middle French, or whether these morphemes are to be considered as making part of multi-functional or even multi-categorial paradigms. In the latter case, each paradigm would express one notion or a series of related notions. A concrete analysis of the usage of four such morphemes, aval, par, tres and en, from 1000 to 1500 shows how these ‘prepositions’ evolve from multi-categorial to mono-categorial usage. This reduction of pluri-categorial morphemes in French can be explained by a more general change at the level of the French grammatical macro-system, leading towards an increasing iconicity, where one function is expressed by one single form.
-
L’opposition statique – dynamique dans la grammaticalisation de la préposition française de
Author(s): Cristiana Papahagipp.: 223–245 (23)More LessSummaryDynamism is a marked feature for prepositions in French: among its lexicalizations by means of prepositional expressions, inchoative de stands out as the most marked one. Yet, this is the result of a modern normative intervention. Within the more comprehensive framework of the change of perception of space from Latin to the Romance languages, the case of de- is striking. In Latin compounds, de- has a dynamic meaning; gradually, it loses its dynamic sense and becomes completely bleached in Middle French. Owing to this loss of semantic quantity, adverbial compounds drop to the prepositional level or move up to the nominal one, where dynamism is no longer possible. The opposite movement, relexicalisation, happened in the 17th century, and tends to reinforce the preposition de by preventing it from getting bleached in compounds, and from losing its sense. The current state of de in French illustrates these two successive movements: it has become a full preposition, expressing by itself the beginning of a movement, and at the same time the ‘emptiest’ preposition, a mere function marker.
-
De l’adverbe au préfixe en passant par la préposition: un phénomène de grammaticalisation?
Author(s): Dany Amiot and Walter De Mulderpp.: 247–273 (27)More LessSummaryThe aim of this article is to study the relationship between certain adverbs, prepositions, prefixes and conjunctions of subordination in French. A distinction is made between two classes of morphemes. The first one includes prefixes and ‘governed’ prepositions (which introduce arguments of the verb, such as the indirect object) : both types of expressions can be said to be ‘linked’, the first to the prefixed element, the second to the verb. The second one includes ‘not-governed’ prepositions (those which introduce adverbial phrases), certain adverbs and conjunctions of subordination ; these morphemes are not linked in the sense mentioned above and can thus said to be ‘free’. This distinction could suggest a grammaticalization channel leading from the free elements to the linked ones : from the adverbs via the related non governed and governed prepositions, in that order, to the prefixes. It is shown, however, that some Latin adverbs grammaticalize directly into preverbs, without an intervening prepositional stage, and that some prepositions directly inherit ‘governed’ as well as ‘not-governed’ uses from their Latin predecessors. Nevertheless, the hypothesis that there is a relation between the governed or non governed nature of some prepositions and the possibility to use them in order to create conjunctions of subordination, could explain why avant que and après que are still used as such conjunctions, whereas sur ce que / sour ce que has disappeared.
-
Déplacement et repositionnement de la préposition à en français
Author(s): Michèle Goyens, Béatrice Lamiroy and Ludo Melispp.: 275–310 (36)More LessIn Modern French, the preposition à has a large number of uses, in contrast to the Latin prepositions ad, ab and apud from which it derives. They can be classified into seven groups: complements expressing (1) place (where?), (2) time (when?), (3) manner, cause or instrument (how?); non locative complements commutating with (5) y or (6) lui, and finally (7) complements expressing possession. This evolution has been described lately as a result of a grammaticalization process, whereby the non locative uses emerged from the locative meaning by an increasing degree of abstraction. First, we show how a comparison with synchronic Romance data (Italian and Spanish), and with diachronic data from Old French, allows us to refine the description of the overall grammaticalization process which involves French à. Moreover, we analyze less well known empirical data concerning lexical and morphosyntactic restrictions on present-day uses of French à. Both kinds of data account for our hypothesis : we argue in particular that the preposition’s main function is no longer that of expressing locative meaning (or adverbial meaning in general) but its use as a mere syntactic complementizer. Furthermore, we show that the preposition is subject not only to a grammaticalization process, but also to a lexicalization process. That the latter also mainly holds for the adverbial uses of à provides evidence for the same hypothesis, viz. the core uses of Modern French à can be described as the result of a ‘repositioning’ of the preposition from the adverbial domain into the structural domain of the indirect object.
-
Évolution sémantique des prépositions spatiales de l’ancien au moyen français
Author(s): Benjamin Fagardpp.: 311–338 (28)More LessSummaryThe aim of this paper is to investigate a particular aspect of semantic change. Many theories have tried to capture the regularity in semantic change. In this respect, some linguists have claimed that space is the necessary starting point of any semantic development, and others have stated that space is situated at the same distance from the “semantic core” of a given lexeme as other semantic domains, such as time. I will formulate a partial answer to the question of the primacy of space. Using diachronic corpus data, I will examine prepositions in Old and Middle French (11th to 16th centuries). The prepositions I have focused on are vers, envers, devers, and pardevers, chosen from a wider corpus of prepositions (which I have studied in the same way) because of their semantic behavior, which is particularly complex, and which I try to explain here in detail.
-
Pour une phytothérapie de la polysémie prépositionnelle
Author(s): Philippe Selossepp.: 339–359 (21)More LessSummaryThe aim of this paper is to refute prepositional polysemy, from an epistemological point of view. The analysis is based on the study of the Latin preposition ex (with ablative case), whose examples are taken from Latin botanical works of the Renaissance, for this corpus provides evidence for two statements of the polysemic approach. The first presents ex as a preposition of movement, with spatial and notional, dynamic and static uses. The second states that, at the time of the Renaissance, ex develops new meanings, since it is used in a new way, either with an anthroponym, or with a colour name. My analysis is based on linguistic and epistemic analyses, that is, considering the épistémè or ‘configuration of scientific knowledge peculiar to a specific time’ (M. Foucault). It appears that the distinctions postulated by the polysemic approach between spatial and notional, dynamic and static, provenance and extraction, are not relevant to the analysis of the meaning of ex, for they just belong to the context (verb, nominal complement). Thus, we can conclude that the ‘new’ uses distinguished by the polysemic tradition are just an application, to specific contexts, of the single semantic structure of the preposition ex and that there is no need to postulate various meanings.
Volumes & issues
-
Volume 47 (2024)
-
Volume 46 (2023)
-
Volume 45 (2022)
-
Volume 44 (2021)
-
Volume 43 (2020)
-
Volume 42 (2019)
-
Volume 41 (2018)
-
Volume 40 (2017)
-
Volume 39 (2016)
-
Volume 38 (2015)
-
Volume 37 (2014)
-
Volume 36 (2013)
-
Volume 35 (2012)
-
Volume 34 (2011)
-
Volume 33 (2010)
-
Volume 32 (2009)
-
Volume 31 (2008)
-
Volume 30 (2007)
-
Volume 29 (2006)
-
Volume 28 (2005)
-
Volume 27 (2004)
-
Volume 26 (2003)
-
Volume 25 (2002)
-
Volume 24 (2001)
-
Volume 23 (2000)
-
Volume 22 (1998)
-
Volume 21 (1997)
-
Volume 20 (1996)
-
Volume 19 (1995)
-
Volume 18 (1994)
-
Volume 17 (1993)
-
Volume 16 (1992)
-
Volume 15 (1991)
-
Volume 14 (1990)
-
Volume 13 (1989)
-
Volume 12 (1988)
-
Volume 11 (1987)
-
Volume 10 (1986)
-
Volume 9 (1985)
-
Volume 8 (1984)
-
Volume 7 (1983)
-
Volume 6 (1982)
-
Volume 5 (1981)
-
Volume 4 (1980)
-
Volume 3 (1979)
-
Volume 2 (1978)
-
Volume 1 (1977)
Most Read This Month
Article
content/journals/15699927
Journal
10
5
false
