Lingvisticæ Investigationes - Volume 39, Issue 1, 2016

Cette étude vise à mettre en évidence, dans une perspective fonctionnelle, les caractéristiques spécifiques de quatre lexies d’affect, présentées comme synonymes, au sein des collocations où elles apparaissent (rage, fureur, rageur, furieux). Les analyses de la combinatoire de ces lexies, menées sur un vaste corpus, permettent d’opérer à trois niveaux (sémantique, syntaxique et textuel) afin d’élargir la description de manière systématique à la dimension discursive. Nous montrons ainsi que le profil discursif de chacune des lexies fournit des éléments pertinents pour distinguer les synonymes entre eux.

In this paper, we aim to reveal the distinctive features of the French synonymous lexies rage, fureur, rageur and furieux in the collocations in which each of them appears. Our study is corpus-based. We describe, in the functional perspective, how each of them preferred to be combined with some specific elements in the nearby context and, more generally, in a particular textual environment. Thus, we show that the what we have called ‘discursive profile’ of each lexie give relevant information to distinguish between these couples of synonyms.

L’analyse sémantique du syntagme nominal à plusieurs éléments est ordonnée d’ordinaire à partir du noyau nominal. Les éléments de détermination complètent le nom en lui ajoutant des éléments d’information ou en modifiant l’étendue du groupe ainsi formé. D’abord élément de sous-catégorisation du nom, l’adjectif a été progressivement isolé en français pour marquer ces fonctions. L’article passe en revue les éléments de frontière entre ces parties du discours : le substantif épithète, l’adjectif relationnel principalement. En partant de l’analyse connue des tours avec nom qualifieur antéposé, il montre que le commandement sémantique doit être attribué dans plusieurs cas à l’élément syntaxiquement subordonné sans que l’explication d’un emploi figuré du langage soit nécessaire.

The semantic analysis of complex noun phrases (NP) is usually determined by the nominal nucleus. Adjectives and determiners complement the noun by adding pieces of information or changing the size of the expanded NP. This paper emphasizes nominal constructions in French where the semantic nucleus must be reassigned to units which do not operate as a syntactic nucleus of NPs. It first discusses what has historically motivated the progressive autonomy of the adjective from the noun. The study then reviews multiple aspects of quantifying and qualifying constructions in NPs, with particular consideration of metaphors. It analyses how some boundary sub-categories, participate in the semantic governance of NP: N2 in expressive binominal noun phrases (N1N2 or N1deN2), relational adjectives in (N1AdjR) groups.

According to Chomsky’s report of the mid 1970s, he and Harris developed their theories in an essentially independent way; whereas according to some statements by Harris, some contact actually took place between them. To shed light on this issue, it may be useful to systematically compare their respective views of the notion ‘transformation’ as well as their analyses of certain syntactic phenomena. Among the topics dealt with in the present article are: the system of syntactic categories and their symbols; the notion of ‘zero elements’; the phenomenon of discontinuous constituents; the English auxiliary system; wh-constructions; the typology of transformations; the notions of ‘kernel’ and ‘kernel sentence’.

Several of these analyses show many points of contact between the two scholars (e.g., the analysis of wh-constructions or that of English auxiliaries), which allow us to maintain that they surely influenced each other. The overall differences between the two models are also clear: the transformational relation holds between sentences in Harris’s framework, while it holds between underlying strings on the one hand and actual sentences on the other in Chomsky’s. As a consequence of this different view of the notion of transformation, two problems which were fundamental for Chomsky had no importance for Harris, namely the order of transformations and the distinction between optional and obligatory transformations.

It can therefore be concluded that, if the two scholars certainly influenced each other when they were working out their respective transformational theories, their theoretical views were acutely different almost from the beginning.

L’étude aborde la problématique de l’accord du participe passé des verbes dits métrologiques en français. Nous tenterons d’éclairer le statut ambigu du segment avec lequel s’effectue l’accord afin de déterminer s’il s’agit d’un vrai objet (COD) ou d’un autre type de complément. Partant des données obtenues lors d’une enquête linguistique adressée à des étudiants français et espagnols de la Faculté de Philologie, nous essaierons de déceler les raisons qui poussent nos étudiants à respecter ou à enfreindre le protocole d’accord du participe passé des verbes conjugués avec avoir (Vaux Av). Nos résultats confirmeront qu’il est grand besoin de simplifier les règles d’accord existantes parce qu’elles sont artificielles, peu transparentes et qu’elles manquent enfin d’une base grammaticale ferme et solide.

This paper aims to study past participle agreement of measure verbs in French. An attempt will be made to clear up the ambiguous status of the segment that agrees with the past participle of these verbs to determine whether this segment functions as a direct object (DO) or as any other complement. Based on the data obtained from a linguistic survey conducted at the Faculty of Philology and addressed to French and Spanish students, we will try to clarify the reasons why our students meet or violate the grammatical rules of the agreement of the past participle of these measure verbs with the auxiliary avoir. Our results will confirm the need to simplify these matching rules both for being artificial and opaque and, in many cases, and for lacking a solid grammatical base.

This paper will propose an innovative model of the conceptualization of color, demonstrated by the syntaxico-semantic description of the chromatic adjectives and their special behavior in gradation, especially in combination with the adverb très [very]. Generally considered as a quality of an object, the color is not treated in language in the same way as other qualities are. Syntactic properties show that an ambivalent referent between texture and quality can be associated to the words of color. Comparing chromatic to typical adjectives of quality, many linguists have remarked that the combination [chromatic adjectives  +  très] is singular. The three most relevant studies (Milner, Whittaker, Noailly) hypothesize a change of category of the adjectives (from classifier to non-classifier) which is denied by Kleiber, who claims that the problem is not linguistic but referential: colors are not gradable referents. None of these explanations are satisfying. Drawing upon a description of the syntactic properties of this combination – reflecting the type of referent possessing the color (homogenous or not) and kind of color (natural or not) – our hypothesis proves that colors are gradable but not always in the same way as qualities, because color can also lead to a quantitative interpretation. This singularity depends on the bidimensionality of the referent, causing two possible interpretations.

Cet article traite la question du choix du mode, indicatif ou du subjonctif, dans les complétives objet en français. Une attention particulière est portée sur les verbes recteurs, la négation, l’interrogation, l’impératif, la subordination hypothétique … Nous montrons que les hypothèses actuelles sur la signification des modes conduisent à des prédictions fausses, et sont donc réfutées. Dans le cadre de la Théorie Modulaire des Modalités (Gosselin 2010), nous proposons une explication nouvelle en termes de convergence / divergence entre les contraintes sur la modalité, associées aux modes, aux verbes, à la négation, à l’interrogation, etc. Cette explication est fondée sur la thèse selon laquelle les modes n’expriment pas la modalité, mais seulement des contraintes sur la modalité (au sens large).

This paper deals with the problem of the choice of the mood, indicative or subjunctive, in complement clauses in French. It focuses on the role of verbs, negation, interrogation, imperative, hypothetical subordination … We show that current hypotheses on significations of moods lead to false prediction, and must be rejected. In the framework of the Modular Theory of Modalities (Gosselin 2010), we propose a new explanation in terms of convergence / divergence between constraints on modality, triggered by moods, verbs, negation, interrogation, etc. This explanation is grounded on the assumption that moods do not express modality, but only constraints on modality (taken in a wide sense).