Abstract locational subjects
Field and settings in French and English
This chapter analyzes the English and French abstract locational subjects il, ça,
there, and it which refer to an ‘abstract region’ within which the entity in the
complement is identified. There, it, and il describe the ‘field’, namely the conceptualizer’s
scope of awareness relative to the complement content, but they
operate at different levels of reality. Existential there and simple il (followed by a
nominal) describe a section of basic reality, while it and complex il (followed by
a clause) operate at a more analytical level of reality which includes the conceptualizer’s
effort to assess or evaluate the complement content. Ça profiles the
abstract setting composed of the immediate context from which the complement
content is extracted for expressive purposes.
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Cognitive Linguistics 27:2
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