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Part of
Give Constructions across Languages
Edited by Myriam Bouveret
[Constructional Approaches to Language 29] 2021
► pp. 97–119

Chapter 4
The French ditransitive transfer construction and the complementarity between the meta-predicates give, take, keep, leave

The hypothesis of a grammatical enantiosemy

| Clesthia, Sorbonne Nouvelle University-Paris 3

We revisit in this chapter the status and meaning of the French Ditransitive Transfer Construction. We show that the construction allows four interpretations that can be accounted for by the antonymous Meta-Predicates give, take, leave and keep. But how can the same construction be at the origin of contrary and even contradictory interpretations? The answer, in our opinion, lies in a particularity of the lexicon that is seldom taken into account in semantics and lexicology, namely enantiosemy, a property by which a lexical unit has two opposite meanings. Thus, we formulate the hypothesis that the Ditransitive Transfer scheme itself is an enantiosemic construction.

Keywords: enantiosemy, Ditransitive Transfer Construction, meta-predicat, contrary relation, contradictory relation
Article outline
  • 1.The problem
  • 2.Lexical dative and non lexical dative
    • 2.1Datives of equivalence
    • 2.2Lexical attributive datives
    • 2.3Non-lexical attributive datives
    • 2.4Lexical partitive datives or epistemic datives
    • 2.5Non-lexical partitive dative
    • 2.6Distinction between lexical dative and non-lexical dative
  • 3. Constructional approach and meta-predicates
    • 3.1Scenario 1: give
    • 3.2Scenario 2: take
    • 3.3Scenario 3: keep
    • 3.4Scenario 4: leave
    • 3.5Discussion
  • 4.The enantiosemic hypothesis
    • 4.1Lexical enantiosemy: Very brief historical overview
    • 4.2Lexcial enantiosemy: Some examples
    • 4.3Undifferentiated meaning
    • 4.5Consequences
      • 4.5.1Cognitive status of the ambivalent construction
      • 4.5.2Grammatical construction and ambivalence
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 March 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.29.04leg
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