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This collection assembles twelve studies devoted to problems of verbal syntax and certain fundamental facts of lexicon and grammar. Beyond the diversity of approaches, the originality of the work is due to the fact that the contributions relate to several phenomena little or not described before. One will find general studies relating on the classification of verbal constructions and the concept of predicate, and other approaches more particular describing : irregular causative constructions, or transitive and causative complements of the verb faire, complements of devenir, impersonal constructions and complements and indirect object with de of the verb changer. On the border of verbal construction and interpretation, two studies are presented relating to the diathesis : passive reflexive verbs in French and in Italian. And also a contrastive study between French and Japanese on the temporal determinations in past tense.
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This collection assembles twelve studies devoted to problems of verbal syntax and certain fundamental facts of lexicon and grammar. Beyond the diversity of approaches, the originality of the work is due to the fact that the contributions relate to several phenomena little or not described before. One will find general studies relating on the classification of verbal constructions and the concept of predicate, and other approaches more particular describing : irregular causative constructions, or transitive and causative complements of the verb faire, complements of devenir, impersonal constructions and complements and indirect object with de of the verb changer. On the border of verbal construction and interpretation, two studies are presented relating to the diathesis : passive reflexive verbs in French and in Italian. And also a contrastive study between French and Japanese on the temporal determinations in past tense.
The aim of the paper is to show that differential object marking, i.e. special marking of a certain type of direct objects, which is not commonly recognized as a typological feature of French, occurs in French with clitics in the causative construction with the verb faire. Several examples of colloquial French thus show that the [+hum] direct object of faire (followed by an intransitive infinitive) occurs as a dative lui and not as an accusative le, as would be expected according to normative French.
In the binary construction “Subject-Predicate (= Copula-Complement)”: Luc est gai, Subject is presupposed for Complement, while it is not indispensable in impersonal complement constructions. Sembler requires always a complement: *Que Luc chante semble – Il semble que Luc chante, where que Luc chante is a complement. Paraître is intransitive in Un livre paraîtra and has a complement in Il paraît que Luc chante. Être, meaning “to exist”, is exceptional and in Luc est à Paris, the locative is necessary. In cleft sentences, the complement is emphasized: C’est là que Luc habite. The impersonal construction offers a non-binary frame where the complement can function without a syntactic nor semantic subject: Il est tard, Il en est autrement de lui.
Traditionally, the verb devenir is arranged in the verbs of state, whose syntactic definition is to introduce an attribute of the subject. However, is definitely distinguished from those verbs, concerning both the subcategorization and the selection. We test here the prepositional phrases for the assumptions previously developed, in order to explain the distributional possibilities and impossibilities weighing on the predicative adjective. It follows from this study (relating only to 30% of the words or expressions inventoried by Larousse de base, dictionary which includes only the most current French vocabulary) that, if there remains a small percentage of terms escaping from it, the advanced proposals prove overall satisfactory. From this point of view, prepositional phrases behave like free words or syntagms.
French sentence structure N faire de N N is shown to present a three-way ambiguity, according to the use of the verb faire: ordinary transitive and support (or light) faire constitute a transitive structure, but the third one, “causative operator faire”, makes a peculiar one in which a direct nominal (N) functions, not as a direct object, but as a indirect object (de N) complement. As an operator, the verb takes as “operand” a particular type of copular sentence, i.e. identificational type, on the contrary to rendre and mettre, well-known causative verbs, applied only to predicational type. faire, rendre and mettre are in complementary distribution. Different possibilities of causative operators for different types of copular sentences are also discussed.
How useful can be decision trees for the construction, update and use of taxonomies of verbs? They are supposed to make the definition of classes more accurate. They are still little used in practice: devising and handling them involves formal logic and Boolean reasoning, which do not belong to a background in humanities. However, a better organization of interdisciplinarity in linguistic research might actually overcome such reluctance. We exemplify how the decision tree of the Lexicon-Grammar of French verbs led us to revise this taxonomy. We resolved an internal contradiction in eight classes: with some locative verbs, a content clause can occupy the theme argument, and we made the formalization of this feature consistent with the definitions of classes.
The Lexicon-Grammar, first developed at LADL (Laboratoire d’Automatique Documentaire et Linguistique, CNRS) by Maurice Gross and his team, is organised in a series of tables. Each table groups lexical items with related behaviour (in the structure of basic sentences, in the distribution of arguments, in terms of semantics). Each table includes a set of properties (in columns) and a flag of “+” and “−” indicating whether or not the item has this property. Part of these properties concerns nouns (called V-n) morphologically related to a verb, (chanter/chanteur/chant/chanson) and their semantic interpretation. This article focuses on verbal constructions (about 5,000 verbs have been examined) and various syntactic positions that deverbal nouns could occupy in these different constructions.
Verb tables are based on the simple sentence, made up of a predicate, its arguments, their actualization and the various transformations the sentence may undergo, all presented in binary table form. What though is the theoretical basis? Since the predicate is determined by the nature of its arguments, the first step is to identify these. An evaluation is then made of the concepts of human and non-human nouns, suggesting that these features are too general or inappropriate for identifying usages, relying too much on syntax and too little on semantics. Yet semantics allows for precise descriptions, providing that different levels are not kept separate, since syntax and semantics are so closely interwoven that it is impossible to separate them.
This paper takes its start from a not so well-known 1984 paper by Henry Kučera “Computational Analysis of Predication Structures in English” which examines the expression of predication in the Brown corpus. We review the observations and insights in this paper and present a general analysis of the structure of predication forms in English, where we distinguish between three types of predication in terms of how the predicate of the sentence is expressed.
We discuss the syntactic properties of N0 V de N1 of changer, in opposition to N0 V N1, from a corpus analysis. In N0 V N1 (Max a changé sa voiture), the referent of N1, direct object, changes, whether modified or replaced. In N0 V de N1 (Max a changé de voiture), on the other hand, N1, which does not admit a determiner, does not refer to a specific entity and indicates a category. Thus the referent of N1 is not affected by the change. The indirect object de N1 of changer is distinguished from de N1 of other verbs which admits determiners and answers the question: “De quoi V N0 ?”, such as parler, traiter, servir, etc
This paper discusses the French pronominal passive construction (PPC) which is frequently used with judgement verbs in scientific articles. After examining the difference between PPC and the periphrastic passive, we focus on the inherent prescriptive sense of PPC. We assume that by using PPC, authors present their judgements as already established in the society in order to render their arguments more persuasive. We then highlight another pragmatic usage of PPC, considering as examples sentences used as instructions. PPC exhibits subtle semantic differences according to context, which enables us to consider the relationship between the fundamental function of the construction and its pragmatic interpretations.
This paper deals with Italian impersonal constructions featured by the clitic si, such as Si è scoperto (gli untori) ‘one has found out the plague-spreaders’, Si sono scoperti (gli untori) ‘the plague-spreaders have been found out’, Si è scoperti (come untori) ‘they have been found to be plague-spreaders’, and suggests a description of them from the point of view of both their argumental configurations, and their syntactic processes. At the surface, these constructions appear to have a non-argumental, unspecified and human subject (“dummy” or “null” final subject). This subject, however, correlates with an initial function which (a) may be a subject or a direct object, (b) may belong to a transitive or intransitive level. The verb morphology reflects both the paradigmatic and the syntagmatic relationships of the final subject.
This paper is intended as an contrastive study of present narrative in French and in Japanese within the framework of Mental Space Theory. In French the so called “historical present” is a metaphorical use of present tense intending to convey past events as if it were now present before the speaker’s eye. But in Japanese the present tense is used to describe the state of past situations without any stylistic effects. The difference comes from the different tense systems of the two languages. In French all events must be indicated from the speaker’s position, but Japanese tense indicate only the relation between the event and the v-point spaces. This may account for the use of the present tense in Japanese.
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This collection assembles twelve studies devoted to problems of verbal syntax and certain fundamental facts of lexicon and grammar. Beyond the diversity of approaches, the originality of the work is due to the fact that the contributions relate to several phenomena little or not described before. One will find general studies relating on the classification of verbal constructions and the concept of predicate, and other approaches more particular describing : irregular causative constructions, or transitive and causative complements of the verb faire, complements of devenir, impersonal constructions and complements and indirect object with de of the verb changer. On the border of verbal construction and interpretation, two studies are presented relating to the diathesis : passive reflexive verbs in French and in Italian. And also a contrastive study between French and Japanese on the temporal determinations in past tense.
The aim of the paper is to show that differential object marking, i.e. special marking of a certain type of direct objects, which is not commonly recognized as a typological feature of French, occurs in French with clitics in the causative construction with the verb faire. Several examples of colloquial French thus show that the [+hum] direct object of faire (followed by an intransitive infinitive) occurs as a dative lui and not as an accusative le, as would be expected according to normative French.
In the binary construction “Subject-Predicate (= Copula-Complement)”: Luc est gai, Subject is presupposed for Complement, while it is not indispensable in impersonal complement constructions. Sembler requires always a complement: *Que Luc chante semble – Il semble que Luc chante, where que Luc chante is a complement. Paraître is intransitive in Un livre paraîtra and has a complement in Il paraît que Luc chante. Être, meaning “to exist”, is exceptional and in Luc est à Paris, the locative is necessary. In cleft sentences, the complement is emphasized: C’est là que Luc habite. The impersonal construction offers a non-binary frame where the complement can function without a syntactic nor semantic subject: Il est tard, Il en est autrement de lui.
Traditionally, the verb devenir is arranged in the verbs of state, whose syntactic definition is to introduce an attribute of the subject. However, is definitely distinguished from those verbs, concerning both the subcategorization and the selection. We test here the prepositional phrases for the assumptions previously developed, in order to explain the distributional possibilities and impossibilities weighing on the predicative adjective. It follows from this study (relating only to 30% of the words or expressions inventoried by Larousse de base, dictionary which includes only the most current French vocabulary) that, if there remains a small percentage of terms escaping from it, the advanced proposals prove overall satisfactory. From this point of view, prepositional phrases behave like free words or syntagms.
French sentence structure N faire de N N is shown to present a three-way ambiguity, according to the use of the verb faire: ordinary transitive and support (or light) faire constitute a transitive structure, but the third one, “causative operator faire”, makes a peculiar one in which a direct nominal (N) functions, not as a direct object, but as a indirect object (de N) complement. As an operator, the verb takes as “operand” a particular type of copular sentence, i.e. identificational type, on the contrary to rendre and mettre, well-known causative verbs, applied only to predicational type. faire, rendre and mettre are in complementary distribution. Different possibilities of causative operators for different types of copular sentences are also discussed.
How useful can be decision trees for the construction, update and use of taxonomies of verbs? They are supposed to make the definition of classes more accurate. They are still little used in practice: devising and handling them involves formal logic and Boolean reasoning, which do not belong to a background in humanities. However, a better organization of interdisciplinarity in linguistic research might actually overcome such reluctance. We exemplify how the decision tree of the Lexicon-Grammar of French verbs led us to revise this taxonomy. We resolved an internal contradiction in eight classes: with some locative verbs, a content clause can occupy the theme argument, and we made the formalization of this feature consistent with the definitions of classes.
The Lexicon-Grammar, first developed at LADL (Laboratoire d’Automatique Documentaire et Linguistique, CNRS) by Maurice Gross and his team, is organised in a series of tables. Each table groups lexical items with related behaviour (in the structure of basic sentences, in the distribution of arguments, in terms of semantics). Each table includes a set of properties (in columns) and a flag of “+” and “−” indicating whether or not the item has this property. Part of these properties concerns nouns (called V-n) morphologically related to a verb, (chanter/chanteur/chant/chanson) and their semantic interpretation. This article focuses on verbal constructions (about 5,000 verbs have been examined) and various syntactic positions that deverbal nouns could occupy in these different constructions.
Verb tables are based on the simple sentence, made up of a predicate, its arguments, their actualization and the various transformations the sentence may undergo, all presented in binary table form. What though is the theoretical basis? Since the predicate is determined by the nature of its arguments, the first step is to identify these. An evaluation is then made of the concepts of human and non-human nouns, suggesting that these features are too general or inappropriate for identifying usages, relying too much on syntax and too little on semantics. Yet semantics allows for precise descriptions, providing that different levels are not kept separate, since syntax and semantics are so closely interwoven that it is impossible to separate them.
This paper takes its start from a not so well-known 1984 paper by Henry Kučera “Computational Analysis of Predication Structures in English” which examines the expression of predication in the Brown corpus. We review the observations and insights in this paper and present a general analysis of the structure of predication forms in English, where we distinguish between three types of predication in terms of how the predicate of the sentence is expressed.
We discuss the syntactic properties of N0 V de N1 of changer, in opposition to N0 V N1, from a corpus analysis. In N0 V N1 (Max a changé sa voiture), the referent of N1, direct object, changes, whether modified or replaced. In N0 V de N1 (Max a changé de voiture), on the other hand, N1, which does not admit a determiner, does not refer to a specific entity and indicates a category. Thus the referent of N1 is not affected by the change. The indirect object de N1 of changer is distinguished from de N1 of other verbs which admits determiners and answers the question: “De quoi V N0 ?”, such as parler, traiter, servir, etc
This paper discusses the French pronominal passive construction (PPC) which is frequently used with judgement verbs in scientific articles. After examining the difference between PPC and the periphrastic passive, we focus on the inherent prescriptive sense of PPC. We assume that by using PPC, authors present their judgements as already established in the society in order to render their arguments more persuasive. We then highlight another pragmatic usage of PPC, considering as examples sentences used as instructions. PPC exhibits subtle semantic differences according to context, which enables us to consider the relationship between the fundamental function of the construction and its pragmatic interpretations.
This paper deals with Italian impersonal constructions featured by the clitic si, such as Si è scoperto (gli untori) ‘one has found out the plague-spreaders’, Si sono scoperti (gli untori) ‘the plague-spreaders have been found out’, Si è scoperti (come untori) ‘they have been found to be plague-spreaders’, and suggests a description of them from the point of view of both their argumental configurations, and their syntactic processes. At the surface, these constructions appear to have a non-argumental, unspecified and human subject (“dummy” or “null” final subject). This subject, however, correlates with an initial function which (a) may be a subject or a direct object, (b) may belong to a transitive or intransitive level. The verb morphology reflects both the paradigmatic and the syntagmatic relationships of the final subject.
This paper is intended as an contrastive study of present narrative in French and in Japanese within the framework of Mental Space Theory. In French the so called “historical present” is a metaphorical use of present tense intending to convey past events as if it were now present before the speaker’s eye. But in Japanese the present tense is used to describe the state of past situations without any stylistic effects. The difference comes from the different tense systems of the two languages. In French all events must be indicated from the speaker’s position, but Japanese tense indicate only the relation between the event and the v-point spaces. This may account for the use of the present tense in Japanese.