Publications
Publication details [#48490]
Fraczak, Lidia. 2008. French prepositions à and de in infinitival complements: A pragma-semantic analysis. In Kurzon, Dennis and Silvia Adler, eds. Adpositions. Pragmatic, semantic and syntactic perspectives. (Typological Studies in Language 74). John Benjamins. pp. 171–190. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
Publication type
Article in book
Publication language
English
Keywords
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins
Annotation
This paper upholds the position that the French prepositions à and de are not “empty” and do not fulfill only a syntactic function. After showing that the criterion of presupposition, used in some previous work, is not sufficient to differentiate these prepositions, the paper puts forward a pragma-semantic description according to which expressions with à, followed by an infinitival complement, are used when the speaker’s intention is to present a fact in an “ambivalent” way, whereas expressions with de indicate a “monovalent” vision of a fact. The study also tries to show that the “ambivalent vision” related to the preposition à makes it possible to introduce a particular argumentative value to the statement, indicating a real or a potential opposition of points of view.