Talmy (1975, 1985, 1991 and 2000b) studies Motion events encoded by verbs from the perspective of lexicalisation(T). Talmy (2000b) proposes six basic semantic elements to describe Motion events; they are Figure, Motion, Path, Ground, Manner, and Cause. For example, in the sentence He entered the room, enter is the main verb and encodes Motion “move” and Path “into”. So the main verb encodes the Path information. Such phenomena are very common in Spanish; however, in English and in Chinese Path is usually expressed by satellites, a category of surface element. Enter is exceptional in English. Although it is a word in English it was borrowed from French. The surface elements which encode the Path information determine a language’s type. For example, if Path is encoded by main verbs in language A, then this language A is a verb-framed language; if Path is typically expressed by satellites in language B, then language B is a satellite-framed language. These are the two most widespread types of languages in this typology. According to Talmy, English is a satellite-framed language (S-framed language); Spanish a verb-framed language (V-framed language); and Chinese a satellite-framed language. Slobin (1996, 1997, 2002, 2004 and 2006) argues that Chinese is an equipollent-framed language (E-framed language), a third language type he added to Talmy’s typology. The evidence for this is the serial verb construction (SVC) in Chinese. SVCs can be briefly defined as a syntactic pattern where two or more verbs are used together to express a single conceptual event and there are no markers of subordination and coordination. Slobin uses feī chū (fly exit) as an example of the SVC and he insists that feī (fly) and chū (exit) share the same grammatical status and are equal to each other in that neither of them can be omitted for a complete expression of the event of flying out. The first verb encodes the Manner information and the latter one expresses the Path information. Omitting either part, the expression is ungrammatical. Having briefly reviewed these two models of language typology, many questions have arisen. Is it necessary to have a third language type to account for Chinese? Or is Chinese an Eframed language or a S-framed language? What is the language typology of Chinese? This is the main research question I aim to answer in this thesis. The main question concerns the nature of Chinese SVCs. In my thesis, I discuss the features of Chinese SVCs as preparation for a working definition of SVC for my empirical work to collect the SVC data from the Lancaster Corpus of Mandarin Chinese (LCMC). I show that the components in Chinese SVCs are not equal in semantics. There are constraints on the positions for different semantic parameters. In addition, the surface forms of components for SVCs do not share equal status for the asymmetrical SVCs. This further shows that components within Chinese SVCs are not in equal grammatical status. My data shows that Path can be encoded by main verbs as well as by satellites in Chinese. Having illustrated that Chinese SVC is not evidence for Chinese to be an E-framed language, then, is Chinese a S-framed language similar to English or a V-framed language like Spanish? Özçalışkan (2004) claims that Path verbs, verbs encoding [Motion + Path], is a closed class. How many Path verbs are there in Chinese and are these Path verbs comparable with those in English and in Spanish? I give a comprehensive list of Chinese Path verbs and then focus on some of them to track the process of the lexicalisation(T). I found that there are no significant differences in number for the 13 types of Path verbs in Chinese, English and Spanish and that the lexicalised(T) Path is comparable. These findings indicate that Chinese uses both main verbs and satellites to express the Path information in motion events. Additionally, the grammaticalization trend of Chinese Path verbs and the shift from independent Path verbs into Path satellites and grammatical relation markers also show that Chinese is not part of any of the parallel system, the split system, or the intermixed system for expressing motion events. Chinese is in the transferring period from a S-framed language to a V-framed language.

Ce travail porte sur les relations entre les propositions du texte et les macro-propositions telles qu’elles ont été définies par van Dijk et Kintsch. L’étude a été conduite sur un corpus de textes issus d’une émission radiophonique interactive. Une première partie du travail a été consacrée à la recherche d’un lien entre l’organisation informationnelle des propositions et l’organisation séquentielle du texte. Les liens décrits par Fries et Martin à propos de textes écrits n’ont pas été retrouvés dans les textes oraux du corpus. Dans une seconde partie nous avons étudié la formation de macro-propositions par généralisation. Une analyse des lexicalisations des macro-propositions a montré que la généralisation se faisait sur une base conceptuelle et non lexicale et que les macro-règles décrites par van Dijk et Kintsch ne rendaient pas compte de la formation de la totalité des macro-propositions générées lors de la compréhension. / This study examines the relations between textual propositions and macro-propositions as defined by van Dijk and Kintsch. The corpus used consisted of texts taken from a BBC phone in programme. In the first part of the study a link was sought between the structure of the text and the information structure of the messages. The patterns identified by Fries and Martin in written texts however could not be found in the oral texts of the corpus. The second part of the research focused on macro-propositions deriving from generalisation. An analysis of the lexicalisation of the concepts of these macro-propositions showed that generalisation was made on a conceptual basis as opposed to a lexical one and that the generalisation macro-rule defined by van Dijk and Kintsch fails to account for all the macro-propositions generated during comprehension.

The present thesis discusses the history and meaning of the term and concept called grammaticalisation. Linguists usually ascribe the coinage of the term grammaticalisation to Antoine Meillet (1866-1936), who allegedly played a vital role in the history of grammaticalisation. It is also widely acknowledged that grammaticalisation was in some way 'revived' during the 1970s, and that Talmy Givón had an important role in this, as demonstrated by the popularity of the saying 'Today’s morphology is yesterday’s syntax' (taken from one of his articles). I show that Meillet wrote little about grammaticalisation and that he hardly ever used this word, and possibly did not mean for it to be viewed as a term / label. Moreover, the paper in question (Meillet, 1912) is basically a general introduction to a concept which he sees as a continuation of a notion with a long history. In addition, I prove that there are no clear links between Meillet and Givón’s work in the early 1970s. Despite the general acceptance that Meillet coined grammaticalisation, my thesis proves that it could have been coined more than once, and that it does not always mean the same thing to all users. I show that sometimes the term is accompanied by examples which others have used to illustrate lexicalisation, a term which some employ for a process that is seen as the opposite of grammaticalisation. I therefore advocate careful use of our definitions of terminology and concepts, and insist that we should define our notions, instead of letting examples do the work of illustration and definition. Finally, I question whether it is true that grammaticalisation is unidirectional. I research the history of the view that grammaticalisation is a unidirectional process. Grammatical relations can be expressed by different means – e.g. word order, content words becoming grammatical markers, or parts of words being given a function. I believe all these should be compared, in order to improve our knowledge of how languages change and why. I claim that they all represent sub-processes of a superordinate category which I have labelled supergrammaticalisation.

L’expression de l’« intensification » en anglais a peu été abordée par la communauté linguistique. Les études qui ont été menées se limitent aux adverbes intensifieurs et classent ces derniers parmi les procédés morphosyntaxiques. Il semble toutefois que les adverbes intensifieurs se situent à l’interface du lexical et du grammatical et sont soumis à un renouvellement constant. Ce travail se propose dans un premier temps d’établir une nouvelle typologie des procédés d’intensification en tenant compte des zones de chevauchement qui existent entre les divers procédés. Dans un second temps, le cas particulier des adverbes intensifieurs est abordé à l’aune de la grammaticalisation et de la lexicalisation. Finalement, ce travail conclut par une étude de l’évolution diachronique des adverbes intensifieurs afin de mettre au jour les mécanismes du processus de renouvellement langagier. / The expression of intensification has hardly been tackled by the linguistic community over the years. The research that has been conducted so far is usually restricted to intensifying adverbs, which are generally considered as morphosyntactic processes. Intensifying adverbs, also referred to as “intensifiers”, are submitted to constant renewal. However, intensifiers appear to be at the junction of grammar and lexis. First, a new typology of the processes used to express intensification will be put forward. The fact that the various processes often overlap will be taken into account. The specific case of intensifiers will then be dealt with in the light of grammaticalization and lexicalization, two processes which seem to be at work in the evolution of intensifiers. Lastly, a corpus-based study will look into the diachronic evolution of intensifiers in order to unveil the mechanisms of renewal and language change.

L’attribution du genre grammatical est une notion complexe qu’il est difficile d’expliquer de manière rationnelle en français car elle est, la plupart du temps, arbitraire. Cette thèse a pour but de théoriser le genre grammatical attribué aux substantifs issus de l’alternance codique et aux emprunts de l’anglais au français. L’alternance codique est un phénomène individuel alors que l’emprunt est un phénomène collectif. Ces deux phénomènes linguistiques sont donc généralement considérés comme différents. Ainsi, le second objectif de cette thèse est de démontrer l’existence d’un continuum entre l’alternance codique et l’emprunt. Dans un premier temps, les concepts clés sont présentés, définis et exemplifiés. Puis, les principales notions caractérisant l’alternance codique et l’emprunt sont détaillées. Ce second chapitre met donc naturellement ces deux phénomènes en opposition dans le but de pouvoir les analyser comme un continuum lorsque des hypothèses concernant le genre grammatical qu’ils se voient attribuer sont formulées. Le troisième chapitre est consacré aux études de cas, et plus précisément à l’analyse de quatre corpus différents. Ce dernier chapitre a donc pour but de confirmer les hypothèses émises dans les deux chapitres précédents et permet de les classer dans cinq catégories afin d’expliquer l’attribution du genre grammatical. Ces catégories sont les suivantes : la raison extralinguistique, la raison interlinguistique, la raison métalinguistique, la raison à la fois interlinguistique et métalinguistique, et la raison grammaticale. Les résultats concernant les pourcentages de substantifs féminins et masculins sont présentés sous forme de graphiques, ainsi que ceux concernant les pourcentages de raisons expliquant l’attribution du genre grammatical aux substantifs issus de l’alternance codique, aux emprunts facultatifs, et aux emprunts obligatoires. Ainsi, l’interprétation de ces résultats est plus claire, plus objective, et plus scientifique. En outre, l’existence d’un continuum alternance codique – emprunt est par conséquent démontrée au moyen de l’explication de l’attribution du genre grammatical, ce qui crée un lien entre l’alternance codique et l’emprunt facultatif, ainsi que par le biais du processus de lexicalisation menant à l’emprunt facultatif, dans lequel l’alternance codique est le point de départ. Le lien entre l’alternance codique et l’emprunt obligatoire n’apparaît, quant à lui, pas de manière évidente étant donné que ces deux phénomènes linguistiques ne partagent pas de caractéristiques communes. / Grammatical gender attribution is quite a difficult notion to logically explain in French, due to the fact that it is, most of the time, arbitrary. This PhD thesis aims to theorise the grammatical gender allocated to codeswitched and borrowed substantives from English to French. Codeswitching and borrowing being generally considered as two distinct linguistic phenomena, since the former is an individual phenomenon, while the latter is a collective phenomenon, the second objective of this thesis is to demonstrate the existence of a codeswitching – borrowing continuum. Throughout three chapters, key concepts are firstly presented to lay the foundation of the thesis. Then, the main notions characterising codeswitching and borrowing are detailed – which naturally opposes these two linguistic devices – in order to eventually analyse them as a continuum, when hypothesising grammatical gender attribution. The last chapter devoted to case studies, and more precisely to the analysis of four different corpora, confirms the hypotheses exposed in the two previous chapters, and enables to classify them into five categories to explain grammatical gender attribution. These categories represent extralinguistic, interlinguistic, metalinguistic, both interlinguistic and metalinguistic, and grammatical reasons. Results on the percentages of feminine and masculine substantives, as well as the reasons explaining the grammatical gender allocated to codeswitched substantives, optional borrowings, and compulsory borrowings are displayed through graphs so that their interpretation is clearer, more objective, and more scientific. Additionally, the existence of a codeswitching – borrowing continuum is therefore demonstrated through the explanation of grammatical gender attribution, linking codeswitching with optional borrowing, as well as through the process of lexicalisation, in which codeswitching is the starting point of the chain, leading to optional borrowing. As for compulsory borrowing, connecting it with codeswitching is not that obvious considering that they do not share common features compared with optional borrowing.

The thesis provides an in-depth analysis of motion event descriptions of two Australian indigenous languages. Jaminjung is a highly endangered non Pama-Nyungan language with approximately 50 remaining speakers. Kriol, an English-lexified Creole, is spoken by about 20.000 people in different varieties across northern Australia. While the languages are typologically very different, occupancy of the same linguistic and cultural area provides an intriguing opportunity to examine the effects of culture and language contact on conceptual components and distribution patterns in discourse. This investigation also applies and tests a number of existing frameworks and typologies regarding the linguistic encoding of motion and space in general. The thesis first provides an overview of the encoding of motion event descriptions in Jaminjung and Kriol. It becomes clear that, concerning overt marking of case, ground-encodings follow a systematic semantic pattern with no or rare case-marking for deictic terms, optional marking for toponyms and mandatory marking for all other types of landmarks. Furthermore, the structure and semantics of the motion verb phrase is investigated. Particularly noteworthy here is a study of asymmetrical serial verb constructions in Kriol which revealed a number of previously undescribed types. Following this, various proposals for a typology of Frames of Reference are applied. The notion of ‘anchor’ is at the centre of the analysis. The investigation shows that contextual restrictions for the use of Jaminjung’s absolute terms can be accounted for by a restriction on egocentric anchoring and ‘Orientation’ settings only. Furthermore, absolute Frame of Reference is realised differently in Roper and Westside Kriol respectively, suggesting an ongoing influence of the traditional languages spoken by the respective communities rather than the lexifier English. Jaminjung and Kriol, additionally, prefer the use of absolute over relative Frame of Reference. The following chapter investigates how lexicalisation patterns influence the distribution of path and manner encodings in discourse. After concluding that Jaminjung might best be described as following an equipollently-framed pattern and Kriol as satellite-framed, path and manner salience is investigated in different types of discourse using a dataset of motion event encodings in a Frog Story collection and a general corpus of various discourse environments. It is concluded that while the two languages behave very differently with regards to frequency patterns of ground- and other path-encodings, they show remarkable similarities in distributing path and manner over larger chunks of discourse. These findings suggest that cultural influences may sometimes override structural typological constraints. Finally, motion event encodings in specific types of discourse are analysed. Regarding route descriptions, speakers show a clear preference for dynamic over static modes of presentation. This includes encoding ‘fictive motion’ events for which a figure- and ground-based distinction is introduced. Additionally, concerning the use of deictics in a comparative analysis of different types of corpora for both languages, it was shown that the distribution of absolute terms remains stable across discourse environments while deictic usage differs drastically. Lastly, the concept of ‘motion’ is abstracted and described as a kind of structuring device in narratives. It is shown that the ‘journey’ within the story world is used by speakers of both languages to bridge episodes sometimes even overriding a temporal in favour of a spatial order of events.

La classe des indéfinis est l’une des classes posant problème au cours de l’histoire du français, une classe hétérogène regroupant pêle-mêle différentes catégories de mots inclassables. L’étrangeté de cette classe nous a amenée à choisir de travailler sur la série [aucun] : aucun, aucune chose, aucune part et aucune fois, série comprenant, outre aucun, des items formés à partir de l’indéfini aucun, rejoignant ainsi la problématique de l’indéfini. Le choix de travailler sur la série [aucun] se justifie, d’une part, par le jugement accordé au mot aucun qui, classé généralement comme un indéfini, ne mérite pas cette appellation selon Arrivé et al. (1986). Ce choix a été renforcé, d’autre part, par le fait que cette série est peu ou nullement étudiée malgré le rôle important joué par aucun, aucune chose, aucune part et aucune fois respectivement dans l’évolution de quelqu’un, quelque chose, quelque part et quelque fois.Notre objectif est de déterminer, à partir d’une étude des caractéristiques morphosyntaxiques et sémantiques de la série [aucun], si l’on peut parler de grammaticalisation ou de lexicalisation. Est-ce qu’il serait abusif de parler de grammaticalisation dans la mesure où elle exige, par exemple, un changement de catégorie grammaticale, et plus prudent d’opter pour la lexicalisation qui ne traite, comme le suggère Prévost (2006), que la forme « cible, lexicale » sans tenir compte « de la forme d’origine, lexicale ou grammaticale » ? Pour mener à bien cette étude, nous avons constitué un corpus, allant de l’Ancien Français au Français Moderne, à partir de la Base du Français Médiéval, du Dictionnaire du Moyen Français et de Frantext. / The category of the indefinite pronouns is one of the categories that poses a problem in the history of the French language, a heterogeneous category including pell-mell a number of sub-categories. The strangeness of this category has led us to choose to work on the series [aucun] : aucun, aucune chose, aucune part and aucune fois, a series containing, in addition to aucun, some items formed from the indefinite pronoun aucun, and hence joining the question of indefinite pronouns. The choice to work on the series [aucun] is justified, on the one hand, by the judgment of the word aucun which is generally classified as an indefinite pronoun that does not deserve this appellation according to Arrivé et al. (1986). This choice is reinforced, on the other hand, by the fact that this series is rarely or never being studied despite the important role played by aucun, aucune chose, aucune part and aucune fois respectively in the evolution of quelqu’un, quelque chose, quelque part and quelque fois.Our objective is to determine, from the study of morphosyntactic and semantic characteristics of the series [aucun], if we can speak about grammaticalization or lexicalization. Would it be exaggerated to talk about grammaticalization in which it requires a change of grammatical category, and would it be cautious to opt to lexicalization which treats, according to Prévost (2006), just the target form that should be lexical without taking into consideration the original form, lexical or grammatical ? To achieve this study, we have constructed a corpus, starting from the Old French to the Modern French, from the Base du Français Médiéval, the Dictionnaire du Moyen Français and Frantext.

The present thesis deals with the semantics of prefixes in Czech verbal neologisms. The first part describes verbal prefixation, the classification of prefixes, and their principal functions. Subsequently, polysemy, collocability and valency of prefixed verbs are characterized. The following section discusses the methodology, and characterizes the electronic neological database Neomat, which is the primary source of material for the thesis. The subject of analysis is neological verbs with prefixes od-, pro- and vy-. The meanings of these prefixes are described in relation to the collocability, valency and polysemy of prefixed verbs. The analysis aims to identify the principal meanings of the prefixes and to determine whether there are any meanings which have not been presented in any paper yet. Key words: neologism, nonce word, prefix, semantics, verb, word formation

No description available.

<p>The present paper examines the N₁ by N₁ construction using corpus linguistic methodology.The distribution of types of the construction that occur more than once either unhyphenated or hyphenated in any subcorpus of the British National Corpus accessed through the BrighamYoung University interface is examined. Written and spoken language as well as variousgenres are compared. Hyphenation is also investigated. A collocation analysis of some typesof the construction is further carried out and it is concluded that the N₁ by N₁ construction canbe part of the on a N₁ by N₁ basis construction. Results from the quantitative analysis as wellas the qualitative discussion suggest that the N P N construction may be undergoinglexicalisation starting as an adverbial and moving to functioning as a premodifier. Thissuggestion is indicated through complementary diachronic searches in the Oxford EnglishDictionary. It is also indicated that the construction may follow a development pattern similarto that of N₁to N₁. The notion of construction is discussed in relation to the N₁ by N₁ construction, and a hierarchical view of constructions is proposed as a solution to some of theproblems with the term.</p>