Esta tese estuda quatro construções que tiveram/estão tendo mudanças em sua sintaxe no português brasileiro (PB). São elas: anticausativas, como em (1) O prato (se) quebrou: médias, como em (2) Essa roupa (se) lava fácil, o membro inacusativo da alternância agentiva, (3) Essa roupa lavou (*se) ontem e impessoais, como (4) Nesse lugar (se) vende bota. Afirmo que as mudanças nas estruturas desses eventos possuem uma origem em comum: a perda de SE que nucleia um tipo de projeção Voice específica. Essa projeção de Voice pode ou não projetar um especificador em que um argumento implícito pro é alocado. Quando essa projeção de Voice tem o especificador projetado, origina-se a interpretação de que um humano é responsável pelo evento. Essa é a interpretação em médias e impessoais com SE. Nos casos em que a projeção de Voice não tem o especificador projetado, a leitura que se tem é de um evento espontâneo que aconteceu sem que um Agente o promovesse, como em anticausativas. Em relação a esse argumento implícito em alguns dos eventos tratados, no Capítulo 2, demonstro que uma série de diferenças dos eventos estudados em relação a outras línguas românicas está relacionada ao tipo de argumento implícito projetado em Voice. O argumento implícito em PB é forte, comportando-se como um DP e funcionando como um interventor em função da sua constituição. Em contraste, o argumento implícito em espanhol, por exemplo, é fraco e não é um interventor em relações de Agree de uma sonda com mais de um argumento (nos casos em que essas relações são lícitas). Essa característica é responsável por diferenças significativas entre os eventos com SE do PB e de outras línguas românicas, algumas das quais foram exploradas nesta tese. Um caminho analítico empregado em vários dos capítulos desta tese é cotejo das variantes marcadas e não marcadas dos eventos estudados acima. No Capítulo 3, lido com anticausativas marcadas e suas contrapartes não marcadas e demonstro que nada mudou na estrutura desse evento com a perda de SE. Isso é esperado, já que anticausativas só possuem um argumento e SE tem o único papel de nuclear Voice. No Capítulo 4, estudo médias marcadas e não-marcadas e demonstro que houve uma alteração substancial na sintaxe desses eventos. Médias não-marcadas não possuem nenhum argumento implícito e são inacusativas para todos os testes relevantes. Isso mostra que as médias não-marcadas em PB se distanciam de médias não-marcadas do inglês, por exemplo, que são descritas como sentenças transitivas. Nesse caso, a perda de SE levou à perda de Voice. No Capítulo 5, estudo o membro inacusativo da alternância agentiva, exemplo em (4), e mostro que, apesar de esse tipo de evento não se combinar com SE, o que aponta que não há Voice nucleada por SE nas sentenças que expressam esse tipo de evento, elas são um subproduto da existência de médias inacusativas não-marcadas no PB. Isto é, sentenças como Essa roupa lavou ontem são uma generalização dos contextos em que uma estrutura como Essa roupa lava fácil pode entrar. Nesse sentido, essas sentenças também estão relacionadas com a perda de um tipo de Voice específico no PB, mas de uma forma indireta. Por último, no Capítulo 6, estudo sentenças impessoais e mostro que a variante não-marcada é talvez um dos eventos estudados nesta tese em que mais houve mudanças, porque essas sentenças sinalizam também uma mudança em TP. Ao contrário de médias e o membro inacusativo da alternância agentiva, todavia, sentenças impessoais necessitam de um argumento externo. Em sentenças como Nesse lugar (se) vende bota, o locativo é o especificador de Voice. Esse elemento é usado nesse tipo de sentença locativa justamente porque locativos geram leituras existenciais. Em suma, este estudo descreve uma série de mudanças em eventos do PB que acontecem, em última análise, em virtude da perda de morfologia nessa língua. O estudo contribui, assim, para dois debates maiores: i) de que forma mudanças de parâmetro podem afetar os eventos da gramática; ii) se eventos são melhor descritos por abordagens lexicais ou sintáticas. Os resultados aqui reportados mostram que mudanças de parâmetros podem afetar eventos, embora não essa não seja uma característica definidora do parâmetro pro-drop, por exemplo. Além disso, os dados do PB mostram que eventos concebidos como fruto de alternâncias lexicais em muitas abordagens atuais, como anticausativas e médias, mudam de acordo com tendências sintáticas da língua e são melhor tratadas em abordagens sintáticas em virtude disso. / In this thesis, I study four constructions that have changed in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), namely anticausatives, as in (1) The plate (se) broke; middles, as in (2) These clothes (se) wash easily; the unaccusative member of the agentive alternation, (3) This cloth (*se) washed yesterday and impersonals, as in (4) In this place (se) sell boots. I argue that all these changes are related to the loss of a Voice projection whose nucleus is the clitic SE. The said projection can or cannot project a specifier, in which pro is merged. When pro is present, the interpretation of an entity responsible for the event originates. This is found in middles and impersonal sentences with SE. As anticausatives are spontaneous events, in this particular case, this type of Voice does not project a specifier. In respect to the implicit argument in some of these events, in Chapter 2, I show that several contrasts among these events in Romance languages can be accounted for if there are different types of implicit arguments. Whereas the implicit argument in BP is strong, i.e. it behaves as a regular DP and intervenes in Agree relations, in Spanish it is a weak implicit argument and does not intervene when the probe enters in a relationship with more than one goal. These constituency differences are responsible for the differences between events with SE in BP and other languages, some of them are treated in this thesis. Throughout the analysis, I compare the SE-variant with its alternative realization without the clitic. In Chapter 3, I deal with marked anticausatives and their unmarked counterparts. I claim that nothing really changed in this case despite the loss of SE. This is expected, since Voiced anticausatives do not project an implicit argument. In Chapter 4, I deal with marked and unmarked middles, showing a substantial change in their structure. There is no implicit argument in unmarked middles and they behave as generic unaccusative for all relevant tests. This shows that unmarked middles in BP differ from English middles, which are normally analyzed as transitive or unergatives. In this case, the loss of SE led to the loss of Voice. In Chapter 5, I study the unaccusative member of the agentive alternation, exemplified by (3). I argue that, although SE is not licensed in this type of event, which shows that there is no Voice in it, they are a byproduct of unmarked middles in BP. In other words, sentences like This cloth washed yesterday (lit.) are a generalization over the contexts in which This cloth washes easily is licensed. For this reason, these sentences are also related to the loss of a specific type of Voice in BP, albeit in an indirect way. Finally, in Chapter 6, I study impersonal sentences. The unmarked variant of this type of event is perhaps the most affected one, since the changes do not affect only Voice, but also T. Unlike middles and the unaccusative member of the agentive alternation, however, impersonal sentences need an external argument. In sentences such as (4), the locative is the specifier of Voice. This element is used because locatives generate existential readings. To sum up, this study describes a series of changes in BP events that happened ultimately due to the loss of morphology in this language. This study contributes to two major debates: i) in which way changes of parameter can affect events; ii) if events are better described by lexical or syntactic approaches. The results reported in this thesis indicate that parametrical changes can affect events, even though this is not a defining property of the pro-drop parameter. In respect to (ii), BP data shows that events traditionally treated by lexical approaches, as anticausatives and middles, are tied in with general morphossyntactic changes in the language and are thus better explained by syntactic approaches.

Le créole afro-portugais de Casamance reste encore méconnu. La présente étude constitue la première description des pratiques langagières des créolophones casamançais. Elle est fondée sur un corpus de première main recueilli lors de discussions spontanées entre des locuteurs créolophones dans des villes multilingues : Dakar, Thiès et Ziguinchor. Dans ce corpus, les principales langues en contact sont essentiellement le créole casamançais, le français et le wolof. Cette thèse décrit les changements induits par ce contact dans le corpus, notamment le repérage temporel et les phénomènes touchant spécifiquement les groupes nominaux (déterminants et génitifs). L’étude de ces champs m’a permis de constater que des éléments grammaticaux et lexicaux sont fournis à la fois par l’ensemble de ces langues. Ce cas de figure n'est pas souvent pris en compte dans les approches théoriques du contact de langues, lesquelles proposent souvent une séparation fonctionnelle des langues fondée sur une dichotomie entre langue matrice et langue insérée, et tendent à ignorer les situations de contact impliquant plus de deux langues. Cette thèse constitue une contribution à l’étude du contact de langues et permet en particulier de porter un regard neuf sur une situation de contact trilingue, impliquant une langue créole et deux autres langues qui en sont typologiquement éloignées. La prise en compte d’une telle configuration revêt un caractère particulièrement novateur dans le domaine des études créoles, où les chercheurs intéressés par le contact de langues se concentrent surtout sur des situations de contact entre les créoles et leurs langues lexificatrices respectives. / Casamancese Afro-Portuguese Creole is still largely unknown. The present study is the first description of the language practices of Casamance Creole speakers. The study is based on a first-hand corpus collected during spontaneous discussions among Creole speakers in multilingual cities: Dakar, Thies and Ziguinchor. In this corpus, the main languages in contact are the Casamancese Creole, French and Wolof.This dissertation describes the changes induced by this contact in the corpus, especially the temporal deixis and phenomena specifically affecting noun groups (such as determiners and genitives). The study of these domains has led me to realize that all three languages involved both grammatical and lexical elements are provided by all these languages.Such a scenario is generally not taken into consideration in the theoretical approaches to language contact, which often posit a functional separation of the languages involved based on a dichotomy between matrix language and embedded language, and tend to ignore contact situations involving more than two languages.This dissertation is therefore a contribution to the study of language contact; more specifically, it allows for the possibility to take a fresh look at a trilingual contact situation involving a Creole language and two other languages typologically distant from the former. The inclusion of such a configuration is particularly innovative in the domain of Creole studies, where researchers interested in contact languages focus mainly on situations of contact between Creoles and their respective lexifier languages

Les langues du monde diffèrent en ce qui concerne l’encodage des événements et la structuration de l’information dans un discours narratif. Les outils linguistiques varient et les particularités typologiques de chaque langue influencent la façon dont le locuteur conceptualise un événement et l’encode verbalement. Notre objectif dans ce travail est d’examiner, dans une perspective développementale, la façon dont les locuteurs tunisiens se réfèrent aux événements dans une production narrative et les structurent en fonction des outils morphosyntaxiques disponibles dans leur(s) langue(s).Notre intérêt porte donc sur le développement de la compétence narrative dans une langue maternelle, l’arabe tunisien qui coexiste désormais avec l’arabe standard, langue de scolarisation, dans un paysage linguistique complexe. Le jeune enfant doit alors jongler avec des systèmes de langues différents, pour passer du statut de « native speaker » à celui de « proficient speaker ».L’arabe tunisien ou « l’arabe de la maison » est une langue essentiellement orale qui diffère considérablement de l’arabe standard. Très peu de travaux en ont décrit les spécificités, c’est pourquoi, nous consacrons une partie de notre travail à la description de certains aspects morphosyntaxiques de l’arabe tunisien en comparaison avec l’arabe standard, « langue de l’école ». L’autre objectif de notre recherche est d’étudier le développement de la compétence narrative chez les enfants tunisiens, un processus long et complexe qui se développe et s’améliore au fil des années. Pour cela nous avons constitué un corpus de productions narratives, élicitées à partir d’un livret d’images sans texte intitulé : ‘Frog where are you ?’ (Mayer, 1969). 60 locuteurs enfants (4, 7, 9, 11 ans) et 15 adultes tunisiens natifs ont participé à cette étude. Ce matériel expérimental a servi à de nombreuses études développementales et translinguistiques pour étudier l’acquisition du langage et le développement de la compétence narrative dans des langues très variées. Il nous a également permis de rendre compte du développement des formes linguistiques (ordre des mots, transitivité, voix grammaticale) et de leurs fonctions discursives dans une production narrative. / Languages differ regarding the expression of events and the organisation of information in narrative discourse. Linguistic tools vary and the typological properties of each language influence the way the speaker conceptualizes an event and encodes it verbally. The aim of this study is to examine from a developmental perspective the way Tunisian speakers refer to and organize these events in a narrative discourse according to the morphosyntactic constructions available in their language. Our interest focuses therefore on the development of narrative competence in a native language. Tunisian Arabic is a language which coexists with Standard Arabic in a complex linguistic situation. Thus, the young child has to « juggle » with two different linguistic systems in order to move from « native speaker » to « proficient speaker ». Tunisian Arabic is essentially a spoken language that differs considerably from Standard Arabic. Few studies have described its specificities, which is why part of this work is devoted to the description of some morphosyntactic aspects of this language compared to Standard Arabic. The other goal of our study is to examine the development of narrative competence in Tunisian Arabic children, a long and complex process that develop and improve over several years.To conduct this study, we used narratives elicited from age groups 4-7-9-11year-olds and adults native speakers of Tunisian Arabic, using a picture book entitled ‘Frog where are you ?’ (Mayer, 1969). This experimental material was used in many developmental and crosslinguistic studies to analyse language acquisition and the development of narrative competence in a variety of languages. It also allowed us to account for the development of linguistic forms (word order, transitivity, grammatical voice) and their discourse functions in a narrative production.

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Codirection / Bien que la communauté scientifique soit toujours à la recherche d'une caractéristique déterminante du trouble développemental du langage (TDL), les difficultés d'accord sujet-verbe, et par extension morphosyntaxiques, ont été identifiées comme un marqueur du TDL chez les enfants anglophones, autant chez les enfants du préscolaire que les plus vieux. Cependant, des études sur les enfants francophones d'âge préscolaire suggèrent que les déficits morphosyntaxiques ne seraient pas un marqueur fiable du TDL. Puisque que certains aspects de la morphosyntaxe en français ne sont acquis que vers l’âge de huit ans chez les enfants au développement typique, tels que l'accord en nombre des verbes sous-réguliers et irréguliers, ci-après SOUSIRR, les déficits morphosyntaxiques pourraient être un marqueur du TDL en français uniquement vers la (pré-)adolescence. Cette thèse a pour objectifs de déterminer si les (pré-)adolescents francophones au développement typique ont acquis l'accord en nombre des verbes SOUSIRR, si les (pré)adolescents francophones avec un TDL ont des déficits d'accord en nombre des verbes SOUSIRR, et à établir si la morphosyntaxe est un domaine de faiblesse par rapport à la lexico-sémantique dans cette population. L'accord en nombre des verbes SOUSIRR et les compétences morphosyntaxiques ont été évalués à l'aide de tâches ciblant les niveaux comportemental et neurocognitif en utilisant des tâches linguistiques et des potentiels évoqués (PÉ). De plus, nous avons développé des prédictions basées sur deux théories touchant les compétences morphosyntaxiques chez les (pré-)adolescents atteints de TDL : l'hypothèse du déficit procédural (Ullman & Pierpont, 2005 ; Ullman et al., 2020), et l'hypothèse du ralentissement généralisé (Kail, 1994). Cette thèse est composée de trois manuscrits pour publication. Le premier évalue les compétences des participants dans plusieurs domaines linguistiques, à l'aide de tâches comportementales typiquement utilisées en orthophonie et dans la recherche sur l’acquisition du langage. Les données révèlent des déficits lexico-sémantiques et morphosyntaxiques chez les participants avec un TDL, mais suggèrent qu'une tâche d'accord en nombre des verbes SOUSIRR était la meilleure pour discriminer les participants avec et sans TDL. Le deuxième article présente une étude innovante de PÉs utilisant uniquement des phrases grammaticales, présentées simultanément avec des images sémantiquement ou grammaticalement congruentes et incongruentes, afin d'évaluer le traitement morphosyntaxique et lexico-sémantique des phrases au niveau neurocognitif. Les résultats provenant de vingt-huit adultes francophones montrent qu'ils ont présenté les composantes PÉs attendues et comparables aux études utilisant des phrases agrammaticales. Ces données ont servi de référence pour établir si nos participants avec et sans TDL avaient un traitement linguistique mature. Le troisième article a testé cette nouvelle expérimentation avec nos participants (pré )adolescents. Les résultats suggèrent que, contrairement à la morphosyntaxe, la lexico-sémantique est une force relative chez les adolescents avec un TDL lors du traitement de l'information linguistique au niveau neurocognitif. Dans l'ensemble, cette thèse révèle que la morphosyntaxe est particulièrement altérée chez les adolescents francophones avec un TDL. Nous discutons les résultats en relation avec la pratique clinique orthophonique et soulignons l'importance d'examiner les processus neurocognitifs dans l'étude du TDL. / Although the scientific community is still searching for a defining characteristic of developmental language disorder (DLD), problems with subject-verb agreement, and by extension morphosyntax, have been identified as a hallmark of English-speaking preschoolers and older children with DLD. However, in studies of French-speaking preschoolers with DLD, morphosyntax has not been found to be a specific linguistic weakness. Since there is evidence that some aspects of morphosyntax in French are acquired by children with typical language (TL) development only later in childhood, such as subregular and irregular subject-verb number agreement, henceforth SUBIRR, morphosyntax has been argued to be a French marker for DLD only in older childhood and adolescence. The present thesis aimed to determine if French speaking (pre-)teenagers with TL have acquired SUBIRR number agreement, resolve whether French-speaking (pre-)teenagers with DLD are impaired on SUBIRR number agreement, and establish whether morphosyntax is an area of weakness as compared to lexico-semantics in this population. SUBIRR number agreement and morphosyntactic skills were evaluated with tasks targeting the behavioural and neurocognitive levels using linguistics tasks and event-related potentials (ERP). Furthermore, we contrasted two theories’ predictions on morphosyntactic skills in (pre-)teens with DLD : the procedural deficit hypothesis (Ullman & Pierpont, 2005; Ullman et al., 2020), and the generalized slowing hypothesis (Kail, 1994). This thesis is composed of three manuscripts for publication. The first evaluated our participants’ skills in multiple linguistic domains with behavioural tasks typical of clinical and research settings. Data reveal impairments in the DLD group in both lexico-semantic and morphosyntactic domains but suggest that a SUBIRR number agreement task was best at discriminating DLD from controls. The second article presents a novel ERP experimental design using only grammatical sentences, presented simultaneously with semantically and grammatically congruent or incongruent images, to assess morphosyntactic and lexico-semantic sentence processing at the neurocognitive level. Data from twenty-eight French-speaking adults show that they elicited the expected ERP components found in previous studies using ungrammatical sentences. These data served as a reference to establish whether our participants with and without TL process sentences in a mature way. The third article tested this novel ERP experiment with our (pre-)teen participants. We tested predictions of the procedural deficit hypothesis which states that children with DLD should have impaired morphosyntax due to an underlying procedural memory deficit, and the generalized slowing hypothesis, which proposes that all linguistic domains should be impaired due to an underlying processing deficit. This experimental design was run on teens with and without DLD. Although some processing delays were found in the DLD group, results on most conditions better fit the procedural deficit hypothesis. This study suggests that, in contrast with morphosyntax, lexico-semantics is a relative strength in teenagers with DLD when processing linguistic information at the neurocognitive level. Overall, this thesis reveals that morphosyntax, tested through SUBIRR number agreement, is especially impaired in French-speaking teens with DLD when compared to their TL peers. We discuss the findings in relation to clinical practice and highlight the importance of examining neurocognitive processes in language assessment.

This study describes the diachronic development of modality in South African English (henceforth SAfE) from the early 19th century up to its contemporary state (1820s to 1990s) in the registers of letters, news, fiction/narrative and non-fiction, on the basis of the theoretical framework of socio historical linguistics and the empirical approach of corpus linguistics. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses are conducted for modal and quasi-modal verbs, by means of the newly compiled historical corpus of SAfE and ICE-SA (with the addition of Afrikaans corpora for comparison). The study explores general frequency changes, register-internal changes and macro- and micro semantic changes, with the focus of the main semantic analysis more strongly on the obligation and necessity cluster1. A set of parameters is compiled for analysing the strength of obligation in the modals must and should, and the quasi-modal HAVE to, and is applied in the micro semantic analyses. The findings are compared with the trends for modality in other native English’s, such as American, British and Australian English (cf. e.g. Mair & Leech, 2006; Collins, 2009a; Leech, 2011), in an attempt to present a complete and comprehensive description of SAfE modality, as opposed to the traditional approach of focusing on peculiar features. It is reported that the trends of modality in SAfE correspond to those of other native varieties in some cases, but do not correspond in others. The modals of SAfE for example have declined more and the quasi-modals have increased less over the 20th century than in other native varieties of English. One particular case, in which SAfE is reported to be unique among other varieties, is the quantitative and qualitative trends for must, which has some implications for the manifestation of the democratisation process. Must in SAfE has not declined significantly over the 20th century (as it has in other native varieties) and has become less face threatening, since uses with a median (weaker) degree of force are just as frequent as those with a higher degree of force by the 1990s (unlike in other native varieties, where must has become restricted to high-degree obligative contexts). Based on socio historical, as well as linguistic evidence (on both quantitative and qualitative levels), language contact with Afrikaans is posited as the main influence for the increased use of must in contexts that are not face threatening. Extrapolating from the semantic findings, some new insights are offered regarding the phase in which SAfE finds itself within Schneider’s (2003) model of the evolution of New English’s, and some support is offered for Bekker’s (2012:143) argument that “SAfE is ...the youngest of the colonial varieties of English”, especially in the Southern Hemisphere. Ultimately, this thesis offers a piece in the larger puzzle that is SAfE, both in terms of linguistic (textual) and socio historical (contextual) aspects. / PhD (English), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2014

This study describes the diachronic development of modality in South African English (henceforth SAfE) from the early 19th century up to its contemporary state (1820s to 1990s) in the registers of letters, news, fiction/narrative and non-fiction, on the basis of the theoretical framework of socio historical linguistics and the empirical approach of corpus linguistics. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses are conducted for modal and quasi-modal verbs, by means of the newly compiled historical corpus of SAfE and ICE-SA (with the addition of Afrikaans corpora for comparison). The study explores general frequency changes, register-internal changes and macro- and micro semantic changes, with the focus of the main semantic analysis more strongly on the obligation and necessity cluster1. A set of parameters is compiled for analysing the strength of obligation in the modals must and should, and the quasi-modal HAVE to, and is applied in the micro semantic analyses. The findings are compared with the trends for modality in other native English’s, such as American, British and Australian English (cf. e.g. Mair & Leech, 2006; Collins, 2009a; Leech, 2011), in an attempt to present a complete and comprehensive description of SAfE modality, as opposed to the traditional approach of focusing on peculiar features. It is reported that the trends of modality in SAfE correspond to those of other native varieties in some cases, but do not correspond in others. The modals of SAfE for example have declined more and the quasi-modals have increased less over the 20th century than in other native varieties of English. One particular case, in which SAfE is reported to be unique among other varieties, is the quantitative and qualitative trends for must, which has some implications for the manifestation of the democratisation process. Must in SAfE has not declined significantly over the 20th century (as it has in other native varieties) and has become less face threatening, since uses with a median (weaker) degree of force are just as frequent as those with a higher degree of force by the 1990s (unlike in other native varieties, where must has become restricted to high-degree obligative contexts). Based on socio historical, as well as linguistic evidence (on both quantitative and qualitative levels), language contact with Afrikaans is posited as the main influence for the increased use of must in contexts that are not face threatening. Extrapolating from the semantic findings, some new insights are offered regarding the phase in which SAfE finds itself within Schneider’s (2003) model of the evolution of New English’s, and some support is offered for Bekker’s (2012:143) argument that “SAfE is ...the youngest of the colonial varieties of English”, especially in the Southern Hemisphere. Ultimately, this thesis offers a piece in the larger puzzle that is SAfE, both in terms of linguistic (textual) and socio historical (contextual) aspects. / PhD (English), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2014

Dans cette thèse, j’étudie l’intransitivité scindée dans la famille linguistique arawak (Amérique du sud). L’analyse grammaticale du phénomène de l’intransitivité scindée s’appuie sur la prise en compte d’une part de ses motivations sémantico-pragmatiques, et d’autre part de ses réalisations morphosyntaxiques selon les catégories grammaticales, les changements de diathèse et les facteurs de TAM. En plus des marquages canoniques de l’agent et du patient d’un verbe transitif, les constructions impliquant des marquages non canoniques, comme celles engageant des verbes nominalisés ou un marquage différentiel, ont également été considérées.Cette étude non seulement révèle l’existence d’une grande diversité parmi les sous-types d’intransitivité scindée, mais propose les moyens de comprendre l’évolution diachronique de ces sous-types, avec laquelle ont pu interférer les effets du contact de langues. Les hypothèses avancées sur l’évolution historique des systèmes grammaticaux mettent à jour les voies où plusieurs langues ont pu s’engager vers des alignements à coloration accusative vs. ergative.Au travers de cette orientation, l’étude nous éclaire sur les différentes manières qu’a l’intransitivité scindée d’affecter l’alignement des actants, apportant ainsi sa contribution à la typologie des langues. / In this thesis I study in depth the split intransitivity in the Arawak family of languages of South America. The grammatical analysis of the split intransitivity phenomenon is based on both their semantico-pragmatical motivations and their morphosyntactical realizations according to grammatical categories, valence changes and TAM. Besides, I also take into account constructions involving other types such as nominalized verbs and differential marking.This study not only reveals the existence of a rich diversity of split intransitivity patterns within this family, but it also proposes paths to understand the diachrony of such patterns, involving shifts from ergative alignment to accusative alignment, for which the effects of language contact may have played an important role. In this connection, the study sheds light onto the ways split intransitivity has implication for alignment-type and it is thus of interest for language typology.

Dans cette thèse, j’étudie l’intransitivité scindée dans la famille linguistique arawak (Amérique du sud). L’analyse grammaticale du phénomène de l’intransitivité scindée s’appuie sur la prise en compte d’une part de ses motivations sémantico-pragmatiques, et d’autre part de ses réalisations morphosyntaxiques selon les catégories grammaticales, les changements de diathèse et les facteurs de TAM. En plus des marquages canoniques de l’agent et du patient d’un verbe transitif, les constructions impliquant des marquages non canoniques, comme celles engageant des verbes nominalisés ou un marquage différentiel, ont également été considérées.Cette étude non seulement révèle l’existence d’une grande diversité parmi les sous-types d’intransitivité scindée, mais propose les moyens de comprendre l’évolution diachronique de ces sous-types, avec laquelle ont pu interférer les effets du contact de langues. Les hypothèses avancées sur l’évolution historique des systèmes grammaticaux mettent à jour les voies où plusieurs langues ont pu s’engager vers des alignements à coloration accusative vs. ergative.Au travers de cette orientation, l’étude nous éclaire sur les différentes manières qu’a l’intransitivité scindée d’affecter l’alignement des actants, apportant ainsi sa contribution à la typologie des langues. / In this thesis I study in depth the split intransitivity in the Arawak family of languages of South America. The grammatical analysis of the split intransitivity phenomenon is based on both their semantico-pragmatical motivations and their morphosyntactical realizations according to grammatical categories, valence changes and TAM. Besides, I also take into account constructions involving other types such as nominalized verbs and differential marking.This study not only reveals the existence of a rich diversity of split intransitivity patterns within this family, but it also proposes paths to understand the diachrony of such patterns, involving shifts from ergative alignment to accusative alignment, for which the effects of language contact may have played an important role. In this connection, the study sheds light onto the ways split intransitivity has implication for alignment-type and it is thus of interest for language typology.