This monograph is an empirical study of the competition between the French movement verbs amener/apporter and emmener/emporter, regarded as partial synonyms in the sense that they are interchangeable in certain contexts. The main purpose of this study is to account for these competing verbs from the perspective of actual language use, and to determine to what extent they are synonymous. The study is based on a corpus of French newspaper texts, some literary texts and the answers from a group of informants. It is shown that these lexemes cannot be defined by the principle of shared properties of all the senses represented. They are best analysed as polysemous within the framework of the prototype theory, according to which there is a basic sense from which the other secondary senses are derived through metaphor or metonymy. In the case of these verbs the competition between them arises through the widening of the semantic content of the verbs amener and emmener, extended to the use of inanimate objects uncapable of movement. This case normally calls for the use of the verbs apporter et emporter. In response to the question of the degree of synonymy between these verbs, when adopting a cognitive perspective, it is argued that they are to be considered as lexical variants rather than as perfect synonyms, in the sense that they focus on different aspects of the described movement. In other words, there is an aspectual difference between these closely related lexemes which is determined not only by inherent semantic properties, but to a large extent also by non-linguistic properties, such as the perspective adopted by the speaker in describing the mouvement. Finally, it is pointed out that the prototypical sense of each verb not only explains the different derived senses it gives rise to, but also accounts for the aspectual difference between these competing verbs. / digitalisering@umu
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-60846 |
| Date | January 1999 |
| Creators | Videkull, Marianne |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Moderna språk, Umeå : Umeå universitet |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | French |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Doctoral thesis, monograph, info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | Umeå studies in the humanities, 0345-0155 ; 148 |
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