LINGUIST List 20.4198
Tue Dec 08 2009
Diss: Typology: Meulleman: 'Les Localisateurs Dans Les...'
Editor for this issue: Di Wdzenczny
<dilinguistlist.org>
1. Machteld
Meulleman,
Les Localisateurs Dans Les Constructions Existentielles: Approche comparée en espagnol, en français et en italien
Message 1: Les Localisateurs Dans Les Constructions Existentielles: Approche comparée en espagnol, en français et en italien
Date: 08-Dec-2009
From: Machteld Meulleman <mathilde.meullemanyahoo.fr>
Subject: Les Localisateurs Dans Les Constructions Existentielles: Approche comparée en espagnol, en français et en italien
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Institution: Universiteit Gent
Program: Taal- en letterkunde: Romaanse talen
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2009
Author: Machteld Claire Meulleman
Dissertation Title: Les Localisateurs Dans Les Constructions Existentielles: Approche comparée en espagnol, en français et en italien
Linguistic Field(s):
Typology
Subject Language(s): French (fra)
Italian (ita)
Spanish (spa)
Dissertation Director:
Eugeen Roegiest
Dissertation Abstract:
The dissertation sets out a contrastive study of the most frequentexistential presentational constructions in Spanish, French and Italian,respectively hay, il y a and c'è. It is divided into two major parts, bothconsisting of four chapters.
The first part presents a status quaestionis of the existing literature onexistential constructions. From this review I conclude that it is mainlythe status of the locative complement (clitic and/or PP) in thisconstruction which has led to controversy, not only from a morphological(chapter 1), but also from a discursive (chapter 2), semantic (chapter 3)and syntactic perspective (chapter 4).
Therefore the second part offers an empirical analysis of the locativeswhich appear in these constructions in the three studied languages. Theinvestigation is based on a systematic statistical corpus study ofcontemporary newspaper articles. Different parameters are taken intoaccount: the frequency of the locative complement, its position, itsdiscursive status, its semantic properties and its internal structure.
It is shown that all three existential verbs behave very similarly as tothe distribution of the locatives? (chapter 5). Moreover, it appears thatin all three languages the position of the locatives is fundamentallydriven by communicative dynamism. In addition, the analysis reveals variouslanguage-specific tendencies. In particular, the studied languages clearlydiffer with respect to the preferred position of these locatives. WhereasItalian c'è and Spanish hay prefer preverbal position for their locatives,in French the locatives appear systematically after the existential il y aconstruction (chapter 6). This language specific tendency is confirmed forseveral other kinds of locatives in existential constructions (chapter 7).It is argued that this divergent (preferential) word order can be explainedin terms of a different degree of grammaticalization (chapter 8). Hence, Isuggest that French il y a functions to a larger extent as atopic-introducing device. Conversely, Italian c'è and Spanish hay are shownto rather function as lexical predicates with an existential meaning.
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