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Article published In: Transcategoriality: A crosslinguistic perspective
Edited by Sylvie Hancil, Danh Thành Do-Hurinville and Huy Linh Dao
[Cognitive Linguistic Studies 5:1] 2018
► pp. 77–105

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Accounting for transcategorial morphemes

Theoretical and methodological issues

 | University of Orléans
 | University of Orléans
Published online: 30 August 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/cogls.00014.nem
Abstract
The article presents a morphemic account of transcategoriality, with detailed illustrations (e.g. English but and even, French encore, tout, meme, Latin to French morpheme /tant/) of the approach. After making explicit the paradigmatic differences between exoskeletal and endoskeletal approaches, and showing that ultimately it can be summarized in terms of existence or not of grammar-free morphemes becoming lexemes through grammatical and contextual insertion, it turns to the issue of knowing what an exoskeletal non-categorial meaning can be. It introduces at this stage the notion of fractality, before making explicit and detailing the method which allows isolation of a morpheme’s indicational semantics. The whole approach is finally illustrated with the study of the whole distribution of French /tant/, first semantically in synchrony before extending the tests to Latin data, showing that polysemy, transcategoriality and plurisemy are various forms of the same issue.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Transcategoriality
    • 2.1To have or not to have transcategorial semantic units?
      • 2.1.1Paradigmatic dimension of the issue
      • 2.1.2Framing the way research has to be conducted: endoskeletal approaches
      • 2.1.3Framing the way research has to be conducted: exoskeletal approaches
        • 2.1.3.1Transcategoriality and exoskeletality
        • 2.1.3.2Transcategoriality and conversion
    • 2.2Predicting non-autonomous uses from autonomous ones?
      • 2.2.1Illustrations
      • 2.2.2So-called free or autonomous uses are not semantic atoms
      • 2.2.3Exoskeletal analysis of so-called “free” uses
      • 2.2.4Transcategoriality and the non-listing of listemes
  • 3.Establishing transcategoriality
    • 3.1Illustration of the issue
      • 3.1.1Semantic transparency
      • 3.1.2Semantic presumption
      • 3.1.3Semantic doubts
    • 3.2Semantic dilemma, semantic issues
      • 3.2.1English but
      • 3.2.2English even and French même
      • 3.2.3French encore
      • 3.2.4French toujours and /tou(s/t)/
    • 3.3Semantic identification of the encoded indications(s)
    • 3.4Non-directionality at the morpheme level
  • 4.Understanding transcategoriality
    • 4.1Non-autonomy of lexeme polysemy
    • 4.2Other conclusions concerning the semantics of transcategorial units
    • 4.3What can an exoskeletal meaning be?
    • 4.4Fractality
    • 4.5Semantic unification and the exoskeletal/endoskeletal relationship
  • 5.Transcategoriality of French tant since Latin: a case study
    • 5.1A single transcategorial unit or autonomous lexemes?
    • 5.2Semantic webs and continuities in the polysemy of tant
      • 5.2.1The stable polysemy of /tant/ from Latin to contemporary French
    • 5.3Identifying sigma
      • 5.3.1Method
      • 5.3.2Expected results
      • 5.3.3Illustration: some uses of /tant/
    • 5.4Testing synchronic morphemic indications in diachrony
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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Horchani, Binène
2021. Évolution grammaticale et genèse morpho-sémantique de /tôt/. Multilinguales :16 DOI logo

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