Structures à subordonnée comparative en français

This article deals with syntactic and semantic representation of comparative structures in French. We propose an analysis of quantitative comparatives (plus, moins, aussi … que) and qualitative comparatives (comme) which highlights their common properties as well as their specificities. The first section (§ 1) offers a syntactic typology of matrix clause structures and (comparative) subordinate clause structures. The following sections consider the various aspects of semantic representations, as related to syntactic structures : we successively deal with (§ 2.) the type of parameter, (§ 3.) the type of differential constituant in the subordinate clause, (§ 4.) the type of parallel constituant in the matrix clause (with restitution of ellipses and anaphora), (§ 5.) the type of compared terms, by contrasting quantitative comparisons and qualitative comparison, and (§ 6.) the type of comparison, accounting for prototypical structures as well as for pragmatic effects induced by certain configurations.