Michel Achard
List of John Benjamins publications in which Michel Achard is involved.
Yearbook
ISSN 1572-0268 | E‑ISSN 1572‑0276
Title
Impersonals and other Agent Defocusing Constructions in French
Michel Achard
This book investigates French impersonals as a functional category. Any structure whose agent is defocused and whose predicate describes a situation stable enough to be generally available should be considered impersonal. In addition to il impersonals, the category also includes demonstrative… read more[Human Cognitive Processing, 50] 2015. ix, 372 pp.
2015 Abstract locational subjects: Field and settings in French and English Subjects in Constructions – Canonical and Non-Canonical, Helasvuo, Marja-Liisa and Tuomas Huumo (eds.), pp. 101–139 | Article
This chapter analyzes the English and French abstract locational subjects il, ça,
there, and it which refer to an ‘abstract region’ within which the entity in the
complement is identified. There, it, and il describe the ‘field’, namely the conceptualizer’s
scope of awareness relative to the… read more
2012 The impersonal value of demonstrative and middle constructions Constructions in French, Bouveret, Myriam and Dominique Legallois (eds.), pp. 177–200 | Article
This chapter suggests a possible methodology for outlining the range of impersonals in French. The proposal relies on two main points. First, impersonals constitute a gradual category. Any structure will be considered impersonal if (i) it defocuses or backgrounds the agent of the profiled process,… read more
2002 Causation, constructions, and language ecology: An example from French The Grammar of Causation and Interpersonal Manipulation, Shibatani, Masayoshi (ed.), pp. 127–155 | Article
2000 Construal and Complementation in French: The Perspective Dimension Complementation: Cognitive and functional perspectives, Horie, Kaoru (ed.), pp. 91–120 | Chapter