Research on the semantics of spatial markers in French is known mainly through Vandeloise’s (1986, 1991) work on static prepositions. However, interest in the expression of space in French goes back to the mid-1970s and focused first on verbs denoting changes in space, whose syntactic properties… read more
Edited by Michel Aurnague, Maya Hickmann † and Laure Vieu
Despite a growing interest for space in language, most research has focused on spatial markers specifying the static or dynamic relationships among entities (verbs, prepositions, postpositions, case markings…). Little attention has been paid to the very properties of spatial entities, their status… read more
This chapter tackles two important aspects of the association of French motion verbs and spatial PPs. The main notions used in order to characterize strict motion predicates are first recalled. The possibility, for the verbs, of appearing in constructions that do not express the landmark entity… read more
This chapter addresses the issue of “goal bias” and asymmetry of motion in French. The semantics of verbs of strict autonomous motion is first captured through their spatio-temporal schemata defined in terms of change of basic locative relation and change of placement. The possibility, for the… read more
The use of the preposition à ‘at’ involving ‘social routines’ gave rise to less attention than its locative use in the linguistic literature on space. In this paper, we highlight the main properties of this use of the preposition –‘functional’ expression of an activity or state, neutrality to… read more
This paper aims to bring out the spatial properties of motion eventualities by focusing on French intransitive motion verbs. After examining changes of posture and changes of placement, we introduce the concept of change of basic locative relation (J.-P. Boons 1987) in order to accurately grasp the… read more
This chapter presents the results froma pointing task that examined French adult’s processing of Internal Localization Nouns (ILNs), with particular attention to avant (‘front’) and devant (‘front surface’). Performance in this task shows that the parameters governing the frontal orientation(s)… read more
That language hosts a multiplicity of part-whole relations is largely accepted, but no complete formal account is currently available. We first show how most distinctions between part-whole relations can be explained by considering the ontological categories of the arguments. We then focus on… read more
This paper deals with the expression of static localization in Basque. It proposes an analyzis of two spatial inflectional cases — genitive and inessive — bringing to the fore that their interpretation heavily relies on functional notions. The fact that Basque makes use of two distinct genitives… read more
