A prepositional cycle in French
This paper discusses the morphosyntax and semantics of locative prepositions in French, with a particular focus on the prefix de- in complex prepositions (e.g., en dessous de [in from.under of] 'below') and in axial nominalizations (e.g., le dessous de [the from.under of] 'the bottom...
| Autores: | , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2026 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona |
| Repositorio: | Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:ddd.uab.cat:325382 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://ddd.uab.cat/record/325382 https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.5565/rev/isogloss.537 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Locative prepositions Ablative-locative transfer Axial nominalizations Child French |
| Sumario: | This paper discusses the morphosyntax and semantics of locative prepositions in French, with a particular focus on the prefix de- in complex prepositions (e.g., en dessous de [in from.under of] 'below') and in axial nominalizations (e.g., le dessous de [the from.under of] 'the bottom part/region of'). We propose that in these formations, de-, which developed historically from an ablative marker, retains a Source semantics and lexicalizes the function project, which defines the region outward from the axial part of an object (Matushansky & Zwarts, 2019). We support our analysis with a corpus study on French child data showing that children acquiring L1 French tend to overuse de- in transitive contexts, overtly expressing conceptual structure that is typically implicit in the standard adult language, but replicating patterns present in Old and Medieval French. |
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