Contenu du sommaire : Les relations actancielles. Sémantique, syntaxe, morphologie, sous la direction de Jacques François et Gisa Rauh

The aim of this contribution is to contrast different conceptions of the linking between semantic roles (agent, patient, experiencer, locative, benefactive, etc.) and syntactic functions (subject, direct and indirect object), especially investigating the form of an access hierarchy. We begin with the notion of (un)marked selection of subject and object in Fillmore's semantic case theory. Then we trace the evolution of the principle of « thematic hierarchy » in JackendofPs model of conceptual semantics. The third section is devoted to the discussion of universality and accessibility of the syntactic functions « subject » and « object » from a functionalist point of view. The fourth section is concerned with the distinction between case marking systems and the observed shifts from one system to another. Finally we demonstrate that the « participation » model of the UNITYP group in Cologne is able to provide a multi-factorial description of the grammaticalisation of case relations.

The present article is concerned with a description of the relation between prepositions and thematic roles, a relation which has been described nonuniformly in the literature. It is claimed — and demonstrated — that the nonuniformity is due to the fact that on the one hand prepositions form a heterogeneous class, and on the other there are different views on thematic relations. It is finally argued that a unique definition of thematic roles as grammatical features with specific licensing effects provides a basis for an explicit description of prepositional variants, at the same time explaining the heterogeneity of the relation between prepositions and roles.

A question central to the syntactic organisation of natural languages is that of verb classes. Its origin lies in the works of Sapir and Fillmore. Is it founded on the distinction between three basic role-patterns, which allows a comparison between different morphological realisations of these three patterns in different languages. It is then possible to show how intrincately related the two notions of intransitivity and transitivity are. The observation of the morphological realisations of these notions in a given language requires not only considerations as to the nature of its verb classes, but also as to the quantitative representation of these classes in that language.

In Indian languages, illustrated by Hindi-Urdu and Badaga (a Dravidian language) the correlation between semantic case and morphological coding is not straightforward. Other parameters (animacy, control, evidentiality...) —which may have areal typological relevance— also governs the choice between alternant syntactic patterns.

The Fillmore's cases are only labels and are not integrated in structures. Others approaches (for instance : Pottier, Shaumyan) have already presented structurations of different casual relations. The author gives an extension to precedent publications (published in the present journal : Langages). His approach belongs to the so called « cognitive localism » and not to the « pure localism » founded only on spatial relations. The author uses differents relational semantic primitives, spatio-temporal and intentional primitives, as : to localize, to move, to change, to do, to control, to anticipate..., to construct different semantico-cognitive schemes. These schemes (stative and dynamic schemes) represent the meanings of lexical predicates. The primitives and schemes are elements of a cognitive representation level. With the relational semantic primitives it is possible to organize grammatical continua (as agentivity, passivity, aspectuality, transitivity, diathesis). The schemes are also integrated into predicative relations by means of specific operators (combinators) of combinatory logic ; these predicative relations express different places of arguments and casual relations. Some schemes are not specific to typologie group of languages but are invariants : for instance the scheme of transitive active diathesis is a dynamic scheme which is related to the scheme of ergativity and to the schemes of active/inactive languages.