Contenu du sommaire : De la manière

In this article, I try to demonstrate that the distribution of manner adverbs can be accounted for in the framework of a fine grained lexico-conceptual analysis. Manner adverbs are of two kinds : first, they can refer to inherent properties of verbal predicates, and in this case they are restricted to active predicates, since only active predicates have a complex internal structure, which is a condition for nouns as well as verbs to be qualified, by adjectives or manner adverbs ; second, they can refer to properties inherited by the predicate from its subject, if the subject bears an agentive or proto-agentive role. The fact that certain properties of the subject may be inherited by the predicate explain why certain stative verbs (verbs of sentiment, for instance) admit manner adverbs.

The present study addresses, in a comparative Swedish-French perspective, the derived adverb and its modification of a following adjective. The difficulties of making a clear division, in both languages, between an intensifying adverb and a qualitative adverb are discussed. The parameters involved when interpretating the adverbe are also developped. Furthermore, a number of tokens from a Swedish-French corpus show that, depending on the solution adopted by the French translator, the qualitative/ intensifying meaning of the Swedish adverb is more or less apparent.

In this paper, the author studies the types of manner readings that can be activated by comparative comme 'as' with a focused number of verbs in French. The study rests on two hypotheses : VP comparatives are manner adverbials ; manner adverbials fill a semantic argument of the predicate (Geuder 2000, 2006). The syntactic and semantic analysis of the commonalities and differences between the comparatives and standard adverbs with suffix -ment '-ly' yields a clearer characterisation of the comparatives under study. The phrase within the comparative in relation with respect to the dominant predicate is found to play a central role.

This paper assesses the exact function of the complement introduced by EN in structures such as Elle a teint ses rideaux en rouge (literally, She dyed her curtains ‘in'red). Since these complements answer the question How ?, the possibility of viewing them as object-oriented manner adverbials is first investigated – and discarded. They are then paralleled to the secondary predicates already identified for other resultative constructions. But I show that they depart from the complements of inherently resultative verbs such as mettre (cf. literally ‘put X in anger/put X pregnant'), which direcly select either a PP projected by the preposition EN or an AP. We propose that they pattern rather like transformer (cf. lit. ‘transform X in frog') : the complement corresponds to a resultative augmentation of the argument structure of the verb, with EN (lit. ‘in') acting as a Result functional head selecting either for a NP (with transformer) or an AP (with teindre).

The starting point of our article is an analysis of the expression of “manner” in French and Dutch in order to establish a comparison between these two languages. In French there is a clear relationship between qualificative adjectives and adverbs on – ment who derive from them, but one can also establish that facultative subject complements and facultative object complements (Les enfants écoutent attentifs, Elle ouvrit tout grands ses yeux purs.) have a potential “manner” interpretation. On the other hand, a number of adverbial adjuncts of manner can qualify the subject or the object and are very close to the facultative subject and object complements. This means that these constructions can sometimes be used one for another (La neige tombe abondamment/ abondante ; Il a planté ses thuyas trop serrés/serré), or that very fine nuances can be expressed (Il part joyeux ≠ il part joyeusement). In Dutch, however, adjectives and adverbs have the same morphology and can be used indifferently. Is it, then, possible to distinguish the facultative subject/ object complements (bepaling van gesteldheid) from the adverbial adjuncts of manner (bijwoordelijke bepaling van hoedanigheid) and to express the same nuances as in French ? And if it is possible, how does it works ?

In this study, we explore the notion of manner from a semantic point of view. We first present works in lexical semantics that have dealt with manner as an ontological or primitive semantic category or as a basic component of the meaning of several lexemes. This brief review reveals that only a few scholars have really tried to define the notion of manner although it is one of the most important concepts that human language and the human mind have to deal with. Next, we define the semantic features that activate a manner interpretation in the case of some motion and location verbs. By analyzing about 150 manner of motion verbs in French, we show that their manner interpretation is due to the presence in their lexical meaning of features such as : SPEED (courir ‘run', filer ‘rush'), BEARING/POSTURE (marcher ‘walk', boiter ‘limp', tituber ‘stagger', twister ‘twist'), FORCE (jaillir ‘gush out', heurter ‘knock'), AIMLESSNESS (errer ‘wander about'), MEDIUM (nager ‘swim', patiner ‘skate', voler ‘fly'), and so on. Manner of location verbs, on the other hand, incorporate in their meaning some of the following features : POSTURE, SHAPE, COLOUR, FUNCTION, and so on. These results, pertaining to the semantics of spatial expressions, suggest that manner is a complex concept which we propose to define as a limited set of more basic features.

In the Germanic languages, verbs of manner of movement can regularly be used in construction with a directional prepositional phrase in order to denote a telic movement event (e.g. The hunters walked into the forest). We show that the Romance languages, allow such a construction, too, but only with a limited group of verbs (e.g. the verbs for slide or jump) but not for the verbs corresponding to float or march, for instance. The syntactic limitations observed with the latter verbs have given rise to the idea of a “lexicalisation parameter" (Talmy 1985), while the former group has rather been dismissed as idiosyncratic lexical exceptions from this general pattern. In this paper, we develop the hypothesis that there is in fact a parameter in the area of semantic composition that distinguishes movement verb constructions in e.g. French and German. It is proposed that in Romance, a telic construction with a PP can only be based on manner of movement verbs whose lexical meaning makes reference to a homomorphic mapping between manner and progression on the path. It is shown that such a regularity falls out naturally from the theory of telicity in Rothstein (2004). The paper moreover addresses a very curious observation in the area of manner of movement verbs : in the Germanic languages, the verb climb can be combined with different directions (climb up or climb down) while in Romance (specifically, French), only upward direction is possible. This effect is argued to be another regular consequence of the same proposed parameter.