Contenu du sommaire : Points de vue sur « comme »

Comme in equative comparison the constructions aussi/ autant... comme still classical period. As in many languages, equative constructions uses in earlier french other lexical elements as comparative constructions (inferiority and superiority) : aussi/autant... comme vs plus/ moins... que. The first contructions are nethertheless more unusual, and at the end of 17th century have practically disappeared. It seems that we find some explanations in the semantic area, and also by looking at some phrases using the world comme, as aussi (bien) comme and autant comme.

Comme comparative constructions French comparative constructions introduced by the word comme show a large variety of realizations. However, a thorough observation of their semantics, and of their syntactic properties, leads to conclude that they all fall under a unique analysis : they are adverbial free relative clauses. Indeed, comme phrases show the behavior of manner adverbs (§ 2), the embedded clause is an extraction context (§ 3) and comme has the properties of an adverbial wh- word. Moreover, thanks to the matching effects that constrain the free relative clause construction, we can explain how the comparative semantics proceed – roughly, the fact that two manners are compared (§ 1 and § 5.2).

“Co-enonciative” comparatives introduced by comme. Examples as Comme vous (le) savez, la guerre vient d'éclater and Comme on pouvait le craindre, le conflit s'est généralisé, which we will call “co-uttered comme clauses”, are marginal cases of the comparative use of comme. This type of constructions is generally characterized by an utterance shift between P1 and the comme clause (P2). A more detailed study of the structure will lead us (1) to specify the place of co-uttered comme clauses within the paradigm of the comparatives introduced by comme, (2) to refine the analysis of the semantic properties and the syntactic functioning of comme and (3) to specify the relations between co-uttered comme clauses and others comme constructions concerned with the question of assuming the assertion, such as the “autonymic modalisation comparatives” in Authier-Revuz (1995) or the “Reportive Comme Clauses” of Desmets α Roussarie (2000).

A typifying use of comme : un de ces exemples comme on voit partout. The aim of this paper is to study comme in the structure “Nindefinite comme P” : un/un de ces exemple (s) comme on en trouve partout. The first part of the paper deals with the description of the co-textual parameters (determiners of N, lexical type of N, adjuncts of N, function of NP in the matrix, lexical type of V in P, determiners of V, adverbials, anaphora of N in P). The second part of the paper is devoted to the syntactic and semantic analysis of comme, in terms of an underlying schema which highlights the relationship between this particular use of comme and its other comparative. It is proposed that comme (together with the determiners of N) characterizes N as a “type” – hence the possibility of paraphrasing the structure in terms of tel que or, in some cases, of a relative clause ; with comme, the property underlying the type always remains unspecified : it is a pure “modus essendi” (manner of being).

Elle volait pour voler, comme on aime pour aimer : analogical constructions introduced by comme. This paper describes a specific configuration in French, called analogical construction, in which the word comme ( “as” in English) relates two complete propositional objects (Le bonheur est la poésie des femmes, comme la toilette en est le fard, Balzac). The author questions the specific semantic contribution of comme in these constructions and she suggests that, as it is the case with “temporal” or “causal” constructions introduced by comme, the whole semantics is the result of inferences settled in relation with the properties of the two propositions or with respect to the common knowledge rather than a specific semantics coming from comme.

This paper examines a left-detachment construction in French which displays a bare noun introduced by comme (Comme ornements, ils avaient des colliers et des bracelets en coquillages). The construction is compared with the sentence-internal uses of comme + Noun on the one hand (Ils avaient des colliers et des bracelets en coquillages comme ornements), and with another left-detachment construction (en fait de + Noun) on the other hand (En fait d'ornements, ils avaient des colliers et des bracelets en coquillages). The study demonstrates it is not possible to offer a homogeneous description of all cases of left-detachment of comme + Noun and suggestions are made for a typology which is based upon various distributional properties.

Markedness in meaning and syntax : comme and appointment verbs. This contribution examines, for the so-called nomination verbs, some of the hypotheses that have been formulated in order to explain the use of comme ( “as”) in object complement constructions. It will appear that comme is used in marked instances of the complement structure. The marking concerns the formal and lexical properties of the object complement, as well as the information structure of the sentence and the verb meaning. In presence of comme, the object complement conforms less often to the properties of a prototypical predicate and, even less so, to those of a resultative predicate. The secondary predication contained within the construction tends, moreover, to adopt some characteristics of what is considered to be a marked information structure. The use of comme, finally, correlates with non prototypical verb meanings in that the verb less often refers to the attribution of a professional duty that is intimately linked to the meaning of the verb.