9 avril 2019
https://www.openedition.org/12554 , info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Geneviève Girard-Gillet, « Structuration lexicale et structuration syntaxique dans l’expression de la causation », Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, ID : 10670/1.f6clli
Geneviève Girard-Gillet wishes to show that the main difference between English and French as regards the expression of causation lies in the syntactic organisation of certain data of the lexicon. In English most intransitive verbs can function as transitive verbs as well and thus can express either a change of state in a given entity or the agent of this change of state: the water will soon boil / Mary will boil some water. The French lexicon does not have this flexibility and must resort to the verb “faire”. This results in complex syntactic structures: « elle fait bouillir du lait », « il fait rentrer du bois » in which « faire » leads to two different interpretations. What is meant by “causation” is no longer very clear and calls for more analyses.