Les mots composés VN N/A du français : réflexions épistémologiques et propositions d'analyse

摘要

The aim of this PhD is the study of French [VN]N/A compounds such as porte-plume, casse-cou or tord-boyaux. These compounds constitute problematic data and have been analysed as morphological or syntactic constructions. Within a modular approach of grammar, my aim is to demonstrate the validity of a morphological analysis of these compounds and to present some of the morphological and semantic constraints to which the [VN]N/A construction is submitted.First, we present some epistemological reflections on the way [VN]N/A compounds were treated by the two main theoretical trends that distinguished morphology from syntax, namely the historical and comparative grammar of the 19th century and the post-lexicalist generative grammar of the 20th century. We try to determine the reasons why these analyses, after an interval of one hundred years, were both in favour of a syntactic treatment of these compounds even though an adequate account of the properties of these compounds cannot be given by such an analysis. On the contrary, we show that a mophological treatment of these [VN]N/A compounds is possible once the theory distinguishes an autonomous morphological component whose aim is to construct lexemes from lexemes and that the [VN]N/A compounds answer these criteria.Our demonstration is based upon an empirical description that shows that, on the one hand, the form of the verb in the [VN]N/A compounds is a theme, that is to say an uninflected form, and on the other hand, that the relation that links the two constituents of the compounds is a semantic one in which a predicate and a semantic participant are involved and not a syntactical relation in which a verb and its complement are involved.Moreover, we give other semantic properties of the [VN]N/A compounds, in particular the fact that the verb never expresses a static process and necessarily contains two semantic participants, one of which is the agent, and the constrained realisation of these participants within the compound.Finally, using these results, we examine similar constructions whose analysis turns out to be problematic.