When evaluative morphology, pluractionality and aspect get tangled up: a case study of French suffixed verbs

Dany Amiot (1) , Dejan Stosic (2)

1 STL - Savoirs, Textes, Langage (STL) - UMR 8163
2 CLLE-ERSS - Cognition, Langues, Langage, Ergonomie

Pluractionality is "the phenomen[on] where a certain derivational morphological marking on a verb [...] indicates that the event denoted by this verb is, in some sense, pluralized: repeated in time, distributed in various locations, holds of many participants, etc." (Greenberg 2010). In French, evaluative suffixes, when joined to verbal bases to build derived verbs, often function as pluractionality markers (e.g., mordre 'bite', mordiller 'nibble, lit. bite off small bites several times'). This paper focuses on the relation between evaluation and aspect/pluractionality and shows that verbal evaluation involves a modification of the internal structure of the event expressed by the verb, which in turn has an influence on its lexical aspect, and on its argumental structure.

Keywords: pluriactionality; morphology; evaluative morphology; verbs; aspect

Keywords: morpologie; morphologie évaluative; asepct; verbe; pluriactionnalité

Domains: Linguistics

Dany Amiot, Dejan Stosic. When evaluative morphology, pluractionality and aspect get tangled up: a case study of French suffixed verbs. Gavriilidou, Z., Revithiadou, A. Mélanges offerts à Anna Anastassiades-Syméonides à l'occasion de sa retraite, Editions Saita (Kavala, Grèce), pp.16-33, 2014, 978-618-5040-57-4. ⟨hal-00952491⟩