Abstract
Conceptual construction of complex expressions : the « adjective-noun » semantic composition
This dissertation deals with sense construction of linguistic complex expressions, particularly with « adjective-noun » conceptual composition. Its main goal is to build up a theoretic frame suitable for the analysis of semantic problems concerning grammatical polymorphy, lexical polysemy or even metonymy. Such a theoretic frame is mainly conceived on the basis of notions stemmed from Langacker's cognitive grammar, but ideas and formulations from both formal semantics (predicate logic, situation semantics,...) and generative lexicon (Pustejovsky, Franks...) are taken into account as well.
The work as a whole relies on the hypothesis that linguistic expressions are directly linked to the conceptualization devices used by a speaker-listener in order to construe and organize the conceptual space (i.e. the universe of interpretation).
For example, syntactic forms are conceived as instructions which configure and characterize semantic categories on the basis a very schematic informational content. To carry out such a category characterization, this work examines in detail the internal organization of predicate structures, particularly the assignment operation of an entity to a predicate role.
Lexical forms also are conceived as instructions which configure and characterize entities in the conceptual space. Yet, they do not characterize schematic categories, but an undetermined amount of assumptions concerning the organization of informational content at different levels of specification.
This work makes use of the conceptualization devices to build up a formal pattern of the semantic composition process. Such a compositional process is conceived as a set of conceptualization operations working on several aspects of the combined entities in order to integrate them in a composite entity.
Taking into account the theoretical pattern of semantic composition defined previously, the last part of the dissertation describes the conceptual construction of some adjective-noun expressions.
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