Publication Date
2-2-2026
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Isogloss
Volume
12
Issue
2
DOI
10.5565/rev/isogloss.537
Abstract
This paper discusses the morphosyntax and semantics of locative prepositions in French, with a particular focus on the prefix de-in complex prepositions (e.g., en dessous de [in from.under of] ‘below’) and in axial nominalizations (e.g., le dessous de [the from.under of] ‘the bottom part/region of’). We propose that in these formations, de-, which developed historically from an ablative marker, retains a Source semantics and lexicalizes the function PROJECT, which defines the region outward from the axial part of an object (Matushansky & Zwarts, 2019). We support our analysis with a corpus study on French child data showing that children acquiring L1 French tend to overuse de-in transitive contexts, overtly expressing conceptual structure that is typically implicit in the standard adult language, but replicating patterns present in Old and Medieval French.
Funding Number
856421
Funding Sponsor
European Research Council
Keywords
ablative-locative transfer, axial nominalizations, child French, locative prepositions
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Department
Linguistics and Language Development
Recommended Citation
Fabienne Martin, Yining Nie, and Artemis Alexiadou. "A prepositional cycle in French" Isogloss (2026). https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/isogloss.537
