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13th International Conference
on Functional Grammar
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| Reflexive constructions in French, Spanish and
Italian in Functional Discourse Grammar |
Christel Le Bellec,
Université de Toulouse - Le Mirail,
Toulouse, France
Vet (1985) analysed a number of reflexive constructions
in French within Dik’s Functional Grammar and proposed
predicate formation rules for each construction as postulated
by Dik (1997). In García
Velasco & Hengeveld (2002), it was pointed out that
predicate formation rules might be problematic in some
respects, and consequently
they have been abandoned within the new architecture of the
model. Inspired by the Functional Discourse Grammar model (FDG)
proposed by Hengeveld & Mackenzie (2006), we aim to
formalise a description of reflexive constructions within FDG.
In
this paper, we have taken advantage of the modifications and
reorganisation of this model in order to describe certain
reflexive constructions and to bring out the function of the
reflexive particle. To this end, we compare the functioning of
the French language in this respect to other Romance languages,
such as Spanish and Italian.
The
FDG model has proved to be a perfect framework for our
analysis because of its new features, such as: the separation
of lexemes and predication frames (proposed by García
Velasco & Hengeveld, 2002)
which supersedes the classical predicate formation rules, and
the hierarchical organisation of the linguistic level’s of
description: pragmatics > semantics > syntax.
The
value of a description of the reflexive constructions within
the FDG framework is that these constructions involve several
distinct levels of linguistic representation. Indeed, there
are different functionalities within every single level (as
assigned to the reflexive particle). Furthermore, these three
levels are interdependent, since certain functions at the
pragmatic and semantic levels will trigger other functions at
the syntactic level, which corroborates the hierarchical
organisation of FDG as presented above.
Finally, the predication frames proposed in this paper
enable us to capture the pragmatic, semantic and syntactic
properties of the reflexive constructions and make it possible
to show the similarities and differences in the three
languages studied from the point of view of this phenomenon.
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| References: |
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Dik,
S.C. 1997. The
Theory of Functional Grammar, Vol. 1: The structure of the
clause (2nd edition, edited by K. Hengeveld),
Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
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García
Velasco, D. & Hengeveld, K.
2002. Do we need predicate frames ? In Mairal Usón,
R. & Pérez Quintero, M.J. (eds.) New Perspectives
on Argument Structure in Functional Grammar, Berlin :
Mouton de Gruyter, 95-123.
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Hengeveld,
K. & Mackenzie, J.L.
2006. Functional Discourse Grammar. In K. Brown (ed.),
Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics,
2nd edition, Vol. 4, Oxford: Elsevier,
668-676.
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Vet, C. 1985.
Passive, reflexive and causative predicate formation in
French . In Bolkestein,
A.M., de Groot, C. & Mackenzie, J.L.
(eds.) Predicates and Terms in Functional Grammar,
Dordrecht: Foris, 49-69.
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