This article reports the results of a corpus-based investigation, which evaluates the way French and English native speakers depict motion events. Space markers’ distribution (prepositions, particles, etc.) is here assessed through the insertion of the selected items in French and English depictions. The inclusion of both languages’ space markers is scrutinized within French and English reports – both languages’ syntactic patterns illustrating the Talmian typology, which opposes English as a satellite-framed language to French as a verb-framed language. According to the hypothesis of this work, when one individual is made to describe some other individual’s motion experience, the linguistic structuring of her report is likely to be influenced by the physical activity she goes through before the descriptive task. This assumption implies that depicting identical phenomena can present language differences, if the speaker goes through a kinesthetic or a static physical performance before delivering her/his report. To test this hypothesis, two groups of speakers are interviewed and they are submitted to distinct sensorimotor constraints before describing the spatial progress of some other individual in the experimental scene. The individual’s spatial navigation to be described is identical in both groups.Through the non-linguistic variable of this investigation, the impact of speakers’ kinesthetic and stationary processes on the linguistic data collected is evaluated, hence assessing the potential relationships between two kinds of phenomena – linguistic and kinesthetic ones. Language is here apprehended through the enactive paradigm, according to which the experiential and sensorimotor dimensions contribute to the structuring of linguistic meaning.

Dans cette contribution nous proposons une analyse sémantique de l’usage qui était fait, au XVIe siècle, des locutions françaises à travers (de), au travers (de), de travers (à), en travers (de), par le travers (de), par à travers et par au travers. Nous nous inspirons, entre autres, des travaux de Stosic (2002a, 2002b, 2005, 2007, 2009) qui a introduit la notion de « guidage » comme alternative à la notion d’un « obstacle ». En proposant une structure en termes de concepts fonctionnels, nous visons à contribuer à une meilleure compréhension de la structure sémantique actuelle de l’ensemble des expressions visées et de leur fonctionnement actuel et ancien.

Le but de cet article est l’étude des capacités linguistiques d’enfants appartenant à une classe socioprofessionnelle (CSP) défavorisée et scolarisés en Zone d’Éducation Prioritaire (ZEP). Partant du constat que l’adolescence est une période clef du développement de l’expression orale et écrite en situation monologique (Berman 2007), les productions de trois groupes d’enfants (scolarisés en CM2 (âge moyen : 10;9), 5ème (âge moyen : 12;7) et 3ème (âge moyen : 15;2)) sont analysées. Les textes ont été produits dans divers contextes de production : à l’oral et à l’écrit, en exposition et en narration. Des analyses off line ont été effectuées, et le présent travail se concentre sur une thématique spécifique : les syntagmes nominaux dans une perspective informationnelle. Les résultats révèlent que les enfants, même les plus jeunes, savent adapter leur choix linguistique au contexte de production : ils distinguent l’écrit de l’oral, la narration et l’exposition. En effet : (a) ils profitent du rythme de production lent de la production écrite en produisant des formes dites plus coûteuses (lexique et/ou nouvelle information) et (b) ils répondent également aux contraintes des types de textes en maintenant davantage l’information dans les textes narratifs et en introduisant plus de nouveaux référents dans les textes expositifs.

In this paper we describe the cognitive model that governs the forms and uses of the cyclic gesture, recurrent in a corpus of spontaneous German conversations. The gesture shows a stable form-meaning relationship: The continuous circular outward movement correlates with the semantic core of cyclic continuity in each context of use. On the basis of a thorough analysis of each of the 56 instances found in the data, we found that the cyclic gesture is not used randomly but distributed over a stable set of contexts of use showing a systematic variation of form and meaning. Furthermore, the analysis revealed that the image schema cycle, which the core of this gesture is reminiscent of, is metaphorically construed drawing on the metaphors mind is a machine, body is a machine, and time is motion through space. According to these findings, we argue for a shared underlying Idealized Cognitive Model (ICM, cf. Lakoff 1987) which functions as a model for thinking about and classifying cyclic events and guides the uses of this gesture. Via our study, we can give a new, semantic, perspective on the notion of gesture families.

On the basis of a corpus-based study of the at-frame in English, this article evaluates Goldberg’s (2006) hypothesis that constructional meaning originates with the meaning of the verbs frequently occurring in a given syntactic pattern. Our study reveals that for the at-construction, this hypothesis does not hold: the constructional meaning is poorly reflected by the distribution of the verbs, and is only arrived at by attending to specific aspects of the semantics of the verbs occurring in it. This suggests that a more complex learning strategy than the simple import of lexical semantics into constructions is needed, especially to account for the emergence of constructions whose meaning is not lexicalized by any verb in the language.

Within a semiogenetic theory of the conditions of emergence and evolution of the sign, I claim that the phonological invariance displayed by the Proto-Indo-European roots *ĝenu- ‘jawbone, chin’ and *ĝenu- ‘knee’ is the surface trace of a deep-level notional invariance. In addition to its linguistic and sublinguistic dimensions, this claim encompasses a number of extralinguistic dimensions such as neuroscience, cognition, and mythology. I conclude that the hypothesis of the existence of an unconscious, somatotopically grounded body-naming strategy based on principles of self-referentiality and conceptual transfer provides a plausible explanation not only for the identity of form displayed by these two roots, but also for their possible links with *ĝenh1- ‘to beget a child, be born’, *ĝneh3- ‘to know, recognize’ and *gwénha- ‘woman’.