The diffusion of French à travers from the 18th century onwards.
This paper investigates possible explanations for the sudden diffusion of the French expression à travers, meaning ‘(way) through/across’, from the middle of the 18th century onwards. From that moment, à travers became remarkably more used than the similar expression au travers (de), and also relat...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Cercle linguistique du Centre et de l'Ouest - CerLICO
2022-06-01
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| Series: | Corela |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/corela/14959 |
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| Summary: | This paper investigates possible explanations for the sudden diffusion of the French expression à travers, meaning ‘(way) through/across’, from the middle of the 18th century onwards. From that moment, à travers became remarkably more used than the similar expression au travers (de), and also relatively more frequent in comparison with par, ‘through’, a preposition with which it competes in certain contexts. A first hypothesis supposes a competition with par. A second assumption is linked to the end of the freedom of à travers and au travers with respect to the combination with the preposition de. The results indicate that the rise of the frequencies of à travers (de) could, in part, follow from a competition with par for the combination with certain types of Grounds (the reference entity of a spatial relation). The increased level of bondedness – and thus of grammaticalization – of à travers seems also to have contributed to its diffusion. |
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| ISSN: | 1638-573X |