Verre à pied, moule à gaufres : préposition et noms composés de sous-classe

Part-of relations, functionality and dependence

“…The existence of one CIW relation between two entities licenses the use of the corresponding genitive constructions (e.g., le carburateur du moteur ('the carburetor of the engine')) as well as of other part-whole descriptions (e.g., le carburateur fait partie du moteur ('the carburetor is part of the engine')). In addition, distinguishing different CIW relations allows us to make predictions about determinative compound nouns of the form Npart de Nwhole (Nwhole Npart / NPpart of Nwhole; e.g., un moteur de voiture ('a car engine')) or Nwhole à/avec Npart (Npart Nwhole / Nwhole with Npart; e.g., un bateau à moteur ('a motor boat'/'a boat with engine)) (Borillo, 1996;Bosredon & Tamba, 1991). The predictions that can be made for each CIW relation can be stated as follows.…”

“…2 In the case of French, let us, for instance, evoke attributive constructions with generic part nouns (e.g., Ce pignon est un composant du mécanisme ('This cogwheel is a component of the mechanism')), descriptions integrating spatial prepositions (e.g., Le cerveau est dans la tête ('The brain is in the head'), Le rétroviseur est à l'avant de la voiture ('The driving mirror is at the front of the car')) (Vieu, 1991;Vandeloise, 1986), Nwhole à Npart structures (e.g., un verre à pied ('a stemmed glass'), un stylo à plume ('a fountain pen')) (Borillo, 1996;Bosredon & Tamba, 1991; see also below, Section 5.3), "composition" verbs (e.g., comporter/comprendre ('to be made/composed of', 'to consist of'), contenir ('to contain'), avoir/posséder ('to have'/'to own')), "assembling/pulling away" verbs (e.g., assembler ('to assemble'), réunir ('to gather'), découper ('to cut'), structurer ('to structure')) (Landelle, 1988) or "extraction/addition" verbs calling or not for particular deriva--44 -tional processes (e.g., ôter/retirer ('to take out'/'to remove'), ébrancher ('to prune'), décapiter ('to behead'), plumer ('to pluck'), ajouter ('to add'), emperler ('to put pearls'), plâtrer ('to plaster')) (Aurnague & Plénat, 1996;Gerhard, 1997).…”

“…Among those peculiarities, let us highlight that the French noun doigt ('finger', 'toe') can apply to both hands and feet whereas pouce (thumb) is exclusive for hands, and that the English handle can identify a larger variety of parts (of objects that can be moved or used by hand) than the French terms manche, poignée, anse or queue which are restricted to narrower categories. 27 Constructions calling for à are more grammaticalized than those calling for avec, giving rise to real compound nouns (Borillo, 1996;Bosredon & Tamba, 1991). This is probably the reason for which in these examples the constructions with à sound even less acceptable than the constructions with avec.…”