Les Verbes-Supports En Ancien Français

Abstract

The use of 'support-verbs' is not specifically limited to Modern French. Old French displays some striking similarities on this point with further development of the French language. This is what emerges from the study of the verb doner {donner) throughout a corpus regrouping the works of Chrétien de Troyes. In many cases the relation shows both a morphological connection and a semantic equivalence, e.g. doner consoillconseillier {i.e. to advise). But the semantic equivalence may appear regularly without any morphological connection, e.g. doner cop/ferir {i.e. to strike). A large selection of substitutes for cop (blow), hyponyma of the head-noun, offer a rich variety of possible expressions. Such pairs tend to form semantically related groups. The structure base on the 'support-verb' yields less ambiguity than the one using the derived verb. Several verbs in Old French including bailler, which is partly synonymous with doner, may imply the meaning of "recevoir" as much as that of "donner". This construction falls within the scope of general linguistics and constitutes a permanent feature, which is noticeable throughout the different stages of the evolution of the French language.