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French prepositions:no peeking

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 February 2020

Arnold M. Zwicky
Arnold M. Zwicky*
Affiliation:
Ohio State University and Stanford University
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Extract

Spatial location and direction are expressed in French primarily by means of prepositional phrases involving three different prepositions:en, dans and à. Disregarding the usual collection of fixed expressions, lexical idiosyncrasies and subtle pragmatic and stylistic effects, the large generalisation about spatial PPs is that dans and a tend to be used with objects understood referentially, as in (1) and (2) (such ‘determinate’ or ‘particularised’ NPs will typically have a determiner in them), while en is used with non-referential objects, as in (3) (these will typically lack a determiner):

(1) a. dans la prison ‘in(to) the prison’

b. dans une prison ‘in(to) a prison’

(2) a l'ecole ‘in(to) the school’

(3) en prison ‘in(to) prison’

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Phonology , Volume 4 , May 1987, pp. 211 - 227
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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Footnotes

*

My thanks to Yves-Charles Morin for jogging me into writing up this sketch of my position on referential en and the fused forms, and to Morin, Donna Jo Napoli, Joel Nevis and Jerrold Sadock for their comments on the version of October 1986; they are not of course responsible for what I have done, or not done, with their suggestions and criticisms. As a non-specialist in French linguistics, I am indebted to Grevisse (1964) and Judge & Healey (1983), which served as the sources for many data that are not specifically credited here.

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