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Corpusonderzoek naar het gebruik van syntactische en morfologische vergelijkende constructies : contrastieve analyse in het Nederlands, Frans en Engels
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Marchal_47262100_2023.pdf
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- In this thesis, an investigation on the use of syntactic and morphological comparative constructions in Dutch, French and English is conducted. First, I pay attention to the theoretical framework of this research, namely Construction Grammar. Second, I give an overview of the different types of comparative constructions. Finally, the characteristics of syntactic and morphological constructions are explained with regard to the specificities of each language. This research aims to find out what types of adjectives and substantives appear in the syntactic comparative constructions of the three languages. It then examines whether syntactic constructions have a morphological counterpart and, if so, to what extent they differ. In the second part of this study, a contrastive analysis takes place that focuses on the differences and similarities between the three languages. To answer these research questions, a corpus study is conducted in each language using the TenTen corpora. The analysis led to the conclusion that most syntactic and morphological constructions in the three languages can express the same meaning (continuum between lexicon and syntax). Nevertheless, some cases exist where morphological or syntactic constructions acquire a more specialized meaning and they are therefore not interchangeable. In addition, the results have shown that syntactic or morphological comparative constructions can be paraphrased with the adverbs very or completely + adjective except when they occur in their specialized use or when they indicate a colour name. The context surrounding the constructions thus plays an important role to interpret their meaning.