á/a and de/de In French and Spanish
Date
1990
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
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Thesis (B.A.)
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Abstract
This thesis is a comparative analytical study of the prepositions
a/a and de/de in French and Spanish respectively. I have chosen these prepositions due to their
extensive semantic ranges and because they possess the greatest number of syntactic uses as
compared with other prepositions. It is important to state that this thesis is by no means an
exhaustive study of aid, nor does it attempt to be, however it should serve as a survey of the
varying environments in which aid appear. Since spoken language serves as the most accurate
representation of the current trend of language, the data I have chosen for analysis come from
spoken language and reference is made to the written language solely for the purpose of making
distinctions. The written language often reflects archaisms which might also be classified with elevated speech which stands in contrast to what is ordinarily said.
The two main sections of the thesis are: 1) the historical background of the preposition, which
will include its Greek influence into Latin, the two classes of prepositions, the function of the
preposition, the debate over category identification, the Latin ancestors of aid, and various
influences on preposition selection - the choice of a particular preposition over another and the
amount of arbitrariness involved; and 2) the presentation of compiled data for analysis and
discussion based on the system employed by Maria Luisa LOpez in her Problemas y Metodos en el
Antilisis de Preposiciones .
I will also pay special attention to idioms and to verbs which. have a pronominal and
non-pronominal counterparts [e.g., se decider d/ decider de (Fr) & decidirse a / decidir (Sp)].
The Spanish personal accusative empty a will also be examined. At the end of the thesis I will
present the statistical results of the questionnaire used to test data on informants and how these
results contributed to my generalizations and provided ideas for future research.