Original scientific paper
Verb faire in contemporary French: synax and semantics
Samir Bajrić
; Universite de Paris-Sorbonne
Abstract
The article presents syntactic and semantic characteristics of the verb faire (to make, to do, to
manufacture, to act) in contemporary standard French, as well as colloquial language. For example:
J’ai fait un livre: “I’ve made” a book, that is: I’ve published a book. Psychomechanics (psychosystematics)
of Gustave Guillame’s language exhibits the so called ideogenesis (“the birth of
ideas”, which leads to morphogenesis, “the birth of linguistics forms and meanings”) of the verb
faire. Gérard Moignet (see the list of references, 1981) and other Guillame scholars claim that
ideogenesis can be analysed into four continuous linguistic expressions (the complete ideogenesis
+ three others, which are subject to “subduction”, the loss and/or changing of the original semantic
value). The complete ideogenesis: the meaning of faire is fabriquer, créer (to make, to create): Il
a fait une maison (He’s made/built a house); ideogenesis 1: faire is a verbal–nominal expression
with one of the existing determinants: Il fait du piano (He is playing the piano); idegoenesis 2:
faire is a verbal–nominal expression without determinants: Il nous fait peur (He is scaring us);
ideogenesis 3: faire is an auxiliary verb: Il fait travailler son fils (He is giving his son a job) or apro–verb (verbe suppléant): Il n’écrit plus comme il le faisait autrefois (He doesn’t write any more
as he did before).
In this paper the author puts emphasis on an uninvestigated problem in psychosystematics of
language, which he calls, free forms of the verb faire” (“entités verbales libres”). For example: On
a fait la Croatie, ma femme et moi (My wife and I “have done” Croatia, that is: My wife and I
have been to Croatia); Tu as fait ta douche? (, Have you done” the shower?, that is: Have you
showered?); Max fait de la course à pied (Max does running, that is: Max runs).
The author offers 158 different examples of usage of the verb faire, the forms of which are
systematically taking over the semantic values of “real”, relative verbs, and often change (condition)
the sentence organization.
The conclusion is that all languages have “lazy words” (N. Quayle, 2001, see the list of references).
In French, one of these words is undoubtedly the verb faire. Its semantics (of possible
worlds) is suited to the way in which the speaker (sujet parlant) thinks out and experiences “doing”
as a linguistic and biological process embedded in this verb (faire = to do). This also explains
the frequency of verbs in the French verb system. After être (to be) and avoir (to have), which
“pre–exist” other verbs, faire is in the third place. To be, to have and to do are three fundamental
constituents of human life. In the French language, the latter is seen primarily through the verb
faire.
Keywords
the verb faire; Gustave Guillaume; verb syntax; verb semantics; French language
Hrčak ID:
30554
URI
Publication date:
17.12.2008.
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