Dérivation lexicale et variations d'actance: Petits arrangements avec la syntaxe

The description of unknown languages reveals the methodological importance - including for general and typological linguistics - of considering individual contextualised sentences as the fundamental unit for the observation of meaning. This method proves to be powerful in analysing the very meaning and mechanisms associated to an incredibly challenging suffix in Motlav (Oceania). This verbal suffix goy recalls the syntax-and-semantics issues related to preverbs in European languages, to serial verbs or to applicative morphemes found in several parts of the world. Therefore, this study approaches both realms of lexical semantics and of syntactic transitivity. Our definition of the suffix goy takes the form of a «prototypical scenario», involving four semantic roles A B C D, mutually related by specific mood attitudes. Through metaphoric or metonymic patterns, Motlav derives from this scenario a fair number of semantic values, in accordance with each context. Starting from this first semantic stage, we show the kind of selections and transformations implied when the speaker inserts this scenario into the limited syntactic structures: the necessity of matching semantic roles with grammatical functions triggers several valency-reshaping strategies inside the sentence. In an attempt to give a model for the cognitive operations involved by linguistic communication, we eventually consider syntax to be a secondary stage in the process of formulation. First of all comes the non-limited, fuzzy representation of a semantic project; then, the syntactic stage provides a set of limited, discrete categories, which just adapt as they can to fit that semantic project.