PROCESSING OF ASPECTUAL AND TEMPORAL INFORMATION IN THE FRENCH LANGUAGE AT THE SYNTAX-SEMANTICS INTERFACE

In this work we propose the processing of the aspectual and temporal information in French at the syntax-semantic interface by adopting the hierarchy of the aspectual and temporal features (operators) proposed by de Swart (2012). We suppose that the aspectual information relevant for the interpretation of the sentence can come from the following different sources : grammatical morphemes that refer to certain phases of the process or the lexically coded aspectual meaning (Aktionsart). Actually, whatever the way of its encoding, the aspectual information must be present at the level of the interpretation of the sentence. Starting from Vet's approach (2008, 2010), we have also proposed the rules for the introduction of semantic features (operators) to the syntax-semantics interface, as well as the rules for the interpretation of these features, which has allowed us to construct an explicit model in which we could more easily test our hypotheses on the aspectual and temporal meaning of the inflected verbal forms of French.