Approches de la scalarité

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"Scalarity", or the reference to a scale of values, is an abstract concept, which can be expressed in various ways in the human language, e.g. through the lexical contents of gradable predicates, with adverbials of gradation, more implicitly with indefinite pronouns, metaphorically through aspectual or spatial adverbs and prepositionsSemantically, scalarity is associated with concepts such as addition, quantification, telicity, gradation, intensity and comparison. The question to be answered is to determine whether scalarity can be considered as underlying to these phenomena and if, in case of a positive answer, it would unify the treatment of structures that are at first sight very divergent.The aim of this book is to provide some answers to this question by presenting a status of the ongoing research. Different scientific approaches are taken into consideration, typological studies and case studies on languages as English, French, Italian, Latin, Russian Spanish, Korean, Yoruba, from morphology to pragmatics, through lexical, syntactical, semantic and discourse studies, from a synchronic as well as a diachronic point of view. French Text.