De la perception auditive à la cognition : étude comparée du verbe HEAR en anglais et du verbe ENTENDRE en français

Christelle Lacassain-Lagoin (1, 2)

1 CRPHLL - Centre de Recherche en Poétique, Histoire Littéraire et Linguistique
2 UPPA - Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour

This paper sets out to compare, in an enunciative perspective, the meaning and uses in authentic sentences of the auditory perception verbs HEAR in English, and ENTENDRE in French. This study shows that these two verbs license complements that are syntactically similar but also, sometimes, specific (e.g. prepositional object for HEAR or perception relative clause for ENTENDRE). It also determines the various relations between the referent of the complement and the auditory percept. The qualitative analysis brings to light three main types of semantic reading – auditory perception, perceptual inference and cognition – and for each of them, the meaning of the sentences is construed with the help of several combined factors: the interaction between the verb and its complement (or the structure type), the nature of the complement’s referent, and the surrounding co-text. It also appears that HEAR has a larger range of uses in the domain of both auditory perception and perceptual inference, while ENTENDRE presents a wider range in the domain of cognition. Their respective etymology seems to play a role in the way they behave and adapt in contemporary language.

Mots clés: Perception verbs; Hear; Entendre; Verb complementation; Auditory perception; Perceptual inference; Cognition; Syntactic reduction; Semantic reduction

Domaines: Linguistique; Linguistique

Christelle Lacassain-Lagoin. De la perception auditive à la cognition : étude comparée du verbe HEAR en anglais et du verbe ENTENDRE en français. L'information grammaticale, 2015, Points de vue linguistique sur la perception, 146, pp.19-26. ⟨hal-03105230⟩