L’imbrication de la généralité, de la non-autonomie et de la sous-spécification : l’exemple du nom élément 

Abstract

Sub-specification can be, and is generally, currently understood as falling within a job class of certain nouns. Subspecification can also be approached, no longer as a founding type of use, but as an intrinsic semantic property of certain nouns or types of nouns and it can be tested, on the one hand, that this subspecification is present whatever the uses of the noun that manifests it, and on the other hand, that it is linked with other semantic properties such as generality, abstraction and referential non-autonomy. This article aims to address the subspecification of the French noun élément ‘element’ in this last perspective.

Keywords

• nominal subspecification
• formal criteria
• semantic criteria
• sense/form interface.