Une variété de (W) revient à dire (que) : construction d’équivalence

Abstract

In this article we study the combinations of revient à dire ‘(it) amounts to saying’ with the elements that occupy the W place, namely the demonstrative pronouns ceci/cela ‘this/that’, the personal pronouns il/elle ‘he/she’, the relative periphrastic structure ce qui ‘which is’, nominal and infinitival phrases. The aim is to show that (W) revient à dire ‘(W) is to say’ is an equivalence construction (reformulation) based on the syntactic pattern Qqc. revient à (faire) qqc. ‘Something means to (do) something’. Our distributional analysis shows that ce qui ‘which is’ dominates ceci/cela ‘this/that’ in any type of corpus. This observation is in accordance with an analysis in terms of a continuative relative clause with a coordinating and synthesizing function.

Keywords

• continuative relative clause
• demonstrative pronouns
• reformulation
• equivalence construction