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When verbal transitivity becomes « invisible », one is confronted with a surface void. An interpretative calculus (calculation) then takes over which either concludes that this absence marks indeterminedness (absolute use), or reduces this void through environment scanning, whether it be context (Ø anaphora) or global situation (Ø deixis). In the last two cases the principle remains stable though their differ in illustration, which leads one to admit that for everything pertaining to things linguistic, one must take into account extra-linguistic reality and integrate it not only in the study of text phenomena that make up meaning but also maybe in the description of the system itself.

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No abstract

The distinction between adjectives and adverbs is a traditional issue in French grammars: many adverbs are derived from adjectives, usually with a -ment suffix (facile ‘easy’ > facilement ‘easily’) but not always (juste > juste ‘just’) many adjectives may modify verbs without being inflected (voir clair ‘see clear’) with a manner or result interpretation. We show how the principles of the Grande grammaire du français (Abeillé & Godard 2012, to appear) allows one to draw a strict division, based on morphosyntactic criteria, for modern French: only adjectives may vary in gender and number only adverbs may occur between the auxiliary and the past participle (a clairement/*clair vu ‘has clearly seen’), or before the infinitive (*clair voir), with an integrated prosody.