Sur une Restructuration Dative

Abstract

In French, the relations between sentences like: (1) Le chien a mordu le bras de Jean (2) Le chien l'a mordu au bras (3) Le chien lui a le mordu bras are productive, but depend on various parameters. We try to describe these relations and we argue that they can be considered as cases of the same general system in which the following operations are involved: ― the productivity of dative complements, in particular the so called "extended datives"; ― the specific syntax of "inalienable" nouns; ― special operations that we call "restructurations" of compound nouns.