Premier, principal, primordial : des adjectifs qui sortent du rang ?

Catherine Schnedecker (1)

1 LILPA - Linguistique, Langues et Parole

Are "premier"," principal", "primordial" falling out of predicative adjectives? The three adjectival expressions" premier, principal, primordial" are generally considered as being synonymous. Yet, "primordial" is close to the so called "qualifiers" whereas "premier & principal" are not. On the other hand "premier & principal" present original properties such as bi-valency, "parallel" graduability, partitivity and even performativity, a fact that general studies do not account for preferring giving credence to the idea of an adjectival category. Besides, "premier & principal" are complementary. Actually, "premier" comes from a "hierarchy" in the strict sense, unlike "principal". It does not only account for the constraints weighing on adjacent nouns but also for the way the relations between a whole and its parts are conceptualized. Premier involving seemingly countables entities connected by a successivity relation whereas "principal" is operating in a "massiver way on blurred outlined entities".

Bien que généralement considérés comme synonymes, les adjectifs "premier", "principal" et "primordial" montrent en fait de nombreuses différences syntaxico-sémantiques qui font que "primordial " reste proche des adjectifs dits "qualiticatifs" à la différence des deux autres dont est mise en évidence l'originalité syntaxique et sémantique, notamment le fait qu'ils relèvent d'une catégorie adjective "à part" et qu'ils rendent leur SN d'accueil partitif.

Mots clés: adjectif-adjectif non prédicatif- relation d'ordre ordinaux

Domaines: Linguistique

Catherine Schnedecker. Premier, principal, primordial : des adjectifs qui sortent du rang ?. Langue française, 2002, 136, pp.89-103. ⟨hal-00804296⟩