An analysis in the mirror of two evidential semi-copules : s'averer and se reveler

Abstract

This paper offers a corpus-based study of two evidential (semi-)copular verbs in French. It deals with their degree of synonymy and the extent to which they are grammaticalized as semi-copulas. First, the study of subcategorization and semantic restrictions of both the direct and indirect (marked) construction with comme, completed by the careful scrutiny of contextual elements, shows that both verbs exhibit slight meaning differences with respect to the inferential process involved in the encoding of indirect inferential evidentiality (Willet 1988) : “results” (se révéler) vs “reasoning” (s’avérer). Second, both verbs fit quite well in the paradigm of copular verbs, although s’avérer seems slightly more ‘transparent’, that means less selective. Crucially, the uses of se révéler with nominal predicates quite often exhibit lexical persistence, while in the adjectival domain both verbs are almost twins as shown by a distinctive collexeme analysis.