Locus et telos : aller à l’école, être à la plage

• Main Author: Francis Corblin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cercle linguistique du Centre et de l'Ouest - CerLICO 2012-12-01
• Series: Corela
• Subjects: definite article; localization; polysemy; semantic facet; social routine; à
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/corela/2722

This paper discusses the telic reading of the constructions aller à l’école (« to go to school »), aller à la plage (« to go to the beach »). It extends the analysis of Corblin (2011) in the light of recent comments by M. Aurnague (Aurnague, forthcoming). The paper discusses, in particular, the possibility of extending the analysis set up in Corblin (2011) for names of places (école, hôpital) to name of « objects » in the terminology of Aurnague, the specificity of these names being that they do not accept locative readings of the preposition à (*La mouche est au piano « *The fly is at the piano »). By way of comparison, the paper considers related constructions in French (aller chez le coiffeur, au coiffeur, en caisse « to go (lit.) to the hairdresser’s house, (lit.) at the hairdresser, (lit.) in cash register ») and shows what distinguishes them from true telic readings of the à preposition.