Grasping prendre: An Experiment in Phenomenological Linguistics☆

Abstract Our analysis throughout argues from the postulate that the systematic behaviour of prendre is grounded in the extra-linguistic motivation of its lexical and grammatical structure. Sections 2 and 3 deal respectively with the semantics and pragmatics of the verb, with a view to systematising its lexicon entry. Under semantics the verb's prototypical meaning is specified, and it is shown that this together with a cluster of typical meanings, identified on the basis of the phenomenological postulate, delimit the whole semantic range. Under pragmatics we affirm and justify the exclusion from the semantic range of pragmatically equivalent verbs not distinguished by dictionaries from those integral to the semantics. The analysis of the verb's syntax in a fourth section is in terms of Fillmore's case grammar, and relies on the distinction between agentive and non-agentive uses. Restrictions on the agentive use to express motion are identified and explained in terms of the gestalt notion of directional vector.