Pour que mé- ne soit plus méconnu : étude contrastive du préfixe français mé- et de ses équivalents polonais et espagnols
So that mé- is no longer méconnu: A contrastive study of the French prefix mé- and its Polish and Spanish equivalents

Summary/Abstract: This article constitutes a contrastive study of the French prefix mé- and its functional equivalents in Polish and Spanish. Drawing on a semantic- translational approach, the research aims to reconstruct the deep-level semantic structure of mé- by examining how French prefixed lexemes are rendered in the two target languages. The study is divided into three main sections. The first provides a synchronic and diachronic overview of the prefix mé-, tracing its possible Germanic origins and outlining its primary semantic features. The second section indicates the theoretical foundations of the semantic-translational method, presents the research corpus — compiled from bilingual dictionaries and parallel textual databases — and details the procedures for identifying and classifying Polish and Spanish equivalents of the studied prefix. The final section discusses the results of the analysis, revealing four fundamental semantic values of mé-: (1) negativity, (2) pejorativity, (3) error/inadequacy and (4) diminution/inferiority, along with their linguistic realizations in Polish and Spanish (i.e., negative prefixes, lexical periphrases, and words with pejorative or error/inadequacy meanings). The findings demonstrate a notable degree of cross-linguistic convergence in the realization of the semantic values of mé- in the two target languages.

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