Pluralia Tantum et verbes supports

Abstract

It is a long-acknowledged fact that in a wide number of Indo-European languages, some noun phrases occur solely in the plural. As for the French language — the only one concerned in this study — examples as les semailles, les pourparlers, les environs, les pantalons, etc., are very common ones. A subclass of these plural invariable nouns (Pluralia tantum), shows specific properties, e.g., the noun phrase does not behave like a collective noun; it differs in meaning from the version in singular, and the version in plural is always diachronically posterior to the one in singular. The main point is that these plural nouns seem to involve a limited class of verbs in a privileged way. The main purpose of this study is then to question the status of support verb of these verbs, as well as their role in a possible process of idiomatization.