Étude comparative des constructions à "agent" sous-déterminé en français: ils V, Vpassif et on V.

This paper aims to compare three structures used in French to denote a process in which the agent is underdetermined: (1) ils V (ils ont construit le groupe scolaire), (2) passive without explicit agent (le groupe scolaire a été construit) (3) on V (on a construit le groupe scolaire). Based on a corpus of mostly spoken examples, the analysis examines the contexts in which the three devices compete, and seeks to highlight the specific features of each. From a semantic perspective, the agents involved differ in terms of number, humanity and speaker inclusion. In addition to these distinctions, each construction offers different ways of perceiving the process, in terms of aspect and actantial structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]