MARQUEURS DE CENTRAGE ET LOCALISATION SPATIALE LE CAS DE EN PLEIN +NOM DE LIEU

The aim of this study is to examine the semantic and combinatorial properties of the French expression en plein followed by a spatial locator (en pleine rue). We set to discuss some selection restrictions that this expression imposes on the noun that follows it (en pleine rue/ *en pleine route). We will demonstrate, through the study of a varied corpus, that some of the uses commonly held as implausible, (*en pleine gare) might turn out to be quite natural in some contexts. The study advocates that the (im)plausibility of these constructions is partly determined by the situation of the utterance and the linguistic co-text. In such a case, the spatial meaning of the locator gives way to another interpretation closely linked to the context.