| Purpose. This dissertation seeks to achieve three purposes: to explain how and why professional translators of Chapters 1, 2 and 3 of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (in short AAIW) select one out of several French translational equivalents (in short TEs) of the English spatial prepositions by, on and into, to offer suggestions for improving lexicographic practice, and to offer suggestions for improving Wierzbicka (1996)'s semantic analysis.; Statement of the problem. Terms are subject to divergences between dictionary equivalences and translation practice. We attempt to explain through Componential Analysis (in short CA) why this is so, even for French TEs of the most concrete spatial prepositions such as by, on and into.; Theory and methodology. Four theoretical assumptions underlie our study: hypothesis testing for support or refutation (Popper 1968); Neubert (1991)'s human linguistic model of translations; Wierzbicka (1996)'s CA, based upon the meanings of words as complexes of semantic primitives (SPs) and upon the sketch grammar of Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) which emphasizes the part-of-speech system and the clause; and sense relations between SPs (semantic field, synonymy, homonymy, hyponymy and meronymy, incompatibility, and metonymy).; The methodological framework consists of Wierzbicka (1996)'s "methodology of lexico-semantics," D. A. Kibbee's computerized French translations of AAIW by 22 professionals, four bilingual French-English dictionaries, and three monolingual French dictionaries which further develop TEs from the bilingual dictionaries, the use of our intuitions as speakers of French, and the use of both qualitative and quantitative approaches to research.; Main points. Regarding the selection of appropriate TEs of by, on and into, bilingual English-French dictionaries were of little help, being concerned with "any sense [...] in any sentence." Actual professional translations, however, did provide explanations through the SP compatibility hypothesis and SP frequency of occurrence.; Regarding the improvement of lexicographic practice, among other things, English-French dictionaries could do a better job should they incorporate TEs from actual professional translations in their entries and specify contexts in these entries.; Finally, Wierzbicka (1996)'s semantic analysis could be improved by incorporating in the system other SPs from the literature. |
