SEMANTIC DYNAMICS OF FRENCH BROAD-MEANING “CHOSE” IN THE CONTEXT OF COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS

The article concerns the definition and analysis of the main stages in the semantic shifts of French broadmeaning “chose” and its Latin counterpart “causa-ae”. It reveals two differently directed vectors in their development ? an abstract (pronominal) one and a substantive, thingness-oriented one. Each of the two tendencies brings about as its outcome its own lexical unit, that is an indefinite pronoun “quelque chose” (something), on the one hand, and the noun of masculine gender “le chose”, on the other hand. Being the termination points on the same operational axis “property of existence” they embrace all the intermediary stages in their semantic shifts which are still in use in modern French.