La préposition : un «auxiliaire» du nom ?

Danielle Leeman evokes the resemblance existing between the preposition's fonction with respect to the noun on the one hand, and some tenses with respect to the verb, on the other hand. She rejects, like many others, the partition between lexical and grammatical items and offers to elaborate a hypothesis regarding the meaning of these forms. She presents different categories of nouns and examines their compatibility with the preposition dans. Leeman further demonstrates that dans is susceptible to forming both temporal and causal complements. She concludes that whatever the noun category introduced by dans is, the preposition presents the event as a whole. Leeman supports the hypothesis that the preposition establishes a certain aspectual feature of the noun, in the same way as the auxiliary establishes an aspectual interpretation of the verb.Leeman-Bouix Danielle. La préposition : un «auxiliaire» du nom ?. In: Langages, 33ᵉ année, n°135, 1999. Les auxiliaires : délimitation, grammaticalisation et analyse, sous la direction de Hava Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot. pp. 75-86