(Présidente du jury) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to thank my research advisor, Professor John Osborne. It has been an honor and a pleasure to work under his mentorship. I appreciate his methodical instruction, inspiring ideas and consistent encouragement, which altogether made my Phd experience productive and stimulating. My sincere thanks go to the committee members, Professor Jean-Claude Bertin (Université du Havre) and Professor Nicole Décuré (Université de Toulouse 3), for their valuable contributions and practical suggestions. I would also like to thank Professor Natalie Kubler (Université Paris Diderot) who has accepted to review my thesis. My special thanks go to the PAROLE team (Université de Savoie) whose laborious coding of the oral corpus enabled me to pin down points of particular interest to my research as regards the conceptualisation of motion events. I would like to extend my thanks to Fabienne Chabert, the librarian, for her warm reception and helpful suggestions