Verbal Collocations with Components “(Nouveau) Coronavirus” and “COVID-19” in French

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of semantic restrictions in the use of verbal collocations with the components "(nouveau) coronavirus" and "COVID-19" applying the AntConc service. It has been found that "coronavirus" lexemes tend to co-occur with 135 verbs. The most common model is (nouveau) coronavirus / COVID-19 + V, where the virus acts as a subject of action and the verbs belong to the lexical-semantic fields "Physical impact on the object", "Qualitative state", "Being", "Progressive motion of the subject", "Social relations", "Social activity", "Interpersonal relationships", "Relationship". The virus plays the role of the object of the action in the V + (nouveau) coronavirus / COVID-19 model. The identified verbal lexemes belong to the lexical-semantic groups "Social activity", "Qualitative state", "Physical impact on object", "Intellectual activity", "Interpersonal relationships", "Being". As the object of action, the lexemes under study reveal more significant limitations of combinatorial potential. The V + PRÉP + coronavirus / COVID-19 model includes verbs of social activity and qualitative state, used with the prepositions contre, de, à, avec. There is a high frequency of collocations with modal verbs. The quantitative predominance of verbs combined with "coronavirus" lexemes that act as a subject suggests that the range of actions performed by the coronavirus is much wider than the actions it experiences.