On peculiarities of static possessive predicate in French

The article deals with the verb that is considered to be a principal means of expressing static possession in the French language. Statics is defined in the work as an unvarying state of holding / appurtenance. The semantic analysis of a group of possessive verbs made it evident that the verb «avoir» may be called the dominant word with the meaning “own, hold”. Other verbs of the group are characterized by some differentiating semes, and it results in distinguishing three verbal subgroups: the predicates that present possessive- dispositional relations ( détenir, disposer, posséder, tenir ); the predicates with possessive- patient relations ( conserver, entretenir, garder, maintenir ), the predicates that express possessive-beneficent relations ( bénéficier, jouir de, profiter de ). The comparison of «avoir» with the opposing verb «être», that serves in French for expressing the static character of appurtenance, allowed the author to discover peculiar lexical features of the verb «être». It might be considered as a particular case of lexico-grammatical transmutation, which differs in logical links between two substances, denoted with the nouns. The content of the utterances with the conversives «avoir» and «être à» is functionally different: the verb «avoir» is focused on the subject of the utterance and highlights a new object of possession; whereas the verb «être à» points to the possessor’s name as a theme and the object name as a rheme of the statement.