The present paper is concerned with the near synonymy of generic nouns of spatial location in French, in particular lieu, endroit and place. We will comment upon the definition of near synonyms as lexical items whose distinctive semantic features can be neutralized pragmatically or logically. It will be argued that beyond their common sense of localizer, lieu, endroit and place denote different spatial representations, depending on their way of locating and on the nature of their selected trajectors.
