In this dissertation, we focus on the various uses of mono (thing, object) in contemporary Japanese. From a methodological point of view, we have adopted an approach based on the observation of authentic data which we have analyzed under several syntactical, semantic and enunciative criteria. Samples consist of various aspects of modern language (newspaper articles, contemporary novels, internet-based communication, informal conversation) collected from existing data sources, mainly from the Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese (BCCWJ) and the Nagoya University Japanese Conversation Corpus.We have first attempted to identify and describe referential readings compared to other more functionnal uses. For this purpose, we have investigated the concept of ‘formal noun’ (keishiki meishi) of which mono is seen as a prototype.The second part is dedicated to the form 'A-wa C-MONO da' that particularly caught our attention because of its frequency and its enunciative effects. A first approach concentrates on nominal uses realized within the framework of a nominal sentence (meishi jutsugo bun). In this part, we propose a brief summary of research on nominal predication and present the different meanings of the sentences built around the bare noun mono. In a second approach, we consider it from the point of view of nominalization, where mono da can be seen as a purely enunciative operator. For this analysis, we have developped a theorical model based on Nishiyama (1985), Kudo (1995, 2002), Teramura (1984, 1999) and Morita (1989).In the third part, reference to the notion of modality has allowed us to specify the appreciative or epistemic nature of the judgment. We have also analyzed the function of mono as a discourse connector in journalist papers and shown its contribution to argumentative operations. The pragmatic approach highlights the process that drives the emergence of specific values derived from its underlying meaning of 'general tendency.' This work ends with an attempt to put the various uses of mono in perspective from the point of view of grammaticalization.
