Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-wpx69 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-06T22:04:26.943Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Inversion stylistique et position de base du sujet

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Marc-Ariel Friedemann
Marc-Ariel Friedemann*
Affiliation:
Université de GenèveetUniversité de Tel-Aviv
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article advances two main claims. First, it argues that [Spec, VP], the base position of the external argument, is right-branching in French. It is shown that some surprising restrictions imposed on the order of complements in stylistic inversion can then be interpreted in terms of an adjacency condition restricting the occurrence of lexical material between the postverbal subject and its Case checker. Second, it asserts that [Spec, IP], the derived subject position, is occupied by a null expletive, pro. The limited distribution of the construction then follows from the licensing conditions governing the null expletive in French. Further, the proposed analysis sketches a possible interpretation of adjacency phenomena and of the notion of expletives within recent developments of generative grammar.

Résumé

Résumé

Cet article soutient deux postulats majeurs. Le premier avance que la position de base de l’argument externe, [Spec, VP], branche à droite en français. Il est montré que certaines restrictions surprenantes sur l’ordre des compléments dans l’inversion stylistique peuvent alors être interprétées comme résultant d’une condition d’adjacence imposée entre le sujet postverbal et son vérificateur de Cas. Le second affirme que dans les constructions à inversion stylistique, la position de sujet dérivée, [Spec, IP], est occupée par un explétif nul, pro. Il est ainsi possible de faire découler la distribution limitée de la construction des conditions de légitimation de l’explétif nul. Par ailleurs, l’analyse proposée entraîne une discussion de l’interprétation de phénomènes d’adjacence ainsi que de la notion d’explétif dans le cadre de développements récents de la grammaire générative.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , December 1997 , pp. 379 - 413
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Références

Adams, Marianne. 1987. From Old French to the theory of pro-drop. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 5:1–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, Mark. 1988. Incorporation: A theory of grammatical function changing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Belletti, Adriana. 1988. The Case of unaccusatives. Linguistic Inquiry 19:1–34.Google Scholar
Belletti, Adriana. 1990. Generalized verb movement: Aspects of verb syntax. Torino: Rosenberg and Sellier.Google Scholar
Belletti, Adriana et Shlonsky, Ur. 1995. The order of verbal complements: A comparative study. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 13:489–526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bobaljik, Jonathan. 1994. What does adjacency do? MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 22:1–32.Google Scholar
Bonet, Eulàlia. 1990. Subjects in Catalan. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 13:1–26.Google Scholar
Bouchard, Denis. 1994. Directionality: Heading the wrong way. Ms., Université du Québec à Montréal.Google Scholar
Calabrese, Andrea. 1992. Some remarks on focus and logical structures in Italian. Harvard Working Papers in Linguistics 1:91–127.Google Scholar
Cardinaletti, Anna. 1993. Pronomi nulli e pleonastici nelle lingue germaniche e romance. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Cardinaletti, Anna et Starke, Michal. 1993. The typology of structural deficiency: On the three grammatical classes. Ms., Università di Venezia, Université de Genève et Max-Planck Institut, Berlin.Google Scholar
Clifford, Paula M. 1973. Inversion of the subject in French narrative prose from 1500 to the present day. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1980. On binding. Linguistic Inquiry 11:1–46.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1982. Some concepts and consequences of the theory of government and binding. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1986a. Knowledge of language; Its nature, origin, and use. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1986b. Barriers. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1993. A minimalist program for linguistic theory. In The view from Building 20: Essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain Bromberger, sous la dir. Hale, de Kenneth et Keyser, Samuel Jay, 1–52. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1994. Bare phrase structure. MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics 5, Cambridge, Mass.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The minimalist program. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cornulier, Benoît de. 1974. Pourquoi et l’inversion du sujet non clitique. In Actes du colloque franco-allemand de grammaire transformationnelle I, sous la dir. Rohrer, de C. et Ruwet, N., 139–163. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Déprez, Viviane. 1988. Stylistic inversion and verb movement. Ms., Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Enç, Mürvet. 1987. Anchoring conditions for tense. Linguistic Inquiry 18:633–657.Google Scholar
Ferdinand, Astrid. 1993. Subject dislocation in French child language. HIL Manuscripts: 54–64.Google Scholar
Friedemann, Marc-Ariel. 1991. On the D-structure position of subjects in French. Proceedings of LCJL 3:155–168.Google Scholar
Friedemann, Marc-Ariel. 1993/94. The underlying position of external arguments in French. Language Acquisition 3:209–255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedemann, Marc-Ariel. 1997. Sujets syntaxiques: positions, inversions et pro. Berne: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Friedemann, Marc-Ariel et Suoni, Tal. 1997. Agrobject is not Agrparticiple. The Linguistic Review 14:69–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giorgi, Alessandra et Longobardi, Giuseppe. 1991. The syntax of noun phrases: Configuration, parameters, and empty categories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph. 1963. Some universale of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. In Universals of Language, sous la dir. Greenberg, de Joseph, 73–113. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Haeberli, Eric. 1995. Morphological Case, pro and word order. Ms., Université de Genève.Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane. 1992. Generative syntax: theory and description. A case study from West Flemish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane. 1994. The typology of syntactic positions: L-relatedness and the A/Ā distinction. Ms., Université de Genève.Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane et Zanuttini, Raffaela. 1991. Negative heads and the Neg criterion. The Linguistic Review 8:233–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halle, Morris et Marantz, Alec. 1993. Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection. In The view from Building 20: Essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain Bromberger, sous la dir. Hale, de Kenneth and Keyser, Samuel Jay, 111–176. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Higginbotham, James. 1985. On semantics. Linguistic Inquiry 16:547–593.Google Scholar
Higginbotham, James et May, Robert. 1981. Questions, quantifiers, and crossing. The Linguistic Review 1:41–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Kyle. 1991. Object positions. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 9:577–637.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jonare, Birgitta. 1976. L’inversion dans la principale non-interrogative en français contemporain. Stockholm: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Uppsala, Studia Romanica Upsaliensia 16.Google Scholar
Jonas, Dianne et Bobaljik, Jonathan. 1993. Specs for subjects: The role of TP in Icelandic. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 18:59–98.Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard. 1973. L’inversion du sujet en français dans les propositions interrogatives. Le français moderne 41:10–42 et 131-151.Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard. 1975. French syntax: The tranformational cycle. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard. 1984. Connectedness and binary branching. Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kayne, Richard. 1986. Connexité et inversion du sujet. In La grammaire modulaire, sous la dir. Ronat, de Mitsou et Couquaux, Daniel, 127–147. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit.Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard. 1994. The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard et Pollock, Jean-Yves. 1978. Stylistic inversion, successive cyclicity, and move NP in French. Linguistic Inquiry 9:595–621.Google Scholar
Kitagawa, Yoshihisa. 1986. Subjects in Japanese and English. Thèse de doctorat, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Google Scholar
Koopman, Hilda. 1993. The internal and external distribution of pronominal DPs. Ms., University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Koopman, Hilda et Sportiche, Dominique. 1991. The position of subjects. Lingua 85:211–258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Korzen, H. 1983. Réflexions sur l’inversion dans les propositions interrogatives en français. In Revue romane, numéro spécial 24: Analyses grammaticales du français: études publiées à l’occasion du 50ème anniversaire de Cari Vikner, sous la dir. Herslund, de M., Mørdrup, O. et Sørensen, F., 50–85.Google Scholar
Kuroda, Shige-Yuki. 1988. Whether we agree or not: A comparative syntax of English and Japanese. In Papers on the Second International Workshop on Japanese Syntax, sous la dir. Poser, de William. CSLI, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Labelle, Marie et Valois, Daniel. 1996. The status of postverbal subjects in French child language. Probus 8:53–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lasnik, Howard. 1993. Case and expletives revisited. Ms., University of Connecticut.Google Scholar
Lasnik, Howard. 1994. Verbal morphology: Syntactic structures meets the minimalist program. Ms., University of Connecticut.Google Scholar
Le Bidois, Robert. 1952. L’inversion du sujet dans la prose contemporaine (1900-1950). Paris: Éditions d’Artray.Google Scholar
Levin, Beth et Hovav, Malka Rappaport. 1995. Unaccusativity at the syntax-lexical semantics interface. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Levow, Gina-Anne. 1995. Tense and subject position in interrogatives and negatives in child French: Evidence for and against truncated structure. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 26:281–304.Google Scholar
May, Robert. 1977. The grammar of quantification. Thèse de doctorat, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
McCloskey, James. 1991. Clause structure, ellipsis and proper government in Irish. Lingua 85:259–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pesetsky, David. 1982. Paths and categories. Thèse de doctorat, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Pesetsky, David. 1987. Wh-in-situ: Movement and unselective binding. In The Representation of (In)definitness, sous la dir. Reuland, de Eric et ter Meulen, Alice, 98–129. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Pierce, Amy. 1989. On the emergence of syntax: A crosslinguistic study. Thèse de doctorat, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Pierce, Amy. 1992. Language acquisition and syntactic theory: A comparative analysis of French and English child grammars. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollock, Jean-Yves. 1981. On Case and impersonal constructions. In Levels of Syntactic Representation, sous la dir. May, de Robert et Koster, Jan, 219–252. Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollock, Jean-Yves. 1986. Sur la syntaxe de en et le paramètre du sujet nul. In La grammaire modulaire, sous la dir. Ronat, de Mitsou et Couquaux, Daniel, 211–246. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit.Google Scholar
Pollock, Jean-Yves. 1997. Langage et cognition: Introduction au programme minimaliste de la grammaire générative. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Reinhart, Tanya. 1976. The syntactic domain of anaphora. Thèse de doctorat, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Reinhart, Tanya. 1981. Theory of markedness in generative grammar. Proceedings of the 1979 Glow Conference, 517–557. Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 1982. Issues in Italian syntax. Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 1986a. Null objects in Italian and the theory of pro . Linguistic Inquiry 17:501–557.Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 1986b. On the status of subject clitics in Romance. In Studies in Romance Linguistics, sous la dir. Jaeggli, de Osvaldo et Silva-Corvalán, Carmen, 391–420. Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 1990. Relativized minimality. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 1991. Residual verb second and the wh-criterion. Technical Reports on Formal and Computational Linguistics 2. Université de Genève.Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 1993. The case of root infinitives. Geneva Generative Papers 1(2): 16–25.Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi et Roberts, Ian. 1989. Complex inversion in French. Probus 1:1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Ian. 1993. Verbs and diachronic syntax. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Safir, Ken. 1987. What explains the Definiteness Effect? In The Representation of (In)definiteness, sous la dir. Reuland, de Eric et ter Meulen, Alice, 71–97. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Shlonsky, Ur. 1997. Clause structure and word order in Hebrew: An essay in comparative Semitic syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suoni, Tal. 1991. Noun raising and the structure of noun phrases. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 14:255–270.Google Scholar
Sportiche, Dominique. 1988. A theory of floated quantifiers. Linguistic Inquiry 19:425–450.Google Scholar
Stowell, Tim. 1981. Origins of phrase structure. Thèse de doctorat, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Travis, Lisa. 1984. Parameters and effects of word order variation. Thèse de doctorat, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Valois, Daniel et Dupuis, Fernande. 1992. On the status of (verbal) traces in French: The case of stylistic inversion. In Romance Languages and Modern Linguistic Theory, sous la dir. Hirschbiihler, de Paul et Koerner, Konrad, 325–338. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vanden Wyngaerd, G. 1989. Raising to object in English and Dutch. Dutch Working Papers in English Language and Linguistics 14, Leiden University.Google Scholar
Wall, Kerstin. 1980. L’inversion dans la subordonnée en français contemporain. Stockholm: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Uppsala, Studia Romanica Upsaliensia 30.Google Scholar
Watanabe, Akira. 1994. A crosslinguistic perspective on Japanese nominative-genitive conversion and its implication for Japanese syntax. Ms., Kanda University of International Studies, Tokyo.Google Scholar
Wexler, Kenneth et Culicover, Peter. 1980. Formal principles of language acquisition. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Zribi-Hertz, Anne. 1994. Les clitiques nominatifs du français. Cahiers de recherche en linguistique, Département des sciences du langage, Université Paris 8.Google Scholar
Zwart, Jan Wouter. À paraître. Dutch is head-initial. The Linguistic Review.Google Scholar