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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
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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

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