Establishing an inventory of surface-syntactic relations: Valence-controlled surface-syntactic dependents of the verb in French (original) (raw)

2009, Studies in language companion series

Purely syntactic properties of Ds 2. Being obligatorily present in any full-fledged clause (of course alongside the Main Verb [= MV]). To avoid a misunderstanding, let us emphasize that we really mean ANY clause; thus, for instance, a Direct Object, even if it is obligatory with some verbs, is not found in any clause of French. 3. Being the dependent of the MV only (that is, being unable to depend on anything but a finite verb). 4. Being implicated in SSynt-promotion/demotion (applicable to nouns, infinitives and subordinate clauses). 5. Being the target of cliticization of a specific type. 6. Being the target of relativization (applicable to nouns). 7. Being the target of clefting (applicable to nouns and infinitives). 8. Being the controller/target of reflexivization (applicable to nouns). 9. Being the controller of the SSynt-role of the Secondary Actor in the causative FAIRE-construction, namely imposing on it the SSynt-role of IndirO. (For more on the representation of the causative FAIRE-construction in French, see 5.3.3, p. 00.) 10. Being the controller of an actantial-attributive complement (applicable to nouns). Syntactico-morphological properties of Ds 11. Being the target of non-specific morphological or lexical government. We speak of 'non-specific' government when a particular case form or a particular preposition is imposed on the D of a SSyntRel r by r itself-rather than by the lexical entry of its G, i.e. by the G's Government Pattern. Cf., for instance, case forms of the clitics le ACC vs. lui DAT and of the relative pronouns qui NOM vs. que ACC as a function of the subordinating SSyntRel (directobjectival, indirect-objectival, and subjectival); or else the selection of PAR (by) for the D of the agentive SSyntRel. (For non-specific government, see Mel'ãuk 1993: 321-322.) 12. Being the target of morphological agreement (applicable to adjectives: Alain le trouve intelligent vs. Alain la trouve intelligente (A. finds him/her intelligent)). 13. Being the controller of agreement of the MV. 14. Linear position with respect to G and/or to other D i (G) (not applicable to clitics and relative pronouns, whose ordering does not depend on the subordinating SSyntRel). 15. Impossibility of left dislocation. (In what follows, we deal only with 'pure' left dislocationnamely, prosodic separation from the rest of the clause without use of a resumptive clitic.) 16. Particular prosody/punctuation (applicable to Direct Speech). 7