Lexical constraints on the syntactic derivation of French inalienable possession structures (original) (raw)

2001, Sky Journal of Linguistics

Gueron (1985), and Vergnaud & Zubizaretta (1992) propose a set of syntactic constraints to account for the distribution of the French inalienable possession construction (IPC). The locality property of this construction is derived from the Binding Theory in Gueron's framework, and from the theories of small clauses and syntatic chains by Vergnaud & Zubizaretta. Landau (1999) claims that movement theory accounts for the local property. None of these theories cover the full range of empirical data, though. There are cases in which a full dative Possessor noun phrase is legitimate. Remarkably stringent and so far unexplained conceptual constraints on these structures will be described, which point to an interesting correlation between semantic and cliticization. Cliticization, a syntactic process, voids or relaxes a number of semantic constraints on French IPCs, though not all of them. Constraints on French IPCs therefore clearly undermine reductionist theories of theta-role assign...

Sign up for access to the world's latest research.

checkGet notified about relevant papers

checkSave papers to use in your research

checkJoin the discussion with peers

checkTrack your impact