Une analyse lexicaliste des affixes pronominaux en français

Cet article considère comme acquis que les pronoms faibles du français sont des affixes flexionnels morphologiquement attachés à une base verbale et introduit le terme affixe pronominal pour les désigner. Nous proposons une analyse syntaxique strictement lexicaliste, dans le cadre HPSG, des formes verbales fléchies pour des affixes pronominaux objets. Cette analyse explique les propriétés spécifiques de ces formes verbales au niveau de la syntaxe de la phrase, notamment (i) l’impossibilité d’un complément plein si la forme verbale est fléchie pour l’affixe correspondant; (ii) le phénomène des affixes pronominaux « non locaux », c’est-à-dire les cas où les affixes pronominaux n’apparaissent pas sur la base verbale dont ils sont des arguments sémantiques; (iii) les corrélations entre la syntaxe des dépendances qu- et des affixes pronominaux, notamment au niveau du flottement des quantificateurs. Nous faisons crucialement appel à une forme de composition de fonctions, qui permet à une tête exigeant normalement un complément saturé de se combiner avec un complément non saturé et avec les compléments exigés par celui-ci.This paper takes as its premise the idea that French weak pronouns are in fact morphologically attached inflectional affixes, and introduces the term pronominal affix for them. We propose a strictly lexicalist syntactic analysis for verbs inflected for object pronominal affixes, couched in the framework of HPSG. This analysis explains the special syntactic properties of these verb forms, especially (i) the impossibility of a full complement in the presence of the corresponding affix on the verb; (ii) the phenomenon of "non local" pronominal affixes, i.e. cases where the affixes do not appear on the verb of which they are semantic arguments; (iii) the correlations between the syntax of wh- dependencies and that of pronominal affixes specifically with respect to quantifier floating. We crucially rely on a form of function composition that allows a head which normally requires a saturated complement to combine with a non-saturated complemement and with those complements which the latter normally requires

Object clitics and clitic climbing in Italian HPSG grammar

Introduction Italian object clitics can be involved in nonlocal dependencies in the sense that they must/may appear on a verbal head of which they are not an argument. Two cases where this situation arises will be discussed: the first is due to the presence of an auxiliary verb and the second is triggered by the presence of a certain class of verbs that allows clitic climbing. An analysis will be proposed within the framework of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar [ Pollard and Sag, 1987; Pollard and Sag, 1993 ] ; it can be shown that an analysis in terms of nonlocal features and the Nonlocal Feature Principle, which is the mechanism provided by HPSG to deal with nonlocal dependencies, does not provide a satisfactory account of the phenomenon; it is too powerful. An alternative approach will be proposed; it is based on the idea that the arguments of a verb which is governed by an auxiliary or clitic climbing trigger verb can be raised to become arguments of the governor by

An information-based theory of topics and grammatical relations.

This dissertation proposes a formal semantic characterization of topichood and an account of the relationship between Topic and core Grammatical Relations. The theoretical framework employed is a form of HPSG (Pollard & Sag (1994)). The notion of Topic has been widely invoked in descriptions both of sentence structure and of intersentential discourse relations. Despite this a formal characterization of this notion is lacking in the literature. It is proposed here that Topics should be seen as predication targets at an underlying semantic level, and that the Topic-Comment relation is analogous to that between possible worlds (situations) and the propositional contents which they support. A Topic is interpreted as a point whose location has to be fixed in some conceptual space formed by the Comments, and this metaphor is extended to the overall Topic of a discourse sequence. Formally, it is suggested that Topics and Comments can be treated as the points and open sets respectively of a topological space. It is claimed that this captures well-known semantic restrictions on which NPs can be made Topics of a sentence. The proposed treatment is also extended to intersentential Topic relations. This account of Topics is made the basis of a revision to the relational hierarchy, which underlies many relational theories of grammar. It is proposed that basic predicates in language are maximally binary and sensitive to topichood, their initial Subject being the default predication target or Topic. Predicates of greater valency are treated as composite, and the effects of the relational hierarchy are derived from rules governing the process of composition. A number of cross-linguistic phenomena are examined which bear on the relationship between Topics and core Grammatical Relations, including the double Subject constructions characteristic of Japanese and other East Asian languages, the clitic doubling of Objects which is an areal phenomenon of the Balkans, and the so called "Object agreement" of Amharic. Finally a chapter is devoted to the nature of Indirect Objects, which are argued (against standard views) to rank above Direct Objects. It is claimed that with this approach an important part of the relational basis of syntax can be derived, without losing descriptive accuracy, from the proposed treatment of predication