The Syntax of Concessive Clauses: Evidence from Exempt Anaphora

Charnavel (2019b) argues that the acceptability of exempt anaphors in adjunct clauses can be used to diagnose the height of those clauses. The goal of this paper is first to provide experimental support for this diagnostic and then to use it to probe the syntax of two types of concessive clauses in English, namely clauses headed by even though and although . The distribution of exempt anaphors reveals that even though -clauses attach lower than although -clauses. However, this result seems to contradict more standard scopal tests (such as pronominal binding) suggesting that even though -clauses scope as high as although -clauses. We argue that this apparent conflict reveals that more fine-grained scopal distinctions are needed both between different types of adjunct clauses and between different types of DPs

Same, different and other as comparative adjectives – A uniform analysis based on French

The goal of this article is to provide a uniform and non-specific analysis for all constructions involving terms expressing similarity and difference (sidi terms) such as same, different or other in French. Beyond theoretical economy, the motivation for this enterprise is based on crosslinguistic evidence showing a unique term for same through all constructions in many unrelated languages. The proposed analysis does not resort to any specific mechanism, but relates sidi terms to both comparatives and relational terms: sidi terms are assumed to be relational adjectives that are complemented by DPs or comparative clauses; in short, they are analyzed as comparatives of individuals. The diversity of constructions does not derive from multiple lexical entries, but from the presence of silent structures: in particular, the comparative clause can be fully or partially elided, and the phrasal or clausal complement of sidi terms can include a silent underspecified pronoun, which can get a pronominal, reflexive, reciprocal or vaguer interpretation. The behavior of sidi terms in islands argues for the presence of silent structures.Linguistic

Non-at-issueness of since-clauses

This paper explores the discourse status of English causal clauses introduced by since. Tests for non-at-issueness demonstrate that neither the relation (between the subordinate and the superordinate clause) expressed by since nor the content of the subordinate clause is at-issue. Other diagnostics further show that these two not-at-issue contents triggered by since belong to two different classes of projective content. This can be accounted for by attributing two different sources to their non-at-issueness: the relation expressed by since is not-at-issue for structural reasons, i.e. because since-clauses modify high evidential or speech act phrases, which are not-at-issue; the content of the subordinate clause is not-at-issue because since lexically selects factive clauses. More generally, this study (and future comparative studies on other subordinators) promises to shed further light on the constraints on different contents projected by the same trigger and the role played by structure in non-at-issueness

On scalar readings of French propre ‘own’

The goal of this paper is to account for scalarity effects typically arising in the presence of French propre ‘own’. I argue for the presence of an implicit, focus-sensitive operator E akin to overt ‘even’, which has previously been proposed to combine with certain NPIs and minimizers. My argument is based on empirical and theoretical considerations: the E operator hypothesis correctly predicts that the domain for the scalarity effect does not depend on the position of propre and that the simultaneous presence of overt focus particles gives rise to intervention effects; this hypothesis is moreover economical since it makes it possible to provide a single lexical entry for propre under all its readings and to analyze all cases of scalarity effects by using a single mechanism, namely E. Furthermore, I argue that the association between E and the focused possessive DP containing propre is pragmatic. It is because propre is a maximizer of possessive relation—i.e. it characterizes the possessive relation it modifies as most specific—that it is relevant in the association with E of the focused DP containing it: the possessum is ranked higher than its alternatives on the scale of relational specificity introduced by propre, and this scale pragmatically correlates with the scale of unexpectedness required by the semantics of E. In sum, the case of propre supports the existence of E on new empirical ground and thus clarifies the pragmatic conditions giving rise to it.Linguistic

Let You Be Bound to Me (and Me to You)

According to Kaplan’s (1977) Fixity Thesis, the semantic value of indexicals, i.e. first and second person pronouns, is fixed by the context of the actual speech act and cannot be manipulated by any logical operator: I refers to the speaker and you to the addressee. This theory has been challenged by empirical facts, especially the ability of first and second person pronouns to be bound in English focus constructions and to shift their reference in attitude contexts in some other languages. The goal of this paper is to provide novel data from English that further refute the Fixity Thesis. Crucially, my new contribution is to show that there is an intrinsic grammatical dependency between the two context parameters speaker s and addressee a: first person pronouns can bind second person pronouns and vice versa. This is so, I argue, because I and you can be understood as descriptions (e-type pronouns), i.e. “your addressee” and “my addressee” respectively.Linguistic

How French Sheds New Light on Scalar Particles

This paper examines the behavior of the French scalar focus-sensitive particles même, quand même, ne serait-ce que and seulement as compared to English even and only. I first show that French même displays a more restricted distribution than even: this behavior and that of its antonym quand même argue for the scope theory against the ambiguity theory of even. Secondly, I demonstrate that the behavior of ne serait-ce que and seulement reveal the existence of an intrinsic link between even-like particles and only-like particles. To capture this observation and more generally the organic relation between scalar particles, I propose a new, parsimonious, theory that builds scalarity, additivity and exclusivity of scalar particles into a conjunctive or disjunctive meaning.Linguistic

The clitic binding restriction revisited: Evidence for antilogophoricity

In some Romance languages, including French and Spanish, there is an interesting asymmetry concerning the behavior of isolated clitics and clitic clusters with respect to coreference. In the French example Anne croit qu’on va la lui recommander pour la promotion ‘Anna thinks that they will recommend her to him for the promotion’, the accusative clitic la ‘her’ in the embedded clause cannot corefer with ‘Anne’ when a dative clitic, lui ‘to him’, co-occurs in the cluster. The only previous account of this constraint (Bhatt and Šimík 2009) attributes this to a binding restriction. Based on new data disentangling binding and logophoricity, we show that the generalization capturing the distribution of clitics clusters in French and Spanish is the following: an accusative clitic cannot be clustered with a dative clitic if the accusative clitic refers to a logophoric center and is read de se. We derive this antilogophoricity effect from perspective conflicts, which we represent as intervention effects in the presence of a single logophoric operator in the relevant domain. This analysis furthermore provides a semantic motivation for intervention effects that have been postulated for the Person-Case Constraint (PCC), which we hypothesize also derives from perspective conflicts.Linguistic

Anaphor Binding: What French Inanimate Anaphors Show

Owing to different ideas about what counts as an anaphor subject to Condition A, two influential but superficially incompatible versions of Condition A of binding theory have coexisted: Chomsky’s (1986) version, and versions of predicate-based binding theories defended by Pollard and Sag (1992) and Reinhart and Reuland (1993) and modified in various ways since ( Pollard 2005, Reuland 2011). Using inanimate anaphors to independently control for sensitivity to Condition A without the confound of logophoricity, we show that Condition A must be checked at the syntax-interpretation interface and that Chomsky’s (1986) version (an anaphor must be bound within the smallest complete functional complex containing it and a possible binder) is nearly correct, with one amendment: a tensed TP boundary is opaque to the search for an antecedent. Given these results, we argue that Condition A should be reduced to phase theory and we outline how this can be done.Linguistic

« Je t'aime. - Moi aussi (je t'aime). » : supersloppiness from a French perspective

In dialogs like "I love you - I do too", the pronoun in the ellipsis site can be interpreted as dependent on the preceding overt pronoun (i.e. I do love you too). This dependency can neither be explained by Kaplan's (1977/1989) theory implying the fixity of indexicals, nor by the various theories of bound indexicals: due to mismatch in person features, the identity in the ellipsis is not sloppy, but supersloppy in such cases. Based on experimentally collected English data, I proposed in Charnavel (2019) to reduce supersloppy readings to sloppy readings by hypothesizing that indexicals can be interpreted as context-dependent descriptions containing a bindable pronoun, i.e. as indexical e-type pronouns (e.g. you as my interlocutor). But due to some limitations in my English data, I left open two interrelated issues: (i) whether supersloppy readings, like sloppy readings, rely on focus blindness to presuppositions of bound pronouns; (ii) whether supersloppy readings can be analyzed in the same way in ellipsis and focus constructions. I here use novel French data to settle these two issues partly based on some morphosyntactic specificities of French. By clarifying the analysis of supersloppy readings, this provides new insight into the theories of indexicals and e-type pronouns