Attract F, Accusative Case-checking and the Position of the Subject in French Stylistic Inversion with Causative and Perception Verbs

Language, Information and Computation(PACLIC 11), 1996, 501-510 Attract F, accusative Case-checking and the position of the subject in French Stylistic Inversion with Causative and Perception verbs Maarten de Wind University of Amsterdam (UvA)/ Holland Instititute of Generative Linguistics (HIL) M.de.Wind@let.uva.n1 Abstract A rather well-known aspect of French Stylistic Inversion is the impossibility of having a nominal object either precede or follow the inverted subject. A similar phenomenon is found in cases of French Stylistic Inversion with causative and perception verbs. The nominal subject of the infinitival complement can never appear with the inverted subject of the causative or perception verb. Both phenomena are usually referred to as Case-adjacency problems. In this paper, we will show that these Case-adjacency problems can be accounted for in a simple and straightforward manner under Attract F and Procrastinate, two constraints on movement formulated in Chomsky's Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995, chapter 4). 1.� Introduction* One way of deriving WH-interrogatives in French is to generate the subject, which must be nominal, in VP-final position. The resulting construction is called Stylistic Inversion. The causative verb faire (make) and the perception verbs regarder (watch), entendre (hear), voir (see) and &outer (listen), and the verb laisser (let) displaying the structure of Stylistic Inversion always have the subject follow the infinitive: Kayne (1972:104) (1) Que fera (*Jean) porter (Jean) a sa femme par son domestique? What will-do (Jean) bring (Jean) to his wife by his servant? What will Jean make his servant bring to his wife?' (2) Qu'a entendu (*Jean) chanter (Jean)? What has heard (Jean) sing (Jean)? What did Jean hear (someone) sing?' With respect to the subject of the infinitival complement of causative and perception verbs the following can be observed: Causative verbs always have the subject follow the infinitive. In the case of perception verbs, the subject either precedes or follows the verb: (3) a Jean a fait chanter Marie. Jean has made sing Marie b Jean a entendu (Marie) chanter (Marie). Jean has heard Marie sing A remarkable aspect of causative and perception verbs displaying the structure of Stylistic Inversion is that the inverted subject of the matrix clause can never occur with the nominal subject of the infinitival clause: 501 (4)� a * Qu'a entendu Marieobject chanter Jeansubject? b * Qu'a entendu Jeansubjec, Mariethject chanter? c * Qu'a entendu Mariethject Jeansubject chanter? d * Qu'a entendu chanter Jeansubject Marieobject? What did Jean hear Marie sing?' Traditionally, cases like (4a-d) have been explained via the Case adjacency requirement, according to which the Case-assignee must be strictly adjacent to its Case-assigner (cf. Stowell 1981). Under the assumption that both the inverted subject of the matrix clause and the subject of the embedded predicate get their Case from V under government, the ungrammaticality of (4a-c1) can be attributed to the circumstance that the rightmost NP is not adjacent to V and therefore it cannot get Case. Stowell (1981) makes crucial use of the mechanism of Case-assignment under government for the explanation of the ungrammaticality of (4a-d). However, in …

Content truncated to 500 words