Lisa A. Reed

French Tough-movement revisited

Abstract In this paper, we argue that predicates of the Tough-class in French embed not a verbal infinitive but rather, a gerundive verbal noun. This hypothesis allows us to capture a number of unexpected restrictions on French Tough-movement discussed by Legendre (Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 4: 137–183, 1986). We show that these restrictions are best described as the inability of French Tough-movement infinitives to be followed by complements that are disallowed in their corresponding argument-taking event nominals. Our analysis of such infinitives as nominalized elements correctly predicts that they should never be selected by auxiliaries, and that they should have suppressed external arguments in the sense of Grimshaw (Argument Structure, MIT Press, 1990). French Tough-movement constructions are further argued to be closely related to the type of English gerund Huddleston (The Sentence in Written English, Cambridge University Press, 1971), Hantson (Towards an analysis of retroactive gerunds, Foris, 1984) and Clark (Boundaries and the treatment of control, University of California, 1985) call ‘retroactive gerunds’. Like French Tough-movement constructions, English retroactive gerunds contain a gap, are possible only with a restricted class of predicates, do not license unbounded dependencies, and do not allow subjects, except when they are realized as by-phrases.

Necessary versus probable cause

One finds in the systems of natural languages some explicit means of elaborating not only upon the directness of the causal relationship believed to exist between two events X and Y (i.e. some means of specifying just how inevitably event X gives or gave rise to event Y), but also some manner of indicating just who or what is understood to be the primary instigator of the caused event. The goal of the present paper is to explore these notions in detail and arrive at a formal, logic-based means of capturing them.

On some split binding paradigms

This paper examines the chameleon-like coreference properties of one use of the French nominal element ce and shows that this element is subject to different noncoreference constraints depending on the quantificational status of its antecedent. Based on previous observations made by Aoun (1986) regarding the binding properties of overt pronouns in a dialect of Mandarin Chinese, it is argued that elements which obey a “split binding condition,” such as French ce, are not restricted to one language. An analysis of these facts is proposed in terms of interpretive strategies at LF stemming from the use languages make of typing particles in C0. This analysis has the advantage of providing adequate empirical coverage while preserving the cross-linguistic/cross-dialectal universality of Binding Theory. It also raises new prospects for Chomskys (1995) Minimalist approach to grammatical theory.

Strengthening the PRO Hypothesis

Generative theory has long sought to capture the syntax of Control, questioning whether the complement clause contains a syntactically projected thematic subject, whether such an argument undergoes displacement and, if so, where and why, and what role semantics may play. This book continues in this tradition, critically examining paradigms erroneously assumed to favor PRO analyses over Movement and implicit argument accounts. It offers novel data amenable to analysis only within a PRO approach - but one radically different from its predecessors in form and interpretation.

Tough-Movement and Nominalized Infinitives in French

It has, at times, been claimed in the literature on Romance causatives that Faire-par embeds not a verbal infinitive but rather, a gerundive, verbal noun (for example by Guasti, 1990; Travis, 1992 and Folli and Harley, 2007). In this paper, we will show that if similar assumptions are made concerning the infinitive embedded under predicates of the Toughclass in French, a number of unexpected restrictions on French Tough-movement constructions (hereafter FTMs) discussed by Legendre (1986) follow naturally. We will also establish that, given their nominal character, FTM infinitives are closely related to retroactive gerunds in English.