Subject Inversion in French. The Limits of Information Structure

Jean-Marie Marandin (1)

1 LLF UMR7110 - Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle

My objective here is to assess the relevance of information structural notions for analyzing subject inversion in French. Subject inversion is not a unified phenomenon. In fact, there are three distinct constructions featuring an inverted subject. I show that the sentences do not have the same informational potential (the type of focus-ground articulation they are compatible with) depending on the construction they abide by. I propose a contextual factor - the informational solidarity between the verb and its first argument - to account for those differences. Then, I show that the three constructions share a common feature that pertains to a completely different dimension: the perspective chosen to describe the situation. I adopt Langacker's notion of absolute construal to characterize it. Finally, I present another common feature: the blocking of the referential anchoring of the referent of indefinite and partitive NPs.

Mots clés: C-ACTI

Domaines: Linguistique

Jean-Marie Marandin. Subject Inversion in French. The Limits of Information Structure. 18th conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), 2011, Stanford, United States. ⟨halshs-00751146⟩