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The Unaccusative Hypothesis and the Impersonal Construction in French

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Sarah Cummins
Sarah Cummins*
Affiliation:
Université Laval
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Abstract

This article argues that the Impersonal Contruction (IC) of French, which displays unaccusative syntax but allows unergative verbs, refutes the Unaccusative Hypothesis (UH) and the principles of lexically driven mapping. It is demonstrated that three types of argument intended to explain unaccusative mismatches are untenable while maintaining the UH. An account of the verbs appearing in the IC is proposed, based on the principles of free linking of arguments and postsyntactic compositional interpretation, taking into account meaning contributed by diverse sources, including lexical, syntactic, constructional, and morphological meaning, which must be compatible. It is argued that the shape of IC sentences requires that a state of affairs be predicated of a locative; various consequences for verb and argument selection and tense arise from this requirement. By removing certain semantico-syntactic functions from the lexicon, economy is achieved in both the lexicon and the syntactic component.

Résumé

Résumé

Cet article montre que la construction impersonnelle (CI) du français, de structure inaccusative mais qui accepte des verbes inergatifs, infirme l’hypothèse de l’inaccusativité (HI), ainsi que le principe voulant que le positionnement syntaxique des arguments découle de la sémantique lexicale. L’article montre que ces anomalies ne peuvent être expliquées tout en maintenant l’HI et propose une analyse fondée sur le principe du positionnement libre des arguments, jumelé à une interprétation compositionnelle postsyntaxique tenant compte de diverses sources de sens, tant lexicale que syntaxique, constructionnelle et morphologique, contraintes à la compatibilité entre elles. La forme même de la CI exige un rapport de prédication entre un lieu et un état de choses. Cette exigence entraîne certaines conséquences sur la sélection de verbes et d’arguments, ainsi que sur le choix du temps. L’élimination du lexique de certaines fonctions sémantico-syntaxiques permet une économie au niveau du lexique et de la syntaxe.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 45 , Issue 3-4 , December 2000 , pp. 225 - 251
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 2000

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