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ucl.ac.uk>Thanks to Knut Lambrecht for his message about my examples (1-3). (1) Je l'ai e'crite. `I it (fem) have written (fem sing)' (2) la lettre que j'ai e'crite.. `the letter (fem) which I have written (fem sing)' (3) J'ai e'crit la lettre. `I have written (no agreement) the letter.' The traditional explanation (which makes good sense to me) is that the past participle agrees with the object whenever the object comes first (as it does in (1) and (2), but not in (3)). Knut's alternative is as follows: What counts is that in the *discourse* the referent be known to be feminine by the time the participle is uttered. I don't think it's primarily the presence of the bound object pronoun *before* the participle that triggers the agreement but the fact that a pronoun *can be used* in the first place, i.e. the fact that the referent can be assumed to be taken for granted by the addressee at utterance time. According to this analysis, the following should be possible. You and I are talking about a letter and a report, both of which have to be written. They're both entities you and I can take for granted, because we're talking about them. So it ought to be correct for me to utter (4). (4) J'ai e'crite la lettre, mais pas le compte-rendu. I've written (fem sing) the letter (fem), but not the report. (Assuming compte-rendu = report ...) My French isn't very good, but I doubt if that's possible. In fact, I doubt if such a rule applies to *any* language - but again I may well be wrong. I bet (though not very much!) that in every case that Knud mentions where there is `object- agreement' when the object is a topic the analysis is controversial and could be done in terms of clitic pronouns. Dick Hudson Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT uclyrahMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>> >Dick Hudson asks: > >>If `object pronouns' are just inflections, why is it that they are treated >>like separate object NPs by the rule that makes a past participle agree >>with its object provided the latter precedes it? >> >> (1) Je l'ai e'crite (la lettre). >> I it have written (the letter) >> (2) La lettre que j'ai e'crite ... >> the letter that I have written (fem sing) >> >> (3) J'ai e'crit_ la lettre. >> I have written the letter >> >>Why is it that no one appears to have taken note in this List discussion of this matter of the formal (e.g., GB or Minimalist) syntactic argument that Agreement is systematically a Specifier-Head relation? Surely this goes a long way indeed towards providing an acount of the three sentences above, even if this sort of formal syntax may not be popular on this List? In (3) the postverbal object, la lettre, is certainly not in Spec of any pphrase level constituent properly and immediately containing the verb complex, so Agreement is unmotivated. In (1), the overt object clitic regardless of whether or not one calls this a pronominal 'word' it is part of a verbal X-bar phrase in such a way as not to be in an A-position relatively to the latter, which is clitic enough for most of us is indeed, certainly in a Functional Phrase category syntax, in Spec/AGR O, and in (2), it is arguable on evidence I nmeed not go into here that, in the absence of a postverbal nominal object, the object is again represented, now covertly, in the same Spec/Agr O position. Apparently, on at leats one argument along the foregoing lines, it is the very presence of an overt postverbal nominal object that preempts, generally at least, the inclusion of the sort of non-full pronominal (equal to the m9nimally stressed, non-focal English pronoun) that will surface as a clitic in the above sense.This is, of course, much the essence of what Kayne means by making the clitic a pronominal in the underlying representation. Incidentally, (5) (5) La lettre que j'ai e'crite e'tait addressee au Pres'sident Clinton. the letter that I have written(FEM) was addressed to Pres. Clinton in the original message to which the present is a Reply is also an instance of a covert Spec/AGR clitic object pronoun, here specifically determined by CVontrol proper ties associated with ordinary relative clause constructions: for, this requires that an at least covert coreferent be available in the relative clause, with the 'que' complementiser mediating Control of the latter by the nominal Head of the relative construction (here, 'la lettre').Mail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
beattie.uct.ac.za>> From: Lambrecht Knut <lambrechMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
access.digex.net>> The only way we can explain the subject agreement on 'assis-e' is by > allowing inflectional morphology to refer to pragmatics, which does not seem > like a revolutionary claim to me. The past participle (I could also have > taken an adjective like 'grand-e') "agrees" (or whatever term we want to use) > with the gender (or is it sex, I don't know anymore) of the person who happens > to be talking. Well, the question "gender or sex?" is not so clear. In a related domain, the pronoun "ils" refers (I am told; I am not a francophone) to any group of persons that contains at least one man, whereas "elles" is used to refer to a group of all women. However, in legal writing, "elles" may be used of a mixed or all-male group, in agreement with "personnes"; this usage tends to deteriorate in a long document: "personnes...elles...elles...ils". John Cowan sharing account <lojbabMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue