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Title:
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The Semantics and Syntax of the passé surcomposé in Modern French
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Author:
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Kate Paesani
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Email:
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click here to access email
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Homepage:
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http://www.clas.wayne.edu/faculty/Paesani
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Degree Awarded:
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Indiana University
, Department of French and Italian
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Degree Date:
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2001
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Semantics
Syntax
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Subject Language(s):
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French
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Director(s):
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Laurent Dekydtspotter
Barbara Vance
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Abstract:
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This dissertation provides a characterization of the meaning and grammar of the French passé surcomposé (psc) articulated within the context of generative grammar and Discourse Representation Theory. The psc is a double compound past form expressing perfect aspect (i.e. Jean a eu mangé une pomme ‘Jean had eaten an apple’). After presenting a critical review of previous literature on the psc, I illustrate the compositional nature of the psc sentence through a comprehensive examination of psc data. I show that the temporal-aspectual value of the psc sentence is determined through the interaction of grammatical aspect, lexical aspect and context. Next, I outline the semantic framework used to explain the data before providing a formal account of the semantics of the psc. I show that the psc, often associated with numerous semantic values, expresses perfect aspect in all syntactic environments. Furthermore, I show that additional semantic nuances fall out as implicatures from the semantics of the psc, the discourse context and conversational maxims. I next consider the syntactic representation of the psc, couching my discussion in terms of the Principles and Parameters and Minimalist theories of grammar. I argue for a hierarchical structure in which each of the three verbs forms is the head of a separate VP and is in turn dominated by a functional category. This hierarchy yields the structure [ TP [ VP [ Asp1P [ VP [ Aps2P [ VP ]]]]]]. The semantic properties associated with the psc can be mapped directly onto this structure. I further argue that this basic structure is sufficient to account for the psc in all of its syntactic environments, showing in particular that a complex array of facts concerning the choice of have or be as auxiliary can be reduced to minor parametric variation of a type already motivated for Romance in general.
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