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Pronominal Clitics in Quã©Bec Colloquial French University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons IRCS Technical Reports Series Institute for Research in Cognitive Science 12-1-1994 Pronominal Clitics in Québec Colloquial French: A Morphological Analysis Julie Auger University of Pennsylvania Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/ircs_reports Part of the Cognitive Neuroscience Commons Auger, Julie, "Pronominal Clitics in Québec Colloquial French: A Morphological Analysis" (1994). IRCS Technical Reports Series. 174. https://repository.upenn.edu/ircs_reports/174 University of Pennsylvania Institute for Research in Cognitive Science Technical Report No. IRCS-94-29. This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/ircs_reports/174 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Pronominal Clitics in Québec Colloquial French: A Morphological Analysis Abstract The grammatical status of Romance pronominal clitics has long been the object of intense debate. Are they syntactically-independent arguments or are they affixal agreement markers? This dissertation addresses this question with respect to Québec Colloquial French (QCF). It treats the morphophonological and morphosyntactic dimensions as two independent dimensions, thus allowing either for affixes to have argument status and prohibiting them from co-occurring with an overt, lexical argument, or for non-affixal elementso t behave like agreement markers and not count as syntactic arguments. The analysis reveals that all the clitics of QCF are affixes at the morphological level, since they demonstrate numerous patterns which are too idiosyncratic to be handled by syntactic rules. Only subject clitics, however, function as agreement markers, since they occur in all the environments where we would expect agreement markers; object markers, conversely, are excluded from those environments. I shall present a morphological analysis following the approach taken by Roberge and his colleagues and work within the Minimalist framework of Chomsky (1993). I assume that fully-inflected lexical items are inserted in the syntax, and I adopt Cummins & Roberge’s (1994a,b) suggestion that an additional interface, the Lexicon-Syntax Interface, handles all inflectional morphology. Chapter 1 introduces the main problem and summarizes a number of recent studies on Romance and French clitics. Chapter 2 presents the facts in QCF and applies morphophonological and morphosyntactic criteria in order to determine the grammatical status of these argument markers. Chapter 3 develops a morphological approach that allows fully inflected verbs to be inserted in the syntax. Finally, chapter 4 discusses one element which has traditionally been excluded from the paradigm of subject markers: ça. The chapter is divided into two parts; the first one discusses the semantic aspects concerning the generic use of ça, while the second one develops an approach to grammatical agreement which allows agreement targets to introduce their own features, as well as certain types of feature conflicts. Disciplines Cognitive Neuroscience Comments University of Pennsylvania Institute for Research in Cognitive Science Technical Report No. IRCS-94-29. This thesis or dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/ircs_reports/174 The Institute For Research In Cognitive Science Pronominal Clitics in Québec Colloquial French: A Morphological Analysis (Ph.D. Dissertation) by P Julie Auger E University of Pennsylvania 3401 Walnut Street, Suite 400C Philadelphia, PA 19104-6228 N December 1994 Site of the NSF Science and Technology Center for Research in Cognitive Science N University of Pennsylvania IRCS Report 94-29 Founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1740 PRONOMINAL CLITICS IN QUÉBEC COLLOQUIAL FRENCH: A MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS Julie Auger A DISSERTATION in Linguistics Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1994 __________________________________________ Sabine Iatridou, Supervisor of Dissertation __________________________________________ Gillian Sankoff, Supervisor of Dissertation __________________________________________ Donald A. Ringe, Graduate Group Chairperson © Copyright Julie Auger 1994 En reconnaissance de leur soutien constant et infaillible dans toutes mes entreprises, cette thèse est dédiée à mes parents, Monique Guay Auger et Jean-Paul Auger Acknowledgements "la langue parlée est souvent beaucoup plus riche de données que la langue épurée qu’on a dans la tête, mais, quand on la prend au sérieux, on peut découvrir des faits de grammaire qui, autrement, seraient restés cachés." (Jeanjean 1986:244) I have had the fortune during my doctoral studies and more specifically while I was working on this dissertation to be guided by numerous very knowledgeable professors, colleagues, and friends. My debt to them all is greater than I could ever express in words, but I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for all they have done for me. First, I would like to thank Denise Deshaies and Claude Paradis for encouraging me to be adventurous and leave Laval University for my Ph.D. studies as well as for their moral support ever since. I would also like to thank all my professors at both the University of Pennsylvania and the 1989 Linguistic Institute in Tucson for all that they have taught me. Special thanks are due to Richard Janda for first mentioning to me this "crazy" analysis of pronominal clitics in French as agreement affixes. Hopefully, since then, my ideas on the issue have matured a bit. I also want to thank my co-advisors, Sabine Iatridou and Gillian Sankoff for their constant support and for their most valuable comments on the various drafts of my dissertation. I owe very many thanks to Yves Roberge, who kindly accepted to serve on my committee and who has been very diligent about answering my innumerable questions iv v and giving me feedback on every piece of writing I ever sent him. Asking him to be on my committee certainly has been one of the best decisions of my life. Many people have commented on various parts of this work. Richard Janda has served as an unofficial member of my committee for most of the time I spent writing my dissertation. His comments have been extremely valuable. Josep M. Fontana has been reading my work ever since I started working on this topic; he has given me extensive comments, and he has constantly encouraged me to finish as soon as possible. Exchanges with Philip Miller have also been extremely stimulating. Finally, I would like to thank Terry Nadasdi for his very helpful comments on my chapters. The following people have, at some point, given me advice and comments, made remarks, pointed out alternative analyses, provided me with examples from other languages and bibliographic references, or discussed linguistic concepts and issues with me: Bill Ashby, Mark Baker, Michael Barlow, Richard Cameron, Greg Carlson, Amy Dahlstrom, Michel DeGraff, Denise Deshaies, Nigel Duffield, Heather Goad, Helen Goodluck, Jeanette Gundel, Michael Hegarty, Aafke Hulk, Brian Joseph, Georg Kaiser, David Kathman, Kostas Kazazis, Jürgen Klausenburger, Manfred Krifka, Tony Kroch, Knud Lambrecht, Young-Suk Lee, Louise McNally, Marianne Mithun, Yves-Charles Morin, Salikoko Mufwene, Michael Niv, Francisco Ocampo, Hélène Ossipov, Ellen Prince, Lisa Reed, Johan Rooryck, Graziella Saccon, Jerry Sadock, Patricia Scheider- Zioga, Armin Schwegler, Carmen Silva-Corvalán, Sue Steele, Knut Tarald Taraldsen, André Thibault, Pierrette Thibault, Enric Vallduvi, and Barbara Vance. Thank you to all of them. vi I also want to thank my friends who invited me to stay with them whenever I came to Philadelphia to meet with my advisors: Heather Davenport, Young-Suk Lee, Naomi Nagy, Carmen Richardson, Pam Saunders, and Ümit Turan. Their friendship and their hospitality was very much appreciated. Thanks to them, I have come to know Philadelphia much better, and I have good memories of the city as well as the people. I would like to thank Richard Janda, Betsy Merceron, and Gerald Rosenau for their editorial comments on different versions of this dissertation. The corrections they have suggested have certainly contributed to making it more legible. I would also like to thank John Goldsmith, chair of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Chicago, for welcoming me as a visiting scholar for two years, as well as the linguistic community at the university there for their support. For their friendship and moral support, especially during the final stages of the writing, I would like to thank Hilary Sachs, Barbara Vance, Michel DeGraff, André Thibault, Josep Fontana, Mylène Catel, John Isbell, Betsy Merceron, Jacques Merceron, Fabienne Meadows, and Patrick Meadows. For their help with the data, I want to thank my family and the eight native speakers of Québec Colloquial French who have accepted to give me grammaticality judgments about many of the sentences discussed in the chapter on generic ça. For his generous friendship and the wonderful bagels he brought me during the final writing weekend, I want to thank René Lapalme. Finally, for being there during this painful summer of writing and for making it more than bearable, for his love and support, I want to thank Yves Brun. ABSTRACT PRONOMINAL CLITICS IN QUÉBEC COLLOQUIAL FRENCH: A MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS Julie Auger Supervisors: Sabine Iatridou Gillian Sankoff The grammatical status of Romance pronominal clitics has long been the object
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