Jaume Solà i Pujols - Departament de Filologia Catalana ...

(136) a. Où (dis-tu qu') est allé Jean?
Where (say-you that) is gone J.
'Where do you say John went'
b. La personne avec qui (je crois que) viendra Jean
The person with who (I believe that) will-come J.
'The person with whom I think that Jean will come'
c. J'espère que vienne Jean
I-hope that come-SUBJ J.
'I hope Jean will come'
There is a general agreement that it is essentially of the same nature as subject inversion
in Romance NSLs (see Kayne & Pollock (1978) for an initial characterization). If French is a
non-NSL, I-subjects should be, according to the present theory, [+anaphoric]. There is a fact,
however, that looks consistent with the present approach: when there is stylistic inversion, no
preverbal subject is present. Standard accounts would say that only null expletives licence
subject inversion. In our alternative theory not involving null expletives in subject inversion we
should say that in French Stylistic inversion, since there is no preverbal subject, there is no
binder for the I-subject and therefore it can be and has to be [-anaphoric].
One aspect of stylistic inversion which is not easy to deal with is the characterization of
the contexts allowing it. It is triggered by Wh-movement and subjunctive mood. Concerning the
former, one cannot say it is licenced by a [+Wh] COMP, because it can be licenced in the clause
where the Wh- has been extracted from even if this clause is not [+Wh] itself (see 0.a/.b) with the
parenthetical part).
One way of characterizing the licensing contexts in a unitary way is the following.
Suppose we assume that stylistic inversion is licenced whenever the clause involving it is non-
assertive. Clauses containing a Wh-gap are non-assertive, and so are clauses in subjunctive
mood. How could we relate this to (stylistic) subject inversion?
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