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

We have crucially assumed that I-subjects in NSLs are directly assigned Case by AGR o
through Chain-government, which is made possible if V-raising to AGR o takes place. French, in
fact, has V-movement to AGR o (V-movement to the top INFL category, in Pollock's (1989)
terms). Therefore, if French does not have subject inversion in the general case, it is only because
it is not a NSL, not because the requirement of V-movement to AGR is not met. Let us
tentatively make a rather speculative proposal in this connection.
Suppose that what in fact makes French a non-NSL is not that AGR o is not intrinsically
rich enough to make French a NSL, but rather that AGR o cannot manage to govern its I-subject
through Chain-Government. Suppose the reason is that there is something between AGR o and
the I-subject blocking government. Suppose this blocking element is absent in non-assertive
sentences. Let's implement the idea.
French (like English and many non-NSLs) has the negative particle pas (Cf. English
not, German nicht, etc.) below the inflected verb. This is what led Pollock to assume NEGP is a
FC placed between T and AGR. Suppose this is right. Suppose, however, that this category is not
NegP, but ΣP, as Laka (1990) suggests, Σ being a FC which includes Negation and Affirmation.
Suppose we assume that Σ also contains the feature [±assertion], and that [+assertive] Σ has some
blocking effect. If [-assertive] Σ did not have this blocking effect, then AGR o would be able to
Chain-govern its I-subject and French will possibly behave like a NSL in [-assertive] sentences.
The above suggestion is only tentative and faces several problems:
- it is not clear at all what the blocking effect of [+Assertive] Σ could be: it does not
block V-head movement, for there is long V-movement in French assertive clauses. It would
block only Chain-government.
null subjects.
- in [-assertive] clauses, French is not actually a NSL: it allows subject inversion but not
In any event, it is significant that non-NSLs often have post-verbal negative particles,
which suggests that Σ intervenes between AGR and T, while NSLs often have preverbal negative
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