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

analyzable as floating elements? The answer seems to be that some are and some are not.
Consider first lui-même. Like English himself or Germanic selbst/selv/etc., lui-même is a SELF
element that can be adjoined to a DP to add referential emphasis to it:
(62) a. Ça concerne pas le problème lui-même, mais plutôt...
This concerns not the problem SELF, but rather...
'This doesn't concern the problem itself, but rather...'
b. J'ai pas parlé avec lui lui-même, mais avec sa femme
I-have not spoken with him SELF but with his woman
'I haven't talked to him himself, but rather to his wife'
So it is likely that lui-même as I-subject is a floating element. This analysis, however,
cannot be generalized to the other two I-subjects (lui and soi(même)), since they cannot be used
as DP-adjuncts: 44
(63) a. *Jean lui l'a fait
J. he it-has done
(Cf. Jean l'a fait lui)
b. *Chacun soi(-même) l'a fait
Each SE (himself) it-has done
(Cf. Chacun l'a fait soi(-même)
44 Even for lui-même, its floating status could be questioned
in cases where the subject is a weak pronominal, because weak
pronominals do not allow adjoined elements:
(i) Il l'a fait lui-même
He it-has done he-self
(ii) *[ Il lui même] l'a fait
But this might be simply due to cliticization requirements
on weak Nominative pronominals. As for soi(-même), the argument
is not conclusive for the reason we mentioned above: by Sstructure,
an emphatic element cannot be adjoined to a nonreferential
DP.
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