Phi-features and the Modular Architecture of - UMR 7023 - CNRS

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c. L'infinitifi […] a été très long à admettre un complément atone préposé
à luii.
The infinitive […] took long to admit an atonic complement preposed
to it.Di.
((b) Postal 1990: 151, (c) Grevisse and Goosse 2008: 662b4°)
For some speakers only, the availability of 3 rd person strong pronouns extends
to passives, (206)-(207). Here cliticization is available for all speakers, and for
most but not all preferred to the strong pronoun. There may be two different structures
involved: a participle opaque to cliticization in (206)b that allows strong
pronouns like participles in reduced relatives, and a transparent one in (206)a that
requires cliticization. 1 st /2 nd person datives again remain to be investigated properly,
but appear to prefer or require cliticization far more forcefully.
(206) Bien sûr que je connais bien ton copaini.
Of course I know your friendi well.
a. Je luii ai été présenté par Ricardo lui-même.
b. % Je ai été présenté à luii par Ricardo lui-même.
I him.Di have been introduced to himi by Ricardo himself.
(207) a. Vous lui serez présenté (par Philippe).
b. ?*Vous serez présenté à elle (par Philippe).
You her.D will.be introduced to her by Philippe
(Postal 1990: 123)
It is not clear to me what to make of these patterns. Postal collapses the reduced
relatives with the PCC repair, and the theory developed here in chapter 5 could be
extended in this fashion by positing a Case problem in them. Yet the hints of the
role of person and animacy of the dative point perhaps rather to the dative-locative
alternations of French verbs like répondre 'respond' discussed in section 4.2 (note
57 and text apposite). It may be that in some grammars, the derivation of opaque
past participles selects locatives where the verb selects datives, partially according
to person/animacy, analogously to the coding switch in English thank you vs.
thankful to you (cf. perhaps for nouns Kayne 1975: 186). 90
4.6.6 Coordination and modification
A clitic cannot participate in a coordination or modification structure, because
it can neither cliticize in it, nor move out of it as a strong island, (208).
90 See Grevisse and Goosse (2008: 662b4°) for apparent à + strong pronoun dative arguments of
nouns, adjectives, participles. Most involve either focus, as in comparison, or uses now strictly
literary that hark back to an older French where the Cliticization Requirement does not hold of
datives (Zink 1997: 273-285): un cheval à lui inconnu 'a horse to him unknown'. Distinct are adnominal
à-phrases, un copain à moi 'a friend to me.D (= of mine) ', un gâteau à framboises 'a
cake to (=with) raspberries', which are full PPs with no Cliticization Requirement.