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

person 'impostors' for the speaker/addressee are also immune to the restriction,
(404). Much speaker variation exists, save perhaps for metonymy. 199
261
(402) a. Si tu étais une chemise, tu te vendrais mal.
If you were a shirt, you se would.sell badly.
(French, Postal 1989: 105, citing Y.-C. Morin p.c.; % )
b. Je me range n'importe où, je me transporte facilement, je vous suis indispensable.
I can be stowed anywhere, I transport easily, I am indispensable to
you. (Suitcase speaking in an advertisement.)
(French, Zribi-Hertz 1982: 363; % )
c. Vous allez voir, je me transporte facilement, je suis la perle de paralytiques.
You will see, I transport easily, I am the pearl of paralytics. (A
wounded person to her rescuers.)
(French, Zribi-Hertz 1982: 365; % )
(403) Nous ne nous vendrons jamais.
We will never sell. (i.e. Our writings will never sell.)
(French, Sandfelt 1928: 133)
(404) a. Nous, on ne se trahis pas.
med: *One (se) does not betray us.
refl.: We do not betray ourselves.
b. Votre serviteur ne se trahit pas.
med.: One does not betray your servant (i.e. yours truly).
refl.: Your servant (i.e. yours truly) does not betray himself.
c. Bibi ne se trahit pas.
med.: One does not betray Bibi (i.e. 'number one').
refl.: Bibi ('number one') does not betray himself.
(French, mediopassives from Postal 1989: 140f. note 1)
These exceptions to the 1 st /2 nd person restriction do not reduce to the general
factors that govern the goodness of mediopassives. Zribi-Hertz (2009) argues that
mediopassives are often blocked because of a preference for reflexive and anticausative
readings on the one hand, and on the other for interpreting a DP in [Spec,
TP] as the agent of a transitive. These preferences may be overridden by forcing
the DP in [Spec, TP] to be interpreted as the object, for instances by selectional restrictions,
and by indicating the presence of a distinct silent agent, for instance by
agent-oriented adjuncts and instruments. These play a role in all the foregoing
good sentences. However, they are of no help with in (400) or (401).
The explanation is also not to be found in the cessation of the "centre of consciousness"
by the speaker/addressee to the impersonal agent in (402)c (Zribi-
Hertz 1982: 364f.). The elements that depend on the "centre of consciousness"
199 Postal (1989: 104) reports (402)c to be "extremely strained' beside the counterfactual and
dream contexts, but some find the former easy, and some find the latter quite difficult.