Status of subordinate clause items in Medieval French

Salvesen (2014) analyses the role of the French complementizer que with respect to the left periphery. This analysis is theoretically based on Kayne (1976), who suggests that, in finite embedded clauses, que is present in the COMP head or C⁰, where, in Standard French, it is overtly realized in all embedded finite clauses except in relative and interrogative clauses.

Accordingly, the overt realization in the latter two is blocked by a variant of the Doubly-filled-COMP-filter, which is active in Standard French but not in some vernacular varieties of French where que is overtly realized after the relative clause item (cf. Salvesen 2014: 51). Salvesen (2014) concludes that there are different complementizer types in Old French. First, if there is no other element in the sentence to be assumed to be in the left periphery, it is a case of a non-split CP, hence there is only a projection composed of a head containing the complementizer and its specifieras can be seen in (25) taken from Salvesen (2014: 74).

(25) Non-split CP

[Force/FinP[Force/Fin° que]]

Second, if a split CP is activated, Salvesen (2014: 74) assumes a chain of complementizers as in (26) adapted here to host a focus under FocP¹²⁶, where the complementizer is merged under Fin⁰ and then cyclically moved to Force⁰.The head-movement of the complementizer allows to merge material to the specifier of the respective head, as, for instance, fronting of a focus to FocP.

(26) Split CP

[ForceP [Force° quei [FocP Focus [Foc° quei [FinP [Fin° quei ]]]]]]

The diachronic data that Salvesen (2014) takes into account corresponds, as she shows, to findings of Roehrs and Labelle (2003) in acquisitional data. In both groups, constructions are attested where either the complementizer is not in the canonical place as in Standard French (27) or it is doubled; (28) taken from Salvesen (2014: 56).

(27) Il s’est aperçu __ la porte que elle était ouverte He REFL.is noticed __ the doori COMP shei was open

‘He noticed the door that it was open’ (five-year-old child)

(28) Ils savaient pas que leur maman qu’elle était rentrée They knew not COMP their mummy COMP.she had come home

‘They didn’t know that their mummy that she had come home.’ (six-year-old child)

Based on Nunes’s (2004) theory of chains, Salvesen (2014) assumes that in Old French and in acquisitional data only the head and the copies can be phonetically realized but not the foot, i.e.

the complementizer in Fin⁰. This is however not the case in Standard French, where, according to Salvesen (2014), only the head of the chain can be overtly realized, though the foot is situated as well in Fin⁰.

Third, she observes that for some classes of matrix verbs (enunciative, cognitive, semi-factive or volitional) the omission of the complementizer is possible in the embedded clauses and that these as well as their counterparts with an overt complementizer regularly exhibit V2. These observations lead her to the conclusion that for the above-mentioned matrix verbs the

126 Salvesen’s (2014) example exemplifies the structure for a topic.

complementizer is merged directly under Force⁰, leaving Fin⁰ accessible to the finite verb (29) taken from Salvesen (2014: 74).

(29) Matrix verbs being enunciative, cognitive, semi-factive or volitional [ForceP [Force° que [FinP [Fin° ø]]]]

This means that in Medieval French, a split CP can be assumed for que as a complementizer.

The exact position of the overtly realized copy of the complementizer in the derivation can be defined with respect to the position of the element(s) that activate(s) the left periphery.

However, regarding relative clause items, Salvesen (2014) does not give a clear answer since she treats relative clause items along the lines of Kayne (1976) as being hosted by a specifier within the CP. Hence the question whether the assumed combination of the relative clause item and silent complementizer in a C head prevents the splitting of the CP and thus results in a structure as in (25) remains unsolved. In a next step, it is, therefore, necessary to more precisely look at the nature that is attributed to French relative clause items, especially to qui.

Recall that, with regard to finite relative clauses, Modern French has two paradigms of subject and direct object relative clause items. On the one hand, the variants of lequel, on the other hand, qui, que, quoi and dont. Sportiche (2011: 86) gives an overview over the basic distribution of these relative clause items, as adopted in table 1.¹²⁷

Qui Que quoi /lequel/

+b¹²⁸ -b +b -b +b -b +b -b

tensed free relatives + + ? - - + - -

other relatives + + ? - - + - +

Table 1. Distribution of French relative clause items

Sportiche (2011) distinguishes between bare (+b) and non-bare (-b) – for example as an object of a preposition – environments of the pronouns. He observes that the status of que is unclear because of the homonymy with the complementizer que. Since it appears only in bare contexts, it could be analysed as a complementizer or as a relative clause item.

127 The first two lines of Sportiche’s (2011: 86) table on tensed and in-situ interrogatives are removed above, since they are not of interest to the present work.

128 Bare qui occurs as a subject relative clause item with human and non-human heads

Kayne (1976) considers qui to be an allomorph of the complementizer que and supposes that the complementary distribution of qui and que is related to subject extraction: here are examples in (30) and (31).

(30) À qui crois-tu que/*qui Marie parle?

To whom think.you que/qui Marie speaks

‘To whom do you think that Mary speaks?’

(31) Qui crois-tu qui/*que parle à Marie?

Who think.you qui/que speaks to Mary

‘Who do you think that speaks to Mary?

He grounds his analysis on the following claims¹²⁹:

− All embedded tensed sentences in French begin with que except in embedded interrogatives and relatives where a wh-item must be used in the CP.

− In French restrictive relative clauses, overt DPs (but not PP) are prohibited in COMP.

The latter explains the ungrammaticality of /lequel/ and quoi in bare restrictive environments, since Kayne (1976) assumes que to be the canonical French complementizer and qui to be its variant in cases of subject extraction. Both are insensitive to the [+/-human] character of the antecedent head. Hence, for Kayne (1976), there are two homonymous forms of qui: the qui-variant of the complementizer que and the [+human] qui that can be found in non-bare relative contexts. Kayne’s article (1976) had considerable impact and was developed by Rizzi (1990), Rooryck (2000), Taraldsen (2001, 2002) and Rizzi and Shlonsky (2007) among others. For the present purposes, only Taraldsen (2002) and Rizzi and Shlonsky (2007) are discussed in detail, since these include the previous approaches.

On grounds of a similar alternation in Vallader between cha and chi and based on the observation that chi and Vallader expletive i share a morphophonemic property, Taraldsen (2002) suggests that Vallader chi is the contracted form of the complementizer cha and i and accordingly analyses French qui to be composed of the complementizer que and an expletive i.

Taraldsen (2002) takes both i in Vallader and in French to have evolved from Latin id that has

129 For a detailed justification of both claims cf. Kayne (1976: 255-259).

lost its person, number and gender features in the transition from the 3 to the 2 gender system.

According to Taraldsen (2002)¹³⁰, expletive i differs from French expletive il in three respects:

first, there isn’t any occurrence of i bearing a final l; second, there is no subject-verb-agreement with respect to person or number; third, it doesn’t require an indefinite associate as expletive il does. The distribution of expletive i to subject extraction contexts and colloquial (t)i complex inversion in Quebec French follows, as Taraldsen (2002) suggests, from its impoverished morphology lacking gender and number features. Accordingly, these don’t allow to check the uninterpretable number feature in finite I that needs to be checked before Spell-Out. In Vallader, in contrast to French, the checking can be performed by a pre-Spell-out pure feature movement of the number feature of a postverbal subject DP licensing (32), taken from Taraldsen (2002:

31), his (8). A corresponding French example of (32) is ungrammatical since pure feature movement is not available in French (33), cf. Taraldsen (2002: 32).

(32) I turnaran quei temps docts.

It will.return.PL those times learned (33) *I sont arrivées ses copines.

It are arrived her friends

Rizzi and Shlonsky (2007) are concerned with the que and qui alternation in conjunction with broader reflections on subject extraction. In order to explain different instances of subject-object asymmetries, they postulate the existence of a functional subject projection SubjP that requires the attraction of a “nominal” to its specifier in order to determine a subject-predicate-articulation and to satisfy the Subject Criterion. Since they refer to Rizzi (2006) for this idea and to his conception of criterial freezing – i.e. a phrase that satisfies a criterion is frozen in place and cannot move further to a distinct criterial position – they need to explain how grammatical subject extraction contexts (and, hence, French subject extraction with qui) are licensed. They follow Taraldsen (2001) in splitting up qui into the complementizer que and an expletive i that they define along the lines of Taraldsen (2002) mentioned above. According to them, i can be thought as clitic-like pronominal element that is a particular nominal realization of the Fin⁰ head and externally merged to the latter. The relative operator cannot be moved to Spec,SubjP in order to satisfy the Subject Criterion as it would be frozen in place and therefore

130 See also Rizzi and Shlonsky (2007). Compare the discussion below.

would not be able to satisfy the criterial position for relative operators in the left periphery.

Hence, Rizzi and Shlonsky (2007) generally suggest the characterization of the criterial configuration and propose a locally based approach, i.e. a configuration characterized by local c-command. In order to fulfil the requirements of the Subject Criterion, after merging the Subj°,Fin° selected by the nominal, –i is merged. They further assume that the relative operator moves through Spec,FinP in order to validate the number features of i, and to exclude the selection of i when no A’-movement to the left periphery takes place. Finally, they address the question of contrast as in (34), cf. Rizzi and Shlonsky (2007: 139), and of how both elements can satisfy the Subject Criterion.

(34) a. L’homme qui, la semaine prochaine, partira en Italie ‘The man who, next week, will leave to Italy.’

b. * Il, la semaine prochaine, partira en Italie ‘He, next week, will leave to Italy.’

c. La semaine prochaine, il partira en Italie ‘Next week, he will leave to Italy.’

d. Jean, la semaine prochaine, partira en Italie ‘Jean, next week, will leave to Italy.’

To account for the contrast between (34b) and (34a)/(34d), Rizzi and Shlonsky (2007) propose the idea of a subfield in between the CP field and the IP field, where the two heads Subj⁰ and Mod^{0 131} are freely ordered (35), cf. Rizzi and Shlonsky (2007: 140), their (58).

(35) a. Subj [AdvP Mod [Agr . . .]]

b. AdvP Mod [Subj [Agr . . .]]

Hence, for (34b), in order to be adjacent to Agr, the appropriate configuration would be (35a), while (34a) and (34d) would be derived according to (35b).

To sum up the proposals emanating from Kayne (1976), both Taraldsen (2002) and Rizzi and Shlonsky (2007) assume that the split up of qui into a complementizer que and an expletive i implies that nothing can intervene between the two components. Hence, they implicitly propose that the left periphery cannot be activated in French subject extraction contexts.

131 The modifier head Mod⁰ can attract to its specifier position a highlighted adverbial such as la semaine prochaine.

An alternative proposal is made by Sportiche (2011). He suggests the existence of two paradigms of relative pronouns in French along the lines of Cardinaletti and Starke’s (1999) proposal for personal pronouns. Accordingly, the French personal pronoun system is split up in a strong and a weak paradigm, the system itself being organized according to three dimensions:

case, the [+/- human] and the strong/weak distinction. Sportiche (2011) examines the properties of bare relative pronouns (qui, que, dont and où) and concludes that they correspond to the properties that Cardinaletti and Starke (1999) attribute to weak forms: a) no [+/- human]

distinction, b) must occur in the CP, c) show optional phonological closeness, i.e. elision, liaison or change to a glide. Therefore, he assumes the existence of a weak paradigm of relative pronouns that exhibits neutralization of the [+/- human] distinction but is sensitive to case. Here are the corresponding parts of Sportiche’s (2011: 97) table 4.

Nom Acc Dat Gen Loc Elative Temp Manner Cause

strong [+h] qui qui à qui de qui - - - - -

strong [-h] quoi quoi à quoi de quoi où d’où quand comment pourquoi

weak [0h] qui que - dont où dont où dont %ø

Table 2. Tensed restrictive relative clause item system¹³²

Sportiche’s (2011) approach can be subsumed as a simple description of the morpho-syntax of French relative clause items system without a special rule for que and qui in case of subject extraction. He explains the restricted distribution of bare /lequel/, considered to be strong relative clause items, and other strong relative clause items to be grounded in a competition between bare forms according to which the weak, the less specified form, is systematically favoured if the syntactic context allows it.

The further question arises: what status and which position do weak relative clause items have?

Sportiche (2011) discusses two options without overtly preferring one to the other. On the one hand, weak forms could be a combination of a head (or heads) in the C system and pronominal properties, since he observes a link between available weak forms and the finiteness of the clause. On the other hand, weak forms could be considered to be relative pronouns. This would

132 Explanations:

− The second column represents the [+/- h(uman)] distinction with 0h being unspecified for [human].

− Italics indicate that the form is not allowed to occur bare.

− A - denotes that the corresponding form doesn’t exist.

− An ø corresponds to a silent form.

− A % indicates that the form is allowed in certain colloquial registers.

explain the common inventory of the weak relative and the weak interrogative system. With respect to the position of the weak relative clause items within the left periphery, Sportiche (2011) suggests, based on Braningan (1992), that subject relative pronouns and all weak relative pronouns occupy a peripheral position lower than strong wh-phrases and clitic-left-dislocated elements. (5) is readopted in (36) and the two possible host projections of relative clause items are introduced:

(36) [ForceP {Topic [FrameP* [ThemeP* [Rci1P {Focus [ContrastFocP* [Rci2P [NInformFocP [VerumFocP [FinP

[TP ]]]]]]}]]]}]

With respect to the accessibility of the left periphery in relative clauses, all depends on another question, namely: how low means lower? The relative clause items could be merged in a projection above the focus field but below the topic field, hence, this corresponds to the position that Ledgeway (2012) suggests for the Int(errogative) projection. To choose an IntP as host for the weak relative clause items would be in conformity with the above observed common inventory of weak interrogative and weak relative pronouns. However, concerning the exact position, Benincà (2006), in contrast, situates the IntP within the Focus field and below the first focus projection, hence, leaving only a small part of the left periphery accessible to the potential fronting of elements within relative clauses.

To sum up, for the French complementizer que, Salvesen (2014) suggests that a split CP is possible with different overt realizations in Medieval French: the complementizer can surge in a non-canonical position or may be doubled. With respect to the relative clause items, two positions can be defended: the more prominent one is to analyse relative que and qui as complementizers, respectively as a cohesion of a complementizer and an expletive element.

This implies, at least for the latter, that the CP cannot be split and that the left periphery is blocked. Sportiche’s (2011) analysis of weak relative clause items leaves a part of the CP accessible for other items depending on where the weak relative clause items are merged.

Im Dokument At the Left Edge : Fronting in Medieval French Embedded Clauses (Seite 121-128)