Acta Linguistica Hungarica
Volume/Issue:
Volume 63: Issue 2
French “quantifiers” in questions: interface strategies
Author:
Lena Baunaz Ghent University/FWO

Search for other papers by Lena Baunaz in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed Close
Pages:
125–168
Online Publication Date:
Jun 2016
Publication Date:
01 Jun 2016
Article Category:
Research Article
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1556/064.2016.63.2.1
Keywords:
nanosyntax; prosody; existential presupposition; Relativized Minimality; quantifiers
Full access

Building on an experimental study, I show that homophonous wh-phrases like qui ‘who’ in French correlate with prosodic differences when specificity and partitivity come into play, something not found with bare Universal Quantifiers like chacun ‘each’ and tous ‘all’. Rather than homophony I claim that these wh-phrases are syncretic. I show that (a) wh-phrases and bare Universal Quantifiers are complex phrases, lexicalizing structures of different sizes; (b) partitivity and specificity are syntactic features. This last claim is supported by intervention effects: the interventions observed with negative and scope islands with wh-phrases in-situ are accounted for in terms of a feature-based Relativized Minimality (Starke 2001; Rizzi 2004).

  • Adli, Aria . 2006. French wh-in-situ questions and syntactic optionality: Evidence from three data types. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 25. 163–203.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Baunaz, Lena . 2005. The syntax and semantics of wh in-situ and existentials: The case of French. Leiden Working Papers in Linguistics 2. 1–27.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Baunaz, Lena . 2008. Floating quantifiers: French universal quantifiers and N-words. Rivista di Grammatica Generativa 33. 25–42.

  • Baunaz, Lena . 2011. The grammar of French quantification. Heidelberg: Springer.

  • Baunaz, Lena . 2015. On the various sizes of complementizers. Probus 27. 193–236.

  • Baunaz, Lena and Eric Lander. submitteda. The basics of Nanosyntax.

  • Baunaz, Lena and Eric Lander. submittedb. Syncretisms with nominal complementizers.

  • Baunaz, Lena and Cédric Patin. 2011. Prosody refers to semantic factors: Evidence from French wh-words. In E. Delais-Roussarie and H.-Y. Yoo (eds.) Actes d’IDP 2009, Paris, 9–11 septembr. 2009. Paris: Université Paris 7. 93–107.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Baunaz, Lena and Cédric Patin. 2012. Quand la prosodie et la sémantique vont de pair, le cas des mots-qu en français. In L. de Saussure and A. Rihs (eds.) Etudes de sémantique et pragmatique françaises. Berne: Lang. 357–378.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Beghelli, Filippo and Tim Stowell. 1997. Distributivity and negation: The syntax of EACH and EVERY. In A. Szabolcsi (ed.) Ways of scope taking (SLAP 65). Dordrecht: Kluwer. 349–408.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Beyssade, Claire, Elisabeth Delais-Roussarie, Jenny Doetjes, Jean-Marie Marandin and Anne Rialland. 2004. Prosody and information in French. In F. Corblin and H. de Swart (eds.) Handbook of French semantics. Stanford: CSLI. 477–499.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Boeckx, Cédric . 1999. Decomposing french Questions. In J. Alexander, N. Han and M. M. Fox (eds.) University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 6.1, Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. 69–80.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Boeckx, Cédric . 2003. French wh-in-situ interrogatives as (c)overt clefts. Ms. Harvard University.

  • Boškovic, Željko . 2000. Second position cliticization: Syntax and/or phonology? In F. Beukema and M. den Dikken (eds.) Clitic phenomena in European languages. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 77–119.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Caha, Pavel . 2009. The nanosyntax of case. Doctoral dissertation. University of Tromsø.

  • Chang, Lisa . 1997. Wh-in situ in French. Ma thesis. University of British Colombia.

  • Cheng, Lisa and Johan Rooryck. 2000. Licensing wh-in-situ. Syntax 3. 1–19.

  • Cinque, Guglielmo and Luigi Rizzi. 2010. The cartography of syntactic structures. In B. Heine and H. Narrog (eds.) The Oxford handbook of linguistic analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 51–65.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Déprez, Viviane, Kristen Syrett and Shigeto Kawahara. 2012. Interfacing information and prosody: French in situ questions. In I. Franco, S. Lusini and A. Saab (eds.) Romance languages and linguistic theor. 2010. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 135–154.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Déprez, Viviane, Kristen Syrett and Shigeto Kawahara. 2013. The interaction of syntax, prosody, and discourse in licensing French wh-in-situ questions. Lingua 124. 4–19.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Diesing, Molly . 1992. Indefinites. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

  • Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen and Claire Beyssade. 2004. Définir les indéfinis. Paris: Éditions CNRS.

  • Doetjes, Jenny . 1997. Quantifiers and selection. On the distribution of quantifying expressions in French, Dutch and English. Doctoral dissertation. HIL, Leiden University.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Enç, Mürvet . 1991. The semantics of specificity. Linguistic Inquiry 22. 1–25.

  • Fitzpatrick, Justin Michael . 2006. Syntactic and semantic routes to floating quantification. Doctoral dissertation. MIT.

  • Fodor, Janet Dean and Ivan Sag. 1982. Referential and quantificational indefinites. Linguistics and Philosophy 5. 355–398.

  • Giannakidou, Anastasia . 2006. N-words and negative concord. In M. Everaert and H. van Riemsdijk (eds.) The Blackwell companion to syntax. Malden, MA & Oxford: Blackwell. 327–391.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Grammont, Maurice . 1894. La loi des trois consonnes. Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 8. 53–90.

  • Haegeman, Liliane and Barbara Ürögdi. 2010. Referential CPs and DPs: An operator movement account. Theoretical Linguistics 36. 111–152.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Hamlaoui, Fatima . 2009. La focalization à l’interface de la syntaxe et de la phonologie: Le cas du français dans une perspective typologique. Doctoral dissertation. Université Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Heim, Irene . 1982. The semantics of definite and indefinite noun phrases. Doctoral dissertation. University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Horn, Laurence . 1997. All John’s children are as bald as the King of France: Existential import and the geometry of opposition. Pepers from the Regional Meetings of the Chicago Linguistics Society 33. 155–179.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Kayne, Richard S . 1975. French syntax: The transformational cycle. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

  • Lipták, Anikó . 2001. On the syntax of wh-items in Hungarian. Doctoral dissertation. LOT, Leiden.

  • Mathieu, Eric . 2002. The syntax of non-canonical quantification: A comparative study. Doctoral dissertation. UCL.

  • Mathieu, Eric . 2004. The mapping of form and interpretation: The case of optional whmovement in French. Lingua 114. 1090–1132.

  • Milsark, Gary Lee . 1974. Existential sentences in English. New York & London: Garland.

  • Obenauer, Hans-Georg . 1994. Aspects de la syntaxe A-barre: Effets d’intervention et mouvements des quantifeurs. Doctoral dissertation. Université de Paris VIII.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Oiry, Magda . 2011. A case of true optionality: Wh-in-situ patterns like long movement in French. Linguistic Analysis 37. 112–136.

  • Pantcheva, Marina . 2011. Decomposing path: The nanosyntax of directional expressions. Doctoral dissertation. University of Tromsø.

  • Pesetsky, David . 1987. Wh-in-situ: Movement and unselective binding. In E. Reuland and A. G. B. ter Meulen (eds.) The representation of (in)definiteness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 98–129.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Post, Brechtje . 2000. Tonal and phrasal structures in French intonation. Doctoral dissertation. University of Nimègue. Thesus, La Haye.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Puskás, Genoveva . 2002. Floating quantifiers: What they can tell us about the syntax and semantics of quantifiers. GG@G 3. 105–128.

  • Rizzi, Luigi . 2004. Locality and left periphery. In A. Belletti (ed.) Structures and beyond: The cartography of syntactic structures 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 223–251.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Rizzi, Luigi . 2013. Syntactic cartography and the syntacticisation of scope-discourse semantics. In A. Reboul (ed.) Mind, values and metaphysics: Philosophical papers dedicated to Kevin Mulligan. Springer: Dordrecht. 517–533.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Rooryck, Johan . 2000. Configurations of sentential complementation: Perspectives from Romance languages. London: Routledge.

  • Sportiche, Dominique . 1988. A theory of floating quantifiers and its corollaries for constituent structure. Linguistic Inquiry 19. 425–449.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Starke, Michal . 2001. Move dissolves into Merge: A theory of locality. Doctoral dissertation. University of Geneva.

  • Starke, Michal . 2009. Nanosyntax: A short primer to a new approach to language. Nordlyd 36. 2–6.

  • Starke, Michal . 2011. Towards an elegant solution to language variation: Variation reduces to the size of lexically stored trees. Ms. Barcelona.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

  • Starke, Michal . 2013. Auxiliaries and structural gaps: Current issues in Nanosyntax. Lecture series presented at CRISSP, Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Collapse
  • Expand
Cover Acta Linguistica Hungarica
Acta Linguistica Hungarica
Print ISSN:
1216-8076
Online ISSN:
1588-2624

Editors

Editor(s)-in-Chief: Katalin É. Kiss,
Ferenc Kiefer

Editor: Éva Dékány

Technical Editor: Zoltán G. Kiss

Review Editor: Beáta Gyuris

Editorial Board

  • Anne Abeillé
  • Željko Bošković
  • Marcel den Dikken
  • Hans-Martin Gärtner
  • Elly van Gelderen
  • Anders Holmberg
  • Katarzyna Jaszczolt
  • István Kenesei
  • Anikó Lipták
  • Katalin Mády
  • Gereon Müller
  • Csaba Pléh
  • Giampaolo Salvi
  • Irina Sekerina
  • Péter Siptár
  • Gregory Stump
  • Peter Svenonius
  • Anne Tamm
  • Akira Watanabe
  • Jeroen van de Weijer

Acta Linguistica Academica
Address: Benczúr u. 33. HU–1068 Budapest, Hungary
Phone: (+36 1) 351 0413; (+36 1) 321 4830 ext. 154
Fax: (36 1) 322 9297
E-mail: ala@nytud.mta.hu

Indexing and Abstracting Services:

  • Arts and Humanities Citation Index
  • Bibliographie Linguistique/Linguistic Bibliography
  • International Bibliographies IBZ and IBR
  • Linguistics Abstracts
  • Linguistics and Language Behaviour Abstracts
  • MLA International Bibliography
  • SCOPUS
  • Social Science Citation Index
  • LinguisList

 

Acta Linguistica Hungarica
Language English
Size  
Year of
Foundation		 1951
Publication
Programme		 changed title
Volumes
per Year		  
Issues
per Year		  
Founder Magyar Tudományos Akadémia  
Founder's
Address		 H-1051 Budapest, Hungary, Széchenyi István tér 9.
Publisher Akadémiai Kiadó
Publisher's
Address		 H-1117 Budapest, Hungary 1516 Budapest, PO Box 245.
Responsible
Publisher		 Chief Executive Officer, Akadémiai Kiadó
ISSN 1216-8076 (Print)
ISSN 1588-2624 (Online)

Monthly Content Usage

Abstract Views Full Text Views PDF Downloads
Apr 2024 0 44 4
May 2024 0 13 2
Jun 2024 0 12 2
Jul 2024 0 23 7
Aug 2024 0 22 7
Sep 2024 0 21 1
Oct 2024 0 3 1