Cover not available

In:Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 15: Selected papers from 'Going Romance' 30, Frankfurt
Edited by Ingo Feldhausen, Martin Elsig, Imme Kuchenbrandt and Mareike Neuhaus
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 15] 2019
► pp. 73–92

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Book EPUB
authorization required

Chapter 4
At the crossroads between (semi-)free relatives and indirect questions in French

 | University of Paris Diderot, LLF, Labex EFL
Published online: 9 October 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.15.04kon
Abstract
In this paper, we examine in some detail the syntactic properties of (semi-)free relatives in French and their ambiguity with indirect questions. Based on the results of an acceptability judgment task, we argue that object free relatives with a human referent and a full NP subject are ungrammatical in French. We then focus on free relatives with an inanimate referent and their ambiguity, often neglected in the literature: the ce que structure can be either a ‘semi-free relative clause’ (Rebuschi 2001) or an indirect question. We propose a reanalysis from ce que to skə, suggesting that ce que has undergone an incorporation process, parallel but not identical to the one which has occurred with o que in Portuguese.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Object extraction is not always the same: An experiment
    • 2.1Acceptability judgment task
    • 2.2English free relatives
  • 3.Back to French: ce que
  • 4.The ce que contruction: Towards an incorporation
    • 4.1The case of other Romance languages
    • 4.2The nature of que in ce que
    • 4.3Some diachronic facts
    • 4.4Towards an incorporation
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (33)
References
Abeillé, Anne, and Danièle Godard (eds). To appear. La Grande Grammaire du Français. Arles: Actes Sud.
Adli, Aria. 2006. “French wh-in-situ questions and syntactic optionality: Evidence from three data types.” Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 25 (2): 163–203. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Arsenijević, Boban. 2009. “Clausal complementation as relativization.” Lingua 119 (1): 39–50. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baker, Mark C. 1988. Incorporation: A theory of grammatical function changing. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baroni, Marco, Silvia Bernardini, Adriano Ferraresi, and Eros Zanchetta. 2009. “The WaCky wide web: a collection of very large linguistically processed web-crawled corpora.” Language resources and evaluation 43 (3): 209–226. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bouchard, Denis, and Paul Hirschbühler. 1986. “French ‘quoi’ and its clitic allomorph ‘que’.” In Studies in the Romance Languages, ed. by Carol Neidle, and Rafael Nuñez, 39–60. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan, and Jane Grimshaw. 1978. “The syntax of free relatives in English.” Linguistic inquiry 9 (3): 331–391.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cecchetto, Carlo, and Caterina Donati. 2015. (Re)labeling. Linguistic Inquiry Monographs, Vol. 70. Cambridge (MA) & London: MIT Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cecchetto, Carlo, Caterina Donati, Ingrid Konrad, and Carla Soares-Jesel. 2015. “Object relative clauses: an unexpected difference between children and adults.” Paper presented at 12th Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition (GALA), Nantes, Sept. 10–12.
Citko, Barbara. 2004. “On headed, headless, and light-headed relatives.” Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 22 (1): 95–126. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Donati, Caterina, and Carlo Cecchetto. 2011. “Relabeling heads: A unified account for relativization structures.” Linguistic Inquiry 42 (4): 519–560. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Frazier, Lyn, and Charles Clifton Jr. 1989. “Successive cyclicity in the grammar and the parser.” Language and Cognitive Processes 4 (2): 93–126. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Friedemann, Marc-Ariel. 1990. “Le pronom interrogatif que et la montée du verbe en C°.” Rivista di Grammatica Generativa 15: 123–139.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Friedmann, Naama, Adriana Belletti, and Luigi Rizzi. 2009. “Relativized Relatives: Types of Intervention in the Acquisition of A-bar Dependencies.” Lingua 119 (1): 67–88. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goldsmith, John. 1978. “Que, c’est quoi ? que, c’est QUOI.” Recherches linguistiques à Montréal 11: 1–13.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gordon, Peter, Randall Hendrick, and Marcus Johnson. 2001. “Memory interference during language processing.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 27 (6): 1411–1423.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Groos, Anneke, and Henk Van Riemsdijk. 1981. “Matching effects in free relatives: A parameter of core grammar.” In Theory of Markedness in Generative Grammar: Proceedings of the 1979 Glow Conference, ed. by Adriana Belletti, Luciana Brandi, and Luigi Rizzi, 171–216. Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard S. 1976. “French relative que.” In Current studies in Romance linguistics, ed. by Fritz Hensey and Marta Luján, 255–299. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2010. “Why isn’t this a complementizer?” In Comparisons and Contrasts, ed. by Richard S. Kayne. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
King, Jonathan, and Marcel A. Just. 1991. “Individual differences in syntactic processing: The role of working memory.” Journal of Memory and Language 30 (5): 580–602. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Manzini, Maria R., and Leonardo Savoia. 2003. “The nature of complementizers” In Rivista di Grammatica Generativa 28: 87–110.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matthieu, Eric. 2004. “The mapping of form and interpretation: the case of optional WH-movement in French.” Lingua 114 (9): 1090–1132. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Medeiros Junior, Paulo. 2016. “From [o[que]] to [o que] in Brazilian Portuguese Free Relatives: A diachronic view.” In The Morphosyntax of Portuguese and Spanish in Latin America, ed. by Mary A. Kato, and Francisco Ordoñez, 308–331. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Munaro, Nicola. 2001. “Free relatives as defective wh-elements: evidence from the North-Western Italian dialects.” In Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 1999: Selected papers from Going Romance 1999, ed. by Yves D’Hulst, Johan Rooryk, and Jan Schroten, Leiden, Dec. 9–11, 221: 281–306. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Niéger, Monique. 1975. “L’interrogation indirecte : étude diachronique.” Cahier de Linguistique 5: 1–15. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Obenauer, Hans-Georg. 1976. Etudes de syntaxe interrogative du français: quoi, combine et le complémenteur. Linguistische Arbeiten, Vol. 34. Max Niemeyer Verlag. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Patterson, Gary, and Ivano Caponigro. 2016. “The puzzling degraded status of who free relative clauses in English.” English Language & Linguistics 20 (2): 341–352. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rebuschi, Georges. 2001. “Semi-Free Relative Clauses and the DP Hypothesis: Basque Evidence and Theoretical Consequences.” In Proceedings of the Israel Association for Theoretical Linguistics, ed. by Alex Grosu, 8: 55–64. Tel Aviv University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 1990. Relativized Minimality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Roberts, Ian, and Anna Roussou. 2003. Syntactic change: A minimalist approach to grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shlonsky, Ur. 2012. “Notes on wh in situ in French.” In Functional Heads: The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, ed. by Laura Bruge, Anna Cardinaletti, Giuliana Giusti, Nicola Munaro, and Cecilia Poletto, 7: 242–252. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Traxler, Matthew J., Robin K. Morris, and Rachel E. Seely. 2002. “Processing subject and object relative clauses: Evidence from eye movements.” Journal of Memory and Language 47 (1): 69–90. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Van Riemsdijk, Henk. 2006. “Free relatives.” In The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, ed. by Martin Everaert, and Henk Van Riemsdijk, Vol. 2, 27: 336–378.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Konrad, Ingrid, Massimo Burattin, Carlo Cecchetto, Francesca Foppolo, Adrian Staub & Caterina Donati
2021. Avoiding Gaps in Romance: Evidence from Italian and French for a Structural Parsing Principle. Syntax 24:2 ► pp. 191 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue