NP subject inversion in French: two types, two configurations

• Published in: Lingua Vol. 116; no. 4; pp. 424 - 461
• Main Author: Lahousse, Karen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.04.2006; Elsevier Science
• Subjects: Descriptive studies and applied theories; Floating quantifiers; Focus; French; Information Structure; Linguistics; NP subject inversion; Semantics Discourse Relationship; Subject; Syntactic Structures; Syntax; Syntax Semantics Relationship; Topic; Word Order; Floating quantifiers; NP subject inversion; French; Word order; Topic; Focus; Generative syntax; Inversion
• ISSN: 0024-3841; 1872-6135
• DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2004.08.020

This paper deals with NP subject inversion in French. It is defended that the distinction generative linguists make between unaccusative inversion and stylistic inversion (i.e. inversion in extraction contexts) is not tenable. Instead, it is shown that unaccusative inversion and stylistic inversion have the same syntactic properties and the same structural analysis, and are instances of one inversion-configuration: genuine inversion. In addition, it is argued that, besides genuine inversion, there exists another type of inversion in French: focus inversion. It is shown that genuine inversion and focus inversion not only differ with respect to their distribution, but also with respect to the interpretation and the discourse-status of the postverbal subject and the verb phrase, the position of floating quantifiers and the relative position of the postverbal subject and complements and adjuncts. These data lead to the conclusion that genuine VS and focus VS have a different structural analysis, and, hence, can be considered as two distinct inversion-configurations.