Abstract
Traditional analyses of French impersonal constructions (ICs) involving the dummy il have distinguished “impersonal passive” from “extraposition of indefinite” according to whether the verbal morphology is passive or active. This paper proposes instead to distinguish ICs according to whether the predicate is unergative or not, arguing that the dummy enters as a 2 in unergative ICs, and as a 1 otherwise. In unergative ICs, passive morphology arises from advancement of the dummy from 2 to 1, while active morphology results from demotion of the postverbal nominal from 1 to 2 prior to the entrance of the dummy. In other ICs (e.g. passive and unaccusative), the postverbal nominal is neither an initial nor final 1, but nonetheless manifests subject properties. This supports an analysis in which the postverbal nominal, an initial 2, advances to 1 and is then put en chômage by the entry of a dummy 1.
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Legendre, G. French impersonal constructions. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 8, 81–128 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00205532
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00205532