Degree fronting in Québec French and the syntactic structure of degree quantifier DPs
- Author(s): David-Étienne Bouchard 1 , Heather Burnett 2 and Daniel Valois 3
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View Affiliations Hide AffiliationsAffiliations:1 McGill University2 UCLA3 Université de Montréal
- Source: Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2009 , pp 39-54
- Publication Date November 2011
In this paper, we compare two syntactic constructions involving degree adverbs in English and Québec French: the Degree Fronting (DF) construction and the Intensification at a Distance (IAD) construction. We argue that, although they display some similar properties, these similarities are superficial. We argue that, while DF can be analyzed as involving movement, IAD cannot. We propose that the quantifiers in IAD sentences are base-generated in their surface positions, and that these syntactic positions coincide with the positions that the quantifiers occupy when they are quantifying over individuals or events. Furthermore, we argue that dialectal variation in distance quantificational structures between Standard European French and Québec French is due to differences in the semantics of degree adverbs in these dialects.
- Affiliations: 1: McGill University; 2: UCLA; 3: Université de Montréal
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