La structure de la phrase en français et en néerlandais: Confrontation des modèles d’analyse

The description of the French sentence structure is based on the contrast between arguments and adjuncts. In order to show that this contrast is confirmed by other linguistic facts, the organization of the French sentence is compared to that of Dutch. It is showed, firstly, how the comparison of French and Dutch contributes to improve the descriptive models of sentence structure used in the two languages. Secondly, it is argued that the opposition between adjuncts and arguments in French is confirmed by their differences in behaviour when placed in the initial extra-clausal position: whereas arguments have to be resumed by a coreferential pronoun that is intonationally integrated in the clause, adjuncts are not subject to this constraint. In Dutch, by contrast, arguments and adjuncts behave in the same way, in that they are both resumed by a coreferential element. The difference between French and Dutch, finally, can be ascribed to the V2 feature of Dutch and to the specific status of the initial intra-clausal position.