Lingvisticæ Investigationes - Volume 11, Issue 2, 1987

Cet article traite des phrases relatives restrictives attachées a un syn-tagme nominal avec déterminant indéfini en italien. Dans une première partie l'on montre que les valeurs "spécifique" et "non-spécifique" de l'article UN dépendent du temps-mode de la relative et ensuite des valeurs tempo-aspectuels du verbe de la phrase principale. L'analyse détaillée des entrées lexicales met en lumière l'existence d'au moins deux classes de verbes qui déterminent, en combinaison avec la relative et le temps-mode, des interprétations différentes de l'article UN.

Sylvie a les yeux bleus: bi-thematic constructionThe purpose of this paper is to describe the syntactic and semantic structures of the construction Sylvie a les yeux bleus. Traditionally, the verb avoir as taken in this construction is said to relate, syntactically, the NP les yeux with the adjective bleus, and that it comes under the category of verbs which take or can take a direct object NP and its complement: e.g. rendre, trouver, élire, appeler, etc.By using the ne... que test, we show that the role of avoir is to bring Sylvie and les yeux (but not les yeux and bleus!) into syntactic relation, and that, therefore, the sentence elle a les cheveux longs is syntactically different from the sentence elle porte les cheveux longs, the former being composed of two clauses, the latter of one clause.On the other hand, our semantic analysis shows that the construction Sylvie a les yeux bleus is a bi-thematic construction, the primary theme being Sylvie, the secondary theme les yeux, and that, from this point of view, the constructions j'ai la tête qui tourne and il a sa fille mariée can also be considered as bi-thematic constructions.

La discussion porte sur la caractérisation syntaxique et sémantique de quatre types de groupes nominaux adverbiaux complémentaires d'adverbes en -ment, ou adverbes généralisés. La double réduction des noms tête dans une construction verbale et dans une construction adjectivale associée les caractérise d'une part comme des noms appropriés intermédiaires entre les deux mots prédicatifs des constructions. Redoublés dans des discours de phrases simples coordonnées, ils sont caractérisés d'autre part comme des pivots lexicaux à partir desquels les adverbes généralisés sont dérivés par relativation. Les noms pivots d'adverbes peuvent être comparés aux verbes supports car les deux types de mots sont régulièrement associés dans les phrases simples à un groupe nominal prédicatif, un même nom pouvant d'ailleurs cumuler le statut de nom pivot et de nom supporté.

In the nineteenth century, reconstruction of syntactic relations was neglected by genetic comparative grammar, because the neo-grammarians concentrated on sound change mainly. Nowadays scholars are trying to fill the gap; but, since they encounter many theoretical problems, which some of them even believe not to be solvable, reconstruction of syntactic relations has still a long way to go. The purpose of this paper is to sort problems out, to analyse the obstacles that arise especially when reconstructing syntactic relations and to show, on the basis of Romance evidence, how these obstacles could be overcome.The fact that a reconstructed proto-language is "langue" only, never "parole," and the fact that syntactic relational features do not evolve in a regular way are the main obstacles. The means to overcome them are firstly the reconstruction of structures rather than of isolated elements, and the reconstruction of their evolution in time and space within the proto-language (provided the external history of the language family is known) and secondly, perhaps to a lesser degree, language universais and diachronic tendencies (in the absence of diachronic regularities).

This article deals with the syntactic properties of pragmatic connectives and with the relationship between their distributional and argumentative properties. Recent discourse models based on speech act theory assume that pragmatic connectives link sentences (or larger units). However, certain phrasal categories too can function as discourse units, and the set of pragmatic connectives therefore includes not only markers linking sentences provided with an illocutionary force (speech acts), but also phrases lacking an asserted illocutionary force (semi-speech acts). Moreover, many connectives either belong to the two subsets or are in complementary distribution, depending on the syntactic environment.Except for coordination, all these connectives are members of only two grammatical categories: Universal subordinators (including complementizers, subordinating conjunctions and prepositions), and modifying adverbs.Coordinate conjunctions are briefly reconsidered, and some arguments are given for restricting this class to et, ou and ni, both on pragmatic and on syntactic grounds.