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La description morphosyntaxique à l’épreuve des textes

Note sur les constructions impersonnelles pronominales de l’italien

Résumé

This paper deals with Italian impersonal constructions featured by the clitic si, such as Si è scoperto (gli untori) ‘one has found out the plague-spreaders’, Si sono scoperti (gli untori) ‘the plague-spreaders have been found out’, Si è scoperti (come untori) ‘they have been found to be plague-spreaders’, and suggests a description of them from the point of view of both their argumental configurations, and their syntactic processes. At the surface, these constructions appear to have a non-argumental, unspecified and human subject (“dummy” or “null” final subject). This subject, however, correlates with an initial function which (a) may be a subject or a direct object, (b) may belong to a transitive or intransitive level. The verb morphology reflects both the paradigmatic and the syntagmatic relationships of the final subject.

Résumé

This paper deals with Italian impersonal constructions featured by the clitic si, such as Si è scoperto (gli untori) ‘one has found out the plague-spreaders’, Si sono scoperti (gli untori) ‘the plague-spreaders have been found out’, Si è scoperti (come untori) ‘they have been found to be plague-spreaders’, and suggests a description of them from the point of view of both their argumental configurations, and their syntactic processes. At the surface, these constructions appear to have a non-argumental, unspecified and human subject (“dummy” or “null” final subject). This subject, however, correlates with an initial function which (a) may be a subject or a direct object, (b) may belong to a transitive or intransitive level. The verb morphology reflects both the paradigmatic and the syntagmatic relationships of the final subject.

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