Word order in French and the influence of topic and focus

Abstract

In classical generative syntactic theory (the Principles and Parameters framework), French figures among the languages for which it has been argued that the basic way of ordering words does not reflect functional, pragmatic or discourse-informational properties such as topic and focus. In line with some more recent generative approaches that accept at least some interaction with these notions, we argue that this classical view is indeed partially incorrect because there are situations in which syntactic theory proposes word order optionality and therefore is in fact indeterminate. With respect to regular full nominal subjects, a syntactically free choice between a postverbal position and a preverbal one has been proposed for a certain array of embedded clauses. Out of these, we singled out relative clauses and subjunctive clauses for further scrutiny, i.e. cases like Le roman qu'a crit Paul / que Paul a crit (relatives) and Je veux que parte Paul / que Paul parte (subjunctives). In this paper we show that the position of the subject in these constructions should be determined by taking into account the functional/pragmatic notions of topic and focus. In particular, we demonstrate that the preverbal position calls for a Topic and the postverbal position for a Focus. However, as the array of constructions for which this position is defended, is in principle limited, we also express a view on the proper balance between the syntactic primitives and the functional ones; we suggest that topic/focus arrangement plays an important role when syntax is indeterminate.