Humanness, pronoun types, and orphan prepositions in French
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Steffen Heidinger
Abstract
This paper is about the distribution of null and strong pronouns in French prepositional phrases in relation to the humanness of the preposition’s complement. The existing literature suggests that the mapping between pronoun type and humanness is characterized by soft complementarity, linking human complements to strong pronouns, and non-human complements to null pronouns. In the empirical coverage of the phenomenon experimental studies are still underrepresented: so far, no data on pronoun choice is available, and regarding interpretation data, the only existing study does not include null pronouns. Two experiments were conducted with the goal to fill this research gap. The results show that soft complementarity only applies to pronoun choice: human complements are typically referred to by strong pronouns, and non-human complements by null pronouns. As related to interpretation, however, both strong and null pronouns are preferably interpreted as human. We account for this asymmetry based on the general preference of pronouns to be interpreted as human unless prevented by strong constraints (as in the case of Engl. it).
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© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- In Memoriam Christian Schmitt (1944–2022)
- In Memoriam Harald Weinrich (1927–2022)
- Chronik 2022
- Humanness, pronoun types, and orphan prepositions in French
- Elaborazione e cambio linguistico: considerazioni sulle ‘lingue minori’ sull’esempio della scritturalità friulana
- The epistemic future in exported grammars: a comparison between two Italo-Romance speech communities
- Pietro Aretino e Luciano di Samosata. Paradosso e parrhesia tra parola e immagine
- Machiavellis Kriegskunst: Die Lehren des Libro dell’arte della guerra
- Buchbesprechungen – Buchanzeigen
- Wendy Ayres-Bennett/John Bellamy (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Language Standardization. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2021 (Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics). XVI+802 Seiten.
- Elissa Pustka, Französische Sprachwissenschaft. Eine Einführung, Tübingen, Narr Francke Attempto, 2022 (Narr Studienbücher). 290 Seiten.
- Considerazioni intorno a un recente contributo della critica mariniana Clizia Carminati: Tradizione, imitazione, modernità. Tasso e Marino visti dal Seicento. Pisa, ETS, 2020 (Res litteraria 18). 178 pagine.
- Jenny Haase: Vitale Mystik. Formen und Rezeptionen mystischen Schreibens in der Lyrik von Anna de Noailles, Ernestina de Champourcin und Antonia Pozzi, Berlin/Boston, De Gruyter, 2022. 545 Seiten.
- Claudia Jacobi: Mythopoétiques dantesques: une étude intermédiale sur la France, l’Espagne et l’Italie (1766–1897), Strasbourg, ELiPhi, 2021. 417 Seiten.
- Gerhard Regn: Poetik des Aufschubs. Augustinus, Dante und die antiken Klassiker in Petrarcas Canzoniere, Heidelberg, Universitätsverlag Winter, 2022 (Neues Forum für allgemeine und vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, Bd. 60). 597 Seiten.
- Aufsätze und Berichte
- The romance in Hispano-Jewish Communities (Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries)
- Citación, relaciones textuales y tradicionalidad en el discurso preeconómico español
- Perspectiva teatral y simbólica de la figura del emperador Carlos V en los dramas históricos renacentistas: de la Égloga real (1518) a la Comedia del saco de Roma (1579)
- Ziel und Zweck als Ursachen im Siglo de Oro
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- In Memoriam Christian Schmitt (1944–2022)
- In Memoriam Harald Weinrich (1927–2022)
- Chronik 2022
- Humanness, pronoun types, and orphan prepositions in French
- Elaborazione e cambio linguistico: considerazioni sulle ‘lingue minori’ sull’esempio della scritturalità friulana
- The epistemic future in exported grammars: a comparison between two Italo-Romance speech communities
- Pietro Aretino e Luciano di Samosata. Paradosso e parrhesia tra parola e immagine
- Machiavellis Kriegskunst: Die Lehren des Libro dell’arte della guerra
- Buchbesprechungen – Buchanzeigen
- Wendy Ayres-Bennett/John Bellamy (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Language Standardization. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2021 (Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics). XVI+802 Seiten.
- Elissa Pustka, Französische Sprachwissenschaft. Eine Einführung, Tübingen, Narr Francke Attempto, 2022 (Narr Studienbücher). 290 Seiten.
- Considerazioni intorno a un recente contributo della critica mariniana Clizia Carminati: Tradizione, imitazione, modernità. Tasso e Marino visti dal Seicento. Pisa, ETS, 2020 (Res litteraria 18). 178 pagine.
- Jenny Haase: Vitale Mystik. Formen und Rezeptionen mystischen Schreibens in der Lyrik von Anna de Noailles, Ernestina de Champourcin und Antonia Pozzi, Berlin/Boston, De Gruyter, 2022. 545 Seiten.
- Claudia Jacobi: Mythopoétiques dantesques: une étude intermédiale sur la France, l’Espagne et l’Italie (1766–1897), Strasbourg, ELiPhi, 2021. 417 Seiten.
- Gerhard Regn: Poetik des Aufschubs. Augustinus, Dante und die antiken Klassiker in Petrarcas Canzoniere, Heidelberg, Universitätsverlag Winter, 2022 (Neues Forum für allgemeine und vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, Bd. 60). 597 Seiten.
- Aufsätze und Berichte
- The romance in Hispano-Jewish Communities (Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries)
- Citación, relaciones textuales y tradicionalidad en el discurso preeconómico español
- Perspectiva teatral y simbólica de la figura del emperador Carlos V en los dramas históricos renacentistas: de la Égloga real (1518) a la Comedia del saco de Roma (1579)
- Ziel und Zweck als Ursachen im Siglo de Oro