Right-Node Raising (RNR, Ross 1967; Chaves 2014) has been claimed to require phonological identity between the missing material and the shared element. Our corpus investigations provide examples of RNR with verb form mismatch with and without syncretism in English and French. Two acceptability experiments show that lack of phonological identity does not affect the acceptability of RNR. We argue further that RNR without phonological identity cannot be taken to be a case of cataphoric VP-ellipsis in French and that it should not be analyzed as such in English. As regards the status of RNR with verb form mismatch, two positions are available: either it is considered to be grammatical, in which case the phonological resolution principle of Pullum & Zwicky (1986) does not hold, or it is considered to be ungrammatical but repaired (or " recycled", Arregui et al. 2006; Frazier 2013). The high acceptability of cases with mismatch compared with ungrammatical controls casts doubt on the applicability of the recycling hypothesis in such cases. In order to account for the broader range of data established by our corpus and experimental results, we propose a new analysis of RNR based on lexeme identity rather than form identity.
Le français contemporain est souvent considéré comme ayant perdu l'accord de proximité (Corbett, 1991), à la dif érence d'autres langues romanes, d'où des controverses sur la place du genre féminin dans la langue (Michel, 2016 ; Viennot, 2017). Nous présentons des données tirées de grands corpus écrits (Frantext, FrWaC), sur la coordination d'articles et de noms de nombre ou genre dif érents au sein du groupe nominal. Nous montrons que l'accord de proximité est bien vivant, et même favorisé dans certains cas. Nous concluons par quelques remarques sur la place du genre féminin dans l'ordre des mots. Mots clés : résolution, accord de proximité, genre, nombre, accord, français, coordination Contemporary French is often considered to have lost closest conjunct agreement, contrary to other Romance languages (Corbett, 1991), hence recent debates about French feminine visibility (Michel, 2016; Viennot, 2017). We consider the coordination of determiners and nouns in the Noun Phrase with dif erent number or gender in large written corpora (Frantext, FrWaC). We show that closest conjunct agreement is alive and even favoured in some cases. We conclude by some remarks on gender agreement and word order.
Right-Node Raising is generally considered to impose stricter identity conditions than other kinds of ellipsis, such as VP ellipsis, according to Hankamer & Sag 1976 and Hardt 1993. In this paper, we investigate voice mismatch in French Right-Node Raising (RNR) through a corpus study and two experiments. We show that RNR with voice mismatch can be found in a written corpus (frTenTen 2012) and that many examples involve coordination of a reflexive active and a short passive form. We suggest this is because semantic contrast (here, between self and external agent) plays a role according to Hartmann (2000) and Abeillé and Mouret (2010). We ran two acceptability judgement experiments to test voice mismatch and semantic contrast. We did not find any penalty for voice mismatch with VP ellipsis but an interaction with semantic contrast. We also found an effect of semantic contrast when coordinating an active and a passive VP without participle ellipsis. We conclude that voice mismatch is acceptable with RNR and propose a Head-driven Phrase-Structure Grammar (HPSG) analysis, following Chaves (2014) and Shiraïshi et al. (2019).
Right-node raising is usually set apart from other elliptical constructions for imposing a strict identity condition between the omitted and the peripheral elements. Since Pullum & Zwicky (1986), it is assumed that only syncretic forms may resolve a feature conflict between the two conjuncts (I certainly will and you already have set the record straight. ). We present an empirical study of RNR with final verb in English and French that shows that verb mismatch does occur in corpora with and without syncretic forms, i.e. that syncretism does not appear to play a role. We present an acceptability judgement task on French that confirms this hypothesis. We therefore propose a new HPSG analysis of RNR that is based on sharing LID features and not morphophonological forms.
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