Journal article
A syntactic account of auxiliary selection in French
- Abstract:
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This article presents a modern theoretical approach to auxiliary selection in Standard European French. Assuming that have and be are allomorphs spelling out the functional head vAux, it argues that the person feature identity of vAux plays a central role in determining auxiliary choice: be is inserted when T and vAux share the same person feature identity, and when identity differs, have obtains. Crucially, and unlike most analyses in the literature, this simple proposal provides a unified account of auxiliary selection for unaccusatives, transitives, and reflexive verbs. It explains why reflexive transitives pattern with unaccusatives, and as a result, the analysis challenges the view that auxiliary selection is sensitive to argument structure. A key assumption here is that have functions as the elsewhere auxiliary.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.4MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1515/probus-2024-0005
Authors
- Publisher:
- De Gruyter
- Journal:
- Probus More from this journal
- Volume:
- 37
- Issue:
- 2
- Pages:
- 163–197
- Publication date:
- 2025-03-25
- Acceptance date:
- 2025-03-10
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1613-4079
- ISSN:
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0921-4771
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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2098094
- Local pid:
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pubs:2098094
- Deposit date:
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2025-03-24
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Marc Olivier
- Copyright date:
- 2025
- Rights statement:
- © 2025 the author(s), published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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