Licensing Conditions of the French Reflexive Clitic

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present an excellent analysis of a complex set of grammatical characteristics of the French reflexive clitic within the framework of Chomsky(1995). When it is contained in a causative construction, the position of the reflexive clitic "se" depends on whether its antecedent NP is the main subject (causer) or the embedded one (causee). The antecedent being the main subject, "se" is cliticized in the main verb, with the causee marked by a preposition "par". On the other hand, the antecedent being the embedded subject, "se" is cliticized in the embedded verb, the causee appearing without any preposition. I will explain these properties of the reflexive clitic "se" proposing the following licensing conditions of the reflexive clitics and the causee marked by the preposition "a". (1) i) VP containing a reflexive clitic is selected by the verb "EN", which merges with the reflexive clitic morphologically. ii) The reflexive clitic is Case—checked in overt syntax. (2) Reflexive elements move to a head position to be co-indexed with a Case-checked NP which is in the minimal domain of the head. (3) "à NP", selected by a verb, is Case-checked in SPEC VP headed by a selecting V. With these assumptions, all the grammatical characteristics of "se" contained in a causative construction can be accounted for in terms of the basic concepts such as MLC and the Last Resort Condition. Furthermore, the present analysis enables us to specify the appropriate structure of the causative construction, which has long been discussed in the field of the generative grammar.