L' « autre » de : une tête quantificationnelle ?

Abstract

Aafke Hulk : L'« autre » de, une tête quantificationnelle ? In this article we consider the three following constructions, containing each the non-prepositional element de followed by an AP or an NP : (1) de chaud, il y a deux pizzas (2) j'ai pris la tienne, de voiture (3) j'ai beaucoup bu de lait We will show that semantically these constructions involve an intersection or a partition of domains. The NP/AN expresses a « virtual » domain of reference, which is linked to another element in the sentence that represents either the extension of the reference domain or a specimen of its class. We will translate this interpretation in syntactic terms by postulating the hypothesis that de in these constructions is the quantificational head of a functional projection that takes an AP or NP as its internal argument and an empty operator in its specifier position. We will demonstrate that if we adopt such a structure, general licensing principles of generative grammar predict the (partially similar) distribution of these constructions.