Propriétés configurationnelles et contraintes aspectuelles: Un ça objet déficient

Abstract

This paper argues that the feature specification of a Swiss French deficient ça accounts for its syntactic distribution. Contrary to the ordinary accusative clitics le, la, les, this pronominal form lacks number, gender and Case feature, but has a temporal-aspectual locative feature. The arguments that support ça's caselessness are based on the following diagnostic: 1. (i) the impossibility of doubling the deficient ça, 2. (ii) the impossibility of ça being an enclitic and 3. (iii) its interaction with topicalisation and right dislocation which differs from what can be observed with ordinary clitics in this context. Another distinction in the feature make-up of ça vs. ordinary clitics is the ambiguous categorical status of ça as both D and DP. As a result of its feature composition, ça requires geric event quantification. This interpretation is always available with transitive eventive verbs but with unaccusatives and transitive statives, the reading is blocked in the present tense. It is demonstrated that the aspectual non-ambiguity of the Swiss French deficient ça, i.e. the fact that it can only appear in contexts of generic event quantification, is responsible for ungrammatical sequences such as ∗Je ça aime (‘I that like’) in this grammar.