Abstract

It has, at times, been claimed in the literature on Romance causatives that Faire-par embeds not a verbal infinitive but rather, a gerundive, verbal noun (for example by Guasti, 1990; Travis, 1992 and Folli and Harley, 2007). In this paper, we will show that if similar assumptions are made concerning the infinitive embedded under predicates of the Toughclass in French, a number of unexpected restrictions on French Tough-movement constructions (hereafter FTMs) discussed by Legendre (1986) follow naturally. We will also establish that, given their nominal character, FTM infinitives are closely related to retroactive gerunds in English.

Highlights

  • It has, at times, been claimed in the literature on Romance causatives that Faire-par embeds not a verbal infinitive but rather, a gerundive, verbal noun

  • It has been known for some time that while English Toughmovement constructions license unbounded dependencies and parasitic gaps, as illustrated in (1a) and (1b), FTMs cannot contain more than one infinitive and do not support parasitic gaps, as can be seen in (1c) and (1d)

  • Some problems for the NP-movement analysis. Contrasts such as (9a) versus (9b), which illustrate the fact that argument nominals but not predicate nominals can undergo Tough-movement in French, suggest that the motivation for this type of object-to-subject raising is Case

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Summary

Introduction

At times, been claimed in the literature on Romance causatives that Faire-par embeds not a verbal infinitive but rather, a gerundive, verbal noun (for example by Guasti, 1990; Travis, 1992 and Folli and Harley, 2007). We will show that if similar assumptions are made concerning the infinitive embedded under predicates of the Toughclass in French, a number of unexpected restrictions on French Tough-movement constructions (hereafter FTMs) discussed by Legendre (1986) follow naturally. We will establish that, given their nominal character, FTM infinitives are closely related to retroactive gerunds in English

Evidence for NP-movement
Some problems for the NP-movement analysis
FTM infinitivals as verbal nouns
FTM infinitivals and English retroactive gerunds

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