The specifier–head relationship: negation and French subject proforms

Rowlett, P 2007, 'The specifier–head relationship: negation and French subject proforms' , Transactions of the Philological Society, 105 (3) , pp. 339-364.

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Abstract

This article1 and the three others in this thematic collection are about heads and specifiers, the relationship between them, and how this relationship can change over time. A theme which emerges is the notion that the spec(ifier)–head relationship is cyclic, in other words, the synchronic relationship between the head and its specifier within a given phrase in a given language can be characterised as a location at a particular point on a cycle, while the diachronic development of the relationship can be seen as a directional stepwise shift around that cycle. The article is organised as follows. Section 2 introduces the theoretical framework. Section 3.1 sketches a well-known diachronic phenomenon – the history of sentential negation – which readily lends itself to an analysis in terms of a cyclic spec–head relationship, and shows how the stages in the cycle have been characterised theoretically. Section 3.2 considers another set of data − pre- and postverbal subject proforms in French − which is similarly suitable for such an approach. Section 4, finally, introduces the three other contributions to the collection.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Special issue: 'The specifier-head relationship'
Themes:	Subjects / Themes > P Language and Literature > PB Modern languages. Celtic languages > PB0001 Modern languages Subjects / Themes > D History General and Old World > DC France Subjects / Themes > P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics Memory, Text and Place
Schools:	Schools > School of Humanities, Languages & Social Sciences > Centre for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics Schools > School of Humanities, Languages & Social Sciences
Journal or Publication Title:	Transactions of the Philological Society
Publisher:	Blackwell Publishing
Refereed:	Yes
ISSN:	00791636
Depositing User:	H Kenna
Date Deposited:	27 Jan 2009 12:17
Last Modified:	09 Aug 2017 04:06
URI:	http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/1357

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