A Lexicalist Approach of Control Phenomena

• Published in: Langages (Paris) 1996-06, Vol.30 (122), p.96-122
• Main Author: Baschung, Karine
• Format: Article
• Language: fre
• ISSN: 0458-726X

Examples of obligatory & arbitrary control of French infinitives are examined to show that the configurational approaches of government & binding theory & generalized phrase structure grammar, which depend on hypotheses of proximity at the syntactic & semantic levels respectively, are inadequate to capture the heterogeneity of French control constructions. Obligatory control, which implies an embedded infinitive & forces a choice of controller from among the subcategorizations of the embedding predicate, is shown to exist in nine forms in French, only six of which permit a deterministic calculation of the controller's position. An empirical generalization missed by other approaches is formalized as a principle that all embedded infinitives must be controlled by a matrix argument; a second empirical principle allows any matrix argument to be controller unless prohibited by a lexical stipulation of the matrix predicate. This lexical perspective on control is formalized in the framework of unification categorial grammar (UCG), specifying via sign features the properties of the nine observed forms of control in French; a comparison of treatments in different models shows that control phenomena do not per se provide evidence for choosing among UCG, lexical semantic, & head-driven phrase structure grammar. 44 References. Adapted from the source document