This thesis investigates the representation of Possession both in the lexicon and syntax within the Government and Binding framework. The relevant data come primarily from nominal and copular possessive constructions in French. / It is argued that the canonical realization for possessive NPs in French is the postnominal dative construction: (N NP$ sb{ rm +DAT /}$). Such dative phrases need not be governed by the licensing head; dative case is a default Case in French and the dative NP can be licensed under predication. This follows from the dyadic nature of the possessive relation which triggers binary branching at all levels of representation. / It is further argued that French has two copulas: avoir and etre. Their distributional difference follows from the fact that avoir is a Case assigner. This proposal allows for a unified analysis of possessive etre and avoir constructions in terms of Case. / Extending to ditransitive constructions, alternations of internal arguments can be accounted for if one posits that internal arguments must be thematically linked. The two internal arguments form a Small Clause, and their respective order follows from the nature of their thematic link.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.74593 |
| Date | January 1991 |
| Creators | Tremblay, Mireille |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Linguistics.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001237018, proquestno: AAINN67465, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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