Voice mismatch and contrast in French Right-Node Raising

Bibliographic Data

ID10141572
AuthorsAlexis Abeille (0000-0002-9187-2298, Université Paris Cité, corresponding author), Aoi Shiraïshi (The University of Tokyo), Barbara Hemforth (0000-0001-8371-1323, Université Paris Cité)
Year2023
Volume59
Issue2
Pages361-388
Publication date2023-02-13
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Linguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-2267 • E-ISSN: 1469-7742
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s002222672200055x
OpenAlexW4320496119
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited30

Right-Node Raising is generally considered to impose stricter identity conditions than other kinds of ellipsis, such as VP ellipsis, according to Hankamer & Sag 1976 and Hardt 1993. In this paper, we investigate voice mismatch in French Right-Node Raising (RNR) through a corpus study and two experiments. We show that RNR with voice mismatch can be found in a written corpus (frTenTen 2012) and that many examples involve coordination of a reflexive active and a short passive form. We suggest this is because semantic contrast (here, between self and external agent) plays a role according to Hartmann (2000) and Abeillé and Mouret (2010). We ran two acceptability judgement experiments to test voice mismatch and semantic contrast. We did not find any penalty for voice mismatch with VP ellipsis but an interaction with semantic contrast. We also found an effect of semantic contrast when coordinating an active and a passive VP without participle ellipsis. We conclude that voice mismatch is acceptable with RNR and propose a Head-driven Phrase-Structure Grammar (HPSG) analysis, following Chaves (2014) and Shiraïshi et al. (2019)

Contrast (vision · Ellipsis (linguistics · Linguistics · Natural language processing · Node (physics · Phrase · Physics · Raising (metalworking · Speech recognition · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Mathematics · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation