The dramatic extraction construction in French

Anne Abeillé (1) , Danièle Godard (1) , Frédéric Sabio (2)

1 LLF UMR7110 - Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle
2 LPL - Laboratoire Parole et Langage

Relying on spoken corpora (Corpaix, CRFP) and on previous studies (Sabio 1995, 1996), we identify a construction common in spoken French, which we analyze as a particular case of extraction:
a. dix sept ans il a. (Seventeen years he has) [Corpaix]
b. deux cigarettes j'ai fumé. (Two cigarettes I smoked) [on the fly]
The construction can only be a root clause and a declarative clause. Its interpretation is that of a thetic proposition. On the other hand, it is not associated with a unique information structure, since it is compatible with a focus-ground partition, with the extracted constotunet as a narrow focus, or with an all focus interpretation. We call this construction 'dramatic extraction', and the extracted element a 'center' (i.e. a focus or a figure). We formalize our analysis in the HPSG grammar.

Mots clés: syntax; French; spoken language; extraction; focus fronting; HPSG

Domaines: Linguistique

Anne Abeillé, Danièle Godard, Frédéric Sabio. The dramatic extraction construction in French. Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics, 2009, 11 (1), pp.135-148. ⟨hal-00576843⟩