Auxiliary Selection with Intransitive and Reflexive Verbs: the limits of gradience and scalarity, followed by a proposal

Pierre-Don Giancarli (1)

1 FoReLL [Poitiers] - Formes et représentations en linguistique et littérature [EA 3816]

The term gradience may be applied to a discontinuous objective situation, or to a representation. As a discontinuous objective situation within a language, gradience can be used to refer to three different cases: we face gradience as soon as a choice is to be made between several options (see Traugott & Trousdale 2010), with a totally constrained choice between two mutually exclusive sub-classes. Or when the choice is totally free between several auxiliaries competing for one and the same verb. Or when the locutor’s choice is only partly free. Gradience can also be a scalar representation set up by the linguist by means of a hierarchy, and it is on this sense that we shall focus: firstly gradience as the particular representation developed by the Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy (ASH), which is a well-known gradient model especially dedicated to auxiliary selection, then gradience in general, always with the aim of assessing their adequacy when dealing with auxiliary selection. Four main types of graduated scales can be conceived of, according to the number of classes involved, the internal organization of the scale, and the relationship between the poles of the scale: a subjective scale (Aart’s subjective gradience), an intersective scale (Aart’s intersective gradience), a monodimensional scale, and a bi-polar scale, summarized in the table below: Mono-gradienceBi-gradience qnt monodimensional scale bi-polar scale qnt + qlt subjective scale intersective scale Mono-gradience involves a single class of elements, bi-gradience involves two classes of elements. Qnt only refers to a scale deprived of any qualitative centre(s), merely a gradient made up of elements that are quantitatively different but qualitatively identical. Qnt + qlt denotes a scale built on one (or more) prototypical occurrence(s), a scale made up of elements that are both quantitatively and qualitatively different: some belong to the core(s) and are closer to the prototype(s), others belong to the periphery(ies). The ASH looks most like an intersective scale, but questions arise as to the choice of the properties on the scale and the relationship between them, their scope, the location of the zero point, the relationship between certain levels of the hierarchy and the predictions in terms of gradualness, as well as the absence of reflexive verbs. As for gradience in general, we shall take the example of Corsican to show that some phenomena escape any reliable prediction made from a gradient scale,then we shall bring up the problem of a crosslinguistic scale on the basis of the example of Acadian French. Finally, drawing upon Corsican, we shall highlight the advantages of a non-scalar representation of auxiliaries, enabling us to account not only for its BE-intransitive verbs (more than three times as many as in Italian) but also for its BE-reflexive verbs (bearing in mind that Corsican displays a split auxiliary system among its reflexive verbs as well), in a unified way.

Domaines: Linguistique

Pierre-Don Giancarli. Auxiliary Selection with Intransitive and Reflexive Verbs: the limits of gradience and scalarity, followed by a proposal. Éd. Kailuweit, Rolf / Rosemeyer, Malte. Auxiliary Selection Revisited: Gradience and Gradualness, coll. linguae & litterae, vol. 44, De Gruyter, p. 79-120, 2015, 978-3-11-034886-6. ⟨10.1515/9783110348866-004⟩. ⟨hal-01634488⟩