Richard Faure

University of Tours | UFR · E.A. 6298 Centre Tourangeau d’Histoire et étude des Sources (CeTHiS)

This chapter is concerned with the reference to abstract objects by means of demonstrative pronouns in Homer. The corpus is made of books Θ and I of the Ilias. This survey is supplemented by probing the rest of the Ilias and the Odyssey. Demonstrative pronouns mostly point at proposition-like objects (propositions, facts, possibilities, as opposed...

This article is a state of the art of the research on the Oblique Optative in Ancient Greek. The oblique use of the mood optative is peculiar in that its two main features (it only appears in past contexts; only in subordinate clauses) are not easily linked with its two other usages (wish and hypothesis). Its rise is still mysterious. Moreover, its...

This article investigates the development of wh-in-situ questions in French by examining a three-year kindergarten dataset of spontaneous productions with 16 children between 2;5 and 5;11. The distribution of the wh-phrases is statistically examined in relation to age, verb form (Fixed be form c'est 'it is' vs. Free be forms vs. Free lexical verbs)...

The article is about the phenomenon of prolepsis in Ancient Greek, which, depending on the authors, corresponds to raising-to-object, hyperraising, or topicalization from a complement clause to the matrix. It is a state-of-the-art article, comprehensively reviewing the literature on the matter. It first addresses the syntactic constraints that bear...

This article explores the problem of information structure in ancient Greek direct constituent questions from the perspective of wh‐placement. It begins with the observation that wh‐items are intrinsically focused and that typologically, wh‐placement is predictable based on the focusing properties in some languages, such as Indonesian (in situ stra...

In this work, I compare two different approaches to clausal complementation. Recent views take the relation of contenthood to be crucial and general in propositional attitudes featuring a clausal complement. Since content cannot play a semantic (θ-) role nor be equated with an attitude, the conclusion was that it must be predicated of an underlying...

This article revisits the long-standing issue of the alternation between wh-in-situ and wh-ex-situ questions in French in the light of diglossia and cross-linguistic data. A careful preliminary examination of the numerous wh-structures in Metropolitan French leads us to focus on Colloquial French, which undoubtedly displays both wh-in-situ and wh-e...

The two possible positions for wh-words (i.e., in situ or preposed) represent a long-standing area of research in French. The present study reports on statistical analyses of a new seminaturalistic corpus of child L1 French. The distribution of the wh-words is examined in relation to a new verb tripartition: Free be forms, the Fixed be form c’est ‘...

This paper addresses the issue of the questions embedded under predicates normally selecting for propositions like know (unselected embedded questions UEQ). This problem was handled in Adger and Quer (Adger, David & Josep Quer. 2001. The syntax and semantics of unselected embedded questions. Language 77. 107–133) and Öhl (Öhl, Peter. 2007. Unselect...

This article addresses the question of the motivation for using such or such argument clause type with such or such predicate in Classical Greek. I focus on participial clauses. They cannot be said to only show up in veridical environments (i.e. in environments where they denote true propositions). Rather, their distribution is constrained by the (...

A study of the emergence and the evolution of the morpho-syntactic status of subject pronouns in Gallo-Romance, crossing three points of view: dialectology (Occitan dialects), diachrony (different stages of French between12th and 17th century), and acquisition (contemporary Metropolitan French).

Root wh-questions have been examined in naturalistic and elicitated L1 child French with very different results (overview in Prévost, 2009): (i) Placement of the wh-term: in-situ vs. fronted (e.g., Philippe, 2;1-2;7: 26% in-situ vs. Augustin, 2;0-2;9: 91%, Hamann, 2000); (ii) Status of est-ce que: analyzed vs. unanalyzed term (Plunkett, 2000 vs. St...

In this paper, we argue against the claim that exclamatives could be reducible to interrogatives in Classical Greek as sometimes claimed for English. Exclamatives are original in that they denote presupposed propositions and are headed by specific (wh-morpheme h-) and focused wh-items. They necessarily involve degrees. We try to make sense of all t...

In this paper, I address the differences between verbs of speaking (VOS) and verbs of thinking (VOT) with respect to complementation. I argue that even if in a language these two types of verbs share the same construction, that does not allow us to say that they fall into the same class. A cross between Functional Grammar and Generative Grammar pro...

Dans cet article, on montre que l'optatif oblique, loin d'être facultatif, s'explique dans la plupart des cas. À contextes comparables (en subordonnée passée), il est majoritaire par rapport à l'indicatif, et ce chez tous les auteurs du IVe siècle avant J-C. Dans l'analyse, on distingue plusieurs classes de verbes introducteurs et deux situations :...

Dans la littérature, on trouve deux façons de classer les prédicats factifs. D'une part, on constate que les présuppositions n'ont pas la même constance avec tous les prédicats, ce qui permet de définir deux catégories. D'autre part, on fait une différence, en sémantique lexicale, entre les prédicats émotifs et les cognitifs. Dans cet article on mo...

It has been argued that the Future Optative (FO) is rare, but noone has shown yet why it is so. In this paper, I claim that rather than the FO, the contexts where the FO can appear are rare. What is crucial is that in these contexts the FO (a case of Oblique Optative) largely outnumbers its potential concurrent, the Future Indicative. Building on A...

In this paper I address the issue as to why there are at first glance three items that can introduce an embedded question in Classical Greek: hós (relative), tís ((direct) interrogative) and hóstis (so-called indefinite relative). Though, a closer examination shows that this threefold possibility is limited to the set of responsive question-embeddi...

In reference Grammars (Kühner-Gerth 1904 ; Humbert 1972), hós and hóstis' usages are treated as being closer in the Classical Period than in Homer's Epics, foreshadowing the merging of the two paradigms in the Gospels. Though it is true that they have changed since Homer's time, I claim that a distinction between the two is to be maintained in the...