The specifier–head relationship: negation and French subject proforms

Rowlett, P

Abstract

This article1 and the three others in this thematic collection are about heads and specifiers, the relationship between them, and how this relationship can change over time. A theme which emerges is the notion that the spec(ifier)–head relationship is cyclic, in other words, the synchronic relationship between the head and its specifier within a given phrase in a given language can be characterised as a location at a particular point on a cycle, while the diachronic development of the relationship can be seen as a directional stepwise shift around that cycle. The article is organised as follows. Section 2 introduces the theoretical framework. Section 3.1 sketches a well-known diachronic phenomenon – the history of sentential negation – which readily lends itself to an analysis in terms of a cyclic spec–head relationship, and shows how the stages in the cycle have been characterised theoretically. Section 3.2 considers another set of data − pre- and postverbal subject proforms in French − which is similarly suitable for such an approach. Section 4, finally, introduces the three other contributions to the collection.

Citation

Rowlett, P. (2007). The specifier–head relationship: negation and French subject proforms. Transactions of the Philological Society, 105(3), 339-364. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-968X.2007.00197.x

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Nov 1, 2007
• Deposit Date: Jan 27, 2009
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 27, 2009
• Journal: Transactions of the Philological Society
• Print ISSN: 0079-1636
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 105
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 339-364
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-968X.2007.00197.x
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-968X.2007.00197.x
• Additional Information: Additional Information : Special issue: 'The specifier-head relationship'