Attract F, Accusative Case-checking and the Position of the Subject in French Stylistic Inversion with Causative and Perception Verbs

A rather well-known aspect of French Stylistic Inversion is the impossibility of having a nominal object either precede or follow the inverted subject. A similar phenomenon is found in cases of French Stylistic Inversion with causative and perception verbs. The nominal subject of the infinitival complement can never appear with the inverted subject of the causative or perception verb. Both phenomena are usually referred to as Case-adjacency problems. In this paper, we will show that these Case-adjacency problems can be accounted for in a simple and straightforward manner under Attract F and Procrastinate, two constraints on movement formulated in Chomsky's Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995, chapter 4). 1. Introduction* One way of deriving WH-interrogatives in French is to generate the subject, which must be nominal, in VP-final position. The resulting construction is called Stylistic Inversion. The causative verb faire (make) and the perception verbs regarder (watch), entendre (hear), voir (see) and &outer (listen), and the verb laisser (let) displaying the structure of Stylistic Inversion always have the subject follow the infinitive: (1) Que fera (*Jean) porter (Jean) a sa femme par son domestique? What will-do (Jean) bring (Jean) to his wife by his servant? What will Jean make his servant bring to his wife?' (2) Qu'a entendu (*Jean) chanter (Jean)? What has heard (Jean) sing (Jean)? What did Jean hear (someone) sing?' With respect to the subject of the infinitival complement of causative and perception verbs the following can be observed: Causative verbs always have the subject follow the infinitive. In the case of perception verbs, the subject either precedes or follows the verb: (3) a Jean a fait chanter Marie. Jean has made sing Marie b Jean a entendu (Marie) chanter (Marie). Jean has heard Marie sing A remarkable aspect of causative and perception verbs displaying the structure of Stylistic Inversion is that the inverted subject of the matrix clause can never occur with the nominal subject of the infinitival clause: 501