Some Preliminary Comparative Remarks on French and Italian Definite Articles

1. Interrogatives. English has both: (1) Which student did you just see? and: (2) What student did you just see? In (2) the wh-word is the same as the one in: (3) What have you done? The French counterpart of bare interrogative what is either que/qu' or quoi: (4) Qu'as-tu fait? ('what have you done') (5) Tu as fait quoi? ('you have done what') depending on various factors. However, neither que/qu' nor quoi can mimic what in (2): (6) *Qu'étudiant as-tu vu? ('what student have you seen') (7) *Quoi étudiant as-tu vu? French does have: (8) Quel étudiant as-tu vu? ('which student have you seen') with a wh-word quel that seems to be a relatively close counterpart of English which as in (1). 1 Of central interest to this paper is the fact that French does not allow the lexical noun to be unpronounced in sentences that are otherwise exactly like (8): 2 (9) *Quel as-tu vu? Similarly in the plural: (10) Quels étudiants as-tu vus? ('which students have you seen') (11) *Quels as-tu vus? The lexical noun can remain unpronounced in French only if quel(s) is preceded by the definite article (written as one word with quel 3): (12) Lequel as-tu vu? ('the which have you seen') (13) Lesquels as-tu vus? The Italian counterparts of (8) and (10) are the following: (14) Quale studente hai visto? ('which student have-you seen') (15) Quali studenti hai visto? ('which students...') in which Italian quale/quali is parallel to French quel/quels. Yet Italian differs from French in that Italian allows the lexical noun to be unexpressed without a definite article appearing, in contrast to (9) and (11): (16) Quale/quali hai visto? Moreover, Italian does not allow the definite article to appear in (16), as opposed to French (12) and (13): (17) *Il quale hai visto? ('the which...') (18) *I quali hai visto? ('the which (plural)...') We can note in passing that English is more like Italian here: (19) Which would you prefer? (20) *The which would you prefer? On the other hand, English differs from Italian in relative clauses with quale or which: (21) the reason for (*the) which John... (22) la ragione per *(la) quale Gianni... English relative which is incompatible with the, while Italian relative quale must be preceded by the definite article, here la. 4 In relatives, French quel is like Italian quale, despite differing from it in interrogatives in the …