The syntax and semantics of quotation the case of Frenc档2.pdf

The syntax and semantics of quotation: the case of French Olivier Bonami Danièle Godard U. Paris-Sorbonne Laboratoire de Linguistique LLF Formelle (CNRS U. Paris 7) Tübingen — March 12, 2008 Outline motivation ‣ One can quote just about anything (Partee, 1973; Clark Gerrig, 1990; Postal, 2004): (1) a. Paul said “I goed there”. (ungrammatical utt.) b. Paul said “Mary bel… believ… knew I was there.” (utt. with repairs) c. Paul said “Marie était là”. (heterolinguistic utt.) d. The balloon went “pshhhhhhhhh” (nonlinguistic sound) e. Paul went [speaker frowns] (paralinguistic behavior) f. The car went [spkr moves his hand in a zizag] (arbitrary behavior) ‣ Yet the quotation is a constituent of the sentence: ‣ g. Paul said “You’re stupid” to Mary. ‣ 2 Outline motivation ‣ Pullum Scholz (2001), Postal (2004): direct quotation provides a strong argument in favor of model-theoretic approaches to syntax. ‣ In Generative-Enumerative approach, each grammatical sentence must be generated from a finite lexicon/alphabet. ‣ But there is no (simple) way to enumerate possible quotations. ‣ In a Model-Theoretic approach, one need only put necessary conditions on what a grammatical sentence consists of. ‣ An open, unconstrained slot can be left for quotation, where “totally free expression” (Jackendoff, 1984) occurs. ‣ We will not discuss the merits of this a