French Tough-movement revisited

Abstract

In this paper, we argue that predicates of the Tough-class in French embed not a verbal infinitive but rather, a gerundive verbal noun. This hypothesis allows us to capture a number of unexpected restrictions on French Tough-movement discussed by Legendre (1986). We show that these restrictions are best described as the inability of French Tough-movement infinitives to be followed by complements that are disallowed in their corresponding argument-taking event nominals. Our analysis of such infinitives as nominalized elements correctly predicts that they should never be selected by auxiliaries, and that they should have suppressed external arguments in the sense of Grimshaw (1990). French Tough-movement constructions are further argued to be closely related to the type of English gerund Huddleston (1971), Hantson (1984) and Clark (1985) call 'retroactive gerunds'. Like French Tough-movement constructions, English retroactive gerunds contain a gap, are possible only with a restricted class of predicates, do not license unbounded dependencies, and do not allow subjects, except when they are realized as by-phrases.

Defects of Defective Intervention

“…Control clauses and finite complements of raising predicates, being full CPs, can. Since raising clauses cannot move, there is simply no way to get an adjunct in 3 Authier and Reed (2009) argue that French tough-movement does not involve a null operator. If they are correct, the type of analysis suggested in the text will not work for French.…”

Another Crack at the Tough Nut: A New Approach to Tough and Other Object-Gap Constructions

“…finds support among researchers into TC-like constructions in Romance Languages (Guérin (2006); Bosque and Gallego (2011)); Authier and Reed (2009) argue that the infinitive is a deverbal nominal. As far as I am aware, however, there is no proposal that takes a contrarian position on both premise C and premise D, as I do in this chapter.…”

“…These observations are not new: in fact, Authier and Reed (2009) rely on them to support their argument that the infinitive in French TCs has nominal properties, citing Grimshaw (1990). In A&R's analysis, the infinitive acts as a "complex event nominal", which has an obligatory object.…”

“…It also raises the possibility that the infinitival in TCs is not a clause but rather a VPa hypothesis that will find support from researchers working on TC-like structures in Romance languages (cf. Authier and Reed (2009)).…”

“…What precisely the infinitival might be if it is not a clause is not clear. Not coincidentally, however, it is precisely the evidence pointing to the absence of an external argument that leads Authier and Reed (2009) to hypothesize that the infinitival in French TCs is a nominal. In section 3.6.2 of this thesis we will explore Authier and Reed's hypothesis in more detail.…”