Verbes de volonté et absence d’obviation en français ancien

Abstract

This article examines the absence of obviation with volition verbs in Older French (e.g., je veux que je soye batu). It is shown that the analyses which propose that obviation depends on the anaphoric character of Tense or on the presence of a lexical complementizer cannot explain the absence of obviation in Older French. The analysis proposed in this article relies on the semantic selection of verbs. It is argued that in Older French, volition verbs (i.e., non-factive emotive verbs) select a [definite event], realized on the head of MP, which licenses an operator in Comp; as a result, the binding domain of the embedded subject is closed and the subjects can be coreferent. The presence of this operator, which can be reanalyzed as the head of CP, also accounts for the fact that both moods, indicative and subjunctive, can be found in the complements of volition verbs. It is also proposed that the changes which affect the complements of volition verbs in Classical French (presence of obviation and absence of indicative mood) are triggered by the fact that volition verbs ceased to select the category [definite event].