LingLunch: Yanis da Cunha (U. de Graz)

Competition effects on animacy restrictions in French and Spanish PPs 

Strong pronouns in French (elle, lui) have been claimed to undergo animacy restrictions in PPs: they only take human antecedents (1) (Sandfeld, 1928). In Spanish however, strong pronouns (ella, él) do not exhibit such animacy restrictions in the same context (2).

(1) Cette dame/*valise, je voyage toujours avec elle. 'This lady/suitcase, I always travel with her/it'

(2) Esta señora/maleta, siempre viajo con ella. 'This lady/suitcase, I always travel with her/it'

in this talk, we will show that this difference between French and Spanish can be rooted in a competition effect: animacy restrictions on strong pronouns appear when a null pronoun alternative is available in a given context (Müller & Sternefeld, 2001; Zribi-Hertz, 2000). In two acceptability judgment experiments in French and Spanish, we compare prepositions which allow/disallow null pronouns (French avec/sans/malgré/vers, Spanish delante/detrás/con/sin). We show that in both languages, strong pronouns undergo animacy restrictions when a null competitor is available, and they do not when a null competitor is not available. Building on these data, we evaluate two possible analytical options in which either pronouns are specified for animacy or they are not. We give arguments for the latter option.