French clausal ellipsis: Types and derivations

This article confirms the existence in French of an overt morphological correlate to Merchant's abstract E-feature, which I call special le. Taking as a point of departure my claim in previous work that special le is, in Modern French, the obligatory phonological realization of the E-feature in French predicate ellipsis, I undertake a close examination of a different type of ellipsis, namely, clausal ellipsis. I first show that, with the exception of sluices, both overt and covert versions of the E-feature in clausal ellipsis are available, although the choice between the two versions varies along register and construction specific lines. Second, I establish that there are, in French, two distinct types of clausal ellipsis. Type 1, exemplified by so-called modal ellipsis, only requires the pairing of an E-feature with a modal verb that takes a phasal complement. Type 2, exemplified by sluices and the ellipsis of the complement to a bridge verb, is instantiated by the pairing of an E-feature with the higher C-projection (C1) of a CP-recursion structure licensed by the presence of a speech act. It is further argued that when C1 is endowed with an E-feature, it must also be associated with an EPP feature, which is but one example of feature clustering among many others. A direct consequence of this is that type 2 clausal ellipsis requires, rather than allows, wh-extraction of a remnant in order to be licensed. Finally, it is shown that relative clauses that embed a bridge verb license type 2 clausal ellipsis only when they are of the ACD type. Regardless of any analysis, this observation entails that standard and ACD relatives undergo distinct derivations. I assume that, in order to avoid infinite regress, ACD relatives force a more complex/costly derivation: they must be late merged, and I argue that late merged ACD relatives contain a full copy of the DP relative head which constitutes, in the specifier of C1, the type of remnant that licenses type 2 clausal ellipsis; that is, a remnant merged with fully valued φ-features. In standard relatives, on the other hand, relative pronouns are minimal pronouns that bear unvalued φ-features that are valued in the course of the derivation via Agree between the head noun and the relative pronoun. As such, run-of-the-mill relative pronouns, having unvalued features when they transit through the specifier of C1, are not appropriate remnants for type 2 clausal ellipsis.