French Interrogatives in a OT-LFG Analysis

Anna Gazdik

Abstract

The present paper approaches the French interrogative system from a non-derivational perspective, aiming to provide an analysis that accounts not only for its complexity in itself (optional simplex and complex variants of the same question in formal French and in situ questions in informal French), but for its differences with other languages (English) as well. As will be shown, the choice of the theoretical framework (OT-LFG) is motivated by important lexical differences between the two languages, which could not only be captured by OT-type constraints.