The Complementation of Aspectual Verbs in French

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of the syntactic analysis of aspectual verbs in French from the point of view of two contrasting complementation structures: raising and control. Data generally overlooked in syntactic studies are given to show that specific constraints exist between aspectual verbs and the embedded predicate. It is argued that these constraints are relevant for the contrast between raising and control, and that they are complementary with the well-known contrasting properties of the matrix subject. The paper also attempts to give a satisfactory account of the apparently unrelated syntactic and semantic characteristics of aspectual verbs. It is claimed that implicational universals, which are generally invoked to explain the semantics of these verbs, can also be used to account for their particular status from the viewpoint of syntactic complementation.