Auxiliaries and clitics in French UCG grammar

Abstract

French auxilliaries and clitics have been analysed in the frame of U.C.G. (Unification Categorial Grammar). Concatenation of a functor sign and an adjacent argument sign is the basic operation of the model; unification allows (a) to verify if constraints on concatenation are respected; (b) to produce a flow of information between the functor sign and the argument sign.The rules of the grammar and the design structure of the sign allows to express: (a) the concatenation between French auxilliaries (etre and avoir) and the participle verb form within a single pattern, (b) transitions between clitics in a systematic way. Two complex questions of French syntax are thus covered in a fairly simple way.