Superiority Effects and the French Plural Pronoun Construction
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Abstract
French Inclusive Plural Pronoun Constructions (IPPCs) of the form Avec pro_x, pro_{x+y} VP, are subject to person restrictions: pro_x cannot be first or second person, if y refers to a third person individual. We propose an account of this phenomenon in terms of the Weak Person Case Constraint (PCC), building on Deal's (2022) "Dynamic Interaction and Satisfaction" framework, and show that it is consistent with other empirical facts specific to the IPPC in French and Russian (Feldman, 2016). If our analysis is on the right track, it may constitute additional evidence that the PCC is not restricted to clitic clusters, as pro_x in the French IPPC is a strong pronoun. Moreover, it would suggest that PCC strength is not only language-dependent, but also probe-dependent, given that French is subject to the Strong (and not the Weak) PCC in the v-domain.