Possessive and argument pronouns with deverbal nouns in Russian and French

Abstract

The article focuses on the use of argument and possessive pronouns with Russian and French nominalizations. In both languages, possessive pronouns are used with nominalizations by default, while argument pronouns are only compatible with certain contexts and bear an intonational and semantic emphasis. Argument pronouns are used in contexts of emphasis on the argument, especially when the subject and the object of the base verb are co-referent. Semantically, argument pronouns prefer dynamic readings of nominalizations, because this type of reading inherits the use of argument pronouns from the base verbs. Finally, the use of argument pronouns is influenced by syntactic factors: coordination contexts favor argument pronouns because of the syntactic parallelism requirement. Another context property of use of argument pronouns is constituted by cases, where a nominalization has other arguments, besides the pronoun – this construction type prevents the argument pronoun from being focused. Another problem addressed in the article concerns the object vs. subject reading of the possessive pronoun: the choice of the reading is mainly regulated by the semantic class of the nominalization.