French auxiliaries

[Kenneth Allen Hyde]

On Friday, 1 february, 2002, Annabelle David wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> I am trying to classify verbs in French but I cam across a problem. What
> do i count as auxiliaries?? In English, it is fairly easy can, could,
> would.... but in French the only real ones are etre and avoir in
> compound tense forms. But I have seen pouvoir, vouloir and others
> considered as such as well. And what about faire and aller??

There are some articles in the morphological literature on this topic.
Michael Jones presents evidence (in "Foundations of French Syntax") that
"avoir" and "etre" are the only auxiliaries in French.  He cites work by
Benveniste (1966), Gueron (1986), and Kayne (1993) on this topic.  Based
on various tests, he claims that "pouvoir" and "devoir" are in different
clauses than the verbs they dominate.

Benveniste, E.  (1966)  Problemes de linguistique generale I, Paris,
Gallimard.

Gueron, J.  (1986)  'Le verbe avoir', Recherches linguisitiques de
Vincennes 14-15: 155-88.

Jones, Michael Allan.  (1996)  Foundations of French Syntax, Cambridge UK,
Cambridge University Press.

Kayne, R.  (1993)  'Toward a modular theory of auxiliary selection',
Studia Linguistica 47:3-31.

Ken

Kenneth Allen Hyde     |  No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife
Univ. of Delaware      |  between the shoulder blades will seriously
Dept. of Linguistics   |  cramp his style  -- Old Jhereg proverb
kenny at Udel.Edu         |  A mind is a terrible toy to waste! -- Me

//www.ling.udel.edu/hyde/prof/