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IL Y A UNE PLAGE DE LIBRE: Study of a construction

The analysis of the usual French construction il y a une place de libre 'there is a place free' shows that it goes with a particular structure, different in many aspects from the other existential constructions. The constraints that it observes bear on the determiner in the noun phrase and on the adjective. More specifically, the last one obeys lexical constraints as well as syntactical ones. The important point is that these constraints are mutually related. A consequence of our treatment is that the construction should be analysed as a verbal element followed by two arguments. Another consequence is that the morpheme de should be viewed as a token inserted on a later stage of the derivation, and not as being introduced in the base. It is a syntactic 'peg', semantically null, which from this point of view — but from this one only — is analogic to the de that we find with the non-referential pronouns: rien de bien interessant 'nothing very interesting', quelqu'un de si courageux 'someone so bold'. The construction // y a une place de libre has often been pointed out as a particular kind of predicate adjective construction, or as a partitive construction marked by de, or has even been assigned to other structures in which the adjective modifies a pronoun, such as je n'en ai aucun de relie (I-have-none-of-them-of-bound), ce qu'il y a de vrai (that-which-there-isof-true). The present study deals with the constraints operating on the successive elements of the construction and demonstrates an analytical framework that is preferable to those noted above. 1. Specificity of the construction Although certainly related to existential constructions involving ily a-NPAdjP, this construction differs from them in more than one way. Thus, // Linguistics 18 (1980), 821-848. 0024-3949/80/0018-0821 $2.00 © Mouton Publishers, The Hague