Frédéric Laurens: French Predicative Verbless Utterances

This paper focuses on a specific type of verbless utterance, labeled PVU, which is defined by two properties:

• PVUs are not discourse fragments.
• PVUs can host a phrase in their right periphery which is coreferential with their external argument. This phrase is labeled α-phrase.

PVUs are analyzed as clausal predicative phrases. Although PVUs can have various illocutionary forces, their content type is constrained by their syntactic form.

As for α-phrases, they are shown to be right-dislocated phrases. Right-dislocation is analyzed as a local anaphoric phenomenon. This approach is consistent with the anaphoric properties of PVUs' external arguments.

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