Anaphora Resolution and Orphan Prepositions in French Anaphernresolution und verwaiste Präpositionen im Französischen

Abstract

According to Zribi-Hertz (1984), French orphan prepositions are only grammatical if the complement is non-human ( Cette valise, je voyage toujours avec ). While corpus data for avec and sans show that this generalization holds as a strong tendency in novels, orphan prepositions are missing in non-fiction texts because non-human referents are expressed as overt disjunctive pronouns ( Ses biens furent confisques, et l’usine avec eux ). The difference between the two text types can be accounted for without postulating two grammars. In both text types the same grammatical constraints are at work and the difference between the text types results from a strive towards efficiency in anaphora resolution.