L'ellipse et les relatives

Résumé En

JACQUELINE BASTUJI: Ellipsis in relative clauses. The analysis by ellipsis of formally missing items is a touchstone for grammatical and linguistic theories. Since the relative clause of the Indo-European languages is not a universal structure, the absence of a «relative pronoun» cannot be treated as ellipsis in the languages that do not have the «antecedent NP + relative S» structure (Chinese and Turkish for instance), even though these languages have the operation of relativization defined as the embedding of an S (NP + VP) with all its constituents under an NP. Consequently, ellipsis of the relative pronoun (e. g. in object position in English) or of the antecedent NP (in French of Latin) is a possible solution only for the languages that require as part of their system that there should be a relation of redundant co-reference between the antecedentNP and the anaphoric element in the relative clause. Ellipsis of the relative pronoun seems to be syntactically constrained while ellipsis of the antecedent seems to be connected to a set of conditions that are syntactic as weIl as semantic. We reject the traditional idea of a relation between an antecedent which is already present and the relative clause and suggest that relativization be treated as the adjunction through predication of a property to an (empty or filled) N or NP, the property being specified by the relative clause which is of the form: S includes x. As the variable x is anempty place, ellipsis is out of the question. By a process of place filling, structures that are at first potential can be turned into a range of varied syntactic configurations.