SWISS COLLOQUIAL FRENCH AND THE OVERT PRONOUN CONSTRAINT

Abstract

This paper applies Montalbetti’s Overt Pronoun Constraint (OPC) to Swiss Colloquial French (SCF) in order to assess the status of the subject pronoun in this variety.  It is shown that, if the subject clitics are assumed to be verbal prefixes of person/number, rather than pronouns, as has been demonstrated for other varieties of French, SCF behaves like Spanish with respect to the OPC.  That is, in sentences containing a formal variable, an overt pronominal subject (él in Spanish and lui—not the prefix il-—in French) cannot be linked to the variable but must be interpreted as free.  This semantic test offers empirical proof that SCF is a pro-drop variety. Pedagogical implications are discussed.