Manuscripts

2025: Semantic Agreement (with Dominique Sportiche). UCLA/Unige manuscript.
2025: Taking Perspective in Motives and Purposes: The Case of Adjunct Clauses and Theory of Mind (with Jill de Villiers & Stephanie Durrleman). Unige manuscript.
2024: Same and different are not additive presupposition triggers. Reply to Mikkelsen & Hardt 2024. Unige manuscript.
2024: Appealing to Superlative Clauses (or how to split the scope of superlative adjectives across intensional predicates). Unige manuscript. Paper.

The general goal of the article is to argue for the hypothesis that just like comparative morphemes (e.g. English -er), superlative morphemes (e.g. English -est) can take a degree clause as argument, which denotes the domain of comparison. The specific goal consists in showing that this hypothesis provides a novel solution to two controversial empirical puzzles: how to derive (i) the low reading of intensional superlatives (e.g. the reading of "the longest book that John said that Tolstoy had written" when John – not the speaker – evaluates the lengths of the books under consideration), and (ii) upstairs de dicto readings (e.g. the reading of "John wants to climb the highest mountain" when John has a specific desire of climbing achievement without any comparative content). In both cases, the superlative clause hypothesis solves previously unsolved problems because it allows split scope between -est and the gradable adjective across the intensional predicate, as well as (variously partial) ellipsis of the degree clause.

2016: Steps towards a Generative Theory of Dance Cognition. Harvard Manuscript. Paper.

In recent years, the formal methods used in generative linguistics have proved to be very fruitful for the study of music cognition (see Jackendoff & Lerdahl 1985, Katz & Pesetsky 2011, a.o.). At the same time, a wealth of studies has emerged on sign languages, investigating the impact of a different modality (space vs. sound) on linguistic systems (see Schlenker 2014, Davidson 2015, a.o.). These two recent developments taken together raise the following question: is there a gestural counterpart of music, the study of which could shed new light on human cognition?The hypothesis of this paper is that dance as a cognitive system is the equivalent of music in the spatial modality. This means that the use of formal methods should allow us to determine a grammar of dance, i.e. the cognitive structures underlying the understanding of movement. Specifically, what are the primitive elements of dance (cf. phonology)? What are the rules of combination (cf. morphology/syntax)? What is the meaning of dance if any (cf. semantics)?The paper mainly focuses on the second question and examine some organizational principles of the mental representation of dance perception. In particular, the grouping structure of dance is explored based on Gestalt principles and musical structure.Hopefully, these first steps will ultimately lead to the elaboration of a theory of dance cognition, which should shed further light on cognitive systems by distinguishing between general cognitive properties and modality-specific or domain-specific properties.

2013: Synchronic Interaction between Binding and Focus: Focus as Anaphorizer - Evidence from French Possessive son propre. Harvard manuscript. Paper.

The goal of this article is to demonstrate the existence of a synchronic interaction between binding and focus in French. The argument is based on the behavior of French possessive son propre (‘his own’) and shows that whether or not it behaves anaphorically depends on whether the pronoun son is focused or not.

2011: Compositionnalité et réflexivité: anaphores, focus et adjectifs relationnels [Compositionality and Reflexivity: Anaphors, Focus and Relational Adjectives]. Thèse de doctorat de l'université Pierre et Marie Curie [Paris VI Dissertation].

This dissertation consists of four sets of articles at the interface between syntax and semantics.The first set of papers deals with French possessive son propre ('his own') from a syntactic and semantic perspective and with the implications on binding theory and the theory of covert focus sensitive operators. The second group concerns the analysis of terms expressing identity and difference such as French même ('same'), différent ('different') or autre ('other'). The third set of papers tackles the question of reflexivization morphemes in French and Lakhota, and proposes a syntactic and unaccusative analysis of French se. Finally, the last and more heterogeneous set consists of an article that experimentally explores the semantic problem of quantifiers in object position, and a paper about syntactic characteristics of Latin parentheticals.

2010: On the Semantics of Agreement: the Case of Conjunction of Singular Quantifiers. UCLA manuscript

The starting point of this paper is the following observation: when a conjunction of singular quantifiers is the subject of a distributive predicate, singular agreement is much preferred, while plural agreement is obligatory when it is the subject of a collective predicate; however, a conjunction of referring terms always triggers plural agreement on the verb. This fact seems to challenge standard theories that describe agreement as a purely syntactic phenomenon.

2009: Reflexivization in Lakhota: Lexical or Syntactic? UCLA manuscript.

Based on field work, I describe the reflexive markers used in Lakhota, and I provide arguments showing that reflexivization in Lakhota is a syntactic process rather than a lexical one.

2009: Linking Binding and Focus: on Intensifying son propre in French. Master Thesis, UCLA. Paper.

The goal of this thesis is to explore the relation between intensification and binding in the light of French possessive son propre ('his own') and to show that these two modules of the grammar interact with each other. To this end, I argue that propre ('own') exhibits intensifying properties that have consequences on the binding properties of son propre ('his own').

2007: Les énoncés parenthétiques chez Cicéron : syntaxe et pragmatique (‘Parenthetical utterances in Cicero’s texts: Syntax and Pragmatics’). Mémoire de Master 2 (Second MA Thesis), Université Paris IV-Sorbonne manuscript.

The goal of this thesis is to examine parenthetical sentences in the Latin language of Cicero: I first show the syntactic constraints of insertion, and I then analyze the pragmatics of this construction in various texts of Cicero.

2004: Les subordonnées qui dépendent d’un nom et autres que les relatives en latin (‘Adnominal completives in Latin’). Mémoire de Maîtrise (First MA Thesis), Université Paris IV-Sorbonne manuscript.

In this thesis, I examine non-relative clauses that depend on a noun in Latin. I first establish a typology of the clauses and the nouns involved in this kind of constructions, and I then analyze the relationship between them from a syntactic and semantic perspective.

Google Sites

Report abuse