FRENCH ORDER WITHOUT ORDER* 
Gabriel G. B~ 
Universit6 Blaise Pascal - Clermont II, Formation Doctorale Linguistique et Informatique 
34 Ave. Carnot, 63037 Clermont-Ferrand Cedex, FRANCE 
Claire Gardent 
Universit6 Blaise Pascal -Clermont II and University of Edinburgh, Centre for Cognitive Science, 
2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH89LW, SCOTLAND, UK 
ABSTRACT 
To account for the semi-free word order of French, 
Unification Categorial Grammar is extended in two 
ways. First, verbal valencies are contained in a set 
rather than in a list. Second, type-raised NP's are 
described as two-sided functors. The new framework 
does not overgenerate i.e., it accepts all and only the 
sentences which are grammatical. This follows partly 
from the elimination of false lexical ambiguities - i.e., 
ambiguities introduced in order to account for all the 
possible positions a word can be in within a sentence - 
and partly from a system of features constraining the 
possible combinations. 
INTRODUCTION 
In the version of categorial grammar (henceforth, 
CG) developed by Bar-Hillel (Bar-Hillel 1953), cate- 
gories encode both constituency and linear prece- 
dence. Linear precedence is encoded by (a) ordering 
valencies in a list and (b) using directional slashes 
indicating whether the argument is to be found to the 
left or to the right of the functor. 
A similar approach is adopted in Unification Cate- 
gorial Grammar (UCG) (Zeevat, Klein and Calder 
1987) as regards word order whereby the directional 
slash is replaced by a binary Order feature with value 
pre orpost. Thus, S/NPLNP in normal CG lranslates as 
S/NP:predNP:post in UCG, wherepre indicates that the 
functor must precede the argument and post that it 
should follow it. 
Our work on French syntax supports the claim that 
the complicated pattern of French linearity phenomena 
can be treated in a framework closely related to UCG 
but which departs from it in two ways. First, there is no 
rigid assignment of an order value (pre orpost) to verb 
valencies. Second, following (Gunji 1986) verbal va- 
lencies are viewed as forming a set rather than a list. As 
* The word reported here was tan'led out as part of ESPRIT 
Project 393 ACORD,'q'he Construction and Interrogation of 
Knowledge Bases using Natural Language Text and Gra- 
pities". 
a result, the syntactic behaviour of constituents is 
dissociated from surface ordering. Constraints on 
word order are described by a system of features as 
advocated in COszkoreit 1987) and (Karttunen 1986). 
1. UCG 
In UCG, the phonological, categorial, semantic and 
order information associated with a word is contained 
in a single grammar structure called a sign. This can be 
represented as follows. 
(1) UCG sign 
Phonology:Categnry:Semantics:Order 
or equivalently 
Phonology 
:Category 
:Semantics 
:Order 
where colons separate the different fields of the sign. 
We need not concern ourselves here with the Se- 
mantics and the Phonology fields of the sign. More 
interesting for our purpose are the Category and the 
Order attributes. Following the categorial tradition, 
categories can be basic or complex. Basic categories 
are of the form HeadAFeatures where Head is one of 
the atomic symbols n(oun), np or s(entence) and Fea- 
tures is a list of feature values. Complex categories are 
of the form C/Sign, where C is either atomic or com- 
plex and Sign is a sign, so that departing from traditio- 
nalCG's,a functorplaces constraints on the whole sign 
of the argument rather than on its syntactic category 
only. The part of a complex category which omits the 
Head'Weatures information constitutes the activepart 
of the sign. The f'trst accessible sign in the active part 
is called the active sign, the idea being that e.g. verb 
valencies are ordered in a list so that each time a 
valency is consumed, the next sign in the active part be- 
comes the new active sign. The Order attribute places 
constraints on the combination rule that may apply to 
a functor: pre on an argument sign Y indicates that the 
functor X/Y must precede the argument, while post 
indicates that the functor must follow the argument. 
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Using terms and term unification, the forward version 1 
of functional application can then be stated as follows. 
(2) Forward Application 
Functor 
PhonologyF 
:CategoryF/PhonologyA 
: CategoryA 
: SemanticsA 
:prc 
:SemanticsF 
:OrderF 
Argument 
PhonologyA 
: CategoryA 
: SemanticsA 
: pie 
Result 
PhonologyF PhonologyA 
:CategoryF 
:SemanticsF 
:OrderF 
were upper letters indicate Prolog variables. In effect, 
the rule requires that the active part of the functor sign 
term unifies with the argument sign. The Result is a 
sign identical to the functor sign, but where the com- 
plex category is stripped from its active part and where 
variables shared by the active part of the functor and the 
rest of the functor sign may have become ground as a 
result of the active part unifying with the argument. 
The resulting phonology consists of the phonology of 
the functor followed by the phonology of the argument. 
An illustrative combination is given in (3) below for 
the sentence Jean marche. 
(3) Derivation of Jean marche 
jean ¸ 
: C/__ I 
:(C/(_:np:jean':O) 
:S 
=:~ 
marche \[ 
: s^\[fin\]/(_.:np:X:pre) 
: marche'(X) 2_ 
jean marche 
:s^\[fm\] 
:marche'(jean~ 
;_ 
where lines represent the information flow determi- 
ning ordering : shared variables ensure that pre in a 
verb valency constrains the fanctor NP that consumes 
this valency to precede the verb carrying this valency. 
2. LINGUISTIC OBSERVATIONS 
Word order in French is characterised by three main 
facts. First, the positioning - left or right- of a particular 
argument with respect to the verb is relatively free. As 
t. Baekward application is just the symmetric of (2) where the 
argument precedes the funetor endpre becomes post. 
illustrated in (4), the subject can appear to the left (4a) 
or to the right (4b,c) of the verb, or between the 
auxiliary and the verb (4d), depending on the morpho- 
logical class of the NP and on the type of the sentence 
(declarative, subject-auxiliary inversion, wh-question, 
etc). 
(4) (a) Jacques aime Marie. 
CO) Alme-t-il Marie ? 
(c) Quel livre aime Jacques ? 
(d) A-t-il aim6 Marie ? 
All other arguments can also appear to the left or to 
the right of the verb under similar conditions. For 
example, a lexical non-nominative NP can never be to 
the left of the verb, but critics and wh-constituents can. 
(5) (a) *Marie aregard~e Jacques ? 
(with Marie = Obj) 
Co) QueUe revue a regard~e Jacques ? 
(with Quelle revue = Obj) 
(c) Jacques l'a regardte 
Second, there seems to be no clear regularities go- 
verning the relative ordering of a sequence of argu- 
ments. That is, assuming that only adjacent consti- 
tuents may combine and taking the combinations left- 
to-right, the combination pattern varies as indicated 
below of each example in (6). Here again, the permis- 
sible distributions are influenced by factors such as the 
morphological class of the constituents and the verb 
mood. 
(6) (a) Pierre donne h Marie un livre. 
\[Subj,IObj,Obj\] 
Co) Pierre donne un livre h Marie. 
\[Subj,Obj,IObj\] 
(c) Le lui donne-t-il ? 
\[Obj,IObj,Subj\] 
(d) Se le donne-t-il ? 
\[IObj,Obj,Subj\] 
Third, coocurrence restrictions hold between cons- 
tituents. For example, clitics constrain the positioning 
and the class of other arguments as illustrated in (7) 2 
(7) (a) Pierre le lui donne. 
Co) Pierre lui en donne. 
(c) Pierre lui donne un livre. 
(d) *Pierre lui le donne. 
(e) *Pierre lui y donne. 
Since the ordering and the positioning of verb 
arguments in French are very flexible, the rigid orde- 
In italics : the word whose coocurrence restriction is 
violated (starred sentences) or obeyed (non-starred senten- 
ces). For instance, (7d) is starred because lu/may not be 
followed by le. 
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ring forced by the UCG active list and the fixed 
positioning resulting from the Order attribute are ra- 
ther inadequate. On the other hand, word order in 
French is not free either. Rather it seems to be governed 
by conditional ordering statements such as: 
(8) IF (a) the verb has an object valency, and 
Co) the object NP is a wh-constituent, and 
(c) the verbal constituent is the simple inflected 
verb, and 
(d) the clitic t-il/elle has not been incorporated 
THEN the object can be placed to the left or to the 
right of the verb. 
If say, (8d) is not fulfilled, the wh-NP can be placed 
only to the left, witness: *Jacques a-t-il regard~ quelle 
revue ?, and mutatis mutandis for the other conditions. 
More generally, five elements can be isolated whose 
interaction determine whether or not a given argument 
can occupy a given position in the sentence. 
(9) (a) Position - left or right - with regard to the 
verb, 
Co) Verbal form and sentence type, 
(c) Morphological class (lexical, wh-consti- 
tuent or clitic) of the previous constituent 
having concatenated to the left or to the right 
of the verb, 
(d) Morphological class of the current consti- 
tuent (lexical, wh-constituent or clitic), 
(e) Case. 
We claim that it is possible to extend UCG in order 
to express the above conditioning variables. The resul- 
ling grammar can account for the preceding linguistic 
facts without resorting either to lexical ambiguity or to 
jump rules 3. 
3. EXTENSIONS TO UCG 
To account for the facts presented in section 2, 
UCG has been modified in two ways. Firstly, the active 
part ofaverb category is represented as a set rather than 
a list. Secondly, a feature system is introduced which 
embodies the interactions of the different elements 
conditioning word order as described in (9) above. 
3.1 SIGN STRUCTURE AND COMBINATION 
RULE : FROM AN ACTIVE LIST TO AN 
ACTIVE SET. 
To accomodate our analysis, the sign structure and 
the combination rule had to be slightly modified. In the 
French Grammar (FG), a sign is as follows. 
XA jump rule as used in (Baschung et al. 1986), is of the form 
X/Y, Y/'Z => X/'Z. 
(10) French Grammar Sign 
Phonology 
: Category 
: Features 
: Semantics 
: Optionality 
: Order 
Semantics and Phonology are as in UCG. Optiona- 
lity indicates whether the argument is optional or 
obligatory 4. The Category attribute differs from UCG 
in that (i) there are no Features associated with the 
Head and (ii) the active part of a verb is viewed as a set 
rather than as a list. 
The Features attribute is a list of features. In this 
paper, only those relevant to order constraints are 
mentioned. They are: case, verb mood, morphological 
class of NP's (i.e., lexical, clitic or wh-constituent) 
and last concatenation to the left (Lastlefl) or to the 
right (Lastright). The latter features indicate the mor- 
phological status of the last concatened functorand are 
updated by the combination rule (cf. (13)). For ins- 
tance, the sign associated with Jean lui a donnd un livre 
will have lex as values for Lastlefl and Lastright 
whereas lui a donn~ un livre has lui and lex respective- 
ly. The Features attribute can be represented as in (11 ) 
below, where the same feature may occupy a different 
position in the feature list of different linguistic units, 
e.g., feature list of verb valencies and feature list of NP 
signs. 
(11) The Features attribute 
For valencies (active sign of NP's and verbs) : 
\[Case, Lastleft, Lastright\] 
For verb signs : 
\[Mclass, Lastleft, Lastright, Vmood\] 
As illustrated in (12), the Order attribute has two 
parts, one for when the functor combines forward, the 
other for when it combines backward. 
(12) The Order attribute 
Cdts =~ pre ~ Resfeat, 
Cdts =~ post =~ Resfeat, 
where Cdts and Resfeat are lists of feature values 
whose order and content are independent from those of 
the Features attribute. The intuition behind this is that 
functors (i.e., type-raised NP's) are two-sided i.e., they 
can combine to the left and to the right but under 
different conditions and with different results. The 
features in Cdts place constraints on the features of the 
argument while the features in Resfeat are inherited by 
the resulting sign. These effects are obtained by unifi- 
4. In the rest of this paper, the Semantics and the Optionality 
attributes will be omitted since they have no role to play in our 
treatment of word order while Phonology will only be repre- 
sented when relevant. 
- 251 - 
cation of shared variables in the rules of combination. 
Omitting Semantics and Optionality attributes, the 
forward combination rule is as follows. 
(13) Forward Combination s (FC) 
Functor 
PhonologyF 
:~ CategoryF / PhonologyA 
:CategoryA 
:\[MClassA .... \] 
: (\[Lastleft,Vmood\] ~pre~ \[Vmood2\], 
_3 
:\[MClassF...\] 
." 
Argument 
PhonologyA 
:\[\] CategoryA' 
: \[MClassA,Lastleft,Lastright,Vmood\] 
{combine (\[\]\], \[21, Category')} 
Result 
PhonologyF PhonologyA 
: Category' 
: \[MClassA, MClassF, Lastright, Vmood2\] 
The rule requires (i) that the functor category 
combines with the argument category \[\] to yield the 
result category Category'. The notion of combination 
relies on the idea that the active part of a verb is a set 
rather than a list. More precisely, given a type-raised 
NP NP1 with category C/(C/NP.) where NP i is a 
valency sign, and a verb V1 with category slActSet 
where ActSet is a set of valency signs, NP1 combines 
with V1 to yield V2 iff NPi unifies with some NP-valen- 
cy sign in the active set ActSet of the verb. V2 is 
identical to V1 except that the unifying NP i valency 
sign has been removed from the active set and that 
some features in V1 will have been instantiated by the 
rule. Forward combination further requires (ii) that the 
two features in the condition list to pre unify with the 
Lastlefl and Vmood features of the argument (the fea- 
tures conditioning post are ignored since they are rele- 
vant only when the functor combines backwards), and 
(iii) that the features of the resulting sign be as speci- 
fied. Note in particular that the MClass of the resulting 
sign is the MClass of the argument, that Lastright 
which indicates the morphological class ofthelast sign 
to have combined with the verb from theright, is trans- 
mitted from the argument, and thatLastlefl is assigned 
as value the MClass of the functor. Features of the re- 
suiting sign which are conditional on the combination 
order ate inherited from the Resfeat field. This perco- 
x In this figure, numbers inside square denote the following 
attribute. For instance, \[\] denotes CategoryA'. 
lation of features by rule is crucial to our treatment of 
word order. It is illustrated by (14) below where the 
sign S 1 associated with the clitic le combines with the 
sign for $2 regarde to yield a new sign $3 le regarde. 
(14) Derivation of le regarde 
S1 le 
:C/(C/(np:\[obj ...\]:-3 
:\[obj...\] 
:-3 
:\[vb .... \] 
:(tiui or i, ind\] => pre => \[ind\], 
\[i, imp\] =>post => \[imp\]) 
:tie .... \] 
:_ 
$2 regarde 
:s/{ np , np } 
:\[obj ...\] :\[subj ...\] 
:\[vb, i, i, ind\] 
:_ 
$3 le regarde 
:s/t nP } : \[subj ...\] 
:\[vb, le, i, ind\] 
:_ 
When le is used as a forward functor, the conditions 
on pre require that the argument i.e., the verb bears for 
the feature Lastlefl the value lui or i where i stands for 
initial state thus requiring that the verb has not combi- 
ned with anything on the left. When it combines by BC, 
the conditions onpost ensure that the argument has not 
combined with anything on its right and that it has 
mood imperative. In this way, all sentences in (15) are 
parsed appropriately. 
(15) (a) I1 le hi donne. 
Co) *II lui le donne. 
(c) Donne le lui. 
(d) *Donne lui le. 
The backward combination rule (BC) functions 
like FC except for two things. First, the argument must 
be to the left of the functor and second, the condition 
field considered is that ofpost rather than ofpre. There 
is also a deletion rule to eliminate optional valencies. 
No additional rule is needed. 
3.2 EXPRESSING THE VARIABLES UNDER- 
LYING WORD ORDER CONSTRAINTS 
In our grammar, there are nopost andpre primitive 
values associated with specific verb valencies. Instead, 
features interact with combination rules to enforce the 
- 252 - 
constraints on word order described in (9). (9a) is 
captured in the two-sided order field. (9b - verb mood) 
and (9c- morphological class of preceding concatena- 
ting functor) are accounted for in that in a functor, the 
features conditioning order include the verb mood and 
the last concatenation attribute. 
(9d) is accounted for in that conditions which are 
invariant for a particular class of constituent (clitic, 
wh-constituent, lexical NP) are expressed in the Order 
field of these constituents. For example, wh-consti- 
tuents reject through their conditions topre a wh-value 
for the Lastlefl feature of the argument and an inv16 
value in their condition to post. As a result, the follo- 
wing sentences are parsed appropriately. 
(16) (a) *A qui qui a ttltphon6 ? 
Co) *A-t-il t~ltphon6 a qui ? 
(c) A qui a-t-il ttltphon6 ? 
(d) I1 a ttltphone a qui ? 
Conditions which vary depending on the class of 
the concatenating constituent are expressed in the 
Features attribute of the verb valencies. This allows us 
to express constraints on the position of a given type of 
NP (lex, wh or clitic) relative to the valency it consu- 
mes. For instance,a lexical NPcan be subject or object. 
If it is subject and it is to the left of the verb, it cannot 
be immediately followed by a wh-constituent. If it is 
subject and it is placed to the right of the verb, it must 
be immediately adjacent to it. These constraints can be 
stated using unification along to the following lines. 
A verb valency is of the form 
(17) (np:\[... X,Y ...\]:Ord) 
where X and Y are either the anonymous variable or a 
constant. They state constraints, among others, on 
possible values ofLastlefl andLastright features of the 
verb. Recall that a valency is a sign which is a member 
of a set in the Category attribute of a verbal sign. 
The active sign of a type raised NP is of the form: 
(18) C/(np:\[... V1, V2...\]:__) 
:\[vb I_\] 
:(\[V1 ...\] => pre => Z, \[V2...\] => post => W) 
By rule, V1 and V2 in the Category attribute of (18) 
must unify with X and Y, respectively, in the verb 
valency (17). Being shared variables, they transmit the 
information to the Conditions on concatenation by FC 
(pre) and BC (post), respectively. 
Furthermore, V1 and V2 in the Ord attribute of the 
functor must unify, by rule, with some specified featu- 
res in the verb Features attribute represented in (19). 
The value/nvl for the Lastlefl feature of a verb resulm from 
a backward combination of the nominative elitic -t-il with 
this verb. 
(19) \[vb, Lasleft, Lastright .... \] 
The flow of information between (17), (18) and 
(19) is represented graphically in (20), where (20a), 
(20b) and (20c) correspond to (17), (18) and (19) res- 
pectively. (20a) and (20c), which express the Category 
and theFeatures attibutes of the same verbal sign, have 
been dissociated for the sake of clarity. 
(20) Flow of information between functor and argu- 
ment 
(a) (np:\[...:~,~'...\]:Ord) 
CO) ...\]: _3 C/(np:\[... V1, V2 
:(\[V1 ...\] ~ pre=~ Z, \[V2...\] =~ post =:~W) 
(c) \[vb,'~tleft, t Lastright .... \] 
:fwd; --:bwd 
For example, suppose the nominative valency 
(21a), in the verbal sign tdMphone d la fille, whose 
Features attribute is as in (21c), and the lexical sign 
Jean (21b). 
(21) Flow of information between Jean and tdldphone 
a laJ#le 
(a) (np:tnom ..... -:wh, i .... \]:Ord) 
I I 1 I Co) C/(np:\[nom or obj ..... V1, V2 .... \]:_ ) 
:\[vb I 
:(\[V1 ...\] ~ pre=~ Z,\[~V2 ...\] =~ post =~ W) 
(c) :\[vb, i, lex,'~...\] 
The concatenation by FC is allowed (-wh is com- 
patible with 0, the requirement extracted from the 
verbal valency being that the Lastleft concatenated 
contituent with the verb is not a wh-constituent. But a 
concatenation by BC will fail(i does not unify with lex). 
Thus examples in (22) are correctly recognised (see 
Appendix). 
(22) (a) Jean ttltphone ~t la Idle. 
Co) *Ttltphone ~ la fille Jean. 
(c) *Jean ~ quelle fille ttltphone ? 
(d) A queUe fille ttltphone Jean ? 
4. IMPLEMENTATION 
The UCG formalism and the corresponding com- 
putational environment were developped at the Centre 
for Cognitive Science, University of Edinburgh by 
(Calderetal. 1986). They include facilities for defining 
templates and path-equations as in PATR-2 and a shift- 
reduce parser. The extensions to the original frame- 
work have been implemented at the Universit6 Blaise 
- 253 - 
Pascal, Formation Doctorale Linguistique et Informa- 
tique, Clermont-Ferrand (France). The system runs on 
a Sun and has been extensively tested. 
5. COVERAGE AND DISCUSSION 
The current grammar accounts for the core local li- 
nearity phenomena of French i.e., auxiliary and clitic 
order, clitic placement in simple and in complex verb 
phrases, clitic doubling and interrogative inversions. 
Unbounded dependencies are catered for without re- 
sorting either to threading COCG), functional uncer- 
tainty (Karttunen) or functional composition (Combi- 
natory Categorial Grammar, Steedman 1986). Instead, 
the issue is dealt with at the lexical level by introducing 
an embedding valency on matrix verbs. Finally, non 
local order constraints such as constraints on the distri- 
bution of negative particles and the requirement for a 
wh-constituent to be placed to the left of the verb when 
a lexical subject is placed to the right (see example 
(22d)) can also be handled. 
Thus, it appears that insights from phrase structure 
and categorial grammar can be fruitfully put together 
in a lexical framework. Following GPSG, our forma- 
lism does not associate verb valencies with any intrin- 
sic order. An interesting difference however is that LP 
statements are not used either. This is important since 
in French, clitic ordering (B~s 1988) shows that order 
constraints may hold between items belonging to dif- 
ferent local trees. Another difference with GPSG is that 
as in UCG, no explicit statement of feature instantia- 
tion principles is required: the feature flow of informa- 
tion is ensured by the concatenation rules. Last but not 
least, it is worth underlining that our approach (1) 
keeps the number of combination rules down to 2 (plus 
a unary deletion rule) and (2) eliminates unjustified 
lexical ambiguity i.e., ambiguity not related to catego- 
rial or semantic information on the other hand. 
Though there are - or so we argue - good linguistic 
reasons for representing verb valencies as a set rather 
than as a list, it is only fair to stress that this rapidly 
leads to computational innefficiency while parsing. 
Typically, given 3 adjacent signs NP 1 V NP2 there will 
be two ways of combining each NP with the verb and 
thus two parses. In a more complex sentence, so-called 
"spurious ambiguities" - i.e., analyses which yield 
exactly the same sign - multiply very quickly. We are 
currently working on the problem. 
REFERENCES 
B ar-Hillel, Yehoshna (1953) A quasi-arithmetical no- 
tation for syntactic description. Language, 29, 47- 
58. 
Baschung, Karine, B~s, Gabriel G., Corluy, Annick, 
and Guillotin, Thierry (1986) Auxiliaries and Cli- 
tics in French UCG Grammar. Proceedings of the 
Third European Chapter of the Association for 
Computational Linguistics. Copenhague, 1987, 
173-178. 
B~s, GabrielG. (1988),Clitiques etconstructions topi- 
calistes clans une grammaire GPSG du fran~ais. 
Lex/que, 6, 55-81. 
Calder, Jonathan, Moens, Marc and Zeevat, Honk 
(1986) An UCG Interpreter. ESPRIT Project 393 
ACORD. Deliverable T2.6, Centre for Cognitive 
Science, University of Edinburgh. 
Gunji T. (1986) Subcategorisation and Word Order. In 
International Symposium on Language and Artifi- 
cialIntelligence, Kyoto, 1986. 
Karttunen, Laud (1986) Radical Lexicalism. Report 
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and Information, December 1986. Paper presented 
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Phrase Structure, July 1986, New York. 
Steedman, Mark J. (1986) Incremental Interpretation 
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Uszkoreit, Hans (1987) Word order and Constituent 
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APPENDIX. Order constraints 
The following matrix represents features in nomi- 
native (a) and non-nominative Co) valencies in verbal 
signs (i.e., they correspond to (21a)),and features in the 
valency of NP's active signs, lexical NP(c) and wh- 
NP(d); see (21b). Columns stand for specified slots for 
both types valencies (see (11)). 
Lleft LrightLleft Lrigth 
(a)nom valency -wh i -wh k 
Co)-nom valency k -wh 
(c)Lexical NP V1 V2 
(d)Wh-NP _ _ Tel V2 
The matrix express the following constraints (in 
italics the constituent inducing the constraints). 
(a) A lexical subject NP to the left of the verb cannot be 
- 254- 
immediately followed by a wh-constituent : 
*Jean quel homme regarde ? (Jean = subject) 
(b) A lexical subjectplaced to the fight of the verb must 
be immediately ajacent to it: 
*Quel cadeau pr6sente a Marie Pierre ? 
(c) A wh-subject to the left of the verb forbids a wh- 
constituent to its immediate fight : 
*Qui quel homme regarde ? 
(d) There may be no wh-subject to the fight of the verb : 
*Jean regarde qui ? 
(e) Lexical non-subject NP's cannot be placed to the 
left of the verb : 
*Marie Pierre regarde 
(f) A wh-NP non-subject to the left of the verb cannot 
be immediately followed by a wh-constituent : 
*Qui qui regarde ? 
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