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Specificity Markers and Nominal Exclamatives in French Fabienne Martin

2.1 Introduction In French, the two markers certain ‘certain’ and précis ‘precise/particular’ seem to indicate that the speaker – or another cognitive agent – has a certain/particular individual in mind. In other words, they mark epistemic specificity (in the sense of e.g. Farkas 2002, Sect. 3.5). These modifiers will thus be called specificity markers. Certain has already been extensively studied, in French (cf. e.g. Jayez and Tovena 2002, 2006a,b), as well as in English (cf. e.g. Hintikka, 1986; Enç, 1991; Kratzer, 1998; Farkas, 2002; Yanovich, this volume). On the other hand, précis is not mentioned in the studies devoted to French specificity markers, and its English closest counterpart particular has to my knowledge only been studied by Houghton (2000) and Zamparelli (2003). The goals of this paper are rather modest. Firstly, it aims to provide a preliminary semantic description of the specificity marker précis that accounts for its specific contribution to an indefinite NP, and thus for the difference between un N ‘a N’ and un N précis ‘a particular N’ on one hand, and un N précis ‘a particular N’ and un certain N ‘a certain N’ on the other hand. Let us immediately observe that the two French specificity markers précis and certain are not competitors. Indeed, they can be simultaneously used in the same NP as shown in (1), without generating (pure) redundancy. A proper analysis should delineate the respective semantic contribution of both markers in such examples. (1)

a. J’aimerais un certain changement précis dans ma vie, mais j’ai l’impression d’être un cas désespéré. (Internet) ‘I would like a certain particular change in my life, but I have the impression to be a desesperate case.’

F. Martin () Department of Languages, Institute of Linguistics, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany e-mail: [email protected] C. Ebert and S. Hinterwimmer (eds.), Different Kinds of Specificity Across Languages, Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy 92, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-5310-5__2, © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2013

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b. Il l’a caché à un certain endroit précis. ‘He hid it at a certain particular place.’ The second goal of the paper is to shed a light on an intriguing puzzle, namely that specificity markers cannot easily appear in exclamative nominal sentences, cf. (2)– (4). This fact can be observed among others in French, English and with the German specificity markers bestimmt and gewiss analysed in Ebert, Ebert & Hinterwimmer (this volume). (2) Oh! Un colis! ‘Oh! A package!’ (3) ??Oh! Un certain colis! ?? ‘Oh! A certain package!’ ?? ‘Oh! Ein gewisses Paket!’ (4) ??Oh! Un colis précis! ?? ‘Oh! A particular package!’ ?? ‘Oh! Ein bestimmtes Paket!’ This is surprising, given that the context of this sentence makes clear that the speaker has a specific individual in mind. They thus contain an epistemic specific indefinite. Given that French certain/précis, English certain/particular and gewiss/be