On the comparative analysis of French (ne) … que exceptives

Abstract This article takes a close look at recent proposals that French (ne) … que exceptives are hidden comparatives involving two silent elements: a covert n-word and a phonologically unrealized autre ‘other’ introducing a partially elided comparative clausal standard headed by que ‘than’. I show that assuming the constant presence of an n-word in the exceptive construction allows us to provide inter alia a scopal treatment of the fact that (ne) … que exceptives in modal contexts are systematically ambiguous between an exclusive reading and a minimal sufficiency reading. As regards the comparative analysis of exceptives, I demonstrate that while the locality of association problem raised by (Homer. 2015. Ne … que and its challenges. In Ulrike Steindl, Thomas Borer, Huilin Fang, Alfredo García Pardo, Peter Guekguezian, Brian Hsu, Charlie O’Hara & Iris Chuoying Ouyang (eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, 111–120. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.) can be resolved by assuming that in French, the standard of comparatives can be clausal or just nominal, the fact that (ne) … que displays a lexically-encoded, conventionalized meaning dependency on focus that is absent from its alleged comparative maximal phonological realization casts some serious doubt on the viability of the comparative analysis of French exceptives. Finally, I examine a number of contexts in which the n-word component of (ne) … que must be overt and argue that this constraint follows from the Intonational Phrase Edge Generalization.