FORMAL ASPECTS OF FRENCH NONLEXICAL DATIVES*

French dative clitic pronouns in (1) as substitutes attached to the verb for prepositional complements of the animate type introduced by the preposition ä. Instances of this correspondence are exempli-fied in (2). (1) me (lsg.) te (2sg.) lui (3sg.) nous (lpl.) vous (2pl.) leur (3pl.) (2) a. Je lui donne le livre. Ί give him/her the book' Je donne le livre ä Marie. b. Elle lui ressemble beaucoup. 'She resembles him/her a lot.' Elle ressemble beaucoup ä sa mere. Α first problem for this approach are sentences with noncKticizable ä-NP. (3) a. Je pense ä Anatole. 'I'm thinking of Anatole.' *Je lui pense. / Je pense ä lui. b. Tu devras l'habifuer ä ton pere. 'You'U have to get bim used to your father.' *Tu devras le lui habituer. / Tu devras l'habiluer ä lui. Barnes (1985) refers to her 1980 a-rticle which explains these cases by "semantic implications which always attach to the dative clitic" (Barnes (1985: 160)). We will not go into this problem here. Let it suffice to refer to an alternative and more formalized explanatio