450 LINDA SCHWARTZ
(43) *Il en sont étudiant trois.
IL of-them are students three
"Three of them are students."
I will assume that the condition for occuring in constructions with en or il-
inversion in French is the same as that for ne-cliticization in Italian, as
claimed in Burzio (1986). In this case, the distribution of en is stated in
terms of a strict notion of theme, as discussed in Section 3.3 and the non
occurrence of en is taken as the default case. Since the subjects of attribu
tive and identificational constructions don't meet this condition, they will
pattern like subjectives with respect to this criterion.
However, an interesting difference between French and Italian is that
in French the copula être "to be" selects the auxiliary avoir "to have", not
être, as shown in (44)-(46).
(44) Jean est/*a arrivé.
Jean is arrived
"Jean arrived."
(45) Jean a/*est été heureux.
Jean has been happy
"Jean has been happy."
(46) Jean al*est été étudiant.
Jean has been student
"Jean has been a student."
At this point, the same condition might appear to determine both occur
rence with //-inversion and en-constructions and also auxiliary selection in
French, since in both cases, attributives and identificationals pattern with
subjectives. However, the condition on auxiliary selection in French is mar
kedly different from that in Italian, and it is also not isomorphic to the con
dition for the occurrence of il-inversion and the potential appearance of en.
In French, those structures which select the auxiliary être seem to con
sist of two distinct classes, one most appropriately characterized formally:
all morphologically marked intransitives (se-moyen, reflexives/reciprocals,
passives, and verbes pronominaux (verbs requiring the obligatory appear
ance of a clitic pronoun from the reflexive paradigm), the other charac
terized semantically: a subset of intransitive verbs of motion and position.
All other verbs take avoir. Examples of morphologically marked intransi
tives are given in (47)-(50).