ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that some recent theoretical innovations permit a principled account of complex inversion, a French construction which is on the agenda of theoretical and Romance syntacticians ever since Kayne’s seminal analysis. A striking property of the construction is that there are apparently two subjects: a full NP, which occurs to the left of the inflected verb, and a pronoun to the right of the inflected verb. The chapter aims to show that the fundamental properties of complex inversion can be properly understood if we combine elements of the thorough analysis proposed in Kayne with certain more recent proposals. It outlines an analysis of subject-clitic inversion, a necessary prerequisite. The chapter addresses the problem posed by the presence of two subjects. It turns to the question of the restriction of complex inversion to root contexts and develops a general approach to the root/non-root distinction.
