Abstract

This thesis investigates the phenomenon of syncretism, defined as a systematic mismatch between morphophonological forms and their associated syntactic feature content. The specific focus of this thesis is the French pronominal paradigm, which encodes multiple dimensions simultaneously—case, gender, and class (strong, weak, clitic). Several forms, such as lui and elle, appear in more than one morphosyntactic environment, raising questions about how such syncretisms should be represented in the grammar. Do syncretic forms correspond to a single lexical entry or multiple entries? How can similarities and differences between syncretic items be captured, and what does this reveal about the interface between morphology and syntax? To address these questions, this thesis adopts a nanosyntactic perspective, building on cartographic approaches to the structure of Determiner Phrases (DPs). The analysis explores the internal feature composition of pronouns and uses tools such as pointer-based lexicalization and branching lexical trees to account for French syncretism patterns. This study contributes to our understanding of the relationship between syntax and morphology, as well as the principles that govern the lexicalization of morphosyntactic structures.