Central semantic of value weak personal pronoun

Morphological criterion

1. Weak personal pronouns are the only ones that have different paradigms according to the feature case with the values nominative, accusative, dative and oblique. They belong to the paradigms of il for the nominative case, le for the accusative case and lui for the dative case. We have also the personal pronouns y and en with the case value oblique. Notice that an allomorph exists for the weak personal pronoun of the first person singular, if it is used in an imperative sentence with ``positive value'' (compare: Tu me donnes du pain?/ Donne-moi du pain). The pronouns of the second person singular and plural in imperative sentences are weak reflexive pronouns and not weak personal pronoun (Tourne-toi/ Tournez-vous).

Test

If X has different paradigms according to the case-value (nom, acc, dat or obl), X is a weak personal pronoun.

• Il /pos=p & type=pers weak & case=nom   mange.
• Elle /pos=p & type=pers weak& case=nom   le /pos=p & type=pers weak & case=acc   connaıt.
• Elle /pos=p & type=pers weak & case=nom   y /pos=p & type=pers weak & case=obl   va.
• Elle /pos=p & type=pers weak & case=nom   lui /pos=p & type=pers weak & case=dat   plaıt.
• Donne- moi /pos=p & type=pers weak & case=dat   du pain.
• Regarde- moi /pos=p & type=pers weak & case=acc   / but : Regarde- toi /pos=p & type=refl weak  

Syntactic criterion

1. We consider y as weak personal pronoun and never as adverb, even if it has the function of a modifier of a clause or of a verb, because it has the same surface distribution as the other weak personal pronouns:
   • Je travaille à mon appartement - J' y /pos=p   travaille (complement of a verb)
   • Je travaille à Paris - J' y /pos=p   travaille (modifier of a verb)
   • Pierre donne son adresse à Marie - Pierre lui /pos=p   donne son adresse (complement of a verb)

   Furthermore, we have to be consistent with the pos-value of en which is a pronoun:

   • Il l'empêche de travailler - Il l' en /pos=p   empêche (complement of a verb)
   • il le frappa d'un baton - Il l' en /pos=p   frappa (modifier of a verb)