This work is a study of the French impersonal on and a theory of the unique "referential deficiency" of impersonals: a range of uses that spans those covered by indefinites and definites; neutrality about content like number; systematic participation in syntactic and semantic dependencies but with unparalleled restrictions like binding of only local, number-neutral anaphora. Current understanding of the syntax and semantics of DPs and properties of French let us study this behavior in depth and

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... extend previous findings, often in unexpected ways. The study reveals a DP with content unique in French but drawing only on options available in UG. It leads to a theory of impersonal on as an indefinite DP whose content interacts with certain theories of phi-features, indefinites and definites, and anaphoric dependencies to give an explanatory account of the nature of impersonals. In turn, impersonal on contributes to the theories that enter into its analysis: the relationship between syntactic underspecification and semantic neutrality, the nature of indefinites and their relationship to definites (Heim 1991, 2011; Heim 1982, Elbourne 2013), and minimal pronoun anaphora (Kratzer 2009). The study is extended to the grammaticalisation of a distinct 1PL on, whose complex properties reflect the colexicalisation of impersonal on and a 1PL element. We end the book on the place of impersonals in the landscape of argument coding and explore the expected parameter space through on-like impersonals cross-linguistically. The work builds on the analysis of on and its kin in Cinque (1988), Chierchia (1995b), Egerland (2003b), Kayne (2010), and explores them in the Principles-and-Parameters approach to syntax and the "situated descriptions" (Elbourne 2013) extension of the syntax-semantics mapping of Heim and Kratzer (1998).