No abstract

In this paper we study the clausal architecture of Old French as it can be assessed from texts dating from the first half of the 12 th century, a period labeled here for convenience Early Old French, and we compare it to what is known of 13th c. Old French. We show that the embedded clauses in our data are very different from 13 th c. Old French. Both main and embedded clauses are verb second (V2) in some sense, but this state of the language cannot be qualified as a symmetrical V2 language. We propose to derive main clauses with a layered CP and embedded clauses with IP, and we spell out more precisely the clausal architecture we propose for both main and embedded clauses.

It is argued that the reflexive clitic se does not operate in the lexicon in French reflexive and reciprocal constructions (excluding middles and anticausatives). The widely held approaches to reflexives, in which the reflexive clitic creates a one-place reflexive verb and/or absorbs a case feature on the verb, is both semantically inadequate and syntactically too local. The reflexive clitic appears with verbs and predicates that are independently semantically reflexive; French reflexive/reciprocal constructions are semantically transitive; and case absorption doesn't account for causative and applicative constructions. To account for the facts, it is proposed that se is a Voice head introducing in syntax the external argument of the verb, and stating that the referent of the object is determined on the basis of that of the subject.

The goal of this article is twofold. First, I explore the hypothesis that a number of regularities in the distribution of the two types of inchoative constructions with verbs of change of state in French, the superficially intransitive construction and the reflexive construction (illustrated in (1)–(3)), can be captured by an analysis whereby monovalent verbs of change of state may project the Patient argument to the subject or to the object position. When the Patient argument is projected to the subject position (as in (1a) and (3a)), the construction is unergative. When it is projected to the object position, the construction is unaccusative (as in (1b)–(3b)). Verbs of change of state in French diner as to whether they may enter an intransitive inchoative construction (1), a reflexive inchoative construction (2) or both (3).

From the perspective of language change, grammaticalization is generally viewed as the process whereby ‘a lexical item or construction in certain uses takes on grammatical characteristics’. Roberts and Roussou (1999) account for this type of change as resulting from the reanalysis of lexical heads into functional heads. This chapter discusses the diachronic changes that do not fall under this definition, viewed as exemplifying a type of grammaticalization whereby illocutionary features come to be associated with distinct functional heads. It analyses the changes in the clausal organization of Old French as following from the fact that the Topic/Focus functional head common to all clause types of the first stage gives way to a system with a number of separate illocutionary heads. The chapter argues that the weakening of the Tobler–Mussafia (TM) constraint excluding object clitic pronouns from initial position in main clauses in Old French (OF) results from a gradual replacement of a common representation for V1 initial clauses by a new system where (1) satisfaction of a discourse-related [Top]/[Foc] feature by V is minimized, and (2) there is a reanalysis of the CP layer, with grammaticalization of illocutionary type features.