A step forward in understandingpas: the post-verbal negator in Old Occitan from the perspective of communication and rhetorical strategizing

Abstract

In recent years, within the cognitive linguistics approach there has been a trend of scholarly research committed to exploring the motivation for language change. The way in which people use language in communication, together with principles of human categorization, are the locus where language change and innovations are to be found. Interactional contexts in particular, seen as playing a crucial role in bringing about syntactic change (Traugott 2010b), have figured prominently in recent contributions on diachronic micro-changes, bringing to the fore the role played by dialogue as both the manifestation of the participants’ own voices and the realization of the constant negotiation that characterizes human communication. Against this background, this contribution focuses on a particular use of the Occitan post-verbal negator pas in negative rhetorical questions, which was very productive in fifteenth-century collections of religious theatrical texts. It is claimed that these dialogic contexts allowed a polyphonic use of pas, crucially restricted to this post-verbal negator, which is key to identifying the reasons behind the eventual establishment of pas as the generalized sentential negator in the modern language.

(Negative) Polarity Items in Catalan and Other Trans-Pyrenean Romance Languages

“…( 68 Lafont 1970, p. 88) The first occurrences of pas in Paoli and Bach's (2020) corpus of Old Occitan are from the end of the 12th century, with the 15th century being the moment when the use of pas (with an enriched pragmatic meaning linked to previous discourse) begins to increase exponentially, particularly in rhetorical questions (Paoli and Bach 2020, pp. 119, 124;Paoli 2020Paoli , p. 1022. The combination of pas with PI scalar minimizers is already attested in Occitan during the period between the 13th and 15th centuries (Paoli and Bach 2020, p. 124; see also Jensen 1986, p. 309;Romieu and Bianch 2005, p. 245).…”

“…These data also support that pas was not used as a scalar minimizer, but as an item with an enriched meaning. According to Paoli (2020Paoli ( , pp. 1039Paoli ( , 1043, pas was used in negative rhetorical questions in Old Occitan to deny a counter-expectation (changing the initial negative question to a positive assertion).…”

“…This use contributed to pas progressively being associated with 'polarity reversing properties', first at the speech-act level (referring back to discourse-old content) and, later on, at the propositional level. According to Paoli (2020Paoli ( , p. 1043, this process would have led to the use of pas as the sentential negator. Olivieri and Sauzet (2016, p. 346) assert that unmarked discontinuous negation emerged in Occitan varieties in the 17th century (see also Schwegler (1988, p. 308).…”

“…Note, though, that the switch to a single postverbal negation does not seem to have occurred uniformly in Languedocian Occitan, given that several instances of an unmarked discontinuous negation have been identified in Languedocian texts from the 19th century (Schwegler 1988, p. 308 and 19th century texts in BaTelÒc). Paoli andBach (2020, p. 119, following Schwegler 1988, p. 163ff.…”

“…In Central Catalan this distinction can be exemplified by the respective use of gens (i) (intensive emphatic negation, i.e., scalar minimizer) and pas (ii) (presuppositional emphatic negation, i. As pointed out by a reviewer, example ( 68) is an instance of a rhetorical question, which according to Paoli (2020) was instrumental in pas establishing itself as a negative operator. 32 Gómez (2011, pp.…”