The evolution of pro-drop in Medieval French

Vance, Barbara S.

doi:10.1075/cilt.60.25van

Cited by 28 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…also Schifano 2015b on Italo-Romance). The significance of this development is clear if we consider the central claim that Old French had a form of Verb Second (V2) syntax (Thurneysen 1892;Wartburg 1958: 103;Price 1971: §11.5;Moignet 1973: 287;Sk arup 1975: 290;Harris 1978Harris : 18-22, 1984Adams 1987aAdams : 2-3, 1987bAdams : 4-7, 1987cAdams , 1988Vance 1987Vance , 1988Vance : 87, 1993Vance : 281-6, 1997Fleishman 1991: 267-70;Roberts 1993: Ch. 2;De Bakker 1997: Ch.…”

Section: Structure Of the Articlementioning

confidence: 99%

Probing the Syntax of a Problematic Particle: Old French ‘si’ Revisited

Wolfe

2018

Trans of the Philol Soc

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article presents the findings of a corpus analysis of seven Old French texts to better understand the syntax of the particle SI. It is argued that the texts display clear evidence of synchronic and diachronic variation, much of which has not been noted in the literature. A diachronic grammaticalisation pathway is proposed for SI from a temporal deictic adverb to a Topic continuity marker and then to a FinP expletive which undergoes upwards reanalysis as a ForceP expletive.

show abstract

Section: Structure Of the Articlementioning

confidence: 99%

Probing the Syntax of a Problematic Particle: Old French ‘si’ Revisited

Wolfe

2018

Trans of the Philol Soc

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Venetian therefore demonstrates that although the clausal structure 'available' to the left of the finite verb in Romance Force-V2 systems is This proposal has an additional very desirable effect, as it suggests that once V2 undergoes reanalysis 29 from Fin to a Force-V2 system, Null Subjects or Topics will become unstable in the system as they will only ever be realised in postverbal position. This may go someway towards accounting for why in French (Adams 1987;Vance 1987Vance , 1988Vance , 1997Roberts 1993Roberts , 2007.2), Northern Italian Dialects (Vanelli, Renzi & Benincà 1986;Vanelli 1987;Poletto 1995) and the majority of the Germanic V2 languages (Sigurðsson 1993;Rosenkvist 2009;Axel & Weiss 2011;Walkden 2013) Null Subjects gradually disappeared from the medieval period onwards, leading some (incorrectly) to claim that there is an inherent incompatibility between a V2 syntax and Null Subjects tout court (Jaeggli & Safir 1989:33 The heavy restrictions on V1 structures in the 'innovative' V2 varieties are therefore linked to the nature of the null elements which can satisfy the V2 constraint. This, in turn, is linked to the high locus of the V2 property on Force.…”

Section: The Original Fin-v2 Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

A comparative perspective on the evolution of Romance clausal structure

Wolfe¹

2016

DIA

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article presents a comparative analysis of the diachronic evolution of Romance clausal structure from Classical Latin through to the late medieval period, with particular reference to the Verb Second (V2) property. In the medieval period three distinct diachronic stages can be identified as regards V2: a C-VSO stage attested in Old Sardinian, a ‘relaxed’ V2 stage across Early Medieval Romance and maintained into 13th and 14th century Occitan and Sicilian, and a ‘strict’ V2 stage attested in 13th and 14th century French, Spanish and Venetian. The C-VSO grammar found in Old Sardinian is a retention of the syntactic system attested in late Latin textual records, itself an innovation on an ‘incipient V2’ stage found in Classical Latin, where V-to-C movement and XP-fronting receive a pragmatically or syntactically marked interpretation.

show abstract

“…Therefore, these kinds of clause have been left out. We have also excluded embedded clauses with a pro subject in OF, even though pro is often seen as an indication of V 0 -to-C 0 movement in main clauses (Adams 1987, Vance 1989, Roberts 1993. The reason for this is that there are known cases where pro may occur without V 0 -to-C 0 movement (Hirschbühler andJunker 1988, Ingham 2012;Salvesen 2014a).…”

Section: Breakdown Of Results By Verb Classmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diagnosing embedded V2 in Old English and Old French

Salvesen¹,

Walkden²

2017

Micro-Change and Macro-Change in Diachronic Syntax

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Old English (OE) and Old French (OF) both display verb-second (V2) word order in main declarative clauses. Different models may account for V2: (a) the finite verb must move to a head in the CP field; (b) it must remain in the IP field; or (c) it moves to the left periphery only when the preceding XP is not a subject. While the IP-model should allow free embedded V2, the two others would either exclude completely or strongly limit the possibilty of having embedded V2. We select embedded that-clauses and analyse the word order with respect to the matrix verb: embedded V2 is possible in both OE and OF, although the availability of this structure is restricted. OE has very few occurrences of embedded V2, whereas OF seems to permit this construction more freely. We link this difference to the site of first Merge of complementizers in the two languages.

show abstract

The evolution of pro-drop in Medieval French

Cited by 28 publications

References 0 publications

Probing the Syntax of a Problematic Particle: Old French ‘si’ Revisited

Probing the Syntax of a Problematic Particle: Old French ‘si’ Revisited

A comparative perspective on the evolution of Romance clausal structure

Diagnosing embedded V2 in Old English and Old French

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About