The Syntax of Old Catalan Clitics: “Llibre dels Fets”

Abstract

Although the distribution of pronominal clitics in Old Catalan has been described in general terms (Fischer 2002; Batllori et al. 2005), there are no quantitative studies detailing the frequency of preverbal or postverbal clitics nor their diachronic evolution. The clitics appearing with verbs in the future and conditional tense (FC) are worth a separate mention, since these forms originate from periphrastic structures that involve an infinitive and the auxiliary verb habere, and which could appear as an analytic (dir-li he) or a synthetic form (li diré or diré-li). This paper describes the general clitic positioning and the one encountered with FC in order to verify the claim that they display parallel distributions, using a text from the 13th century, to wit Llibre dels Fets. This article analyses the pragmatic-syntactic environments in which the clitic are found, as well as the degree of grammaticalization and univerbation of the FC. Following previous work (e.g., Bouzouita & Sentí 2022), it is argued that the FC in Catalan appear to exhibit a more advanced degree of grammaticalization than the western languages of the Iberian Peninsula.

Clitic Placement and the Grammaticalization of the Future and the Conditional in Old Catalan

“…Regarding clitic placement, some studies on present-day Galician (Álvarez Blanco et al 1986) and Old Castilian (Granberg 1988(Granberg , 1999Castillo Lluch 1996;Bouzouita 2008aBouzouita , 2008bBouzouita , 2011Bouzouita , 2012Bouzouita , 2016 have observed that this pragmatic function (emphasis) accounts for the presence of preverbal clitics in the aforementioned syntactic environments. Similar behaviour has also been recently observed in Old Catalan (Bouzouita and Sentí 2022;Sentí and Bouzouita 2022;Torres-Latorre 2023). Even so, a detailed exploration of the consequences of information structure in clitic placement in Old Romance languages is still pending.…”

“…First, the variation permitted between a more grammaticalized construction, i.e., SFC-p, and a less grammaticalized version of the FC, i.e., the AFC, since these forms appear in the same syntactic contexts. As previous studies have shown, both constructions are frequent in Old Catalan (Bouzouita and Sentí 2022;Sentí and Bouzouita 2022;Torres-Latorre 2023). However, this was not the case in Old Castilian.…”

“…Furthermore, another grammaticalization process participated in the evolution of Old Catalan: the evolution of clitic placement from the above-mentioned syntactic distribution towards a fixed preverbal position (as in present-day Catalan). In spite of the previous knowledge on pronominal clitics in Old Catalan (Fischer 2002;Batllori et al 2005;Bouzouita and Sentí 2022;Sentí and Bouzouita 2022), this topic has yet to be studied quantitatively and qualitatively. There is lack of knowledge on which variation contexts favour preverbal placement and on the extent to which proclisis is linked to emphasis (or whether it can also appear in a neutral, i.e., non-emphatic environment, and therefore be used in innovative contexts).…”

“…The position of pronominal clitics with respect to the verb in Old Catalan (and Old Romance languages) is motivated by syntactic-pragmatic restrictions (Fischer 2002;Batllori et al 2005;Sentí and Bouzouita 2022)-unlike in the present-day language, in which morphosyntactic restrictions related to the type of verb form govern clitic positioning (cf. GIEC 2016, Section 8.3.3;Bonet 2002).…”

“…On the other hand, other scholars have precisely highlighted the connection between clitic placement and the distribution of the different forms of FC. In the Middle Ages, clitic placement with the FC is governed by the same syntactic-pragmatic restrictions than those with other tenses (Eberenz 1991;Castillo Lluch 1996Bouzouita 2011Bouzouita , 2012Bouzouita , 2016Sentí and Bouzouita 2022). The three following points support this perspective against the pragmatic approach and the perception of AFC as a marked configuration: (i) the AFC and SFC with postverbal clitics (SFC-p, also known as postposition or enclisis) can exclusively appear in the syntactic environments that require a postverbal clitic; (ii) in some linguistic varieties, such as Old Castilian, the AFC is (almost) the only available construction for the environments which demand postposition; (iii) the SFC with preverbal clitics (SFC-a, also known as anteposition or proclisis) are permitted in those syntactic contexts in which preverbal clitics are expected with other verbal tenses.…”