- St Catherine's College, Oxford, OX1 3UJ
Sam Wolfe
University of Oxford, Linguistics, Philology, and Phonetics, Faculty Member
- Historical Linguistics, Syntax, Romance Linguistics, Historical Syntax, Medieval Romance, Information Structure, and 28 moreHistory of Latin Language, Latin Language, Word order, Sardinian language, Late Latin, Sicilian language, Verb Movement, Verb Second, Root Phenomena, Venetian language, Linguistics, Ancient Indo-European Languages, Languages and Linguistics, Latin, Romance philology, Indo-European Linguistics, Indo-European Studies, Hispanic Linguistics, Formal syntax, Germanic linguistics, Diachronic Linguistics (Or Historical Linguistics), Information structure (Languages And Linguistics), Minimalist Syntax, Diachronic Syntax, Syntactic Change, Minimalism, Generative linguistics, and French linguisticsedit
- Professor of French and Romance Linguistics and Fellow of St Catherine's College, University of Oxford. Interested in... moreProfessor of French and Romance Linguistics and Fellow of St Catherine's College, University of Oxford. Interested in the evolution of French syntax and comparative Romance syntax more generally, parameter theory and the left periphery.edit
This volume offers a range of synchronic and diachronic case studies in comparative Germanic and Romance morphosyntax. These two language families, spoken by over a billion people today, have played a central role in linguistic research,... more
This volume offers a range of synchronic and diachronic case studies in comparative Germanic and Romance morphosyntax. These two language families, spoken by over a billion people today, have played a central role in linguistic research, but many significant questions remain about the relationship between them. Following an introduction that sets out the methodological, empirical, and theoretical background to the book, the volume is divided into three parts that deal with the morphosyntax of subjects and the inflectional layer; inversion, discourse pragmatics, and the left periphery; and continuity and variation beyond the clause. The contributors adopt a diverse range of approaches, making use of the latest digitized corpora and presenting a mixture of well-known and under-studied data from standard and non-standard Germanic and Romance languages. Many of the chapters challenge received wisdom about the relationship between these two important language families. The volume will be an indispensable resource for researchers and students in the fields of Germanic and Romance linguistics, historical and comparative linguistics, and morphosyntax.
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This volume offers a wide-range of case studies on variation and change in the sub-family of the Romance languages that includes French and Occitan: Gallo-Romance. Both standard and non-standard Gallo-Romance data can be of enormous value... more
This volume offers a wide-range of case studies on variation and change in the sub-family of the Romance languages that includes French and Occitan: Gallo-Romance. Both standard and non-standard Gallo-Romance data can be of enormous value to studies of morphosyntactic variation and change, yet, as the volume demonstrates, non-standard and comparative Gallo-Romance data have often been lacking in both synchronic and diachronic studies. Following an introduction that sets out the conceptual background, the volume is divided into three parts whose chapters explore a variety of topics in the domains of sentence structure, the verb complex, and word structure. The empirical foundation of the volume is exceptionally rich, drawing on standard and non-standard data from French, Occitan, Francoprovençal, Picard, Wallon, and Norman. This diversity is also reflected in the theoretical and conceptual approaches adopted, which span traditional philology, sociolinguistics, formal morphological and syntactic theory, semantics, and discourse-pragmatics. The volume will thus be an indispensable tool for researchers and students in French and (Gallo-) Romance linguistics as well as for readers interested in grammatical theory, sociolinguistics, and historical linguistics.
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This volume provides the most exhaustive and comprehensive treatment available of the Verb Second property, which has been a central topic in formal syntax for decades. While Verb Second has traditionally been considered a feature... more
This volume provides the most exhaustive and comprehensive treatment available of the Verb Second property, which has been a central topic in formal syntax for decades. While Verb Second has traditionally been considered a feature primarily of the Germanic languages, this book shows that it is much more widely attested cross-linguistically than previously thought, and explores the multiple empirical, theoretical, and experimental puzzles that remain in developing an account of the phenomenon. Uniquely, formal theoretical work appears alongside studies of psycholinguistics, language production, and language acquisition. The range of languages investigated is also broader than in previous work: while novel issues are explored through the lens of the more familiar Germanic data, chapters also cover Verb Second effects in languages such as Armenian, Dinka, Tohono O'odham, and in the Celtic, Romance, and Slavonic families. The analyses have wide-ranging consequences for our understanding of the language faculty, and will be of interest to researchers and students from advanced undergraduate level upwards in the fields of syntax, historical linguistics, and language acquisition.
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This volume provides the first book-length study of the controversial topic of Verb Second and related properties in a range of Medieval Romance varieties. It presents an examination and analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data... more
This volume provides the first book-length study of the controversial topic of Verb Second and related properties in a range of Medieval Romance varieties. It presents an examination and analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data from Old French, Occitan, Sicilian, Venetian, Spanish, and Sardinian, in order to assess whether these were indeed Verb Second languages. Sam Wolfe argues that V-to-C movement is a point of continuity across all the medieval varieties - unlike in the modern Romance languages - but that there are rich patterns of synchronic and diachronic variation in the medieval period that have not previously been observed and investigated. These include differences in the syntax-pragmatics mapping, the locus of verb movement, the behaviour of clitic pronouns, the syntax of subject positions, matrix/embedded asymmetries, and the null argument properties of the languages in question. The book outlines a detailed formal cartographic analysis of both the attested synchronic patterns and the diachronic evolution of Romance clausal structure. The findings have widespread implications for the understanding of both the key typological property of Verb Second and the development of Latin into the modern Romance languages.
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This book provides the most comprehensive and detailed formal account to date of the evolution of French syntax. It makes use of the latest formal syntactic tools and combines careful textual analysis with a detailed synthesis of the... more
This book provides the most comprehensive and detailed formal account to date of the evolution of French syntax. It makes use of the latest formal syntactic tools and combines careful textual analysis with a detailed synthesis of the research literature to provide a novel analysis of the major syntactic developments in the history of French. The empirical scope of the volume is exceptionally broad, and includes discussion of syntactic variation and change in Latin, Old, Middle, Renaissance, and Classical French, and standard and non-standard varieties of Modern French. Following an introduction to the general trends in grammatical change from Latin to French, Sam Wolfe explores a wide range of phenomena including the left periphery, subject positions and null subjects, verb movement, object placement, negation, and the makeup of the nominal expression. The book concludes with a comparative analysis of how French has come to develop the unique typological profile it has within Romance today. The volume will thus be an indispensable tool for researchers and students in French and comparative Romance linguistics, as well as for readers interested in grammatical theory and historical linguistics more broadly.
Despite the vast literature which has accrued on the fine structure of the Romance left periphery, there exists no diachronic account of the emergence of the considerable microvariation between Romance varieties today. Focussing in... more
Despite the vast literature which has accrued on the fine structure of the Romance left periphery, there exists no diachronic account of the emergence of the considerable microvariation between Romance varieties today. Focussing in particular on the syntax of French and Venetan varieties, this article suggests that certain northern Romance varieties have diverged maximally from an Early Medieval Romance norm in which each left-peripheral Head attracts a wide variety of suitable Goals for movement, unlike the 'innovative' Romance grammars which emerge in the post-medieval period where the suitable class of Goals becomes restricted along categorial or information-structural grounds. The account predicts that the most 'conservative' Modern Romance grammars allow widespread argument fronting via movement, whereas their most 'innovative' counterparts show heavy restrictions on such operations.
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This article revisits the classic definition of a Residual Verb Second language in light of evidence from the history of French, which is supplemented with synchronic evidence from the Romance languages. The core proposal is that... more
This article revisits the classic definition of a Residual Verb Second language in light of evidence from the history of French, which is supplemented with synchronic evidence from the Romance languages. The core proposal is that following the loss of the Verb Second property French has successively lost multiple Verb Second correlates such that the grammar at different stages can be described as 'more' or 'less' Verb Second, according to the degree of left-peripheral phrasal or head movement permitted. Novel corpus data is presented for Renaissance and Classical French to show that the triggers for such movement become increasingly restricted along micro-and nanoparametric grounds. The gradient conception of Residual Verb Second which emerges from the data is also borne out in the Modern Romance languages, which are argued to instantiate multiple points on a typology of Verb Second residues according to the degree of leftperipheral phrasal movement or head movement that they license.
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This article presents a novel empirical analysis of the word-order properties of Middle French, which were analysed extensively in the 1990s but have not been discussed recently in light of the latest theoretical developments. Based on... more
This article presents a novel empirical analysis of the word-order properties of Middle French, which were analysed extensively in the 1990s but have not been discussed recently in light of the latest theoretical developments. Based on novel data, it is argued that Middle French is a form of V2 system, where the locus of V2 effects is a low left-peripheral head Fin. Whilst the evidence for V2 in the three texts examined is robust, the texts attest several changes in progress which, it is argued, eventually lead to the reanalysis of French as an SVO system. The article concludes with a discussion of why, in terms of formal parameter theory, the core V2 property remained so stable in the history of French across nearly a millennium, when it was also subject to extensive diachronic microvariation across centuries.
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This article presents a novel analysis of four Old Italo-Romance texts to better understand the syntax of the particle SI. The proposal is that the variation attested can be understood in a model where SI is understood to be merged in... more
This article presents a novel analysis of four Old Italo-Romance texts to better understand the syntax of the particle SI. The proposal is that the variation attested can be understood in a model where SI is understood to be merged in distinct positions in the Old Italo-Romance left periphery. Furthermore, it is suggested that the distribution of SI may depend on the types of constituents that can act as satisfiers of the V2 constraint in a given language.
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This article draws on a novel corpus of medieval texts to explore diachronic change in the French subject system. It is argued that the relative frequency of null, preverbal and postverbal subjects is affected by changes in the... more
This article draws on a novel corpus of medieval texts to explore diachronic change in the French subject system. It is argued that the relative frequency of null, preverbal and postverbal subjects is affected by changes in the syntax-information structure mapping during the medieval period, with the discourse value of both preverbal and postverbal subjects diachronically variable across the textual records. Furthermore, the discourse value of both so-called Germanic-and Romance-inversion structures is subject to change in the syntax-pragmatics mapping.
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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... more
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.
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The 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... more
The 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.
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The article proposed a new typology of the V2 property, integrating new data from a corpus of Medieval Romance texts with that from Rhaeto-Romance, Early Germanic and Modern Germanic. The proposed analysis is that all V2 systems have a... more
The article proposed a new typology of the V2 property, integrating new data from a corpus of Medieval Romance texts with that from Rhaeto-Romance, Early Germanic and Modern Germanic. The proposed analysis is that all V2 systems have a V-movement and phrasal movement trigger on the lowest left-peripheral head, Fin, and that in a subclass of V2 languages Force also has these properties. It is argued that the restrictions and variation on licensing verb-initial and verb-third clauses within Romance and Germanic V2 systems fall out from the Fin/Force distinction.
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New comparative data concerning the distribution of V1 and V3 orders in the Medieval Romance languages is presented in order to propose an analysis of the role these ‘deviant’ orders play in Verb Second (V2) grammars. It is proposed that... more
New comparative data concerning the distribution of V1 and V3 orders in the Medieval Romance languages is presented in order to propose an analysis of the role these ‘deviant’ orders play in Verb Second (V2) grammars. It is proposed that neither V1 nor V3 orders are
incompatible with a V2 grammar and that the synchronic variation found with regard to the licensing of V1 and V3 in Romance and cross-linguistically is linked to whether the locus of the V2 property is either ‘low’ in the C-domain on Fin or ‘high’ on Force.
incompatible with a V2 grammar and that the synchronic variation found with regard to the licensing of V1 and V3 in Romance and cross-linguistically is linked to whether the locus of the V2 property is either ‘low’ in the C-domain on Fin or ‘high’ on Force.
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Against the backdrop of controversy over the correct analysis of Old Romance clausal structure, this article presents a comparative typology of the V1 orders found within seven Old Romance texts. Evidence is presented that all the... more
Against the backdrop of controversy over the correct analysis of Old Romance clausal structure, this article presents a comparative typology of the V1 orders found within seven Old Romance texts. Evidence is presented that all the languages under consideration feature V-to-CFin movement and are thus types of verb-second (V2) grammar. The languages present a pattern of rich microvariation with regard to V1 phenomena however. The Old Sicilian, Old Occitan and Old Venetian varieties considered are argued to present widespread V1 which is employed as a discourse- marked word order alternative. In the later Old Spanish text presented V1 is attested as a marked word order, but is exceptionally rare. Old Sardinian contrasts with the other varieties is licensing generalised V1, derived via V-to-CFin movement. Later Old French makes use of the initial particle SI, in cases where the other varieties license V1 orders.
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The view that Old Spanish was a form of verb second (V2) language has been prominently critiqued. Using data from a 14th century Spanish prose text it is argued that (later) Old Spanish in fact provides compelling evidence for a V2... more
The view that Old Spanish was a form of verb second (V2) language has been prominently critiqued. Using data from a 14th century Spanish prose text it is argued that (later) Old Spanish in fact provides compelling evidence for a V2 analysis, which assumes head movement of the finite verb into the left periphery of the clause accompanied by merger of a phrasal constituent in the C-layer. V3 matrix clauses involving co-occurrence of a Topic and Focus are not attested in the text and V4 is also not found. On this basis it is argued that Old Spanish is a class of V2 language where the locus of the V2 property is CForce, a high head in the clausal left periphery. Despite the widely held view that Old Spanish was a symmetrical V2 language, evidence from complement clauses is presented that this is not the case. All cases of embedded V2 are found under a class of predicates known to license so-called ‘Main Clause Phenomena’ cross-linguistically. Later Old Spanish thus patterns with Mainland Scandinavian in allowing a restricted class of embedded V2 clauses, therefore precluding a symmetrical V2 analysis.
Research Interests: Philology, Diachronic Linguistics (Or Historical Linguistics), Languages and Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, Spanish, and 10 moreHistorical Syntax, Romance philology, Syntax, History Portuguese and Spanish, Spanish Linguistics, Spanish Grammar, Linguistics, Linguistic Typology, Diachronic Syntax, and Verb Second
Evidence from two under-studied Old Italo-Romance varieties, Old Sicilian and Old Sardinian, is discussed in order to ascertain the key characteristics of the word order patterns instantiated in their textual records. Evidence from linear... more
Evidence from two under-studied Old Italo-Romance varieties, Old Sicilian and Old Sardinian, is discussed in order to ascertain the key characteristics of the word order patterns instantiated in their textual records. Evidence from linear verb placement, a matrix/embedded word order asymmetry and the nature of the preverbal field suggests that Old Sicilian is a verb-second language, as expected under Benincà’a (1983-4, 1995, 2004, 2006) analysis of Old Romance syntax. Old Sardinian, however, displays significant syntactic properties that set it aside from other Old Romance varieties, suggesting it is in fact a verb-initial language. Both languages are analysed as featuring verb movement to C, whilst only Old Sicilian requires the preverbal CP-field to be filled.
Research Interests:
The particle SI is ubiquitous across the early French textual record, yet receives no uniform analysis, with numerous competing and often contradictory claims in the literature about its distribution and formal status. This study draws on... more
The particle SI is ubiquitous across the early French textual record, yet receives no uniform analysis, with numerous competing and often contradictory claims in the literature about its distribution and formal status. This study draws on a novel diachronic corpus analysis to put forward an original analysis of SI, under which it is not the homogeneous entity often assumed but rather an adverbial which grammaticalises as a topic-continuity marker and, later, two forms of V2-related expletive. SI loses its previously specific temporal and discourse-pragmatic meaning, shows a widening of distribution and occupies an increasingly high position within the left periphery. In these respects it is shown to instantiate a classic form of upwards grammaticalisation pathway.
Research Interests:
This study presents a discussion of the word order properties of Old Occitan, a Medieval Romance language which remains under-studied in comparison to many of its sister languages. We argue that it was a V2 system and in particular that... more
This study presents a discussion of the word order properties of Old Occitan, a Medieval Romance language which remains under-studied in comparison to many of its sister languages. We argue that it was a V2 system and in particular that the locus of the V2 property was a low left-peripheral head, namely Fin, yielding a descriptively 'relaxed' V2 grammar, with systematic V-to-Fin ⁰ movement but widespread verb-third or more orders. Data are presented from a wide range of related properties that show that Occitan occupies a unique position within the wider typology of V2 languages.
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We present evidence that Old Sardinian, in contrast to other old Romance systems commonly reported to be verb-second, had a form of verb-initial syntax with optional pragmatically-driven focalisation and topicalisation into the left... more
We present evidence that Old Sardinian, in contrast to other old Romance systems commonly reported to be verb-second, had a form of verb-initial syntax with optional pragmatically-driven focalisation and topicalisation into the left periphery. We argue that this verb-initial order is derived through verb movement to C. Whilst V-to-C movement is a characteristic shared by Old Sardinian and other old Romance languages, the makeup of the left periphery is partially distinct. In Old Sardinian merger of a left peripheral topic/focus is optional, whilst in other old Romance verb-second systems it is a systematic requirement due to an {+epp} feature on C. We argue that V-to-C movement is a feature inherited by all the old Romance languages from late Latin, but suggest that only Old Sardinian retains the late Latin characteristic that left peripheral topicalisation or focalisation is optional and pragmatically-driven. The {+epp} feature on C is an innovation occurring in the other old Romance verb-second systems and not present in late Latin.
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This article presents a novel analysis of four Old ItaloRomance texts to better understand the syntax of the particle SI. The proposal is that the variation attested can be understood in a model where SI is understood to be merged in... more
This article presents a novel analysis of four Old ItaloRomance texts to better understand the syntax of the particle SI. The proposal is that the variation attested can be understood in a model where SI is understood to be merged in distinct positions in the Old Italo-Romance left periphery. Furthermore, it is suggested that the distribution of SI may depend on the types of constituents that can act as satisfiers of the V2 constraint in a given language
Research Interests:
This chapter offers an analysis of one of the most salient typological differences between Latin and historical stages of French on the one hand and Modern French and its varieties on the other, namely the presence or absence of OV orders... more
This chapter offers an analysis of one of the most salient typological differences between Latin and historical stages of French on the one hand and Modern French and its varieties on the other, namely the presence or absence of OV orders where verbal complements undergo movement to the low left periphery at the edge of the extended verb phrase. It is argued a change takes place early in the history of Latinity where unmarked rollup movement of all objects is reanalysed as syntactically or pragmatically marked movement of a subclass of objects to the vP-periphery; with increasing restrictions on the class of objects which can undergo such movement, this scrambling operation persists into Old and Middle French. In Standard Modern French varieties the class of complements which can undergo movement out of the vP is highly restricted, which is linked in the analysis to changes affecting the CP-periphery where movement operations have also declined markedly since the Renaissance.
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This chapter revisits previous work (Gärtner and Michaelis 2010), which discusses the prospects of theories that derive the distribution of V2-declaratives from their affinity with assertive illocutionary force (potential). It reiterates... more
This chapter revisits previous work (Gärtner and Michaelis 2010), which discusses the prospects of theories that derive the distribution of V2-declaratives from their affinity with assertive illocutionary force (potential). It reiterates the challenge disjunctive coordination of V2-declaratives poses to commitment-based contruals of assertion. Likewise, it restates the take on this challenge in earlier work which ‘weakens assertion’ to proposition-level intersection with the common ground. Against the backdrop of this proposal, two recent approaches to the ‘disjunction challenge’ are analysed: (i) a feature-transfer mechanism proposed by Julien (2015), which exempts V2-disjuncts from being directly asserted; (ii) a discourse model developed by Antomo (2016), which discards assertion and, instead, requires the content of V2-declaratives to be relevant to the current question(s) under discussion. The chapter shows that both these approaches run up against serious obstacles, compositio...
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This chapter provides key empirical background for the subsequent chapters by offering a broad overview of several of the most salient developments that characterize the history of French. The alleged transition from a synthetic... more
This chapter provides key empirical background for the subsequent chapters by offering a broad overview of several of the most salient developments that characterize the history of French. The alleged transition from a synthetic grammatical system to an analytic one is outlined and critically evaluated, with reference to a range of phenomena including the ‘emergence’ of articles, auxiliaries, and prepositions, and developments in verbal and nominal morphology. A critical overview of major changes in the negative system is also presented and it is suggested that Jespersen’s Cycle offers neither a sufficient description nor motivation for all the changes observed in the language’s history. Finally, the most prominent approaches to word-order change in the literature are discussed, where it is argued that simplistic labels such as ‘free’, ‘fixed’, ‘V2’, and ‘SVO’ fail to accurately capture the extent of variation in word order attested in all periods.
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Mathematics and Romance
This article revisits the classic definition of a Residual Verb Second language in light of evidence from the history of French, which is supplemented with synchronic evidence from the Romance languages. The core proposal is that... more
This article revisits the classic definition of a Residual Verb Second language in light of evidence from the history of French, which is supplemented with synchronic evidence from the Romance languages. The core proposal is that following the loss of the Verb Second property French has successively lost multiple Verb Second correlates such that the grammar at different stages can be described as ‘more’ or ‘less’ Verb Second, according to the degree of left-peripheral phrasal or head movement permitted. Novel corpus data is presented for Renaissance and Classical French to show that the triggers for such movement become increasingly restricted along micro and nanoparametric grounds. The gradient conception of Residual Verb Second which emerges from the data is also borne out in the Modern Romance languages, which are argued to instantiate multiple points on a typology of Verb Second residues according to the degree of left-peripheral phrasal movement or head movement that they license.
Research Interests:
This chapter analyses the evolution of both overt subjects and null arguments in the history of French, both of which are domains undergoing extensive change and still displaying widespread variation in French varieties today. Latin and... more
This chapter analyses the evolution of both overt subjects and null arguments in the history of French, both of which are domains undergoing extensive change and still displaying widespread variation in French varieties today. Latin and Old and Middle French are argued to make use of informational structure-sensitive subject positions in both the clausal core and the left periphery, which are subject to diachronic variation both in the period of Latinity and in Old and Middle French. By way of contrast, in Modern French varieties subjects typically target subject positions within an articulated inflectional layer. In the domain of null argument, it is argued that the history of French has seen a gradual progression away from a generalized null-argument grammar to one where null subjects are highly restricted in the modern language. The chapter concludes with a diachronic analysis of the evolution of null and overt subjects.
Despite the vast literature which has accrued on the fine structure of the Romance left periphery, there exists no diachronic account of the emergence of the considerable microvariation between Romance varieties today. Focussing... more
Despite the vast literature which has accrued on the fine structure of the Romance left periphery, there exists no diachronic account of the emergence of the considerable microvariation between Romance varieties today. Focussing in particular on the syntax of French and Venetan varieties, this article suggests that certain northern Romance varieties have diverged maximally from an Early Medieval Romance norm in which each left-peripheral Head attracts a wide variety of suitable Goals for movement, unlike the ‘innovative’ Romance grammars which emerge in the post-medieval period where the suitable class of Goals becomes restricted along categorial or information-structural grounds. The account predicts that the most ‘conservative’ Modern Romance grammars allow widespread argument fronting via movement, whereas their most ‘innovative’ counterparts show heavy restrictions on such operations.
Research Interests:
The particle SI is ubiquitous across the early French textual record, yet receives no uniform analysis, with numerous competing and often contradictory claims in the literature about its distribution and formal status. This study draws on... more
The particle SI is ubiquitous across the early French textual record, yet receives no uniform analysis, with numerous competing and often contradictory claims in the literature about its distribution and formal status. This study draws on a novel diachronic corpus analysis to put forward an original analysis of SI, under which it is not the homogeneous entity often assumed but rather an adverbial which grammaticalises as a topic-continuity marker and, later, two forms of V2-related expletive. SI loses its previously specific temporal and discourse-pragmatic meaning, shows a widening of distribution and occupies an increasingly high position within the left periphery. In these respects it is shown to instantiate a classic form of upwards grammaticalisation pathway.
Research Interests:
This introductory chapters outlines the core background to the volume. It highlights points of major similarity between Germanic and Romance linguistics methodologically in continuing importance of neogrammarian dialect atlases,... more
This introductory chapters outlines the core background to the volume. It highlights points of major similarity between Germanic and Romance linguistics methodologically in continuing importance of neogrammarian dialect atlases, established links between synchronic and diachronic work, and the emergence in recent years of large-scale electronic corpora. Theoretical background informing the volume’s chapters is also discussed, including sociolinguistics, generative grammar, and the field’s increasing focus on microvariation. Each chapter’s contents is discussed and set in its broader context.
<p>This volume revisits the classic and oft-repeated claim that Old French shows a raft of 'Germanic' grammatical properties due to contact with Frankish in the early medieval period. These properties include Verb Second,... more
<p>This volume revisits the classic and oft-repeated claim that Old French shows a raft of 'Germanic' grammatical properties due to contact with Frankish in the early medieval period. These properties include Verb Second, scrambling, Stylistic Fronting, and the loss of the null subject property. Drawing on a mixture of historical, formal syntactic, and acquisitional arguments it is suggested that the hypothesis is extremely problematic and suffers from major empirical and theoretical flaws, alongside major challenges in terms of dating. An alternative scenario is outlined in which left-peripheral verb movement and XP-fronting, middlefield scrambling, Stylistic Fronting, and progressive restrictions on null arguments are natural progressions of the syntactic system attested in late Latin. Finally, it is proposed that the core morphosyntactic parallels between early Germanic and Romance can be captured by their common syntactic inheritance from Proto-Indo-European.</p>
<p>In the literature on semantic and categorial change French chez and Mainland Scandinavian hos are often cited together as parallel examples of locative prepositions deriving from nouns referring to the concept 'house'. In... more
<p>In the literature on semantic and categorial change French chez and Mainland Scandinavian hos are often cited together as parallel examples of locative prepositions deriving from nouns referring to the concept 'house'. In this paper we compare in detail the philological records and the more recent development of the two items as well as that of the cognate Insular Scandinavian hjá. We show that while there are similarities in the development of Latin CASA / French chez and hos, as frequently suggested in the literature, there are also significant divergences. We argue in favour of a reevaluation of the origin of hos aligning it with hjá rather than casa as suggested in Noreen (1892), and show that if so revised, the differences can be shown to arise from the different meanings of the source terms: Latin casa 'hut, house' and later 'place' as opposed to Old Swedish hos and Old Icelandic hjá 'group of people, company'. We then go on to explore the consequences of these different diachronic trajectories for our general understanding of the connected semantic and syntactic developments and the time course of categorial change.</p>
Research Interests:
This article presents a novel empirical analysis of the word-order properties of Middle French, which were analysed extensively in the 1990s but have not been discussed recently in light of the latest theoretical developments. Based on... more
This article presents a novel empirical analysis of the word-order properties of Middle French, which were analysed extensively in the 1990s but have not been discussed recently in light of the latest theoretical developments. Based on the novel data, it is argued that Middle French is a form of V2 system, where the locus of V2 effects is a low left-peripheral head Fin. Whilst the evidence for V2 in the three texts examined is robust, the texts attest several changes in progress which, it is argued, eventually lead to the reanalysis of French as an SVO system. The article concludes with a discussion of why, in terms of formal parameter theory, the core V2 property remained so stable in the history of French across nearly a millennium, when it was also subject to extensive diachronic microvariation across centuries.
Research Interests:
This chapter surveys and analyses the rich variation in verb placement and verb movement operations which is attested in the history of French. The analysis developed suggests than an original SOV grammar where the finite verb remains... more
This chapter surveys and analyses the rich variation in verb placement and verb movement operations which is attested in the history of French. The analysis developed suggests than an original SOV grammar where the finite verb remains in-situ is reanalysed as one with optional verb movement to the left periphery during the Classical Latin period, with this movement itself reanalysed as systematic V-to-C movement in certain colloquial and late Latin texts. Until the Renaissance, French is also argued to feature systematic V-to-C movement, albeit to distinct heads within the left periphery. Novel data is presented to suggest that as part of an SVO grammar, French has featured verb movement to the high tense-aspect-mood field since the 16th century. A diachronic and synchronic analysis of verb–subject inversion in interrogatives and verb movement in imperatives is also presented. The chapter concludes with a formal parametric analysis of both unmarked and marked verb movement from Lati...
Research Interests: Linguistics and Verb
This volume provides the most comprehensive and detailed formal account to date of the evolution of French syntax. Making use of the latest formal syntactic tools, it combines careful textual analysis with a detailed synthesis of the vast... more
This volume provides the most comprehensive and detailed formal account to date of the evolution of French syntax. Making use of the latest formal syntactic tools, it combines careful textual analysis with a detailed synthesis of the vast research literature on French to provide an original and wide-ranging analysis of the major syntactic developments to have taken place in the history of French. The empirical scope of the book is exceptionally broad, discussing syntactic variation and change in Latin, Old, Middle, Renaissance, and Classical French, as well as standard and non-standard varieties of Modern French. Following detailed introductory chapters, a wide range of phenomena are discussed including the left periphery, subject positions and null subjects, verb movement, object placement, negation, and the makeup of the nominal expression. The book concludes with a comparative analysis of how French has come to develop the unique typological profile it has within Romance today. T...
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This chapter provides a detailed description and formal analysis of the evolution of the French left periphery. Following an introductory survey of the variation attested in the left-peripheral syntax of standard and non-standard Romance... more
This chapter provides a detailed description and formal analysis of the evolution of the French left periphery. Following an introductory survey of the variation attested in the left-peripheral syntax of standard and non-standard Romance varieties, the chapter begins with an overview of the Latin data, which, it is argued, evidence a rich left-peripheral structure. A major change is discussed in the transition from Classical Latin to French, where previously optional movement to the left periphery is reanalysed as obligatory, yielding a V2 syntax with systematic constituent fronting. This V2 syntax is argued to characterize a large portion of the language’s history from the late Latin period until the Renaissance. From the Renaissance onwards, it is argued that French varieties see the progressive loss of operations where constituents reach the left periphery via movement, with implications for topicalization, focus-related operations, and the behaviour of complementizers. The chapt...
Investigating Gallo-Romance GO-past and GO-future periphrases, this chapter proposes that they originate from the same construction, in which the basic spatial meaning of GO is reinterpreted as temporal posteriority. Building on an... more
Investigating Gallo-Romance GO-past and GO-future periphrases, this chapter proposes that they originate from the same construction, in which the basic spatial meaning of GO is reinterpreted as temporal posteriority. Building on an intuition by Bres and Labeau (2013a) that the periphrasis itself is devoid of tense, the two temporal outcomes are derived through anchoring of the prospective movement to different reference frames: while the GO-past periphrasis is interpreted by anaphoric linking to the past events that surround it, the GO-future periphrasis is linked deictically to speech time. Assuming the same underlying construction for both periphrases and focusing on the component of posteriority has the advantage of maintaining the widely attested generalization that structures with verbs of motion grammaticalize into future grams.
This chapter provides a detailed synthesis of the descriptive content and analysis offered in the preceding chapters, as well as considering the broader implications of the analysis and where French sits within a comparative Romance... more
This chapter provides a detailed synthesis of the descriptive content and analysis offered in the preceding chapters, as well as considering the broader implications of the analysis and where French sits within a comparative Romance syntactic typology. It is argued that the majority of case studies presented in the book constitute cases where a mesoparametric property undergoes reanalysis as a micro- and then nano-parametric property, with the meso- to micro- transition frequently mediated by information structure-related features. The overall analysis is that Modern French generally and colloquial varieties specifically have seen the successive loss of movement operations to all portions of the clause and that Feature Economy and Input Generalization have been pivotal in conditioning such changes. In the final two sections of this chapter, it is argued that the extent to which this holds true is unique within a broader Romance context.
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This study presents a discussion of the word order properties of Old Occitan, a Medieval Romance language which remains under-studied in comparison to many of its sister languages. We argue that it was a V2 system and in particular that... more
This study presents a discussion of the word order properties of Old Occitan, a Medieval Romance language which remains under-studied in comparison to many of its sister languages. We argue that it was a V2 system and in particular that the locus of the V2 property was a low left-peripheral head, namely Fin, yielding a descriptively &#39;relaxed&#39; V2 grammar, with systematic V-to-Fin ⁰ movement but widespread verb-third or more orders. Data are presented from a wide range of related properties that show that Occitan occupies a unique position within the wider typology of V2 languages.
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This volume offers a range of synchronic and diachronic case studies in comparative Germanic and Romance morphosyntax. These two language families, spoken by over a billion people today, have been of central importance throughout the... more
This volume offers a range of synchronic and diachronic case studies in comparative Germanic and Romance morphosyntax. These two language families, spoken by over a billion people today, have been of central importance throughout the development linguistics, yet many significant questions about the relationship between the two families remain. Following an introduction that sets out the methodological, empirical, and theoretical background to the book, the volume is divided into three parts which deal with the morphosyntax of subjects and the inflectional layer inversion, discourse pragmatics, and the left periphery, and continuity and variation beyond the clause. The approaches used by the authors of individual chapters are diverse, making use of the latest digitized corpora and presenting a mixture of well-known and understudied data from standard and non-standard Germanic and Romance languages. Many of the chapters challenge received wisdom about the relationship between these tw...
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This volume provides the most exhaustive and comprehensive treatment available of the Verb Second property, which has been a central topic in formal syntax for decades. While Verb Second has traditionally been considered a feature... more
This volume provides the most exhaustive and comprehensive treatment available of the Verb Second property, which has been a central topic in formal syntax for decades. While Verb Second has traditionally been considered a feature primarily of the Germanic languages, this book shows that it is much more widely attested cross-linguistically than previously thought, and explores the multiple empirical, theoretical, and experimental puzzles that remain in developing an account of the phenomenon. Uniquely, formal theoretical work appears alongside studies of psycholinguistics, language production, and language acquisition. The range of languages investigated is also broader than in previous work: while novel issues are explored through the lens of the more familiar Germanic data, chapters also cover Verb Second effects in languages such as Armenian, Dinka, Tohono O’odham, and in the Celtic, Romance, and Slavonic families. The analyses have wide-ranging consequences for our understanding...
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This article draws on a novel corpus of medieval texts to explore diachronic change in the French subject system. It is argued that the relative frequency of null, preverbal and postverbal subjects is affected by changes in the... more
This article draws on a novel corpus of medieval texts to explore diachronic change in the French subject system. It is argued that the relative frequency of null, preverbal and postverbal subjects is affected by changes in the syntax-information structure mapping during the medieval period, with the discourse value of both preverbal and postverbal subjects diachronically variable across the textual records. Furthermore, the discourse value of both so-called Germanic- and Romance- inversion structures is subject to change in the syntax-pragmatics mapping.
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This book provides the first book-length study of the controversial subject of Verb Second and related properties in a range of Medieval Romance languages. Both qualitative and quantitative data are examined and analysed from Old French,... more
This book provides the first book-length study of the controversial subject of Verb Second and related properties in a range of Medieval Romance languages. Both qualitative and quantitative data are examined and analysed from Old French, Occitan, Sicilian, Venetian, Spanish, and Sardinian to assess whether the languages were indeed Verb Second languages. The book argues that unlike most modern Romance varieties, V-to-C movement is a point of continuity across all the medieval varieties, but that there are rich patterns of synchronic and diachronic variation in the medieval period which have not been noted before. These include differences in the syntax–pragmatics mapping, the locus of verb movement, the behaviour of clitic pronouns, the syntax of subject positions, matrix/embedded asymmetries, and the null argument properties of the languages in question. The book outlines a detailed formal cartographic analysis both of both the synchronic patterns attested and of the diachronic evo...
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This article proposes a new typology of the V2 property, integrating new data from a corpus of Medieval Romance texts with data from Rhaeto-Romance, Early Germanic and Modern Germanic. The proposed analysis is that all V2 systems have a... more
This article proposes a new typology of the V2 property, integrating new data from a corpus of Medieval Romance texts with data from Rhaeto-Romance, Early Germanic and Modern Germanic. The proposed analysis is that all V2 systems have a V-movement and phrasal movement trigger on the lowest left-peripheral head, Fin, and that in a subclass of V2 languages Force also has these properties. It is argued that the restrictions on and variation in licensing verb-initial and verb-third clauses within Romance and Germanic V2 systems fall out from the Fin/Force distinction.
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New evidence is presented from two under-studied Old Romance varieties, Old Sicilian and Old Sardinian, to assess whether they instantiate V2 systems, as predicted under Beninca’s (1983–4) account of Old Romance word order. We suggest... more
New evidence is presented from two under-studied Old Romance varieties, Old Sicilian and Old Sardinian, to assess whether they instantiate V2 systems, as predicted under Beninca’s (1983–4) account of Old Romance word order. We suggest that Old Sicilian is a V2 system, evidenced by strong matrix/embedded asymmetries in word order, the limited distribution of V1 clauses and the makeup of the matrix left periphery. A significant finding, however, is that Old Sardinian is a form of verb-initial system, which differs in certain key areas of the syntax from other Old Romance varieties. Our central claim is that both varieties share the microparametric property of a uPhi feature on a C-head in matrix clauses, whilst the locus of this feature in embedded contexts, the position occupied by subjects and the parametric makeup of the left periphery is subject to microvariation across varieties. This leads to a re-evaluation of Beninca’s (2004, 245) definition of an “abstract Medieval Romance” word order.
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ABSTRACT This article presents findings of a syntactic study of two Old Sardinian legal documents. It is proposed that Old Sardinian had a verb-initial syntax, which at face value appears quite distinct from the verb-second (V2) syntax... more
ABSTRACT This article presents findings of a syntactic study of two Old Sardinian legal documents. It is proposed that Old Sardinian had a verb-initial syntax, which at face value appears quite distinct from the verb-second (V2) syntax reported elsewhere in Old Romance. It is suggested, however, that this verb-initial order is derived by V-to-C movement, a feature which is inherited from late Latin and represents a synchronic point of continuity in the syntax of Old Romance varieties. Old Sardinian matrix clauses show evidence for a rich set of left peripheral projections to which subjects can raise, leading to an SVO/VSO alternation which is sensitive to the information structure of the subject constituent in question. There is no direct evidence for these discourse-related projections in the C-layer in embedded contexts, leading to a strict VSO word order and suggesting that Old Sardinian may have an impoverished embedded left periphery.
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The view that Old Spanish was a form of verb second (V2) language has been prominently critiqued. Using data from a 14th century Spanish prose text it is argued that (later) Old Spanish in fact provides compelling evidence for a V2... more
The view that Old Spanish was a form of verb second (V2) language has been prominently critiqued. Using data from a 14th century Spanish prose text it is argued that (later) Old Spanish in fact provides compelling evidence for a V2 analysis, which assumes head movement of the finite verb into the left periphery of the clause accompanied by merger of a phrasal constituent in the C-layer. V3 matrix clauses involving co-occurrence of a Topic and Focus are not attested in the text and V4 is also not found. On this basis it is argued that Old Spanish is a class of V2 language where the locus of the V2 property is CForce, a high head in the clausal left periphery. Despite the widely held view that Old Spanish was a symmetrical V2 language, evidence from complement clauses is presented that this is not the case. All cases of embedded V2 are found under a class of predicates known to license so-called ‘Main Clause Phenomena’ cross-linguistically. Later Old Spanish thus patterns with Mainland Scandinavian in allowing a restricted class of embedded V2 clauses, therefore precluding a symmetrical V2 analysis.
Research Interests: Philology, History, Cognitive Science, Languages and Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, and 13 moreSpanish, Historical Syntax, Romance philology, Syntax, History Portuguese and Spanish, Spanish Linguistics, Spanish Grammar, Linguistics, Linguistic Typology, Diachronic Syntax, Verb Second, Verb, and Lingua
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... more
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.
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This chapter seeks to reappraise the value of periodization for both early French and Occitan, by analysing a range of syntactic changes including verb placement, inversion effects, the structure of the left periphery, the null subject... more
This chapter seeks to reappraise the value of periodization for both early French and Occitan, by analysing a range of syntactic changes including verb placement, inversion effects, the structure of the left periphery, the null subject system and the particle SI. On this basis, it is argued that in syntactic terms there is some value in assigning the label ‘middle’ to a particular period in the history of French, whereas there is minimal empirical basis to assign the same label to a particular stage in the history of Occitan. Overall in terms of comparative Romance syntactic typology this is linked to the fact that medieval and modern Occitan are syntactically closer to the ‘southern’ Romance prototype than French.
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This chapter engages with recent criticism of Spanish’s status as a V2 language, suggesting that the criticism is ill-founded and arguing that it was a relatively strict V2 language, showing a prefield comparable to other V2 systems,... more
This chapter engages with recent criticism of Spanish’s status as a V2 language, suggesting that the criticism is ill-founded and arguing that it was a relatively strict V2 language, showing a prefield comparable to other V2 systems, Germanic-inversion, and direct object fronting without clitic resumption. Both verb-initial and verb-third orders are also shown to be heavily restricted in certain later Old Spanish texts when compared to other Medieval Romance V2 varieties. The chapter challenges the notion that Old Spanish was a symmetrical V2 language, presenting quantitative data that it showed word order asymmetries between matrix and embedded clauses, which are typical of asymmetric V2 systems such as Modern German and Dutch.
This chapter presents a detailed study of the word order of Old Sardinian. The Sardinian data are of particular interest as the language has been claimed to have a form of verb-initial grammar in the small existing literature on the... more
This chapter presents a detailed study of the word order of Old Sardinian. The Sardinian data are of particular interest as the language has been claimed to have a form of verb-initial grammar in the small existing literature on the topic. Old Sardinian is shown to have the V-to-C movement characteristic of other Medieval Romance varieties but to lack obligatory fronting of a phrasal constituent, typical of V2 grammars. It is shown to have multiple subject positions, sensitive to the discourse status of the subject. Unusually within Romance, Old Sardinian is shown to have a VSO order in embedded clauses, with a strict adjacency between the embedded verb and the complementizer or relativizer. Overall, Old Sardinian is argued to have half of the V2 constraint, in that it has obligatory verb fronting into the left periphery, but no requirement for a phrasal constituent to also be merged.
This chapter provides a detailed account of the word order properties of Old French and Old Occitan. It shows that Old French is a descriptively stricter V2 system than Old Occitan but that both are V2 grammars, with a prefield... more
This chapter provides a detailed account of the word order properties of Old French and Old Occitan. It shows that Old French is a descriptively stricter V2 system than Old Occitan but that both are V2 grammars, with a prefield nonspecialized for subjects, a dominant V2 order, Germanic inversion, and matrix/embedded asymmetries. However, as with Old Italo-Romance the precise makeup of the left periphery is distinct between varieties, later Old French does not license new information focus like Occitan, and both differ in their clitic pronominal and null subject properties.
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This chapter provides a comprehensive formal account of the V2 property in Medieval Romance. A number of points of continuity between varieties are highlighted, which are linked to the presence of a verb-movement trigger on a low... more
This chapter provides a comprehensive formal account of the V2 property in Medieval Romance. A number of points of continuity between varieties are highlighted, which are linked to the presence of a verb-movement trigger on a low left-peripheral head in all varieties and an Edge Feature on a low left-peripheral head in all varieties except Sardinian. The second part of the chapter argues that variation between the Romance V2 systems can be captured under the idea that there are at least two types of V2, correlated with the height of the V2 bottleneck, which can either be on Force or on Fin. The chapter then presents a map of the clausal structure of Medieval Romance and a detailed account of the evolution of Romance clausal structure in Section 2.
This chapter provides a detailed account of the word order properties of Old Sicilian and Old Venetian. It shows that the two Old Italo-Romance varieties have much in common, namely a preverbal field not specialized for subjects, a... more
This chapter provides a detailed account of the word order properties of Old Sicilian and Old Venetian. It shows that the two Old Italo-Romance varieties have much in common, namely a preverbal field not specialized for subjects, a dominant V2 order, two types of V2-related inversion, and matrix/embedded asymmetries. However, certain texts differ with respect to the regularity with which the verb appears in second position, the types of verb-initial and verb-third orders found, and whether new information focus can occur in the left periphery. The Tobler–Mussafia clitic system is also shown to be subject to intertextual variation.
New comparative data concerning the distribution of V1 and V3 orders in the Medieval Romance languages is presented in order to propose an analysis of the role these ‘deviant’ orders play in Verb Second (V2) grammars. It is proposed that... more
New comparative data concerning the distribution of V1 and V3 orders in the Medieval Romance languages is presented in order to propose an analysis of the role these ‘deviant’ orders play in Verb Second (V2) grammars. It is proposed that neither V1 nor V3 orders are incompatible with a V2 grammar and that the synchronic variation found with regard to the licensing of V1 and V3 in Romance and cross-linguistically is linked to whether the locus of the V2 property is either ‘low’ in the C-domain on Fin or ‘high’ on Force.
This chapter offers a reappraisal of the place of Medieval Romance languages within the V2 typology based on novel corpus data. A review of the available primary and secondary evidence provides compelling evidence that the Medieval... more
This chapter offers a reappraisal of the place of Medieval Romance languages within the V2 typology based on novel corpus data. A review of the available primary and secondary evidence provides compelling evidence that the Medieval Romance languages considered (French, Occitan, Sicilian, Venetian, and Spanish) were V2 languages, with V-to-C movement and XP-merger in the left periphery. The second half of the chapter focuses in detail on Old Sicilian and Old French, arguing that although both show certain commonalities, the height of the V2 bottleneck is distinct with thirteenth-century French showing a stricter V2 syntax than Old Sicilian. This is linked to the former’s status as a high V2 language with a locus for V2 on Force, as opposed to Fin where the constraint is operative in Sicilian.
This chapter provides a detailed presentation of the main data and arguments which have been proposed in favour of claiming that the Medieval Romance languages were V2 systems and considers data from Old French, Old Occitan, Old... more
This chapter provides a detailed presentation of the main data and arguments which have been proposed in favour of claiming that the Medieval Romance languages were V2 systems and considers data from Old French, Old Occitan, Old Italo-Romance varieties, Old Spanish, and Old Portuguese. It provides new qualitative and quantitative evidence to show the nature of the prefield, Germanic inversion, matrix/embedded asymmetries, and the precise types of verb-first and verb-third-or-greater orders provide new evidence in favour of the V2 hypothesis. It also suggests that the diachronic emergence of a V2 grammar is entirely plausible on the basis of the available data. The main objections to the V2 account proposed in the literature are evaluated and argued to face empirical and theoretical problems.
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In this paper novel data from a corpus analysis of Old Venetian and Old Sicilian are reviewed in order to assess their significance for the ongoing debate as to whether Old Romance varieties show a form of V2 syntax. It will be suggested... more
In this paper novel data from a corpus analysis of Old Venetian and Old Sicilian are reviewed in order to assess their significance for the ongoing debate as to whether Old Romance varieties show a form of V2 syntax. It will be suggested that both qualitative and quantitative assessments of the corpus data point to Old Sicilian and Old Venetian being forms of V2 systems, strengthening the core hypothesis that Old Romance languages went through a V2 stage.
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Despite a truly vast literature on Old French word order (Vance 1997; Rouveret 2004; Mathieu 2012; Labelle & Hirschbühler forthcoming) and a growing empirical understanding of word order in Old Occitan (Kunert 2003; Vance, Donaldson &... more
Despite a truly vast literature on Old French word order (Vance 1997; Rouveret 2004; Mathieu 2012; Labelle & Hirschbühler forthcoming) and a growing empirical understanding of word order in Old Occitan (Kunert 2003; Vance, Donaldson & Steiner 2009; Donaldson 2015, 2016) there remains as yet no formal account of the similarities and differences between these important early Romance varieties. This lacuna is significant as the correct analysis of core clausal word order in Old French and Old Romance in general is a hugely controversial area of Romance scholarship (see Rinke & Elsig 2010 and Benincà 2013 for opposing views). Based on detailed quantitative analysis of two 13th century texts, La Vie de Sainte Douceline in the case of Occitan and La Queste del Saint Graal in the case of French and a hand search of a range of 11th-13th century texts for each language, we propose a new account of the similarities and differences.
Drawing on the insights developed in Rizzi (1997) and Benincà & Poletto (2004) that the left periphery consists of a rich set of hierarchically ordered functional projections, I assume that the V2 property, commonly conceptualised as entailing V-to-C movement, can vary in terms of which position in the left periphery the verb targets. In the case of Old Occitan, I hypothesise that the verb targets Fin°, the lowest functional head in the left periphery, and as such the whole range of left-peripheral positions are a priori active. In the case of 13th century French, I propose that the verb targets one of the highest positions in the clause, Force, which results in heavy restrictions in the left-peripheral structure available. This proposal permits a novel and revealing account of the differences between the relevant texts concerning V>3 structures, the licensing of null subjects and topics, the clitic pronominal system and the licensing of Verb Second structures in embedded clauses.
Drawing on the insights developed in Rizzi (1997) and Benincà & Poletto (2004) that the left periphery consists of a rich set of hierarchically ordered functional projections, I assume that the V2 property, commonly conceptualised as entailing V-to-C movement, can vary in terms of which position in the left periphery the verb targets. In the case of Old Occitan, I hypothesise that the verb targets Fin°, the lowest functional head in the left periphery, and as such the whole range of left-peripheral positions are a priori active. In the case of 13th century French, I propose that the verb targets one of the highest positions in the clause, Force, which results in heavy restrictions in the left-peripheral structure available. This proposal permits a novel and revealing account of the differences between the relevant texts concerning V>3 structures, the licensing of null subjects and topics, the clitic pronominal system and the licensing of Verb Second structures in embedded clauses.
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The Medieval Romance languages are frequently analysed as showing verb-second (V2) effects, derived through V-to-C movement and merger of a pragmatically salient constituent into the C-layer (Roberts 1993; Vance 1997; Benincà 2006;... more
The Medieval Romance languages are frequently analysed as showing verb-second (V2) effects, derived through V-to-C movement and merger of a pragmatically salient constituent into the C-layer (Roberts 1993; Vance 1997; Benincà 2006; Poletto 2014). The present paper sketches a potential analysis of how these syntactic properties evolved and how they were lost, drawing on a new comparative corpus of Medieval Romance texts.
In Classical Latin, V1 orders involving topic continuity, contrastive and wide focus, different polarity values and imperatives are extensively attested (Devine & Stephens 2006, Bauer 2009), involving verb-movement to CTop, CFoc, CPol and CForce respectively as a marked word order alternative. Based on a study of the 4th century Peregrinatio, we propose that in late Latin this discourse-marked verb fronting has been reanalysed as unmarked verb- movement to CFin in all matrix clauses. When accompanied by optional topicalisation or focalisation this yields incipient V2 structures (1), yet this additional constituent fronting is not yet obligatory (Salvi 2004; Clackson & Horrocks 2007; Ledgeway 2012):
(1) Et omnem ipsam allocutionem perleget episcopus And all.ACC that.ACC address.ACC read.3SG bishop.NOM ‘And the bishop reads all that address’
This (XPTopic/Focus)-V-(S)-(O) syntax is retained in 11th century Sardinian texts (Lombardi 2007, Wolfe 2015) and also in 10th century texts from the Iberian Peninsular (Wright 2014).
In Early Old French, Spanish, Sicilian and Occitan previously optional topicalisation or focalisation is reanalysed as obligatory and the languages show a clear V2 syntax (2):
(2) Ma quillu templu avia issu factu edificari but that temple have.3SG.PST he do.PTCP build.INF ‘But he had had that temple built...’ (Old Sicilian)
Here the features responsible for V2 effects (an Edge Feature and Phi-Probe) are held on a low C-head, CFin. Frame-Topic-Focus projections in the CP are ‘multiply accessible’ in the terms of Benincà (2004) yielding widespread V3 and V4 orders (3) and null elements moving to the Topic layer can satisfy V2 through movement via SpecCFinP yielding marked V1 orders featuring Null Shift Topics (Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl 2007) (4):
(3) Illi, per amor del Senhor, lur=lavava los pes
he for love of-the Lord them=wash.3SG.IMPV the feet
‘He washed their feet because of his love for the Lord’ (Old Occitan)
(4) Tient l’ olifan
hold.3SG the Oliphant...
‘He holds the Oliphant...’ (Early Old French, Labelle 2007)
In the later Old Spanish, Old French and Old Venetian texts from the 13th century, by contrast, preverbal Topics and Foci do not co-occur at all, V4 accounts for less than 1% of matrix clauses and V3 can only co-occur with a Frame-setter (Giorgi 2010) (5):
(5) en q(ue)sta eli se=com(en)çà menar l’un l’autro
in this they REFL=begin.3PL.PST threaten.INF each other
‘And at this moment they began to threaten each other’ (Old Venetian)
V1 is also distinct, failing to occur at all in later Old French and being restricted to discourse- initial position with verba dicendi in later Old Spanish. We analyse this following Zwart (1997) as involving a null discourse operator in SpecCForceP. To account for these characteristics, we propose that in these varieties a further reanalysis has taken place, where the locus of V2 effects is CForce, high in the C-layer.
Unmarked V-to-C movement has now been lost in all but certain Rhaeto-Romance languages (Poletto 2002). V-to-CPol and CForce in polar questions and imperatives, however, remains an option to the present day. We reanalyse the resistance of these two clause-types to change as a result of their salience in acquisition input (Westergaard 2007).
In Classical Latin, V1 orders involving topic continuity, contrastive and wide focus, different polarity values and imperatives are extensively attested (Devine & Stephens 2006, Bauer 2009), involving verb-movement to CTop, CFoc, CPol and CForce respectively as a marked word order alternative. Based on a study of the 4th century Peregrinatio, we propose that in late Latin this discourse-marked verb fronting has been reanalysed as unmarked verb- movement to CFin in all matrix clauses. When accompanied by optional topicalisation or focalisation this yields incipient V2 structures (1), yet this additional constituent fronting is not yet obligatory (Salvi 2004; Clackson & Horrocks 2007; Ledgeway 2012):
(1) Et omnem ipsam allocutionem perleget episcopus And all.ACC that.ACC address.ACC read.3SG bishop.NOM ‘And the bishop reads all that address’
This (XPTopic/Focus)-V-(S)-(O) syntax is retained in 11th century Sardinian texts (Lombardi 2007, Wolfe 2015) and also in 10th century texts from the Iberian Peninsular (Wright 2014).
In Early Old French, Spanish, Sicilian and Occitan previously optional topicalisation or focalisation is reanalysed as obligatory and the languages show a clear V2 syntax (2):
(2) Ma quillu templu avia issu factu edificari but that temple have.3SG.PST he do.PTCP build.INF ‘But he had had that temple built...’ (Old Sicilian)
Here the features responsible for V2 effects (an Edge Feature and Phi-Probe) are held on a low C-head, CFin. Frame-Topic-Focus projections in the CP are ‘multiply accessible’ in the terms of Benincà (2004) yielding widespread V3 and V4 orders (3) and null elements moving to the Topic layer can satisfy V2 through movement via SpecCFinP yielding marked V1 orders featuring Null Shift Topics (Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl 2007) (4):
(3) Illi, per amor del Senhor, lur=lavava los pes
he for love of-the Lord them=wash.3SG.IMPV the feet
‘He washed their feet because of his love for the Lord’ (Old Occitan)
(4) Tient l’ olifan
hold.3SG the Oliphant...
‘He holds the Oliphant...’ (Early Old French, Labelle 2007)
In the later Old Spanish, Old French and Old Venetian texts from the 13th century, by contrast, preverbal Topics and Foci do not co-occur at all, V4 accounts for less than 1% of matrix clauses and V3 can only co-occur with a Frame-setter (Giorgi 2010) (5):
(5) en q(ue)sta eli se=com(en)çà menar l’un l’autro
in this they REFL=begin.3PL.PST threaten.INF each other
‘And at this moment they began to threaten each other’ (Old Venetian)
V1 is also distinct, failing to occur at all in later Old French and being restricted to discourse- initial position with verba dicendi in later Old Spanish. We analyse this following Zwart (1997) as involving a null discourse operator in SpecCForceP. To account for these characteristics, we propose that in these varieties a further reanalysis has taken place, where the locus of V2 effects is CForce, high in the C-layer.
Unmarked V-to-C movement has now been lost in all but certain Rhaeto-Romance languages (Poletto 2002). V-to-CPol and CForce in polar questions and imperatives, however, remains an option to the present day. We reanalyse the resistance of these two clause-types to change as a result of their salience in acquisition input (Westergaard 2007).
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This paper presents new data from a corpus study of six medieval Romance varieties and suggests ways in which the data can improve our understanding of V2 systems from both a synchronic and diachronic perspective. Pace Kaiser (2002),... more
This paper presents new data from a corpus study of six medieval Romance varieties and suggests ways in which the data can improve our understanding of V2 systems from both a synchronic and diachronic perspective. Pace Kaiser (2002), Rinke & Elsig (2010) and Sitaridou (2012), all the varieties under examination provide compelling evidence that finite verb movement targets a C-head. Evidence comes from a preverbal vorfeld not specialised for subjects, verb-subject inversion when a non-subject occurs in the left periphery and object topicalisation/focalisation without clitic resumption: (1) Son cors ne poï je veoir.. his body NEG can.1SG I see.INF 'I cannot see his body' (Old French) These characteristics closely mirror those of the Germanic V2 languages (Holmberg & Platzack 1995; Vikner 1995) and provide evidence that a point of continuity across medieval Romance is the presence of a Phi-Probe on a C-head. We also find evidence however that the languages vary in at least three other surface properties: V3 orders, V1 orders and the requirement for merger of a phrasal constituent in the C-layer. Whilst Old Sicilian, Old Occitan, Old Venetian and Old Sardinian show widespread attestation of orders where a preverbal Topic and Focus cooccur and allow orders where more than two constituents occur preverbally, this is not the case for Old Spanish and Old French where V3 occurrences are only triggered by scene-setting elements with adverbial value. This is analysed as suggesting that the functional head responsible for V2 is distinct in both sets of languages (cf. Roberts 2012). In the first group CFin bears a Phi-probe and EDGE feature allowing preverbal Foci and Topics to cooccur, whilst in the second group these features are present on CForce, whose position high in the functional structure permits only Frame elements to cooccur with constituents satisfying V2 in SpecForceP. We suggest that the locus of the V2 property also manifests itself in the types of V1 orders attested. Old French does not allow V1 at all in matrix declaratives, whilst Old Spanish only shows V1 with verba dicendi in discourse-initial position. Old Sicilian, Old Occitan and Old Venetian on the other hand show structures plausibly analysed as involving null Topics (Benincà 2004). The proposal is that only where CFin is the locus of V2 do we find null Topic structures. Where CForce is the locus of V2, a null operator may occupy SpecForceP, but its function is linked to a different kind of illocutionary force which only reports events and distances the speaker from asserting their truth value (Reis 2000). Finally we note that in Old Sardinian V1 is the majority order and does not yield a special discourse interpretation (Lombardi 2007). We present evidence that that it features V-to-CFin movement, but no phrasal movement trigger and only optional topicalisation/focalisation, yielding a grammar with 'half of the V2 constraint' (Roberts 2005). This essentially matches the proposal put forward by Clackson & Horrocks (2007) and Ledgeway (2012) for the syntax of late Latin. Our conclusions are that the V2 property should not be reduced to a linear ordering constraint. Rather, a twofold typology of grammars emerges where either CFin or CForce bears a Phi-Probe and an EDGE feature, with consequences for the types of surface V1 and V3 permitted. The absence of the EDGE feature on a C-head, yields a form of verb-initial grammar with V-to-C movement attested in Old Sardinian. We speculate that this kind of grammar may have given rise to the V2 property in Romance and suggest that the underlying similarity of these systems has led to similar diachronic developments in Germanic
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This is the (very detailed) handout from a talk given at the University of Cambridge offering a comparative analysis of Medieval Romance data concerning verb-second. Much of the content is quite speculative and comments are particularly... more
This is the (very detailed) handout from a talk given at the University of Cambridge offering a comparative analysis of Medieval Romance data concerning verb-second. Much of the content is quite speculative and comments are particularly welcome.