This chapter investigates the sequence of changes leading from the Latin system of negation to the various Romance outcomes. While Classical Latin is a Double Negation language, the earliest Romance varieties show a Negative Concord grammar. In the proposed analysis, this seemingly paradoxical development is explained by situating the prerequisites for Negative Concord already at the Late Latin stage. In Late Latin, a featural and structural reanalysis of the negative marker entails the activation of a projection in the clause where sentential negation has to be identified. This, in turn, triggers the grammaticalization of new negatively marked indefinites licensed in the scope of negation. These indefinites establish a syntactic relation first with the Focus Phrase (as negation strengtheners) and subsequently with the Negation Phrase, yielding a Negative Concord system. This study highlights the importance of generative research on the nature and format of syntactic features for our understanding of diachrony.
This work follows the syntactic and semantic development of some indefinite pronouns and determiners between Latin and Romance. The history of elements of the functional lexicon such as Latin quidam ‘a certain’, aliquis ‘some’, nullus ‘no’, nemo ‘no one’, nihil ‘nothing’ allows us to detect which aspects of their meaning and of their form are responsible for the diachronic success of some of them, and for the disappearance of others, and how they are reanalyzed or replaced in the Romance languages. The system of indefinite pronouns and determiners changes profoundly from Latin to Romance, but Romance languages maintain a certain degree of similarity in the way their various systems evolve. We can account for this similarity of outcomes if we consider the changes happening at the intermediate stage of Late Latin. At this stage, the grammar of indefinites already shows a number of changes, which are homogeneously transmitted to the daughter languages, explaining in this way the parallelism among the various emerging Romance systems. The conclusions of this study confirm the fruitfulness of applying methods and models developed within synchronic theoretical linguistics to the study of diachronic phenomena. In turn, they bear witness to the importance of diachronic research for understanding the nature of crosslinguistic variation, and the systematic nature of language change.
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