Late Latin Verb Second: The Sentential Word Order of the “Itinerarium Egeriae”

Abstract

In this article we undertake a systematic study of the Itinerarium Egeriae, one of the best known late Latin texts, to determine the proper characterization of the word order of the text and to consider in particular whether the Itinerarium Egeriae can legitimately be considered to present a verb-second (V2) grammar on the par with the well-studied grammars of medieval Romance. The results, based on detailed quantitative and qualitative analyses of the text and, where relevant, appropriate comparisons with medieval Romance, confirm the innovative nature of the syntax of the Itinerarium Egeriae whose word order patterns are shown to follow an asymmetric V2 constraint. The article therefore offers valuable original evidence for the often claimed, but hitherto unproven, hypothesis that the V2 syntax of medieval Romance represents the continuation of a parametric setting already well established in the grammar of late Latin. En aquest article duem a terme un estudi sistemàtic de l'Itinerarium Egeriae, un dels textos del llatí tardà més ben coneguts, per tal de determinar la caracterització adequada de l'ordre de mots del text i veure, en particular, si l'Itinerarium Egeriae es pot considerar legítimament que presenta una gramàtica de verb segon (V2) de manera semblant a les gramàtiques ben estudiades del romànic medieval. Els resultats, basats en detallades anàlisis quantitatives i qualitatives del text i, on és pertinent, en comparacions adequades amb el romànic medieval, confirmen la naturalesa innovadora de la sintaxi de l'Itinerarium Egeriae, els patrons d'ordre de mots de la qual es demostra que segueixen una restricció asimètrica de V2. L'article, per tant, ofereix evidència original i valuosa a favor de la hipòtesi sovint proposada però fins ara no demostrada que la sintaxi V2 del romànic medieval representa la continuació d'una fixació paramètrica ja ben establerta en la gramàtica del llatí tardà.Paraules clau: Verb segon (V2); llatí tardà; ordre de paraules; perifèria esquerra; romànic medieval; Tobler-Mussafia * I thank two anonymous reviewers and Jim Adams, Paola Benincà, Theresa Biberauer, Federica Cognola and Nigel Vincent for their valuable comments and observations on a previous version of this article.

Los contactos de lengua y el español medieval

“…Como tienen un 21 La cita de Lapesa (1981, p. 112) soporta la propuesta que hago: "Los germanos, enseñoreados del territorio romano, conservaban con plena vitalidad sus lenguas, y los latinos aprendían de ellos denominaciones de cosas y costumbres extrañas, familiarizándose con expresiones germánicas". Ledgeway (2017) argumenta consistentemente que el latín tardío ya manifestaba la propiedad V2. 22 No he logrado comprender si los francos hablaban francés o alguna lengua germánica.…”

Resumptive structures in a Gallo-Romance perspective

“…A first observation is that SI does not occur in clause-medial or final position, and it must thus be analysed as a CP-element. Based on data from Ledgeway (2017), Wolfe (2018) shows that SI could occur clause-medially in Late Latin. By Early Old French, he assumes that SI is base generated in the High Adverb field and obligatorily moved to SpecFinP.…”

A micro-perspective on Verb-second in Romance and Germanic

“…The origin of this structure has also been debated. While it has been suggested that V2 in the Romance languages is the result of language contact with Germanic languages (Mathieu, 2007a,b), this view has been challenged and it has been suggested that V2 evolves independently in these languages (Wolfe, 2015a(Wolfe, ,b, 2019Ledgeway, 2017;Klaevik-Pettersen, 2018).…”

“…However, the presence of V o -to-C o movement, systematic subject inversion and main-embedded asymmetries are indications of a structural V2 word order. Strictly speaking, V o -to-C o movement is in itself taken as the definition of V2 by a number of scholars (Benincà, 2006;Wolfe, 2015bWolfe, , 2019Ledgeway, 2017).…”