Reconsidering variation and change in the Medieval French subject system

Abstract

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 Romanceinversion structures is subject to change in the syntax-pragmatics mapping.

Residual Verb Second in French and Romance

“…The core observations which led to this conclusionunsurprising in light of our discussion in §2.1are that second position is the preferred position for the finite verb, that the prefield is not a specialized subject position but one that can host a range of grammatical categories with a variety of pragmatic roles (6) (Skårup 1975: 9-69;Roberts 1993: 85-87;Vance 1997: 43-47;Mathieu 2012: 327;Steiner 2014), and that the subject can appear postverbally in inversion structures; particularly significant in this regard are so-called Germanicinversion structures such as (7), which unambiguously reveal the finite auxiliary to be occupying a C-related head position with the subject appearing in the T-layer (Adams 1987: 4;Roberts 1993: sec. 2.2; de Bakker 1997;Salvesen & Bech 2014;Wolfe 2020). We should note that these Germanic-inversion structures are attested alongside a less frequent Romance-inversion construction where the subject appears lower in the clausal hierarchy, likely at the vP periphery ( 8 There is an increasing consensus that although French was a V2 system from the time of its earliest textual attestations to approximately 1525, the nature of the system was subject to change during this time; this is an unsurprising finding if we consider the fine-grained variation between V2 systems spoken today (Jouitteau 2010;Lohnstein & Tsiknakis 2019;Woods & Wolfe 2020), and the fact that other V2 languages have undergone change during the period when a V2 constraint was operative in their 3 For review and analysis of the relevant data, see De Bakker (1997), Salvesen &Bech (2014), andWolfe (2020).…”

“…2.2; de Bakker 1997;Salvesen & Bech 2014;Wolfe 2020). We should note that these Germanic-inversion structures are attested alongside a less frequent Romance-inversion construction where the subject appears lower in the clausal hierarchy, likely at the vP periphery ( 8 There is an increasing consensus that although French was a V2 system from the time of its earliest textual attestations to approximately 1525, the nature of the system was subject to change during this time; this is an unsurprising finding if we consider the fine-grained variation between V2 systems spoken today (Jouitteau 2010;Lohnstein & Tsiknakis 2019;Woods & Wolfe 2020), and the fact that other V2 languages have undergone change during the period when a V2 constraint was operative in their 3 For review and analysis of the relevant data, see De Bakker (1997), Salvesen &Bech (2014), andWolfe (2020).…”

Parametric variation in Romance synchronic V2 through a French lens

“…fronted constituent Xverbnominal subject) 1 in declarative root clauses (1-3). 2 Although I will not enter into detail with respect to the V2 or non-V2 status of Medieval Romance and French, and the reason why it was lost (Benincà 2006, Kaiser & Zimmerman 2011, Labelle 2006, Ledgeway 2007, Larrivée 2022, Wolfe 2020, XVS patterns such as (1-3) could be considered to be instances of V2 (Poletto 1998, Rizzi 1990, Rizzi 1996, to the extent that they combine constituent preposing and obligatory Vmovement (see Holmberg 2015& Ledgeway 2007. 3 (1)…”