Stability, Variation and Change in Word Order: Some Evidence from the Romance Languages

Sornicola, Rosanna

doi:10.1075/cilt.213.10sor

Cited by 25 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Whether these cases are genuinely syntactically motivated is, however, less clear inasmuch as they could presumably be readily integrated with the preceding pragmatic and modal cases of verb-fronting since, with the exception of negation, the triggers all involve reference to speaker perspective. Now, while the V2 status of medieval Romance is widely supported by detailed statistical studies like those cited in footnote 3 above (but see Martins 1994;Kaiser 1999Kaiser , 2002Kaiser , 2002Sornicola 2000;Rinke 2009;Sitaridou 2012), similar conclusions for late Latin are based on somewhat superficial and impressionistic evidence. For example, Clackson & Horrocks (2007: 292) recognize a V2 pattern in the late fourth-century Itinerarium Egeriae 'Travels of Egeria', where they identify 'an underlying order with the verb occupying the first position in the sentence, with an optional focus slot before it, which may be filled by a verbal argument (subject as default) or an adverbial phrase' (cf.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 79%

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

Ledgeway

2017

catjl

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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.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 79%

“…Under one proposal, V2 is to be interpreted as movement of the finite verb to T° with fronting of some other thematic or rhematic constituent to SpecTP (cf. Martins 1994;Kaiser 1999Kaiser , 2002Kaiser , 2002Sornicola 2000;Rinke 2009;Sitaridou 2012). This analysis leaves the higher C position available to host lexical complementizers.…”

Section: Embedded Clausesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Ledgeway

2017

catjl

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“…Among the presentday Romance languages, V2 is only found in some Rhaeto-Romance varieties (see Haiman & Benincà 1992;Benincà 1994;Poletto 2002;Anderson 2005); but, according to Benincà (1983Benincà ( , 2006 and many others after her, V2 syntax was present in many, or even all, medieval Romance languages. 3 The V2 status of medieval Romance is particularly well attested and widely supported by corpus-based statistical studies (see Ledgeway 2012;Poletto 2014;and Wolfe 2018 for some overviews), but has also been disputed and denied, especially for old Ibero-Romance languages (see Martins 1994Martins , 2002Martins , 2019Kaiser 1999Kaiser , 2002Ribeiro 1995;Sornicola 2000;Rinke 2009;Rinke & Meisel 2009;Sitaridou 2012). The properties that have been taken as evidence for V2 in medieval Romance include: (a) fronting of a constituent other than the subject to a preverbal position, as in (3)-( 5); (b) subject inversion, whenever a constituent other than the subject is fronted and the subject is overtly realized in a postverbal position (cf.…”

Section: V2 In the History Of Romancementioning

confidence: 99%

What is “residual verb second”? And what does Romance have to do with it?

Cruschina

Sailor

2022

isogloss

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This paper aims to clarify a point of persistent confusion in the literature: namely, the status of residual verb second. We approach this from both a terminological and typological perspective. Terminologically, traditional usage of residual V2 in the literature has conflated two different senses (one formal, and one historical); we argue that it is essential to keep these two senses separate. We propose a distinction between partial V2 and residual V2 within the general typology of verb second. Following a formal definition of V2 from the recent literature, we define partial-V2 systems as involving genuine instances of V2 that are limited to nondeclarative environments in a given language (e.g. English). By contrast, we (re)define residual V2 as describing purely vestigial structures that do not qualify as formally V2 in the synchronic grammar of a given language, despite their historical origins in an earlier stage in which the language had true V2. In this respect, almost all modern Romance languages provide clear examples of residual V2: the syntax of these languages is only historically related to V2, with all formal traces of V2 having been long lost, even in nondeclaratives. With these clarifications in place, we propose an updated typology of V2 systems, conceiving of it as a spectrum of degrees from partial V2 through strict V2 (as measured by the set of formally-V2 environments that a given language allows).

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“…Indeed, given that, by assumption, such relevance-induced pressures are ever-present, being language independent, one might expect that such pragmatically based determination of placement of weak uses of pronouns would be robust and long-lasting (Sornicola 1996). And indeed, as already noted, it was and is long-lasting, being pervasive through Latin (Adams 1994), lasting throughout medieval Spanish,and surviving even today in some dialects of Portuguese (Galician).…”

Section: Pronoun Placement: Latin and Medieval Spanishmentioning

confidence: 99%