The evolution of bare nouns in the history of French. The view from calibrated corpora
Pierre Larrivée,
Mathieu Goux
Abstract:This article investigates the evolution of bare nouns, used without a determiner, through the history of the French language. The loss of bare nouns is charted through calibrated corpora of non-fictional prose texts from the same genres and region, ranging from the 12th to the 19th century. The change is first completed with nouns in subject function, significantly advances with direct objects, and progresses with obliques. The extensive quantitative documentation demonstrates that the change is impacted by th… Show more
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