Null Subjects and Syntactic Change in Middle French

1997 ◽  
pp. 257-329
Author(s):  
Barbara S. Vance
Keyword(s):  
Null Subjects ◽  
Middle French ◽  
Syntactic Change

scholarly journals Aboutness Topics in Old and Middle French: A corpus-based study on the fate of V2

2017 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-220
Author(s):  
Aroldo de Andrade
Keyword(s):  
Middle French ◽  
Relativized Minimality ◽  
Syntactic Change ◽  
New Information ◽  
Phase Extension ◽  
History Of ◽  
Alternative Proposal

AbstractThis article investigates the loss of aboutness topics in preverbal position in the history of French, using a corpus-based research on preverbal accusative objects. A comparison of Old and Middle French with Modern French reveals that new-information focalization had disappeared by the 14thcentury, whereas aboutness topicalization had in turn vanished by the end of the 16thcentury, along with other marked constructions. Combined with the generative premise that independent pragmatic factors should not trigger syntactic change, the results of this study suggest the reanalysis of the grammar as V-to-I in Renaissance French is responsible for blocking the derivation of aboutness topicalization. An alternative proposal based on phase extension and on Relativized Minimality, in a version affecting some types of A′-movement, relates those two diachronic shifts. The article concludes with the idea that the study of marked constructions may be recast as offering diagnostics on broader syntactic changes.

WILLIS, D.W.E.: Syntactic Change in Welsh. A study of the loss of verb-second

Kratylos ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 213-216
Author(s):  
G.R. Isaac
Keyword(s):  
Verb Second ◽  
Syntactic Change

Middle French hargnier and Germanie -ntj

Romania ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 93 (371) ◽  
pp. 393-402
Author(s):  
Paul Brosman
Keyword(s):  
Middle French

Negation and Nonveridicality in the History of Greek

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katerina Chatzopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Inertial Forces ◽  
Greek Language ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Polarity Item ◽  
Syntactic Change ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Asymmetry ◽  
Diachronic Development

This study is an investigation of the expression of negation in the history of Greek, through quantitative data from representative texts from three major stages of vernacular Greek (Attic Greek, Koine, Late Medieval Greek), and qualitative data from Homeric Greek until Standard Modern. The contrast between two complementary negators, NEG1 and NEG2, is explained in terms of sensitivity of NEG2 μη‎ to nonveridicality: NEG2 is a polarity item in all stages of the Greek language, an item licensed by nonveridicality. The asymmetry in the diachronic development of the Greek negator system (the replacement of NEG1 and the preservation of NEG2) is explained with reference to the particulars of the uses of NEG2, specifically the inertial forces drawn by the nonnegative uses of NEG2, which being nonnegative did not experience the renewal pressures predicted by the Jespersen’s Cycle. These are its complementizer uses: (i) as a question particle, and (ii) in introducing verbs of fear complements. A viewpoint for Jespersen’s Cycle is proposed that abstracts away from the morphosyntactic and phonological particulars of the phenomenon and explicitly places its regularities in the semantics, accommodating not only for Greek, but for numerous other languages that deviate in different ways from the traditional description of Jespersen’s Cycle. The developments observed in the history of the Greek negator system agree with current generative theories of syntactic change, regarding the notions of up-the-tree movement.

The prefield after the Old High German period

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Augustin Speyer ◽  
Helmut Weiß
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Structural Constraints ◽  
Old High German ◽  
Syntactic Change ◽  
The One ◽  
Split Cp

The filling of the prefield in Modern German is determined by information-structural constraints such as scene-setting, contrastiveness, and topichood. While OHG does not yet show competition between these constraints, competition arises from MHG onward. This has to do with the generalization of the V2 constraint (i.e. the one-constituent property of the prefield) for declarative clauses, in which context the information-structural constraints are loosened. The syntactic change whose result eventually was the loss of multiple XP fronting comprised a change of the feature endowment of C because the fronting of expletive thô (roughly in the OHG of the ninth century) led to the reanalysis of XP fronting as a semantically vacuous movement whose only function is to check the EPP feature of C. Data from doubly filled prefields in ENHG and post-initial connectives indicate that an articulated split CP-structure, as proposed within the cartographic approach, is also at play in German.

scholarly journals Modeling Syntactic Change under Contact: The Case of Italiot Greek

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 74
Author(s):  
Cristina Guardiano ◽  
Melita Stavrou
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Potential Source ◽  
Syntactic Change ◽  
The Social ◽  
Linguistic Structures

In this paper, we investigate patterns of persistence and change affecting the syntax of nominal structures in Italiot Greek in comparison to Modern (and Ancient) Greek, and we explore the role of Southern Italo-Romance as a potential source of interference. Our aim is to highlight the dynamics that favor syntactic contact in this domain: we provide an overview of the social context where these dynamics have taken place and of the linguistic structures involved.

scholarly journals A Variationist Study of Subject Pronoun Expression in Medellín, Colombia

Languages ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Rafael Orozco ◽  
Luz Marcela Hurtado
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Random Effect ◽  
Routine Activities ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Functional Categories ◽  
Lexical Effect ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
Baseline Knowledge ◽  
Subject Pronoun ◽  
Reflexive Verbs

This variationist study of subject pronoun expression (SPE) in Medellín, Colombia uses multivariate regressions to probe the effects of ten predictors on 4623 tokens from the Proyecto para el Estudio Sociolingüístico del Español de España y de América (PRESEEA) corpus. We implement analytical innovations by exploring transitivity and the lexical effect of the verb, which we analyze by testing infinitives and subject pronoun + verb collocations, respectively, as standalone, random-effect factors. Our results reveal the highest pronominal rate (28%) found in a mainland Spanish-speaking community. Additionally, we uncover that pronominal rates increase with age, a finding which appears to have cognitive implications. The internal conditioning contributes to pronombrista studies by showing the effects of discourse type and transitivity. Narratives and opinion statements favor overt subjects, but statements indicating routine activities favor null subjects. Whereas unergative verbs promote overt subjects, reflexive verbs favor null subjects. The lexical effect of the verb reveals opposing tendencies between verbs in the same category as well as within different collocations of the same verb, providing more definitive answers than the semantically guided approaches used for the last four decades and showing that verb groupings do not constitute functional categories with regard to SPE. Overall, this study contributes to expand our baseline knowledge of SPE in mainland Latin American communities and opens interesting research avenues.

Agreement syncretization and the loss of null subjects: quantificational models for Medieval French—Addendum

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-377
Author(s):  
Alexandra Simonenko ◽  
Benoit Crabbé ◽  
Sophie Prévost
Keyword(s):  
Null Subjects
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