Evaluating the contact hypothesis for Old French word order

2021 ◽  
pp. 275-296
Author(s):  
Sam Wolfe
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Old French ◽  
Contact Hypothesis ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
Alternative Scenario ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
The Core ◽  
Null Arguments

This volume revisits the classic and oft-repeated claim that Old French shows a raft of ‘Germanic’ grammatical properties due to contact with Frankish in the early medieval period. These properties include Verb Second, scrambling, Stylistic Fronting, and the loss of the null subject property. Drawing on a mixture of historical, formal syntactic, and acquisitional arguments it is suggested that the hypothesis is extremely problematic and suffers from major empirical and theoretical flaws, alongside major challenges in terms of dating. An alternative scenario is outlined in which left-peripheral verb movement and XP-fronting, middlefield scrambling, Stylistic Fronting, and progressive restrictions on null arguments are natural progressions of the syntactic system attested in late Latin. Finally, it is proposed that the core morphosyntactic parallels between early Germanic and Romance can be captured by their common syntactic inheritance from Proto-Indo-European.

Verb Second in Medieval Romance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Wolfe
Keyword(s):  
Old French ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
Medieval Romance ◽  
Second Languages ◽  
Clausal Structure ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Null Argument

This book provides the first book-length study of the controversial subject of Verb Second and related properties in a range of Medieval Romance languages. Both qualitative and quantitative data are examined and analysed from Old French, Occitan, Sicilian, Venetian, Spanish, and Sardinian to assess whether the languages were indeed Verb Second languages. The book argues that unlike most modern Romance varieties, V-to-C movement is a point of continuity across all the medieval varieties, but that there are rich patterns of synchronic and diachronic variation in the medieval period which have not been noted before. These include differences in the syntax–pragmatics mapping, the locus of verb movement, the behaviour of clitic pronouns, the syntax of subject positions, matrix/embedded asymmetries, and the null argument properties of the languages in question. The book outlines a detailed formal cartographic analysis both of both the synchronic patterns attested and of the diachronic evolution of Romance clausal structure.

scholarly journals On the Acquisition of Word Order in WH-Questions in theTromsø Dialect

Nordlyd ◽  
10.7557/12.48 ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marit Richardsen Westergaard
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
Syntactic Form ◽  
Wh Questions

This article reports on a study of three children acquiring a dialect of Norwegian which allows two different word orders in certain types of WH-questions, verb second (V2) and and verb third (V3). The latter is only allowed after monosyllabic WH-words, while the former, which is the result of verb movement, is the word order found in all other main clauses in the language. It is shown that both V2 and V3 are acquired extremely early by the children in the study (before the age of two), and that subtle distinctions between the two orders with respect to information structure are attested from the beginning. However, it is argued that V3 word order, which should be ìsimplerî than the V2 structure as it does not involve verb movement, is nevertheless acquired slightly later in its full syntactic form. This is taken as an indication that the V3 structure is syntactically more complex, and possibly also more marked.

Changing EPP parameters

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lieven Danckaert
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Clause Structure ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
Modal Verbs ◽  
The Core ◽  
History Of ◽  
Parametric Change ◽  
T Domain ◽  
The Way

This chapter starts with a description of the core facts concerning the VPAux/AuxVP alternation in the history of Latin. In the case of modal verbs and infinitives, there is a clear decline of the head-final order VPAux, whereas Late Latin BE-periphrases surprisingly prefer this order. Against the backdrop of these observations, the discussion then turns to the analysis of Classical and Late Latin clause structure. It is proposed that during the transition from Classical to Late Latin, a major parametric change took place related to the way the clausal EPP-requirement is satisfied. In the earlier grammar (‘Grammar A’), the entire VP undergoes A-movement to the high T-domain, resulting in the characteristic VPAux word order. In the later grammar (‘Grammar B’) the EPP-requirement is met by means of verb movement, with the VP staying in situ. In this grammar VPAux-orders are derived through roll-up movement, which is incompatible with the VOAux-pattern.

Variable V2 in Norwegian heritage language

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marit Westergaard ◽  
Terje Lohndal ◽  
Björn Lundquist
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
The Other ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Dominant Language ◽  
Crosslinguistic Influence

Abstract This paper discusses possible attrition of verb second (V2) word order in Norwegian heritage language by investigating a corpus of spontaneous speech produced by 50 2nd–4th generation heritage speakers in North America. The study confirms previous findings that V2 word order is generally stable in heritage situations, but nevertheless finds approximately 10% V2 violations. The cases of non-V2 word order are argued to be due to lack of activation of the heritage language grammar, making it vulnerable to crosslinguistic influence from the speakers’ dominant language. This crosslinguistic influence does not simply replace V2 by non-V2, but is argued to operate more indirectly, affecting (a) the distribution of contexts for V2 word order, and (b) introducing two new distinctions into the heritage language, one (indirectly) based on a similar distinction in the dominant language (a difference between adverbs and negation with respect to verb movement), the other based on frequency of initial elements triggering V2 in non-subject-initial declaratives. Together, these findings also indicate that crosslinguistic influence affects different contexts of V2 differently, providing support for analyses that treat V2 word order as the result of many smaller rules.

scholarly journals Diagnosing embedded V2 in Old English and Old French

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Meklenborg Salvesen ◽  
George Walkden
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Old French ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Matrix Verb ◽  
Finite Verb

Old English (OE) and Old French (OF) both display verb-second (V2) word order in main declarative clauses. Different models may account for V2: (a) the finite verb must move to a head in the CP field; (b) it must remain in the IP field; or (c) it moves to the left periphery only when the preceding XP is not a subject. While the IP-model should allow free embedded V2, the two others would either exclude completely or strongly limit the possibilty of having embedded V2. We select embedded that-clauses and analyse the word order with respect to the matrix verb: embedded V2 is possible in both OE and OF, although the availability of this structure is restricted. OE has very few occurrences of embedded V2, whereas OF seems to permit this construction more freely. We link this difference to the site of first Merge of complementizers in the two languages.

The assertion analysis of declarative Verb Second

2020 ◽  
pp. 265-280
Author(s):  
Marit Julien
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Illocutionary Force ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Matrix Clause ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Root Properties ◽  
Finite Verb

This chapter addresses the assertion analysis of Mainland Scandinavian embedded declarative V2 clauses. These clauses are identified by having the finite verb preceding all sentence adverbials and/or having a non-subject in initial position. Whereas this word order is mainly found in that-clauses embedded under certain predicates in modern Mainland Scandinavian, it was more generally allowed in Old Scandinavian. The Old Scandinavian word order arguably involved verb movement to the inflectional domain. In modern Mainland Scandinavian it necessarily involves movement to the C-domain, which means that embedded V2 clauses have root properties. On this analysis, they are asserted, and both the illocutionary force and the V2 order are consequences of the presence of a Force head. For most speakers of modern Mainland Scandinavian, direct or indirect assertions can be embedded whenever they are compatible with the semantics of the matrix clause.

Public Powers, Private Powers, and the Exploitation of Metals for Coinage

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanna Bianchi
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Mineral Resources ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
Italian Journal ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Relationship

In 1994, an article appeared in the Italian journal Archeologia Medievale, written by Chris Wickham and Riccardo Francovich, entitled ‘Uno scavo archeologico ed il problema dello sviluppo della signoria territoriale: Rocca San Silvestro e i rapporti di produzione minerari’. It marked a breakthrough in the study of the exploitation of mineral resources (especially silver) in relation to forms of power, and the associated economic structure, and control of production between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. On the basis of the data available to archeological research at the time, the article ended with a series of open questions, especially relating to the early medieval period. The new campaign of field research, focused on the mining landscape of the Colline Metallifere in southern Tuscany, has made it possible to gather more information. While the data that has now been gathered are not yet sufficient to give definite and complete answers to those questions, they nevertheless allow us to now formulate some hypotheses which may serve as the foundations for broader considerations as regards the relationship between the exploitation of a fundamental resource for the economy of the time, and the main players and agents in that system of exploitation, within a landscape that was undergoing transformation in the period between the early medieval period and the middle centuries of the Middle Ages.

Chestnuts in Charters

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ross Balzaretti
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Method ◽  
Its Region ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Social Differences ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
Specialized Production ◽  
System P ◽  
Macro Scale ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
Economic Specialization

This chapter responds to a point which Chris Wickham raised in his recent review of my book on Dark Age Liguria: did chestnut cultivation show any economic specialization in this region in the early medieval period? Chestnuts figured a great deal in that book, which drew briefly on the surviving charter documentation for the region. In this chapter a more detailed analysis of charters from the tenth and eleventh centuries develops an answer to the question of specialized production with a comparative study in which the Genoese evidence is set alongside similar charter evidence from Milan and its region, where chestnuts were also cultivated for food. The Genoa–Milan comparison puts into practice Wickham’s advocacy of comparative method at the micro as well as at the macro scale, for regions where comparison has not historically been the norm. The comparison suggests that chestnuts were more important to the Genoese than the Milanese economy, in part for local climatic reasons but also, perhaps, because of fundamental political and social differences between these two cities. It will be shown that some charters show that the production of chestnuts was to some degree specialized, how it was specialized and what the consequences of that specialization were for each economic system.

Clause Structure and Word Order in the History of German

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Clause Structure ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Right ◽  
Theoretical Analyses

Over roughly the last decade, there has been a notable rise in new research on historical German syntax in a generative perspective. This volume presents a state-of-the-art survey of this thriving new line of research by leading scholars in the field, combining it with new insights into the syntax of historical German. It is the first comprehensive and concise generative historical syntax of German covering numerous central aspects of clause structure and word order, tracing them throughout various historical stages. Each chapter combines a solid empirical basis and valid descriptive generalizations with reference also to the more traditional topological model of the German clause with a detailed discussion of theoretical analyses couched in the generative framework. The volume is divided into three parts according to the main parts of the clause: the left periphery dealing with verbal placement and the filling of the prefield (verb second, verb first, verb third orders) as well as adverbial connectives; the middle field including discussion of pronominal syntax, order of full NPs and the history of negation; and the right periphery with chapters on basic word order (OV/VO), prosodic and information-structural factors, and the verbal complex including the development of periphrastic verb forms and the phenomena of IPP (infinitivus pro participio) and ACI (accusativus cum infinitivo). This book thus provides a convenient overview of current research on the major issues concerning historical German clause structure both for scholars interested in more traditional description and for those interested in formal accounts of diachronic syntax.

OV versus VO in Old High German

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Svetlana Petrova ◽  
Helmut Weiß
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Landing Site ◽  
Old High German ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
Functional Projection ◽  
Functional Head ◽  
Word Order Variation ◽  
Order Variation ◽  
The Right

This chapter surveys the word order variation in the right periphery of the clause in OHG. The investigation is based on a corpus including all dependent clauses introduced by the complementizer thaz ‘that’ in the minor OHG documents, a collection of up to forty smaller texts of various genres. The analysis shows that the majority of the data can be explained within a standard OV grammar, assuming additional extraposition of heavy XPs to the right. But apart from these cases, there is evidence supporting the assumption of leftward movement of the verb to an intermediate functional projection vP which is optional with basic OV but obligatory with basic VO. In addition, the chapter presents patterns which evidently involve verb movement to a higher functional head, above vP, and discusses the nature of the landing site of the verb in these cases.

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