Rethinking Medieval Romance Verb Second

2020 ◽  
pp. 348-367
Author(s):  
Sam Wolfe
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Old French ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Compelling Evidence ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Medieval Romance ◽  
Corpus Data

This chapter offers a reappraisal of the place of Medieval Romance languages within the V2 typology based on novel corpus data. A review of the available primary and secondary evidence provides compelling evidence that the Medieval Romance languages considered (French, Occitan, Sicilian, Venetian, and Spanish) were V2 languages, with V-to-C movement and XP-merger in the left periphery. The second half of the chapter focuses in detail on Old Sicilian and Old French, arguing that although both show certain commonalities, the height of the V2 bottleneck is distinct with thirteenth-century French showing a stricter V2 syntax than Old Sicilian. This is linked to the former’s status as a high V2 language with a locus for V2 on Force, as opposed to Fin where the constraint is operative in Sicilian.

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.

The V2 syntax of Medieval Romance

2018 ◽  
pp. 17-34
Author(s):  
Sam Wolfe
Keyword(s):  
Old French ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Medieval Romance ◽  
Quantitative Evidence ◽  
Old Spanish ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Old Occitan ◽  
Old Portuguese ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Detailed Presentation

This chapter provides a detailed presentation of the main data and arguments which have been proposed in favour of claiming that the Medieval Romance languages were V2 systems and considers data from Old French, Old Occitan, Old Italo-Romance varieties, Old Spanish, and Old Portuguese. It provides new qualitative and quantitative evidence to show the nature of the prefield, Germanic inversion, matrix/embedded asymmetries, and the precise types of verb-first and verb-third-or-greater orders provide new evidence in favour of the V2 hypothesis. It also suggests that the diachronic emergence of a V2 grammar is entirely plausible on the basis of the available data. The main objections to the V2 account proposed in the literature are evaluated and argued to face empirical and theoretical problems.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
pp. 147-152
Author(s):  
Sam Wolfe
Keyword(s):  
Romance Languages ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Medieval Romance ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
Null Argument

This chapter summarizes the main findings of the book and considers their wider consequences. The Medieval Romance languages are argued to occupy important points on the V2 typology, which are linked to variable loci of V2 within the left periphery. Contrary to various claims in the literature, the analysis suggests that many Romance V2 systems are not less strict than all their Germanic counterparts. It is suggested that changes observable within the medieval period concerning V2 may account for important morphosyntactic isoglosses separating Romance varieties today, impacting the makeup of the left periphery, the null argument system, and the syntax–pragmatics mapping more generally. The chapter concludes by suggesting that the post-medieval period is an important forum for future research, with detailed research on the varieties in question from the 14th century onwards generally lacking in the literature.

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.

scholarly journals Topic and focus in Old French V1 and V2 structures

2018 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 264-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Labelle ◽  
Paul Hirschbühler
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Old French ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Verb Second

AbstractThe hypothesis that Old French was not a verb-second (V2) language, but rather a Topic-initial language, is evaluated in a corpus of verb initial (V1) and V2 matrix clauses extracted from a corpus of 12th- and 13th-century texts. It is shown that the initial constituent of V2 clauses is not always a Topic; it may be part of the informational Focus, or it could be an element that is neither Topic nor Focus. In addition, in V1 and V2 sentences with subject inversion, the postverbal subject may be an informational Topic, contrary to the hypothesis that subjects must move to the preverbal position to avoid being interpreted as part of the informational Focus. Therefore, from an Information-Structure point of view, Old French is similar to a standard V2 language like German. However, certain differences between 12th- and 13th-century texts could suggest that the use of the left periphery evolved during the period considered.

scholarly journals Roots of V-to-C Movement in Romance

2022 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 210-229
Author(s):  
André Antonelli
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Verb Raising ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Finite Verb

The paper investigates the syntactic structure of wh-clauses in late Latin. The results show that, in sentences with a wh-phrase as direct object, the interrogative operator reaches FocP in the left periphery, with the finite verb raising to the Foc head. This spec-head relation accounts for why subjects and dislocated XPs (like topics or focus elements) can not be intervening constituents between the object wh-phrase and the verb. For wh-clauses in which the interrogative operator is an adjunct, the hypothesis is that the wh-phrase occupies [Spec,IntP]. Here, the verb does not move to the CP-field, thus explaining the possibility of intervening subjects and interpolated XPs between the adjunct wh-element and the verb. These results show that the verb second (V2) property of V-to-C movement, as seen in several old Romance languages, can be derived from late Latin, and not exclusively from a supposed influence of Germanic languages, as is assumed in the literature.

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.

Sui testi romanzi medievali in grafia greca come fonte di informazione linguistica

2017 ◽  
Vol 133 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Maggiore
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Southern Italy ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
Medieval Romance ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Reliable Source ◽  
Greek Alphabet ◽  
Source Of Information

AbstractMedieval Romance texts in the Greek alphabet are generally considered a very reliable source of information about spoken vernacular varieties, mainly due to the intrinsic independence of their writers from the Latin graphic tradition. Nevertheless, as first observed by Alberto Varvaro and Anna Maria Compagna in 1983, these valuable documents, like any other kind of written evidence, are not immune from some degree of conventionality. This paper will focus on the problems raised by the codification of Romance languages in the Greek alphabet, which requires the study of multilingualism, language contact and coexistence of different (written and oral) cultural traditions. Exemplification will come from Italo-Romance texts produced in Sicily and Southern Italy before 1500, but also from texts of other Romance areas like the Gallo-Romance 13th Century

Continuity and Variation in Germanic and Romance

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Discourse Pragmatics ◽  
Indispensable Tool ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
People Today

This volume offers a range of synchronic and diachronic case studies in comparative Germanic and Romance morphosyntax. These two language families, spoken by over a billion people today, have been of central importance throughout the development linguistics, yet many significant questions about the relationship between the two families remain. Following an introduction that sets out the methodological, empirical, and theoretical background to the book, the volume is divided into three parts which deal with the morphosyntax of subjects and the inflectional layer inversion, discourse pragmatics, and the left periphery, and continuity and variation beyond the clause. The approaches used by the authors of individual chapters are diverse, making use of the latest digitized corpora and presenting a mixture of well-known and understudied data from standard and non-standard Germanic and Romance languages. Many of the chapters challenge received wisdom about the relationship between these two important language families. This volume will be an indispensable tool to researchers and students in Germanic and Romance linguistics, historical linguistics, grammatical theory, and language relationships.

Relaxed Verb Second in Classical Portuguese

2020 ◽  
pp. 368-395
Author(s):  
Charlotte Galves
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Tycho Brahe ◽  
Contrast Feature

Based on the quantitative and qualitative study of 11 syntactically parsed texts (485,767 words) from the Tycho Brahe Parsed Corpus of Historical Portuguese, this chapter argues that Classical Portuguese, i.e. the language instantiated in texts written in Portugal by authors born in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is a V2 language of the kind that Wolfe calls ‘relaxed V2 languages’. These are languages in which V1 and V3 sentences coexist with V2 patterns. To account for the sentential patterns observed and their interpretation, a new cartographic analysis of the left periphery is proposed. The existence of sentences in which quantified objects precede fronted subjects suggests that there are two distinct positions in the CP layer to which preverbal phrases can move. The higher one is the familiar Focus category. It is argued that the lower one is neuter with respect to the topic/focus dichotomy and merely encodes a contrast feature. Other constituents can be adjoined at the higher portion of the left periphery where they are interpreted as topics or frames. The chapter concludes by emphasizing the importance of textually diversified corpora as the basis of historical syntactic studies.

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