Syntactic Change in French

Syntactic Change in French PDF Author: Sam Wolfe
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198864310
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
This book provides the most comprehensive and detailed formal account to date of the evolution of French syntax. It makes use of the latest formal syntactic tools and combines careful textual analysis with a detailed synthesis of the research literature to provide a novel analysis of the major syntactic developments in the history of French. The empirical scope of the volume is exceptionally broad, and includes discussion of syntactic variation and change in Latin, Old, Middle, Renaissance, and Classical French, and standard and non-standard varieties of Modern French. Following an introduction to the general trends in grammatical change from Latin to French, Sam Wolfe explores a wide range of phenomena including the left periphery, subject positions and null subjects, verb movement, object placement, negation, and the makeup of the nominal expression. The book concludes with a comparative analysis of how French has come to develop the unique typological profile it has within Romance today. The volume will thus be an indispensable tool for researchers and students in French and comparative Romance linguistics, as well as for readers interested in grammatical theory and historical linguistics more broadly.

Syntactic Change in French

Syntactic Change in French PDF Author: Sam Wolfe
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192609920
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
This book provides the most comprehensive and detailed formal account to date of the evolution of French syntax. It makes use of the latest formal syntactic tools and combines careful textual analysis with a detailed synthesis of the research literature to provide a novel analysis of the major syntactic developments in the history of French. The empirical scope of the volume is exceptionally broad, and includes discussion of syntactic variation and change in Latin, Old, Middle, Renaissance, and Classical French, and standard and non-standard varieties of Modern French. Following an introduction to the general trends in grammatical change from Latin to French, Sam Wolfe explores a wide range of phenomena including the left periphery, subject positions and null subjects, verb movement, object placement, negation, and the makeup of the nominal expression. The book concludes with a comparative analysis of how French has come to develop the unique typological profile it has within Romance today. The volume will thus be an indispensable tool for researchers and students in French and comparative Romance linguistics, as well as for readers interested in grammatical theory and historical linguistics more broadly.

Syntactic Change in Medieval French

Syntactic Change in Medieval French PDF Author: Barbara S. Vance
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401588430
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
1. 0. V2 AND NULL SUBJECTS IN THE HIS TORY OF FRENCH The prototypical Romance null subject language has certain well known characteristics: verbal inflection is rich, distinguishing six per sonlnumber forms; subject pronouns are generally emphatic; and, when there is no need to emphasize the subject, the pronoun is not expressed at all. Spanish and Italian, for example, fit this description rather weIl. Modem French, however, provides a striking contrast to these lan guages; it does not allow subjects to be missing and, not unexpectedly, it has a verbal agreement system with few overt endings and subject pronouns which are not emphatic. One of the goals of the present work is to examine null subjects in two dialects of Romance that fit neither the Italian nor the French model: later Old French (12th-13th centriries) and MiddIe French (14th- 15th centuries). Old French has null subjects only in contexts where the subject would be postverbal if expressed (cf. Foulet (1928)), and Mid dIe French has null subjects in a wider range of syntactic contexts but does not freely allow a11 persons of the verb to be null. The work of Vanelli, Renzi and Beninca (1985) (along with many other works by these authors individually) shows that a number of other geographically proximate medieval dialects had similar systems, though it appears that there are significant differences in detail among them.

Syntactic Change in French

Syntactic Change in French PDF Author: Sam Wolfe
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198864310
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book provides the most comprehensive and detailed formal account to date of the evolution of French syntax. It makes use of the latest formal syntactic tools and combines careful textual analysis with a detailed synthesis of the research literature to provide a novel analysis of the major syntactic developments in the history of French. The empirical scope of the volume is exceptionally broad, and includes discussion of syntactic variation and change in Latin, Old, Middle, Renaissance, and Classical French, and standard and non-standard varieties of Modern French. Following an introduction to the general trends in grammatical change from Latin to French, Sam Wolfe explores a wide range of phenomena including the left periphery, subject positions and null subjects, verb movement, object placement, negation, and the makeup of the nominal expression. The book concludes with a comparative analysis of how French has come to develop the unique typological profile it has within Romance today. The volume will thus be an indispensable tool for researchers and students in French and comparative Romance linguistics, as well as for readers interested in grammatical theory and historical linguistics more broadly.

The Syntax of French

The Syntax of French PDF Author: Paul Rowlett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139461729
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
French is a syntactically interesting language, with aspects of its word order and clause structure triggering a variety of important developments in syntactic theory. This is a concise and accessible guide to the syntax of Modern French, providing a clear overview of those aspects of the language that are of particular interest to linguists. A broad variety of topics are covered, including the development and spread of French; the evolution of its syntax; syntactic variation; lexical categories; noun, verb and adjective phrases; clause structure; movement; and agreement. Drawing on the work of a wide range of scholars, it highlights the important role of French in the development of syntactic theory and shows how French challenges some fundamental assumptions about syntactic structure. An engaging and in-depth guide to all that is interesting about French, The Syntax of French will be invaluable to students and scholars of syntactic theory and comparative linguistics.

Language Acquisition and Syntactic Theory

Language Acquisition and Syntactic Theory PDF Author: A.E. Pierce
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401125740
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
The theory of language acquisition is a young but increasingly active field. Language Acquisition and Syntactic Theory presents one of the first detailed studies of comparative syntax acquisition. It is informed by the view that linguists and acquisitionists are essentially working on the same problem, that of explaining grammar learnability. The author takes cross-linguistic data from child language as evidence for recent proposals in syntactic theory. Developments in the structure of children's sentences during the first few years of life are traced to changes in the setting of specific grammatical parameters. Some surprising differences between the early child grammars of French and English are uncovered, differences that can only be explained on the basis of subtle distinctions in inflectional structure. This motivates the author's claim that functional or nonthematic categories are represented in the grammars of very young children. The book also explores the relationship between acquisition and diachronic change in French and English. It is argued that findings in acquisition, when viewed from a parameter setting perspective, provide answers to important questions arising in the study of language change. The book promises to be of interest to all those involved in the formal, psychological or historical study of linguistic knowledge.

English as a Contact Language

English as a Contact Language PDF Author: Daniel Schreier
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139619268
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
Recent developments in contact linguistics suggest considerable overlap of branches such as historical linguistics, variationist sociolinguistics, pidgin/creole linguistics, language acquisition, etc. This book highlights the complexity of contact-induced language change throughout the history of English by bringing together cutting-edge research from these fields. Special focus is on recent debates surrounding substratal influence in earlier forms of English (particularly Celtic influence in Old English), on language shift processes (the formation of Irish and overseas varieties) but also on dialects in contact, the contact origins of Standard English, the notion of new epicentres in World English, the role of children and adults in language change as well as transfer and language learning. With contributions from leading experts, the book offers fresh and exciting perspectives for research and is at the same time an up-to-date overview of the state of the art in the respective fields.

Sociolinguistic Variation in Contemporary French

Sociolinguistic Variation in Contemporary French PDF Author: Kate Beeching
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 902721865X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Divided into three main sections on Phonology, Syntax and Semantics, this new volume on variation in French aims to provide a snapshot of the state of sociolinguistic research inside and outside metropolitan France. From a diatopic perspective, varieties in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Africa and Canada are considered, mainly with respect to phonological features but also focusing on syntactic and lexical evolutions (the relative clause in Ivorian French and discourse markers in Canadian French). The acquisition of stylistic features of French figures in chapters on both first and second language learners and variation across different genres is addressed with respect to non-standard non-finite forms. Finally, a section on semantic change traces the way that interactional and other socio-historical factors affect word meaning. The volume will appeal to (socio-)linguists with an interest in contemporary French as well as to advanced undergraduates and post-graduate students of French and specialists in the field.

The Paradox of Grammatical Change

The Paradox of Grammatical Change PDF Author: Ulrich Detges
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027248084
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Recent years have seen intense debates between formal (generative) and functional linguists, particularly with respect to the relation between grammar and usage. This debate is directly relevant to diachronic linguistics, where one and the same phenomenon of language change can be explained from various theoretical perspectives. In this, a close look at the divergent and/or convergent evolution of a richly documented language family such as Romance promises to be useful. The basic problem for any approach to language change is what Eugenio Coseriu has termed the paradox of change: if synchronically, languages can be viewed as perfectly running systems, then there is no reason why they should change in the first place. And yet, as everyone knows, languages are changing constantly. In nine case studies, a number of renowned scholars of Romance linguistics address the explanation of grammatical change either within a broadly generative or a functional framework.

Internal and External Factors in Syntactic Change

Internal and External Factors in Syntactic Change PDF Author: Marinel Gerritsen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110886049
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description
TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as neuroscience and cognitive science. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.

French Dislocation

French Dislocation PDF Author: Cécile de Cat
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199230471
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Cécile De Cat's account of dislocation in French (as in Le chocolat, c'est bon) throws new light on French syntax and prosody, and makes an important and original contribution to the study of linguistic interfaces. It also provides new insights into the acquisition of French as first language. This book will interest scholars and advanced students of French and of its acquisition as a first language as well as linguistic theorists interested in the interfaces between syntax, discourse, and phonology.