Cover not available
Article published In:
Journal of Historical Linguistics
Vol. 10:3 (2020) ► pp.389–426

Clitic position in Old Occitan affirmative verb-first declaratives coordinated by e

A variationist analysis

| University of California

This paper offers a variationist analysis of object and adverbial clitic position in coordinated affirmative verb-first main declaratives introduced by e(t) “and” in Old Occitan. In this context, clitics occur in either preverbal (e·l vestit “and clothed him”) or postverbal position (e perdonet li “and pardoned him”). Following recent work on Medieval Romance coordination, I posit that proclitic and enclitic examples reflect different coordination structures at the underlying syntactic level. Data from complete analyses of five major 13th- and 14th-century texts, analyzed in a variationist approach using logistic regression, reveal that the choice between coordination structures – and hence, between proclisis and enclisis – is principled rather than random and depends on the degree of continuity or rupture/discontinuity between the conjuncts.

Keywords: old Occitan, medieval Romance, word order, clitic position, sentential coordination, variation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Clitic placement in OOc
  • 3.Verb-second and generative analyses of medieval Romance and clitic position
    • 3.1Verb-second
    • 3.2Tobler-Mussafia revisited
    • 3.3Generative studies of coordination in medieval Romance
    • 3.4Proposal
  • 4.Data and method
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Overview
    • 5.2Main declaratives
    • 5.3Subordinate clauses
    • 5.4Rupture between conjuncts
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Primary sources
  • Secondary sources
Published online: 8 December 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.19002.don
References

Primary sources

Boutière, Jean
ed. 1964 Biographies des troubadours: Textes provençaux des XIIIe et XIVe siècles. Paris: A.-G. Nizet.Google Scholar
Gout, Raoul
ed. 1927 La vie de Sainte Douceline. Paris: Ars et Fides.Google Scholar
Lee, Charmaine
2000 Jaufre (edizione critica). Accessed online: [URL]
Manetti, Roberta
2008 Flamenca: Romanzo occitano del XIII secolo. Modena: Mucchi Editore.Google Scholar
Schneegans, Friedrich
ed. 1898 Gesta Karoli Magni ad Carcassonam et Narbonam. Halle: Max Niemeyer Verlag.Google Scholar
Zufferey, François
ed. 2014 Flamenca. Paris: Librairie Générale Française.Google Scholar

Secondary sources

Adams, Marianne
1987 From Old French to the Theory of Pro-Drop. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 5:1.1–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Anglade, Joseph
1921 Grammaire de l’ancien provençal. Paris: Klincksieck.Google Scholar
Arteaga, Deborah
1997 On Null Objects in Old French. Romance Linguistics: Theoretical Perspectives ed. by Armin Schwegler, Bernard Tranel & Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria, 1–11. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Benincà, Paola
1983–1984 Un’ipotesi sulla sintassi delle lingue romanze medievali. Quaderni Patamini di Linguistica 4:1.3–19.Google Scholar
1995 Complement Clitics in Medieval Romance: The Tobler-Mussafia Law. Clause Structure and Language Change ed. by Adrian Battye & Ian G. Roberts, 325–344. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2006 A Detailed Map of the Left Periphery of Medieval Romance. Crosslinguistic Research in Syntax and Semantics: Negation, Tense, and Clausal Architecture ed. by Rafaella Zanuttini, Héctor Campos, Elena Herburger & Paul H. Portner, 53–86. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Bocchi, Andrea
2004 ‘Sì’ nel ‘Livero de l’abbecho’. Storia della lingua et filologia ed. by Michelangelo Zaccarello & Lorenzo Tomasin, 121–159. Florence: Sismel.Google Scholar
Donaldson, B.
2013 Null Objects in Old French. Research on Old French: The State of the Art ed. by Deborah Arteaga, 61–86. Berlin: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 Preverbal Subjects, Information Structure, and Object Clitic Position in Old Occitan. Journal of Linguistics 52:1.37–69. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Donaldson, B., & B. Vance
2017 La place des pronoms clitiques en ancien occitan: analyse des déclaratives affirmatives à verbe initial coordonnées par e. 12th Congrès de l’Association d’Études Occitanes, July 2017 Albi, France.Google Scholar
Fontana, Josep M.
1993 Phrase Structure and the Syntax of Clitics in the History of Spanish. Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Foulet, Lucien
1928 Petite syntaxe de l’ancien français. 3rd ed. Paris: Honoré Champion.Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane
2012 Adverbial Clauses, Main Clause Phenomena, and the Composition of the Left Periphery: The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, vol. 8. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haiman, John
1980 The Iconicity of Grammar: Isomorphism and Motivation. Language 56:3.515–540. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hamlin, Frank R., Peter T. Ricketts & John Hathaway
1967 Introduction à l’étude de l’ancien provençal. Geneva: Droz.Google Scholar
Herman, Jozsef
1954 Recherches sur l’ordre des mots dans les plus anciens textes français en prose. Acta Linguistica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 41.69–93; 351–379.Google Scholar
Hinzelin, Marc-Olivier
2007 Die Stellung der klitischen Objektpronomina in den romanischen Sprachen. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.Google Scholar
Holmberg, Anders
2015 Verb Second. Syntax – Theory and Analysis: An International Handbook, vol. 1 ed. by Tibor Kiss & Artemis Alexiadou, 342–383. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Jensen, Frede
1986 The Syntax of Medieval Occitan. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1990 Old French and comparative Gallo-Romance syntax. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1994 Syntaxe de l’ancien occitan. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kunert, Hans P.
2003 L’ordine degli elementi della frase in Occitano antico. Romanische Forschungen 1151.194–209.Google Scholar
Labelle, Marie & Paul Hirschbühler
2005 Changes in Clausal Organization and the Position of Clitics in Old French. Grammaticalization and Parametric Variation ed. by Monserrat Battlori, Maria-Lluïsa Hernanz, Carme Picallo & Francesc Roca, 60–71. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Labov, William
1972 Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Lafont, Robert
1967 La phrase occitane: Essai d’analyse systématique. Montpellier: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Ledgeway, Adam
2008 Satisfying V2 in Early Romance: Merge vs. Move. Journal of Linguistics 44:2.437–470. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Luraghi, Silvia
1997 Omission of the Direct Object in Latin. Indogermanische Forschungen 1021.239–257.Google Scholar
1998 Omissione dell’oggetto diretto in frasi coordinate: dal latino all’italiano. Sintassi storica. Atti del XXX congress SLI ed. by Paolo Ramat, 183–196. Rome: Bulzoni.Google Scholar
2013 Clitics. The Bloomsbury Companion to Syntax ed. by Silvia Luraghi & Claudia Parodi, 165–193. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Marchello-Nizia, Christine
1985 Dire le vrai: L’adverbe si en français médiéval. Geneva: Droz.Google Scholar
Mériz, Diana T.
1978 Observations on Object Pronoun Collocation with Finite Verb-Parts in Medieval Occitan (to 1300). Romania 991.145–182; 289–310. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mussafia, Adolf
1886 Una particolaritá sintattica della lingua italiana dei primi secoli. Miscellanea di folologica e linguistica: Dedicata alla memoria di Napoleone Caix e Ugo Angelo Canello, 255–261. Florence: Le Monnier.Google Scholar
Paden, William D.
1998 An Introduction to Old Occitan. New York: Modern Language Association.Google Scholar
Poletto, Cecilia
2005  Sì and e as CP Expletives in Old Italian. Grammaticalization and Parametric Variation ed. by Montserrat Batllori, Maria-Lluïsa Hernanz, Carme Picallo & Francesc Roca, 206–235. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2009 Two Instances of a Broken Cycle: Sentential Particles in Old Italian. Cyclical Change ed. by Elly van Gelderen, 185–206. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Poole, Geoffrey
2006 Interpolation and the Left Periphery in Old Spanish. Newcastle Working Papers in Linguistics 12–131.188–216.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana
1992 The Inherent Variability of the French Subjunctive. Theoretical Analyses in Romance Linguistics ed. by Christiane Laeufer & Terrell A. Morgan, 235–263. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana & Nathalie Dion
2009 Prescription vs. Praxis: The Evolution of Future Temporal Reference in French. Language 85:3.557–587. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
R Development Core Team
2008 R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.Google Scholar
Ramsden, Herbert
1963 Weak-Pronoun Position in the Early Romance Languages. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Roberts, Ian G.
1993 Verbs and Diachronic Syntax: A Comparative History of English and French. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
2012 Phases, Head Movement and Second-Position Effects. Phases: Developing the Framework ed. by Ángel J. Gallego, 385–440. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rohlfs, Gerhard
1970 From Vulgar Latin to Old French. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.Google Scholar
Romieu, Maurice & André Bianchi
1999 La lenga del trobar: Précis de grammatica d’occitan ancian. Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux.Google Scholar
2002 Iniciacion a l’occitan ancian: Dètz e nòu tèxtes de l’Edat Mejana comentats. Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux.Google Scholar
Salvi, Giampaolo
2000 La formazione del sistema V2 delle lingue romanze antiche. Lingua e stile 351.665–692.Google Scholar
Schutz, Alexander H.
1938 Where Were the Provençal Vidas and Razos Written? Modern Philology 35:3.225–232. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Simonenko, Alexandra & Paul Hirschbühler
2012 Placement de clitiques dans les propositions V1 et évolution de la structure de la proposition en ancien français. Typologie, ordre des mots et groupe verbal en français médiéval ed. by Monique Dufresne, 11–53. Laval, Quebec: Presses de L’Université Laval.Google Scholar
Sitaridou, Ioanna
2005 A Corpus-Based Study of Null Subjects in Old French and Old Occitan. Romance Corpus Linguistics II: Corpora and Diachronic Linguistics ed. by Claus D. Pusch, Johannes Kabatek & Wolfgang Raible, 359–374. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.Google Scholar
Skårup, Povl
1997 Morphologie élémentaire de l’ancien occitan. Copenhagen: Museum Tusulanums Forlag.Google Scholar
Smith, Nathaniel B. & Thomas G. Bergin
1984 An Old Provençal Primer. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Speelman, D.
2014 Logistic Regression: A Confirmatory Technique for Comparisons in Corpus Linguistics. Corpus Methods for Semantics: Quantitative Studies in Polysemy and Synonymy ed. by D. Glynn & J. A. Robinson, 487–533. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thurneysen, Rudolf
1892 Die Stellung des Verbums in Altfranzösischen. Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie 161:289–307. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tobler, Adolf
1875 Review of De l’ordre des mots dans Chrétien de Troyes by Jean J. Le Coultre [Dresden: B. G. Teubner 1875] Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen 341.1057–1082.Google Scholar
Van Valin, Robert D. & Randy J. LaPolla
1997 Syntax: Structure, Meaning, and Function. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vance, Barbara
1997 Syntactic Change in Medieval French: Verb-Second and Null Subjects. Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 La syntaxe des pronoms d’objet clitiques de l’ancien occitan: Système stable ou dynamique? Los qui fan viure et treslucir l’occitan: Actes du Xe Congrès de l’AIEO ed. by Carmen Alen-Garabato, Claire Torreilles & Marie-Jeanne Verny, 202–212. Limoges: Lambert-Lucas.Google Scholar
Vance, Barbara, Bryan Donaldson & B. Devan Steiner
2010 V2 Loss in Old French and Old Occitan: The Role of Fronted Clauses. Romance Linguistics 2009: Selected Papers from the 39th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages ed. by Sonia Colina, Antxon Olarrea & Ana Maria Carvalho, 301–320. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vanelli, Laura, Lorenzo Renzi & Paola Benincà
1985 Typologie des pronoms sujets dans les langues romanes. Actes du XVIIe Congrès International de Linguistique et Philologie Romanes 31.163–176. Aix: Université de Provence.Google Scholar
Wanner, Dieter
2010 Review of Die Stellung der klitischen Objektpronomina in den romanischen Sprachen by M.-O. Hinzelin [Tübingen: Narr 2007] Zeitschrift für Katalanistik 231.270–280.Google Scholar
Wolfe, Sam
2016 A Comparative Perspective on the Evolution of Romance Clausal Structure. Diachronica 33:4.461–502. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2018 Occitan, Verb Second, and the Medieval Romance Word Order Debate. Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2015: Selected Papers from Going Romance Nijmegen 2015 ed. by Janine Berns, Haike Jacobs, & Dominique Nouveau, 315–336. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
2019 Verb Second in Medieval Romance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Donaldson, Bryan
2021. Clause Structure and Illocutionary Force in Medieval Gallo-Romance: Clitic Position in Old Occitan and Early Old French Sentential Coordination. Probus 33:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Donaldson, Bryan
2021. Clause Structure and Illocutionary Force in Medieval Gallo-Romance: Clitic Position in Old Occitan and Early Old French Sentential Coordination. Probus 33:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 15 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.