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Article published In:
The Role of Pragmatics in Cyclic Language Change
Edited by Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen
[Journal of Historical Pragmatics 21:2] 2020
► pp. 263–288

Parallels between the negative cycle and the rise of interrogative marking in French

| Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
In this paper, I discuss a type of construction that is rarely if ever mentioned in connection with diachronic cyclicity: wh-interrogative marking. In particular, I shall compare sentential negation with wh-marking in French and point to interesting commonalities between the prototypical diachronic cycle (negation) and interrogative marking. The pragmatic contrast between question types in Old French is shown to be mirrored in a similar contrast in Modern French, with the previously “strong” est-ce que interrogative now being a weaker one. In addition, I argue that reversal of anaphoric direction is another shared feature in the history of negation and of the est-ce que interrogative.
Keywords: diachronic cycle, echo question, incredulity question, interrogative marking, negation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Morphosyntactic and semantic–pragmatic cycles
    • 1.2Parallels between negation and interrogation
    • 1.3The idea of the interrogative cycle
  • 2.Marked interrogation in French
    • 2.1Interrogative form-types in Modern French
    • 2.2On the notion of marked interrogation
    • 2.3Marked wh-interrogation in French
      • 2.3.1The “echo question” and the “incredulity question”
      • 2.3.2Lacking information outside an expected or reasonable range
      • 2.3.3Marked and non-marked wh-interrogation in Modern French and Old French
  • 3.Use of the long form in Old French
  • 4.Reversal of anaphoric direction
    • 4.1“Janus-faced” context in the generalization of French bipartite negation
    • 4.2Reversal of anaphoric direction in the history of the est-ce que interrogatives
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 3 March 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.00044.wal
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