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Chapters of Dependency Grammar: A historical survey from Antiquity to Tesnière
Edited by András Imrényi and Nicolas Mazziotta
[Studies in Language Companion Series 212] 2020
► pp. 85–132

Chapter 3
How dependency syntax appeared in the French Encyclopedia

From Buffier (1709) to Beauzée (1765)

| MoDyCo (UMR 7114), Université Paris Nanterre

In the French Encyclopedia (1765, Volume 14), Beauzée made a clear distinction between the notion of government (Fr. rection) (one word imposes a special form on another) and the notion of complement. Except for the subject, Beauzée’s complementation corresponds to the modern notion of dependency and is illustrated by complete dependency trees, but by means of verbal description and not diagrams. Starting from the seminal work of Port-Royal (1660), which redefined the aim of syntax, we show how Beauzée’s clear vision of syntactic structure developed in the previous century. Three other authors are discussed: Buffier (1709), though unfortunately using an awkward terminology, was probably the first to propose a detailed dependency-based analysis of sentences and a dependency-based definition of parts of speech; Girard (1747), preferring a more constituency-based analysis, proposed a definition of the notions of government and syntactic functions and a remarkable formalization of word order rules; Du Marsais (1754), in his contribution to the first articles of the Encyclopedia, synthesized the main ideas of his predecessors on the notions of complement, heralding Beauzée’s clear-cut formalization.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Dependency syntax in Beauzée
    • 2.1Regime vs. complement
    • 2.2Beauzée’s syntactic structures
    • 2.3Analytical order
    • 2.4Syntactic constraints on word order
      • 2.4.1Heavy shift
      • 2.4.2Projectivity
  • 3.From Buffier to Beauzée
    • 3.1Port-Royal (1660, 1662)
      • 3.1.1The foundations of grammar
      • 3.1.2The functions of the verb and the subject-attribute relation
      • 3.1.3The syntactic program
      • 3.1.4Determination
    • 3.2Buffier (1709)
      • 3.2.1The definition of syntax
      • 3.2.2Parts of speech
      • 3.2.3Buffier’s syntactic structure
      • 3.2.4Word order
    • 3.3Girard (1747)
      • 3.3.1The notion of government
      • 3.3.2The notion of function
      • 3.3.3Girard’s rules of grammar
    • 3.4Du Marsais (1754)
      • 3.4.1Construction vs. syntax
      • 3.4.2The two notions of complements
      • 3.4.3Du Marsais’s syntactic structure
      • 3.4.4The distinction between government and complement
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 February 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.212.04kah
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