Cover not available
Part of
Historical Linguistics 2013: Selected papers from the 21st International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Oslo, 5-9 August 2013
Edited by Dag T.T. Haug
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 334] 2015
► pp. 135–154

Morphological evidence for the paradigmatic status of infinitives in French and Occitan

| University of Oxford
| University of Oxford

This study examines the morphological behaviour of the infinitive in French and Occitan in diachrony, finding that the infinitive and the rest of the verb paradigm exhibit differential behaviour. The infinitive is the last member of the paradigm to undergo analogical change, or undergoes an idiosyncratic change; in cases of conjugational class shift, the infinitive is typically affected last, if at all; in paradigms presenting overabundance, overabundant forms are either confined to the infinitive, or to paradigm cells excluding the infinitive; and the availability (or otherwise) of infinitives in defective paradigms provides strong evidence for a distinction between ‘decay’ and ‘arrested development’ as subtypes of defectiveness. The study proposes that treating the infinitive as a morphologically mixed category, a member of two paradigms at once, can account both for cases in which the infinitive simultaneously displays properties of nouns and verbs, and for the idiosyncratic behaviour of the infinitive.

Keywords: infinitive, inflectional morphology, lexical relatedness, paradigm, Romance linguistics
Published online: 1 October 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.334.08bac
References
Albright, Adam
2009 “Modelling Analogy as Probabilistic Grammar”. Analogy in Grammar: Form and Acquisition ed. by James P. Blevins & Juliette Blevins. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
ALLOc/ALLOr = Unpublished fieldnotes for the Atlas Linguistique du Languedoc Occidental and Oriental, Laboratoire ERSS, Université Toulouse-Le Mirail.
Bach, Xavier & Louise Esher
2013 “Je sacherais pas te dire: Erreurs et variations flexionnelles dans la structure des paradigmes verbaux français”. Variation et variabilité dans les sciences du langage: analyser, mesurer, contextualiser. Actes de la 4ème édition des JéTou, 16 et 17 mai 2013, Toulouse, France, 88–97. Toulouse: CLLE-ERSS / Octogone-Lordat / LARA-CPST.Google Scholar
Baerman, Matthew, Greville Corbett & Dunstan Brown
2010 Defective Paradigms: Missing Forms and What They Tell Us. Oxford: OUP/British Academy. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baerman, Matthew & Greville Corbett
2010 “Introduction: Defectiveness: Typology and Diachrony”. Baerman, Corbett & Brown, eds 2010, 1–18. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Base textuelle FRANTEXT
ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine. [URL].
BFM Base de Français Médiéval [URL]
Bohs, Wilhelm
1904 “Abrils issi’ e mays intrava. Lehrgedicht von Raimon Vidal von Bezaudun”. Romanische Forschungen 15. 204–316.Google Scholar
Boyé, Gilles & Patricia Cabredo Hofherr
2010 “Defectiveness as Stem Suppletion in French and Spanish Verbs”. Baerman, Corbett & Brown, eds. 2010, 35–52. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Buridant, Claude
2000 Grammaire nouvelle de l’ancien français. N.p.: SEDES.Google Scholar
2005 “La substantivation de l’infinitif en ancien français: aperçu et perspectives”. Langue française 147. 98–120.Google Scholar
Cappellaro, Chiara
2013 “Overabundance in Diachrony: A Case Study”. The Boundaries of Pure Morphology. Diachronic and Synchronic Perspectives (= Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics, 4) ed. by Silvio Cruschina, Martin Maiden & John Charles Smith, 209–220. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dalbera, Jean-Philippe
1994 Les Parlers des Alpes-Maritimes: étude comparative, essai de reconstruction. London: AIEO.Google Scholar
Delaunay, Bénédicte & Nicolas Laurent
2012 Bescherelle. La conjugaison pour tous. Paris: Hatier.Google Scholar
Deledar, Jòrdi
2006 Les parlers couserannais. Villeneuve-sur-Lot: Le Luy de France.Google Scholar
Fouché, Pierre
1931 Le verbe français. (= Publications de la Faculté des Lettres de l’Université de Strasbourg, 56). Paris: Les Belles Lettres.Google Scholar
Foulet, Lucien
1965 Petite syntaxe de l’ancien français. Troisième édition revue. Paris: Champion.Google Scholar
Frei, Henri
1929 La grammaire des fautes. Genève: Slatkine.Google Scholar
Gougenheim, Georges
1974 Grammaire de la langue française du XVIe siècle. Picard: Paris.Google Scholar
Gourmont, Rémy de
1899 Esthétique de la langue française. Paris: Mercure de France.Google Scholar
Grévisse, Maurice & André Goosse
2005 Le bon usage. 13e édition. Paris: Duculot.Google Scholar
Jensen, Frede
1994 Syntaxe de l’ancien occitan. Tübingen: Niemeyer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kerleroux, Françoise
1996 La coupure invisible. Etudes de syntaxe et de morphologie. Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.Google Scholar
Ledgeway, Adam
1998 “Variation in the Romance Infinitive: The Case of the Southern Calabrian Inflected Infinitive”. Transactions of the Philological Society 96. 1–61. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Legrand, Jacques
1986 Archiloge Sophie. Livre de bonnes meurs. Édition critique avec introduction, notes et index par Evencio Beltran. (= Bibliothèque du XVe siècle, 49). Paris: Champion .Google Scholar
Loporcaro, Michele
1986 “L’infinito coniugato nell’Italia centro-meridionale: ipotesi genetica e ricostruzione storica”. L’Italia dialettale 49. 173–240.Google Scholar
Maiden, Martin
2011 “Morphological Persistence”. The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages ed. by Martin Maiden, John Charles Smith & Adam Ledgeway, 155–215. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Matthews, Peter
1997 The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Menard, Philippe
1987 Syntaxe de l’ancien français. Bordeaux: Bière.Google Scholar
Pauphilet, Albert
ed. 2003 La Queste del Saint Graal: Roman du XIIIe siècle. Paris: Champion.Google Scholar
Plessner, Helmuth
1995 Le rire et le pleurer: une étude des limites du comportement humain. Paris: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme.Google Scholar
Pope, Mildred K
1934 From Latin to Modern French with Especial Consideration of Anglo-Norman. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Pountain, Christopher
1995 “Infinitives with Overt Subjects: A Pragmatic Approach”. Portuguese, Brazilian, and African Studies. Studies Presented to Clive Willis on His Retirement ed. byT.F. Earle & Nigel Griffin, 11–25. Warminster: Aris & Phillips.Google Scholar
Price, Glanville
1971 The French Language: Present and Past. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Rémi-Giraud, Sylvianne
1988 L’Infinitif: une approche comparative. Linguistique et sémiologie. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon.Google Scholar
Sleeman, Petra
2010 “The Nominalized Infinitive in French: Structure and Change”. Linguística. Revista de Estudos Linguísticos da Universidade do Porto 5. 145–173.Google Scholar
Spencer, Andrew
2013 Lexical Relatedness. A Paradigm-based Model. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stump, Gregory & Raphael A. Finkel
2013 Morphological Typology. From Word to Paradigm (= Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, 138). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Toscano, Reinat
1998 Gramàtica niçarda. Toulouse: Princi Néguer.Google Scholar
Thornton, Anna
2011 “Overabundance (Multiple Forms Realizing the Same Cell): A Non-canonical Phenomenon in Italian Verb Morphology”. Morphological Autonomy. Perspectives from Romance Inflectional Morphology ed. by Martin Maiden, John Charles Smith, Maria Goldbach & Marc-Olivier Hinzelin, 358–381. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vanderschueren, Clara
2013 Infinitivo y sujeto en portugués y español. Un estudio empírico de los infinitivos adverbiales con sujeto explícito ( = Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, 377). Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vernet, Florian
2000 Dictionnaire grammatical de l’occitan moderne selon les parlers languedociens. Montpellier: Centre d’Études Occitanes.Google Scholar
Zink, Gaston
1989 Morphologie du français médiéval. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Bach, Xavier
2022. Overlapping suppletion and periphrasis: On HAVE, BE, and GO in Gallo-Romance. Word Structure 15:2 ► pp. 115 ff. DOI logo
Esher, Louise
2015. Morphomes and predictability in the history of Romance perfects. Diachronica 32:4 ► pp. 494 ff. DOI logo
Esher, Louise
2016. Morphomic distribution of augments in varieties of Occitan. Revue Romane. Langue et littérature. International Journal of Romance Languages and Literatures 51:2 ► pp. 271 ff. DOI logo
Esher, Louise
2021. Gallo-Romance imperfects betwixt multiple morphomic patterns. Word Structure 14:3 ► pp. 271 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 19 march 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.