Article published in:
Diachronic TreebanksEdited by Hanne Martine Eckhoff, Silvia Luraghi and Marco Passarotti
[Diachronica 35:3] 2018
► pp. 393–428
Text form and grammatical changes in Medieval French
A treebank-based diachronic study
Benoît Crabbé | LLF/CNRS/Paris Diderot, USPC
Sophie Prévost | LATTICE, CNRS/ENS/Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle, USPC & PSL
This paper presents a treebank-based study of the effect the text form (prose vs. verse) has on the course of two grammatical
changes in Medieval French: the loss of null subjects and the loss of OV word order. By means of statistical analysis, we
demonstrate that naive estimates of the spread of overt subjects and VO orders give the impression that there is a significant
difference between the rates of development in prose vs. verse. By contrast, estimates based on an abstract grammar competition
model which distinguishes between grammar-ambiguous surface forms (overt personal subjects, null subjects in coordination
contexts) and grammar-unambiguous surface forms (overt expletive subjects, null subjects in non-coordination contexts) show
prose-verse parallelism, prose having an earlier change onset, in line with traditional intuitions. At a more general level, these
results suggest that the product of the interaction of a particular grammar with universal pragmatic laws is constant, which can
be observed if the factors responsible for variation in grammatical choices are controlled for.
Keywords: prose vs. verse in language change, Constant Rate Effect, null subjects, word order change, Medieval French, treebanks
Keywords: prose vs vers dans le changement linguistique, Effet du Taux Constant, sujets nuls, changement de l’ordre des mots, français médiéval
Keywords: Prosa und Vers im Sprachwandel, constant rate effect, Nullsubjekt, Wortstellungswandel, mittelalterliches Französisch
Published online: 05 November 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.00008.sim
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.00008.sim
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