Article published in:
Transitivity and Valency: From theory to acquisition
Edited by Georgia Fotiadou and Hélène Vassiliadou
[Lingvisticæ Investigationes 40:1] 2017
► pp. 59–80

On, Se and related valency alternations in Medieval French

| Universität Salzburg
This article explores the question of why Medieval French does not use se-constructions as exhaustively as other Medieval Romance varieties and why the indefinite pronoun on is clearly the preferred choice. It is claimed that se exhibits affix-like behavior in passive constructions and that it is very likely to be a morphological exponent of absorbing the [+Def] feature on T in IACs. These assumptions are connected to the possibility within a language system to store affixes as independent lexical entries, following Speas, 1995. It will be shown that Medieval French seems to be a language system in flux in which signs of NSL > non-NSL were present over a longer period of time. The uncertain status of affixes within these radical changes would have prompted learners to go for a multifunctional solution that is readily available and unequivocally identifiable: on.
Keywords: , , -drop, syntax, Medieval French, Medieval Spanish, valency
Published online: 08 December 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/li.40.1.04wol
Corpora

Corpora

BFM (Base de français médiéval)
http://​txm​.bfm​-corpus​.org/ (08/12/2016).
REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA
Banco de datos (CORDE) [en línea]. Corpus diacrónico del español. http://​www​.rae​.es (01/10/2016).

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