Cover not available
Article published In:
Romance Parsed Corpora
Edited by Christina Tortora, Beatrice Santorini and Frances Blanchette
[Linguistic Variation 18:1] 2018
► pp. 23–48
Special issue articles

The variable use of determiners in Old French and the argument DP hypothesis

| Queen’s University
| Université de Montréal
| University of British Columbia
The argument DP hypothesis, adopted by many syntactic analyses, claims that nominal arguments are introduced by a determiner (D), which may be covert or overt. While overt D is obligatory in Modern French (consistent with the argument DP hypothesis), it was not obligatory in earlier stages of French. We explore the factors that contributed to this change – including semantic class, syntactic function, number, and definiteness – focusing on a shift that occurred in the D-paradigm in two Anglo-Norman texts of the 12th century. Quantitative analysis (Goldvarb) yields two major findings. First, the effect of syntactic function remains constant: subject position favours overt D, but object position inhibits it. Second, there is a change in the effect of semantic class: count nouns increasingly favour overt D, but non-count (mass and abstract) nouns increasingly inhibit it. More generally, the gradual disappearance of bare Ns in French reflects the emergence of paradigmatically conditioned D.
Keywords: argument DP hypothesis, bare nouns, definiteness, Old French, Anglo-Norman, syntax, morphology, language change, language variation, corpus analysis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.What D does
  • 3.Previous studies of OF bare nouns
  • 4.Investigating OF determiners with variationist methods
    • 4.1Determiners as linguistic variables
    • 4.2Data extraction
    • 4.3Methods for data analysis
  • 5.Results and interpretation
    • 5.1Predicates versus arguments
    • 5.2Arguments
    • 5.3Argument count nouns
      • 5.3.1D is the locus of (in)definiteness
      • 5.3.2A reorganization of the indefinite D paradigm
    • 5.4Argument definite count nouns
    • 5.5Argument non-count nouns
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.00003.duf
References (59)
References
Adams, Marianne. 1987. Old French, null subjects and verb second phenomena. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA dissertation.Google Scholar
Baker, Mark C. 2003. Lexical categories: Verbs, nouns, and adjectives. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bernstein, Judy B. 1993. Topics in the syntax of nominal structure across Romance. New York, NY: The Graduate Center (City University of New York) dissertation.Google Scholar
Boucher, Paul. 2003. Determiner phrases in Old and Modern French. In Martine Coene & Yves D’Hulst (eds.) From NP to DP: the syntax and semantics of noun phrases, vol. 11, 47–69. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2005. Definite reference in Old and Modern French: The rise and fall of DP. In Montse Batllori, Maria-Lluïsa Hernanz, Carme Picallo & Francesc Roca (eds.) Grammaticalization and parametric variation, 95–108. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Buridant, Claude. 2000. Grammaire nouvelle de l’ancien français. Paris: SEDES.Google Scholar
Carlier, Anne. 2007. From preposition to article: The grammaticalization of the French partitive. Studies in Language 311. 1–49. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2013. Grammaticalization in progress in Old French: Indefinite articles. In Deborah L. Arteaga (ed.) Research on Old French: The state of the art, 45–60. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carlier, Anne & Michèle Goyens. 1998. De l’ancien français au français moderne: régression du degré zéro de la détermination et restructuration du système des articles. Cahiers de l’Institut de Linguistique de Louvain-la-Neuve 24(3–4). 77–112. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chierchia, Gennaro. 1998. Plurality of mass nouns and the notion of “semantic parameter.” In Susan D. Rothstein (ed.) Events and grammar, 53–104. Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1995. Bare phrase structure. In Hector R. Campos & Paula M. Kempchinsky (eds.) Evolution and revolution in linguistic theory, 51–109. Georgetown: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Déchaine, Rose-Marie, Raphaël Girard, Calisto Mudzingwa & Martina Wiltschko. 2014. The internal syntax of Shona class prefixes. Language Sciences 431. 18–46. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Déchaine, Rose-Marie & Mireille Tremblay. 2012. Deriving nominal reference. WECOL 40, 419–430.Google Scholar
Delfitto, Denis & Jan Schroten. 1991. Bare plurals and the number affix in DP. Probus 3(2). 155–185. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen, Tonia Bleam & M. Teresa Espinal. 2006. Bare nouns, number and types of incorporation. In Svetlana Vogeleer & Liliane Tasmowski (eds.) Non-definiteness and plurality, 51–79. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen & Brenda Laca. 2003. Les noms sans déterminants dans les langues romanes. In Danièle Goddard & Anne Abeillé (eds.) Les langues romanes. Problèmes de la phrase simple, 235–281. Paris: CNRS.Google Scholar
Dupuis, Fernande. 1989. L’expression du sujet dans les subordonnées en ancien français. Montréal: Université de Montréal dissertation.Google Scholar
Epstein, Richard. 1995. L’article défini en ancien français: L’expression de la subjectivité. Langue Française 1071. 58–71. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Foulet, Lucien. 1974 [1928]. Petite syntaxe de l’ancien français. Paris: H. Champion.Google Scholar
Frege, Gottlob. 1997 [1892]. On Sense and Reference. In Peter Ludlow (ed.) Readings in the philosophy of language, 563–583. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Gillon, Carrie S. 2006. The semantics of determiners: domain restriction in Squamish. Vancouver: University of British Columbia dissertation.Google Scholar
Giusti, Giuliana. 1994. Enclitic article and double definiteness. A comparative analysis of nominal structure in Romance and Germanic. The Linguistic Review 111. 241–255. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harf-Lancner, Laurence (ed.). 1990. Marie de France. Lais de Marie De France. (Bilingual Anglo-Normand/French edition). Paris: GF-Flammarion.Google Scholar
Heim, Irene. 2011. Definiteness and indefiniteness. An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning, Volume 11: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1963. The social motivation of a sound change. Word 191. 273–309. [Reprinted as Chapter 1 of William Labov, Sociolinguistic patterns, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972.]Google Scholar
. 1969. The study of nonstandard English. Washington, D.C.: National Council of Teachers of English.Google Scholar
. 1972. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Longobardi, Giuseppe. 1994. Reference and proper names: A theory of N-movement in syntax and logical form. Linguistic Inquiry 25(4). 609–665.Google Scholar
. 2001. The structure of DPs: Some principles, parameters and problems. In Mark Baltin & Chris Collins (eds.) The handbook of contemporary syntactic theory, 562–603. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2005. Toward a unified grammar of reference. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 24(1). 5–44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2008. Reference to individuals, person, and the variety of mapping parameters. In Henrik Høeg Müller & Alex Klinge (eds.) Essays on nominal determination: from morphology to discourse management, 188–209. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lyon, John. 2011. The semantics of determiner phrases in Okanagan. Paper presented at the International Conference on Salish & Neighboring Languages (ICSNL).
Marchello-Nizia, Christiane. 1996. Les verbes supports en diachronie: le cas du français. Langages 1211. 91–98. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marchello-Nizia, Christiane & Magali Rouquier. 2012. De (S)OV à SVO en français: où et quand? L’ordre des constituants propositionnels dans la Passion de Clermont et la Vie de saint Alexis. In Monique Dufresne (ed.) Constructions en changement. Hommage à Paul Hirschbüler, 111–155. Québec: Presses de l’Université de Laval.Google Scholar
Martineau, France. 2008. Un corpus pour l’analyse de la variation et du changement linguistique. Corpus 71. 135–155.Google Scholar
(ed.). 2009. Le corpus MCVF. Modéliser le changement: Les voies du français. Ottawa: Université d’Ottawa. [URL].
Martineau, France, Constanta R. Diaconescu & Paul Hirschbühler. 2007. Le Corpus Voies du Français: de l’élaboration à l’annotation. Paper presented at the Le Nouveau Corpus d’Amsterdam; Proceedings of the Lauterbad Workshop (23–26 February 2006).
Mathieu, Éric. 2009. From local blocking to cyclic Agree: The role and meaning of determiners in the history of French. In Jila Ghomeshi, Ileana Paul & Martina Wiltschko (eds.) Determiners: Universals and variation, 123–157. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matthewson, Lisa. 1998. Determiner systems and quantificational strategies. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.Google Scholar
Moignet, Gérard. 1976. Grammaire de l’ancien français. Paris: Librairie Klincksieck.Google Scholar
Palm, Lars. 1977. La construction li filz le rei et les constructions concurrentes avec a et de étudiées dans des oeuvres littéraires de la seconde moitié du XIIe siècle et du premier quart du XIIIe siècle. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.Google Scholar
Partee, Barbara. 1986. Noun phrase interpretation and type-shifting principles. In Jeroen Groenendijk, Dick de Jongh & Martin Stokhof (eds.) Studies in discourse representation theory and the theory of generalized quantifiers, 115–143. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana & Sali Tagliamonte. 2001. African American English in the diaspora. Malden: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Rand, David & David Sankoff. 1990. GoldVarb 2.1: A variable rule application for Macintosh (Version 2). Centre de Recherches Mathématiques, Université de Montréal. Retrieved from [URL].
Randall, Beth. 2009. CorpusSearch 2: A tool for linguistic research. Includes CorpusDraw, a graphical interface for displaying and correcting parsed corpora. URL: [URL]
Reenen, Pieter van & Lene Schøsler. 2000. Declension in Old and Middle French. Two opposing tendencies. In John Charles Smith & Delia Bentley (eds.) Historical linguistics 1995. General issues and non-Germanic languages, vol. 11, 327–344. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Russell, Bertrand. 1998 [1905]. On denoting. In Gary Ostertag (ed.) Definite descriptions: A reader, 35–49. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rychner, Jean (ed.). 1983. Marie de France. Lais (circa 1170). Paris: Champion.Google Scholar
Sankoff, David. 1988. Variable rules. Sociolinguistics: An international handbook of the science of language and society 21. 984–997.Google Scholar
Sankoff, David, Sali Tagliamonte & Eric Smith. 2005. GoldVarb X: Computer Program. Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto, Canada. Retrieved from [URL].
Schøsler, Lene. 2012. Les constructions à verbes supports. In Monique Dufresne (ed.) Constructions en changement: Hommage à Paul Hirschbühler, 157–209. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval.Google Scholar
Sharvy, Richard. 1980. A more general theory of definite descriptions. The Philosophical Review 891. 607–624. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Short, Ian & Brian S. Merrilees (eds.). 2006a. Benedeit. Le voyage de saint Brendan (1106–21). Paris: Champion Classique.Google Scholar
(eds.). 2006b. Benedeit. Le voyage de saint Brendan (1106–21) [Translation from Anglo-Normand to English]: Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Stark, Elisabeth. 2007. Gender, number, and indefinite articles: About the ‘typological inconsistency’ of Italian. In Elisabeth Stark, Elisabeth Leiss & Werner Abraham (eds.) Nominal determination: typology, context constraints, and historical emergence, 49–71. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2008. Typological correlations in nominal determination in Romance. In Henrik Høeg Müller & Alex Klinge (eds.) Essays on nominal determination: From morphology to discourse management, 45–64. Amsterdam: John Benjamins DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Swart, Henriette de & Joost Zwarts. 2009. Less form – more meaning: Why bare singular nouns are special. Lingua 1191. 280–295. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Williams, Edwin. 1983. Semantic vs. syntactic categories. Linguistics and Philosophy 6(3), 423–446. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wiltschko, Martina & Rose-Marie Déchaine. 2010. Interface syntax. Ms., University of British Columbia.Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Rupp, Laura & Sali A. Tagliamonte
2019. “They used to follow Ø river”: The Zero Article in York English. Journal of English Linguistics 47:4 ► pp. 279 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 8 july 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.