Evidence from a correspondence corpus for diachronic change in French indefinites 1450–1715
In this study the changing distribution of French indefinite forms in different clause types is studied diachronically using a corpus of personal letters written between the Middle French and Classical French periods. The data is interpreted using Haspelmath’s 1997 semantic map of indefinites, and it is shown that the re-categorisation of quelque as an ordinary positive indefinite is associated with a major change in the use of the hitherto all-purpose indefinite aucun, leading ithe latter to become an n-item in Modern French. This analysis contributes to an account of the evolution of syntactic negation emphasising micro-parametric factors involving the properties of individual lexical items, rather than a macro-parametric change affecting the structural representation of negation.
References (36)
Primary sources
Commentaires et Lettres de Blaise de Monluc, Maréchal de France 1550-1564. Tomes IV-V. M. Alphonse de Ruble (ed.) Paris: Ch. Lahure, 1869.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Correspondance du Maréchal de Vivonne, Relative a L’Expédition de Messin. Tome 2 (1676-78) J. Cordey (ed.) Nogent-le-Rotrou: Daupeley-Gouverneur, 1914.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lettres, mémoires, instructions et autres documents relatifs à la guerre du Bien public, en l'année 1465. In J.- J. Champollion-Figeac, (ed.), Documents historiques inédits t. II. Paris: Didot, 1843.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lettres de Charles VIII, Roi de France. Tomes I-V, Société de l’Histoire de France. Nogent-le-Rotrou: Daupeley-Gouverneur, 1898-1905.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lettres de Louis XI, Roi de France. Société de l’Histoire de France. Nogent-le-Rotrou: Daupeley-Gouverneur, 1867.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lettres de Marguerite D’Angoulême, Sœur de François Ier, Reine de Navarre 1521-1549. F. Génin (ed.) Paris: Crapelet, 1841-42.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lettres D’Antoine De Bourbon et de Jehanne D’Albret 1538-1572. Mis De Rochambeau (ed.). Société de l’Histoire de France. Nogent-le-Rotrou: Daupeley-Gouverneur, 1877.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lettres du Duc de Bourgogne au Roi d’Espagne Philippe V et à la Reine 1709-1712. Tome Premier. Alfred Baudrillart et Léon Lecestre (eds.), 1912.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lettres du Cardinal Mazarin à la Princesse Palatine 1651-1652. M. Ravenel (ed.) Paris: Crapelet, 1836.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
References
Brunot, Ferdinand. 1906. Histoire de la langue française, Tome II: Le seizième siècle. Paris: Armand Colin.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Combettes, Bernard. 2004. La grammaticalisation d’un déterminant indéfini: Quelque en Moyen Français. Scolia 18: 9-40.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Delbrück, Berthold. 1910. Germanische Syntax: Zu den negativen Sätzen. Leipzig: Teubner![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Déprez, Viviane. 2011. Atoms of negation. In The Evolution of Negation: Beyond the Jespersen Cycle, Pierre Larrivée & Richard Ingham (eds). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Eckardt, Regine. 2006. Meaning Change and Grammaticalisation. An Enquiry into Semantic Reanalysis. Oxford: OUP.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Foulet, Lucien. 1930. Syntaxe de l’ancien français. Paris: Champion.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Hansen, Maj-Britt. 2011. Discussion of ‘Viviane Déprez: Atoms of negation. An outside-in micro-parametric approach to negative concord’. In The Evolution of Negation. Beyond the Jespersen Cycle, Pierre Larrivée & Richard Ingham (eds), 273-283. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Hansen, Maj-Britt. 2012. On the evolution of temporal n-words in Medieval French. Language Sciences 34(1): 76–91. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Hansen, Maj-Britt. 2013. Negation in the history of French. In The History of Negation in the Languages of Europe and the Mediterranean [Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics 5], David Willis, Christopher Lucas & Anne Breithbart (eds). Oxford: OUP.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Haspelmath, Martin. 1997. Indefinite Pronouns. Oxford: OUP.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Ingham, Richard P. 2006a. On two negative concord dialects in early English. Language Variation and Change 18: 241-266 ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Jespersen, Otto. 1917. Negation in English and Other Languages. Copenhagen: A.F. Horst & Son.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Kallel, Amel. 2007. The loss of negative concord in Standard English: Internal factors. Language Variation and Change 19: 27-49. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Kallel, Amel. 2011. The Loss of Negative Concord in Standard English: A Case of Lexical Reanalysis. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Ladusaw, William. 1992. Expressing negation. In Barker, C. & D. Dowty (eds.), SALT II Proceedings. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Linguistic Circle, 237-260.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Larrivée, Pierre. 2004. L’Association négative: Depuis la syntaxe jusqu'à l’interprétation. Geneva: Droz.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lightfoot, David. 2006. How New Languages Emerge. Cambridge: CUP. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Martineau, France & Déprez, Viviane. 2004. Pas rien/Pas aucun en Français classique: Variation dialectale et historique. Langue Française 143: 33-47.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Muller, Claude. 1991. La négation en français: Syntaxe, sémantique et éléments de comparaison avec les autres langues romanes. Geneva: Droz.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Nurmi, Arja (ed.). 1998. Manual for the Corpus of Early English Correspondence Sampler. Helsinki: Department of English, University of Helsinki.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Prévost, Sophie & Schnedecker, Catherine. 2003. Aucun(e)(s)/d’aucun(e)(s)/les aucun(e)(s): Évolution du français médiéval au français moderne. Scolia 8: 39-73.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Roberts, Ian. 2000. Some remarks on the diachrony of French negation. DELTA 16: 201-219. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Rowlett, Paul. 1998. Sentential Negation in French. Oxford: Oxford University Press.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Spelke, Elizabeth. 1990. Principles of object perception. Cognitive Science 14: 29-56. ![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Willis, Daniel. 2011. Negative polarity and the quantifier cycle: Comparative diachronic perspectives from European languages. In The Evolution of Negation. Beyond the Jespersen Cycle, Pierre Larrivée & Richard Ingham (eds), 285-323. Berlin: Mouton.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Zeijlstra, Hedde. 2008. Negative concord is syntactic agreement. LingBuzz 000645.![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Cited by (3)
Cited by three other publications
GIBSON, HANNAH
2021.
Anne Breitbarth, Christopher Lucas & David Willis, The history of negation in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean, vol. II: Patterns and processes (Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics 40). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. xiv + 292..
Journal of Linguistics 57:3
► pp. 675 ff.
![DOI logo](//benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
Gianollo, Chiara
2020.
DP-internal Inversion and Negative Polarity: Latin aliquis and its Romance Descendants.
Probus 32:2
► pp. 271 ff.
![DOI logo](//benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
Larrivée, Pierre
2020.
Sémantique de la grammaire, parcours typologiques et changement historique.
Semiotica 2020:234
► pp. 277 ff.
![DOI logo](//benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 16 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.