24.3531, Review: Historical Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; French, Old: Arteaga (2012)

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Subject: 24.3531, Review: Historical Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; French, Old: Arteaga (2012)

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Date: Mon, 09 Sep 2013 14:42:49
From: Catharina Peersman [c.peersman at sheffield.ac.uk]
Subject: Research on Old French

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/23/23-4682.html

EDITOR: Deborah L. Arteaga
TITLE: Research on Old French
SUBTITLE: The State of the Art
SERIES TITLE: Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory
PUBLISHER: Springer
YEAR: 2012

REVIEWER: Catharina Peersman, University of Sheffield

INTRODUCTION

In her introduction to “Research on Old French: The State of the Art”,
Deborah Arteaga ambitiously presents her work as an overview of scholarly
study into Old French, “as it is practiced today, in ALL of its forms”
[emphasis is mine] (2). Obviously, within a volume of less than 400 pages,
covering all forms of research on Old French is quite impossible.
Nevertheless, within the physical constraints of the volume, the range of its
17 contributions is quite impressive. Covering a broad range of topics within
a variety of theoretical frameworks, the editor aims to provide insight into
both diachronic and synchronic linguistics, not only of Old French, but of
language in general. All examples are glossed and the relevant characteristics
of Old French are clearly explained, in order to direct the book not only at
linguists and graduate students who specialize in Old French, but also at
linguists who conduct research in historical linguistics in other languages,
as well as those focusing on theoretical linguistics and on Romance
linguistics in general.

SUMMARY

The general structure of the book is straightforward. Its first part addresses
diachronic studies and its second part synchronic studies, with the first
counting nine and the latter eight contributions, respectively. The chapters
center around two general research questions: on the one hand, how diachronic
studies contribute not only to the field of Old French, but also to our
current understanding of language change; and, on the other hand, how
synchronic studies lead to a better understanding of language systems, in
general, and that of Old French, in particular. The coherence is not only
assured by these two general questions, which justify the two-fold structure
of the volume, but also by the fact that the chapters can be grouped into
thematic or methodological clusters, as suggested in its introduction. It is
this cluster structure, rather than a linear approach from beginning to end,
that will be observed in the following summary of chapters.

The book represents four different branches of formal linguistics, i.e.,
phonology, morphophonology, syntax and semantics. The contributions focusing
on syntax can be subdivided in those dealing with nominal morphosyntax, verbal
syntax, the mood and tense system and parataxis. One of the key features of
Old French is the fact that it illustrates how the former Latin case system is
evolving, so it does not come as a surprise that the chapters dedicated to
nominal morphosyntax (Chapters 1, 3 and 9) all choose to highlight a
particular aspect of this complex evolution. All three adopt a diachronic
point of view.

In Chapter 1,  “A Diachronic View of Old French Genitive Constructions”,
Arteaga and Julia  Herschensohn analyze the evolution of Old French genitive
constructions, in particular, the juxtaposition genitive (JG). After giving a
transparent overview of both Latin and Old French genitive constructions, they
turn to the Minimalist framework. After analyzing the JG in Old French, which
they consider to be as directly inherited from the same structure in Latin,
they discuss genitive structures from a diachronic viewpoint and how it has
implications for language change in general. Lene Schøsler chooses to focus on
the evolution of the case system with respect to other parts of the grammar in
Chapter 9, “The Development of the Declension System”. Her perspective is
broader in the sense that she also takes into account variation in Old French,
characterizing the diatopically anchored breakdown of the case process
according to lexical, grammatical and pragmatic parameters of variation.
Inspired by Harald Völker (2009), she analyzes the percentage of ‘correct’
choice of the nominative case in the ‘Miracles par personnages’ to illustrate
the existence of a transitional paradigm of case-marking on articles between
Old and Middle French. An interesting continuation on the topic of articles is
found in Chapter 3, where Anne Carlier analyzes “Grammaticalization in
progress in Old French” by means of the Old French indefinite article ‘un(s)’.
Lavishly illustrating her argument with annotated examples, Carlier determines
the conditions of use and meaning of the indefinite article ‘un(s)’ and of the
partitive ‘du/des’ in Old French, mainly from a synchronic point of view.
However, the diachronic perspective is represented as well, through the
evolution of the articles from Old to Modern French regarding frequency and
the level of grammaticalization.

Researchers interested in verbal syntax can enjoy three contributions from a
Minimalist perspective by Bryan Donaldson,  Richard Ingham and Eric Mathieu
(Chapters 4, 14 and 17, respectively) or the contributions dedicated to the
mood and tense system by Jan Lindschouw, Igor Dreer and Margaret Winters
(Chapters 7, 12 and 18, respectively).

In “Null Objects in Old French”, Donaldson addresses null objects (i.e. the
non-expression or dropping of the object of a verb) in twelfth and thirteenth
century French. He proposes that Old French possessed both null pronominals
and null variables. As null objects are attested in Latin, as well as Middle
and Modern French, his data point to the continual presence of object drop
from the earliest stages of French to the language we know today. In “A
Derivational Approach to Negative Polarity Item Licensing in Old French”,
Ingham focuses on identifying properties of negative main clauses by means of
a twofold data analysis of apparent verb second (V2) violations in negative
clauses:  initial ‘ja/onques’ in thirteenth century prose and initial polarity
items in twelfth century epic verse. Through his derivational approach, he
shows that negative clauses were not necessarily V2 contexts and that V2
observance or violation is probably more principled than critics of the
Complementizer Phrase (CP) V2 analysis have contended. Mathieu’s contribution
“The Left-periphery in Old French” gives an account of the distribution of
left-periphery elements in Old French. He identifies three topic positions (in
addition to the two traditional categories in V2 languages): one for
stylistically fronted elements, a second for left dislocated elements, and a
last one for hanging topics. Old French is, according to Mathieu’s analyses, a
consistently non-generalized V2 language because stylistic fronting appears to
be available throughout the Old French period.

The mood and tense system are addressed by Lindschouw, Winters and Dreer. Both
Lindschouw and Winters focus on the subjunctive. On the one hand, Lindschouw’s
chapter “Evolution and Regrammation in the Mood System: Perspectives from Old,
Middle, Renaissance and Modern French” offers 3 synchronic sections detailing
the relative frequency and modal value of the subjunctive and indicative in
concessive clauses in Old and Middle French, Renaissance and Pre-classical
French, and Modern French, respectively. The combined data create a diachronic
perspective on the ‘regrammation’ of the mood system, which passes from a
relatively flexible system in Old French to a highly constrained one in Modern
French. Winters, on the other hand, adopts a generally synchronic approach.
She examines different proposals on the meaning/s of the subjunctive in her
chapter on “Grammatical Meaning and the Old French Subjunctive”, by testing
them on data from Old French and theories of change. She concludes that the
best option to gain insight on its diachronic developments is to view mood as
a semantic category of related uses. Dreer’s contribution, ‘The Use of the
Future and Conditional in High Medieval Literature’, focuses on the future and
conditional. Analyzing exclusively on high medieval literary texts, Dreer uses
the Columbia School’s sign-oriented approach to show that the distribution of
the Old French future and conditional was not random, but rather motivated by
their invariant meanings. Both forms consistently appear not only in
individual sentences, but also within entire texts.

The presence and/or omission of ‘que’ is addressed in Chapters 13 and 16. In
Chapter 13, “Old French Parataxis: Syntactic Variant or Stylistic Variation?”,
Julie Glikman & Thomas Verjans explore the Ø/ ‘que’ alternation in paratactic
constructions through a contrastive synchronic analysis.  They uncover that
the two types of structures are free variants and that the alternation could
be a reflection of the ‘speaking/writing’ opposition and its communicative
constraints. Sophie Marnette also considers ‘que’, but from a very different
point of view, given that her chapter focuses on “Forms and Functions of
Reported Discourse in Medieval French”.  She points out, however, that
subordination markers such as ‘que’ are not specific to indirect discourse nor
are they necessary for it.

Next to these six contributions within the field of syntax, the volume counts
six more chapters evenly divided over the fields of phonology, morphophonology
and semantics.

The field of phonology is represented by Randall Gess and Haike Jacobs &
Janine Berns, who offer diachronic perspectives on compensatory lengthening
(CL) and French velar palatalization, respectively, in two consecutive
chapters (5 and 6). In “Compensatory Lengthening in Historical French: The
Role of the Speaker”, Gess adopts a comprehensive view of CL in which the
speaker, through innovative reductive articulations, feeds the listener’s
misperceptions. Relying on a direct influence of the markedness constraint
‘isochrony’ in the production grammar, he argues for a phonetically-based
speaker-oriented approach to CL and shows how isochrony has had an important
impact on French over a large time span. In the chapter “Perception,
Production and Markedness in Sound Change: French Velar Palatalization”,
Jacobs and Berns review traditional and recent accounts of the second French
velar palatalization before exploring to what extent a constraint-based
Optimality Theory (OT) perspective is a more restricted way of modeling sound
change than classical OT. By trying to separate the roles of production,
perception and markedness on one hand, and the role of phonology and phonetics
on the other, they find markedness constraints to be crucial for the analysis
of sound change and provide a principled phonological account of the atypical
velar palatalization before ‘a’.

Chapters 8 and 15 are dedicated to morphophonology. Michael Mazzola’s take on
analogy is diachronic in two different ways. In “Analogy Among French Sounds”,
he examines analogy as structure, lexical diffusion and suppletive leveling
applied to French sounds from the fourth to sixth centuries, reflecting a
continuous development of Gallo-Roman influence before the Frankish rise to
power. In doing so, he offers an alternative to Meyer-Lübke’s nineteenth
century vision on sound change, in which the birth of the French language is
‘delayed’ until the arrival of the Franks. Chapter 15 “Theoretical Issues in
Old French Inflectional Morpho(phono)logy”, by Jürgen Klausenbürger, treats
inflectional morpho(phono)logy from a synchronic perspective. He applies the
concepts of iconicity and system congruity to the loss of the case system, and
paradigmatic leveling to the invariance and final consonant alternation of the
Old French verbal system. To a certain degree, his is also a theoretical
reflection, as he frames his position within the larger context of linguistic
theorizing, opposing Ockham’s Razor (his own position) to Chatton’s Anti-Razor
(the generative approach).

The remaining two chapters represent the field of semantics. In Chapter 10,
Harald Völker explores “The Diasystem and Its Role in Generating Meaning” from
a highly theoretical point of view. He aims to examine what varying ‘means’ by
applying different multi-level models of lexical semiosis to lexical change of
a few Old French lexical elements (i.e. meuble, arche, court, bannal).  Cyril
Aslanov’s contribution on “Crusader’s Old French”, by contrast, is synchronic
and very concrete. It explains which dialects of Old French contributed to the
creation of a new crusader’s koiné in specific regions (e.g. Walloon and
adjacent dialects in the Kingdom of Jerusalem), how the koiné was influenced
by Italo-Romance dialects (e.g. ‘splage’, a cross-formation between ‘plage’
and ‘spiaggia’) and its alloglottic surroundings, specifically the influence
of Arabic.

EVALUATION

This state of the art of research on Old French is impressive in its diversity
in many different ways. The theoretical approaches range from OT to Minimalism
to discourse analysis, and the variety of topics and subsystems of the
language covered are considerable. The diachronic range goes from Latin to
Gallo-Romance to Old French, as one has the right to expect, but also way
beyond through many links with Middle, Renaissance and Modern French. I
greatly appreciate that many of the chapters are corpus-based, which is a
tribute to the fact that more electronic corpora are becoming available and
proving their usefulness to the different linguistic fields. This is
illustrated very effectively, if only by the sheer amount and diversity of
texts taken into account: the corpus texts range from charters from
Luxembourg, the Roman de Renart or the Arthur cycle to treatises by Christine
de Pizan, historiography by Joinville and Anglo-Norman translations of Latin
originals.

The range of text materials also transpires in the range of examples (mainly
for Old French, but also for Latin or modern French), which are all carefully
glossed. Moreover, relevant characteristics of Old French are generally
clearly explained in order to render the contributions more accessible to
non-specialists of Old French. And who wouldn’t agree that explaining the loss
of the JG gains from the use of examples such as ‘Galois sont tuit par nature
plus fol que bestes an pasture’ / The Gauls are all by nature crazier than
animals at pasture (Arteaga & Herschensohn, p. 40)

All in all, this is an impressive volume with highly diverse contributions,
and although some are more accessible than others, all are carefully
illustrated and glossed. Without a doubt “Research on Old French: The State of
the Art” constitutes added value to French linguistics and to linguistics in
general. However, that is also exactly what could be considered its weakness:
it simply wants too much. Apart from the fact that it is as ambitious as
unrealistic to want to present the study of Old French in ALL its aspects
within 17 chapters, one can wonder why this would be necessary. This is a book
that will be gratefully used by many scholars and researchers, including
myself, but only selectively for the few contributions relevant to or close
enough to one’s own specialization. Moreover, it is ONE of many possible
states of the art, rather than THE state of the art, and as such, it
necessarily documents a momentary state. As the study of Old French is very
much alive, I sincerely hope that this state of the art will be followed by
equally diverse and yet completely different volumes under a similar, yet
slightly less ambitious title.

REFERENCE

Völker, Harald. 2009. La linguistique variationnelle et l’intralinguistique.
Revue de Linguistique Romane 73, 27-76.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Dr. Catharina Peersman is lecturer in French studies at the University of
Sheffield (UK). Her research focuses on historical (socio)linguistics of
French, Old French in particular, in texts from the medieval county of
Flanders. Her teaching experience covers more diverse topics, ranging from
Béroul's Tristan over historical French grammar to Belgian language policy and
applied linguistics.








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