25.2314, Review: Romance; Historical Linguistics; Typology: Labeau & Bres (2013)

Tue May 27 15:13:35 UTC 2014

LINGUIST List: Vol-25-2314. Tue May 27 2014. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 25.2314, Review: Romance; Historical Linguistics; Typology: Labeau & Bres (2013)

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Date: Tue, 27 May 2014 11:13:01
From: Paul Isambert [zappathustra at free.fr]
Subject: Evolution in Romance Verbal Systems

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/24/24-4775.html

EDITOR: Emmanuelle  Labeau
EDITOR: Jacques  Bres
TITLE: Evolution in Romance Verbal Systems
SERIES TITLE: Sciences pour la communication - Band 108
PUBLISHER: Peter Lang AG
YEAR: 2013

REVIEWER: Paul Isambert, Université de Tours

SUMMARY

In their introduction, Emmanuelle Labeau and Jacques Bres stress the
importance of a cross-linguistic and diachronic approach to linguistic
phenomena, relating the book to Bybee et al. (1994) and similar works. They
then introduce the following papers.

Aude Rebotier's ''The 'passé simple' takes a step back; who steps in?'' is a
study of the use of the ''passé simple'' in French compared to the similar yet
more frequent ''passato remoto'' in Italian. Working with a corpus of
Wikipedia articles, the author shows that several variables, for example, the
verbal lexeme, the animacy of the subject, the presence of some adverbials or
prepositions, (dis)favor the use of concurring tenses, and that as a whole,
the present and ''passé composé'' are the more frequent replacements, but with
different profiles: the present is an alternative for the ''passé simple'' in
general, while the ''passé composé'' takes over some of its uses only.

Mary T. Copple's ''Following the path: An emerging perfect(ive) viewed through
temporal reference'' describes the evolution of the present perfect (PP) into
a perfective (competing with the preterit). Texts from the 15th, 17th and 19th
centuries are studied according to three main criteria: increase in frequency
(i.e., the proportion of PP forms versus preterit forms), syntactic
rigidification (i.e., fusion of the auxiliary and the participle), and
semantic generalization (i.e., larger range of temporal reference). They all
point to the same conclusion: the PP experiences the well-known evolution from
resultative to perfective.

In ''Towards an unified account of the present perfect in Catalan and
English'', Teresa Maria Xiqués addresses the difference between the use of the
PP in the two languages: it has a hodiernal past interpretation in Catalan,
which is impossible in English. Using Reichenbach's (1947) framework, the
author argues that the temporal configuration of the PP is identical in all
uses, although it remains unexplained why English prevents punctual time
adverbials with this tense.

''French participle agreement with 'avoir': Current trends as an indication of
grammaticalization'', Rebotier's second contribution to the volume,
investigates the factors contributing to proper agreement (according to
normative grammar) between the past participle and its pre-posed object; among
others, the audibility of the agreement (the study is based on a written
corpus) and the speech situation matter most, but interestingly, some factors
inhibiting agreements also prevent a resultative or passive reading, hinting
at the parallel development of form and function in the ongoing
grammaticalization of the perfect with 'avoir' ('to have').

In ''Non-conventional uses of the pluperfect in Italian (and German) literary
prose'', Pier Marco Bertinetto examines the aoristic interpretation of the
pluperfect and its exploitation by writers as a replacement for the simple
past. While the study focuses on literary use, the author hypothesizes that
the evolution is parallel to the present perfect becoming a perfective, so
languages missing the latter (like English) would be less likely to exhibit
the aoristic pluperfect.

Bres and Lebeau's ''About the illustrative use of the 'aller' + periphrasis in
French'' studies a frequent yet little studied use of the French
'go'-periphrasis (whose most common interpretation is future). This use often
illustrates a fact and marks iteration (preventing any semelfactive
interpretation), and, more generally, is clearly modal. The authors also claim
that all the uses of the 'go'-periphrasis stem from a common, fundamental
value, despite the apparent variety.

''The 'aller' perfect'', by Marianne Collier, compares the French future with
its periphrastic counterpart when used with the perfective. Both tenses can be
used for temporal reference (locating a process in the future before another
one) or modality (expressing past probability); however, with 'aller' ('to
go'), the latter use is much restricted (except in Canadian French). Moreover,
when 'aller' itself is in the imperfect, it does not take over the modal
values of the conditional.

In ''Indirect evidentiality and related domains: Some observations from the
current evolution of the Romanian presumptive'', Monica-Alexandrina Irimia
investigates how Romanian expresses indirect evidentiality with a modal
auxiliary followed by 'be' and the present or past participle. The complex
morphological data allow the author to study the evolution of
tense/aspect/mood notions and how they are mapped onto particular structures.
Despite highly idiosyncratic patterns, the semantics of indirect evidentials
can be decomposed, showing that their main import is that an eventuality does
not hold at the speaker's deictic center.

In ''Modals and tense in Contemporary European Portuguese and in Old
Portuguese'', Alexandra Fiéis and Ana Madeira claim that, despite unchanging
semantics, some Portuguese modal verbs have undergone degrammaticalization, as
evidenced by syntactic considerations pertaining to the following infinitival
phrase. Because of this structural change, the modals have acquired
characteristics associated with lexical verbs, even though no difference in
interpretation follows.

In ''Portuguese temporal expressions with 'haver' and their Romance
counterparts -- Semantic interpretation and grammaticalization'', Telmo Móia
tracks the current development of a modal into a preposition-like connective;
this evolution, found in several other languages (see English 'ago'), can be
explained by the fact that the (originally verbal) constructions have a
meaning typically expressed by prepositional phrases, which they formally
resemble at the discourse level.

EVALUATION

As stated by the editors in their introduction, this volume takes diachrony
seriously as an explicative factor in language structure: ''[A] diachronic
approach significantly enhances the explanatory power of linguistic theory by
showing how a specific form came to convey a certain function [...]'' (p. 1).
Also crucial is the idea that a language is not ''a neat system'', but rather
a complex layering of interacting sub-systems (Hopper, 1991). Finally, many --
if not all -- papers compare similar phenomena in several languages, thus
offering interesting cross-linguistic insights.

Interestingly, most evolutions studied in this volume are quite recent, and
actually, often still ongoing. As such, it stresses the fact that diachronic
approaches do not deal with the past, but with change, and that change may be
better grasped in the present (Janda & Joseph, 2003), if only because data are
much more available. It also serves as a constant reminder that diachronicians
study the same phenomena as other linguists; the papers on French, for
instance, offer excellent insights into the most contemporary grammatical
facts.

That said, the approaches in this volume vary widely, from the variationist,
quantitative methodology of Rebotier's two papers to Fiéis and Madeira's
strong generative stance. Again, this stresses that diachrony is not a theory,
but rather a point of view -- actually, a linguistic phenomenon in itself, in
need of explanation like any other linguistic phenomenon. Hence, despite the
theoretical diversity, much can be learned from this book about the evolution
of a language family.

Verbal systems, even restricted to Romance languages and considered only in
diachrony, won't be exhausted by a single volume, and this book doesn't
pretend to do so. Instead, it includes a set of contributions focusing on very
precise issues (as opposed to more abstract theorizing). Theoretical
considerations aren't absent, but they are played down in favor of data, which
is actually the feature that makes this book stand out. Consequently, it will
be of use to anybody interested in Romance linguistics (not only historical
Romance linguistics), as it offers hard facts on quite complex systems.

The book could have benefited from a more thorough introduction strengthening
the importance of diachrony; here, the editors mostly refer the reader to
Bybee et al. (1994), and similar works, and then present the rest of the
volume. Finally, more care could have been brought to the editing of figures,
as most of them are screenshots that are, in some cases, not very legible, and
in some cases, even including the spellchecker's wiggly underline. These are
minor defects, though, and do not decrease the book's value.

REFERENCES

Bybee, Joan, Revere Perkins & William Pagliuca (1994), ''The evolution of
grammar: Tense, aspect and modality in the languages of the world.,'' The
University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Hopper, Paul J. (1991), On some principles of grammaticalization, in
''Approaches to grammaticalization,'' E.C. Traugott and B. Heine (eds.),
vol.1, 17-35, John Benjamins, Amsterdam.

Janda, Richard D. & Brian D. Joseph (2003), On language, change, and language
change -- Or, of history, linguistics, and historical linguistics, in ''The
handbook of historical linguistics'', B.D. Joseph and R.D. Janda (eds), 3-180,
Blackwell, Oxford.

Reichenbach, Hans (1947), ''Elements of symbolic logic'', Macmillan, New York.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Paul Isambert holds a PhD from the University of Paris 3, France. He is
currently working on grammaticalization in French and teaches at the
University of Tours, France.

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