Research on Old French: The State of the Art (Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory Book 88)

The present volume presents scholarly study into Old French as it is practiced today, in all of its forms, within a variety of theoretical frameworks, from Optimality Theory to Minimalism to Discourse Analysis. Many of the chapters are corpus-based, reflecting a new trend in the field, as more electronic corpora become available. The chapters contribute to our understanding of both the synchronic state and diachronic evolution, not only of Old French, but of language in general. Its breadth is extensive in that contributors pursue research on a wide variety of topics in Old French focusing on the various subsystems of language. All examples are carefully glossed and the relevant characteristics of Old French are clearly explained, which makes it uniquely accessible to non-specialists and linguists at all levels of training. ​ Front Matter....Pages i-viii Introduction....Pages 1-15 Front Matter....Pages 17-17 A Diachronic View of Old French Genitive Constructions....Pages 19-44 Grammaticalization in Progress in Old French: Indefinite Articles....Pages 45-60 Null Objects in Old French....Pages 61-86 Compensatory Lengthening in Historical French: The Role of the Speaker....Pages 87-105 Perception, Production and Markedness in Sound Change: French Velar Palatalization....Pages 107-122 Evolution and Regrammation in the Mood System: Perspectives from Old, Middle, Renaissance and Modern French....Pages 123-148 Analogy Among French Sounds....Pages 149-165 The Development of the Declension System....Pages 167-186 The Diasystem and Its Role in Generating Meaning: Diachronic Evidence from Old French....Pages 187-204 Front Matter....Pages 205-205 Crusaders’ Old French....Pages 207-220 The Use of the Future and Conditional in High Medieval Literature....Pages 221-242 Old French Parataxis: Syntactic Variant or Stylistic Variation?....Pages 243-260 A Derivational Approach to Negative Polarity Item Licensing in Old French....Pages 261-281 Theoretical Issues in Old French Inflectional Morpho(phono)logy....Pages 283-298 Forms and Functions of Reported Discourse in Medieval French....Pages 299-326 The Left-Periphery in Old French....Pages 327-350 Grammatical Meaning and the Old French Subjunctive....Pages 351-376 Back Matter....Pages 377-383