A comparative study of word order in Old Romance

Ioanna Sitaridou

doi:10.1515/flin.2012.019

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A comparative study of word order in Old Romance

Ioanna Sitaridou

Published/Copyright: October 31, 2012

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From the journal Folia Linguistica Volume 46 Issue 2

The main objective of this article is to discuss word-order phenomena in Old French, Old Spanish, Old Portuguese, and Old Occitan from a comparative perspective. In particular, the following are examined: (i) the empirical evidence in order to assess the theoretical arguments for and against a verbsecond analysis of the Old Romance languages; (ii) verb movement in Old Romance; and (iii) whether the changes in the word-order patterns in the history of the Romance languages can be captured as yet another instance of grammaticalisation. By means of a uniform methodology and statistical analysis of novel data, it is claimed that: (a) Old Romance does not possess a Germanic V2; (b) there is variation in terms of word order among Old Romance languages, which is shown to be linked to the individual history of the languages; (c) V2 order is mostly an epiphenomenon of the discourse mechanisms and the nature of the left functional field in these languages.

Keywords:: Old Romance; V2 order; grammaticalisation

Published Online: 2012-10-31

Published in Print: 2012-10

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/flin.2012.019

Keywords for this article

Old Romance; V2 order; grammaticalisation