Home Linguistics & Semiotics The evolution of the encoding of direction in the history of French
Chapter
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

The evolution of the encoding of direction in the history of French

A quantitative approach to argument structure change
  • Heather Burnett and Mireille Tremblay
View more publications by John Benjamins Publishing Company
Search
Historical Linguistics 2009
This chapter is in the book Historical Linguistics 2009

Abstract

This paper presents a quantitative study of a change in the encoding of direction from the Old French period to the Middle French period: the loss of verb-particle combinations. Using a large electronic corpus, we test a previous hypothesis about the cause of this change from the theoretical literature, namely, that the loss of directional particles was caused by another change in the language around that period: the lexicalization of directional and aspectual prefixes onto verbal roots. We argue that a link between the two changes is not verified by our data. Through this study, we also investigate the extent to which argument structure change parallels another type of morphosyntactic change: abstract parameter change. We argue that the shape of change in the valency of predicates is different from that of parameter change because argument structure change is sensitive to many more factors, including the semantics of particular lexical expressions.

Abstract

This paper presents a quantitative study of a change in the encoding of direction from the Old French period to the Middle French period: the loss of verb-particle combinations. Using a large electronic corpus, we test a previous hypothesis about the cause of this change from the theoretical literature, namely, that the loss of directional particles was caused by another change in the language around that period: the lexicalization of directional and aspectual prefixes onto verbal roots. We argue that a link between the two changes is not verified by our data. Through this study, we also investigate the extent to which argument structure change parallels another type of morphosyntactic change: abstract parameter change. We argue that the shape of change in the valency of predicates is different from that of parameter change because argument structure change is sensitive to many more factors, including the semantics of particular lexical expressions.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Foreword & Acknowledgements vii
  4. Editors’ introduction ix
  5. Part I. General and specific issues of language change
  6. Competing reinforcements 3
  7. On the reconstruction of experiential constructions in (Late) Proto-Indo-European 31
  8. Criteria for differentiating inherent and contact-induced changes in language reconstruction 49
  9. Misparsing and syntactic reanalysis 69
  10. How different is prototype change? 89
  11. The syntactic reconstruction of alignment and word order 107
  12. Part II. Linguistic variation and change in Germanic
  13. The Dutch-Afrikaans participial prefix ge- 131
  14. Diachronic changes in long-distance dependencies 155
  15. Changes in the use of the Frisian quantifiers ea/oait “ever” between 1250 and 1800 171
  16. On the development of the perfect (participle) 191
  17. OV and V-to-I in the history of Swedish 211
  18. Ethnicity as an independent factor of language variation across space 231
  19. The sociolinguistics of spelling 253
  20. Part III. Linguistic variation and change in Greek
  21. Dative loss and its replacement in the history of Greek 277
  22. Word order variation in New Testament Greek wh-questions 293
  23. Part IV. Linguistic change in Romance
  24. The morphological evolution of infinitive, future and conditional forms in Occitan 317
  25. The evolution of the encoding of direction in the history of French 333
  26. Velle -type prohibitions in Latin 355
  27. The use and development of habere + infinitive in Latin 373
  28. Index 399
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.320.17bur

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Foreword & Acknowledgements vii
  4. Editors’ introduction ix
  5. Part I. General and specific issues of language change
  6. Competing reinforcements 3
  7. On the reconstruction of experiential constructions in (Late) Proto-Indo-European 31
  8. Criteria for differentiating inherent and contact-induced changes in language reconstruction 49
  9. Misparsing and syntactic reanalysis 69
  10. How different is prototype change? 89
  11. The syntactic reconstruction of alignment and word order 107
  12. Part II. Linguistic variation and change in Germanic
  13. The Dutch-Afrikaans participial prefix ge- 131
  14. Diachronic changes in long-distance dependencies 155
  15. Changes in the use of the Frisian quantifiers ea/oait “ever” between 1250 and 1800 171
  16. On the development of the perfect (participle) 191
  17. OV and V-to-I in the history of Swedish 211
  18. Ethnicity as an independent factor of language variation across space 231
  19. The sociolinguistics of spelling 253
  20. Part III. Linguistic variation and change in Greek
  21. Dative loss and its replacement in the history of Greek 277
  22. Word order variation in New Testament Greek wh-questions 293
  23. Part IV. Linguistic change in Romance
  24. The morphological evolution of infinitive, future and conditional forms in Occitan 317
  25. The evolution of the encoding of direction in the history of French 333
  26. Velle -type prohibitions in Latin 355
  27. The use and development of habere + infinitive in Latin 373
  28. Index 399
Sign up now to receive a 20% welcome discount
Institutional Access
How does access work?
Have an idea on how to improve our website?
Please write us.
© 2025 De Gruyter Brill
Downloaded on 11.9.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1075/cilt.320.17bur/html
Scroll to top button