Cover not available

In:The Semantics of Dynamic Space in French: Descriptive, experimental and formal studies on motion expression
Edited by Michel Aurnague and Dejan Stosic
[Human Cognitive Processing 66] 2019
► pp. 109–138

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Book EPUB
authorization required

From il s’envole hors to il sort du nid

A typological change in French motion expressions

 | Lattice, CNRS, ENS & Université Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle; PSL & USPC, France
Published online: 29 July 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.66.03fag
Abstract
In this chapter, I describe the evolution from Latin to French, focusing on a specific typological change: that from a Satellite-framed to a Verb-framed language, in the (much debated) dichotomy established by Talmy (1985). The goal of the paper is to describe in detail the loss, between Medieval and Modern French, of one important feature of Satellite-framed languages: Satellites. In order to do this, I rely on a quantitative and qualitative diachronic corpus study of a series of adverbs with particle uses in Medieval French, following their decline throughout the diachrony of French. I describe the uses of these adverbs and their gradual disappearance, which has left room for other spatial grams, mainly adpositions.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.State of the art: Motion event descriptions in Latin and Medieval French
  • 3.Theoretical framework and methodology
    • 3.1Corpus
    • 3.2Particles
    • 3.3Noise
    • 3.4Semantics and morpho-syntax
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Global evolution
    • 4.2Step by step: From Old French to Modern French
      • 4.2.1Old French (950–1350)
      • 4.2.2Middle French (1351–1550)
      • 4.2.3Preclassical and Classical French (1551–1800)
      • 4.2.4Modern French (1801–2013)
    • 4.3Microconstructions
  • 5.Discussion: A global replacement of spatial grams?
    • 5.1The “satellite” microconstruction
    • 5.2Semantic bleaching and grammaticalization
    • 5.3Lexicalization and productivity
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
  • Databases
  • Appendix
References (60)
References
Aske, J. (1989). Path Predicates in English and Spanish: A Closer Look. Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 1–14.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bally, C. (1965) [1932]. Linguistique générale et linguistique française. Berne: Francke [Paris: Librairie Ernest Leroux].Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Böhme-Eckert, G. (2004). De l’ancien français au français moderne: l’évolution vers un type “à part” à l’époque du moyen français. Langue française, 141, 56–68.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brunot, F. (1905). Histoire de la langue française, des origines à 1900. Paris: Armand Colin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Buridant, C. (1987a). Les particules séparées en ancien français. In C. Buridant (Ed.), Romanistique-germanistique: une confrontation (pp. 167–204). Strasbourg: P.U. Strasbourg.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1987b). L’ancien français à la lumière de la typologie des langues: les résidus de l’ordre OV en ancien français et leur effacement en moyen français, Romania, 108, 20–65. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1995). Les préverbes en ancien français. In A. Rousseau (Ed.), Les préverbes dans les langues d’Europe: introduction à l’étude de la préverbation (pp. 287–323). Lille: Presses du Septentrion.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2000). Grammaire nouvelle de l’ancien français. Paris: Sédès.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Burnett, H. & Tremblay, M. (2009). Variable behavior Ps and the location of PATH in Old French. In E. Aboh et al. (Eds.), Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2007 (pp. 25–50). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2012). Directionnalité et aspect en ancien français: l’apport du système prépositionnel. In M. Barra-Jover et al. (Eds.), Études de linguistique gallo-romane (pp. 217–232). Vincennes: Presses de l’Université de Vincennes.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Burnett, H., Gauthier, G. & Tremblay, M. (2010). La perte des particules arriere et avant en français médiéval: étude quantitative. Proceedings of the 2nd Congrès Mondial de Linguistique Française (pp. 125–136). New Orleans, USA.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Burnett, H., Petrik, K. & Tremblay, M. (2005). La grammaire des particules en ancien français: sémantique, distribution et perte de productivité. In C. Gurski (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2005 Meeting of the Canadian Linguistics Association.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Combettes, B. & Marchello-Nizia, C. (2010). La périodisation en linguistique historique: le cas du français préclassique. In B. Combettes, C. Guillot, S. Prévost, E. Oppermann-Marsaux & A. Rodríguez Somolinos (Eds.). Le changement en français. Etudes de linguistique diachronique (pp. 129–142). Berne: Peter Lang. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Combettes, B. (1988). Recherches sur l’ordre des éléments de la phrase en moyen français (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Nancy).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Mulder, W. & Lamiroy, B. (2012). Gradualness of grammaticalization in Romance. The position of French, Spanish and Italian. In K. Davidse, T. Breban, L. Brems & T. Mortelmans (Eds.), Grammaticalization and Language Change (pp. 199–226). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dufresne, M., Dupuis, F. & Tremblay, M. (2003). Preverbs and particles in Old French. In G. Booij & A. van Kemenade (Eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 2003 (pp. 3–60). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fagard, B., Stosic, D. & Cerruti, M. (2017). Within-type variation in Satellite-framed languages: The case of Serbian. Language Typology and Universals, 70(4), 637–660.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fagard, B., Pietrandrea, P. & Glikman, J. (2016). Syntactic and semantic aspects of Romance Complementizers. In K. Boye & P. Kehayov (Eds.), Complementizers in European Languages (pp. 75–130). Berlin / New York: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fagard, B., Zlatev, J., Kopecka, A., Cerruti, M. & Blomberg, J. (2013). The Expression of Motion Events: A Quantitative Study of Six Typologically Varied Languages. Proceedings of the Thirty-ninth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 39, 364–379. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fournier, N. (1998). Grammaire du français classique. Paris: Belin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goldberg, A. (1995). Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gougenheim, G. (1984). Grammaire de la langue française au seizième siècle. Paris: Picard.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gsell, O. (1982). Las rosas dattan ora – les röses da fora – le rose danno fuori: Verbalperiphrasen mit Ortsadverb im Rätoromanischen und im Italienischen. In S. Heinz & U. Wandruszka (Eds.), Fakten und Theorien: Beiträge zur romanischen und allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft. Festschrift für Helmut Stimm zum 65. Geburtstag (pp. 71–85). Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hopper, P. J. & Traugott, E. C. (2003) [1993]. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Iacobini, C. & Corona, L. (2016). L’espressione della direzione del moto dal latino classico all’italiano antico. In M. Fruyt, G. V. M. Haverling & R. Sornicola (Eds.), Actes du XXVIIe Congrès international de linguistique et de philologie romanes (pp. 87–100). Nancy: ATILF.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Iacobini, C. & Fagard, B. (2011). A diachronic approach to variation and change in the typology of motion event expression. A case study: From Latin to Romance, Faits de Langues. Les cahiers, 3, 151–171.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Iacobini, C. & Masini, F. (2007). Verb-particle Constructions and Prefixed Verbs in Italian: Typology, Diachrony and Semantics. In G Booij et al. (Eds.), On-line Proceedings of the Fifth Mediterranean Morphology Meeting (MMM5). Fréjus 15–18 September 2005, University of Bologna, 2007. URL [URL]
Iacobini, C. (2009). The role of dialects in the emergence of Italian phrasal verbs. Morphology, 19, 15–44. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2015). Chapter-Verbs in Romance. In P. O. Müller et al. (Eds.), Word-Formation. An International Handbook of the Languages of Europe (pp. 626–658). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kopecka, A. (2006). The semantic structure of motion verbs in French: Typological perspectives. In M. Hickmann & S. Robert (Eds.), Space in languages: linguistic systems and cognitive categories (pp. 83–101). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2009). Continuity and change in the representation of motion events in French. In Guo et al. (Eds), 415–426.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
In press. From a satellite- to a verb-framed pattern: a typological shift in French. In H. Cuyckens, W. De Mulder & T. Mortelmans (Eds.). Variation and change in adpositions of movement. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Kuryłowicz, J. (1965). The evolution of grammatical categories. Diogenes, 13, 55–71. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lamiroy, B. (1999). Auxiliaires, langues romanes et grammaticalisation. Langages, 135, 33–45. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2011). Degrés de grammaticalisation à travers les langues de même famille. Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris, 19, 167–192.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Marchello-Nizia, C. (1979). Histoire de la langue française aux XIVe et XVe siècles. Paris: Bordas.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1995). L’évolution du français: ordre des mots, démonstratifs, accent tonique. Paris: Armand Colin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2002). Prépositions françaises en diachronie: une catégorie en question, Linguisticae Investigationes, 25(2), 205–221.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(To appear). Prépositions, adverbes, préfixes, préverbes séparables et particules verbales. In C. Marchello-Nizia, B. Combettes, S. Prévost & T. Scheer (Eds.), Grande grammaire historique du français. Berlin / New York: de Gruyter Mouton.
Mateu, J. & Rigau, G. (2010). Verb-particle constructions in Romance: A lexical-syntactic account. Probus 22(2), 241–269. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Meillet, A. (1912). L’évolution des formes grammaticales, Scientia, Rivista di scienza 12(26). [= Meillet, Antoine. (1958. Linguistique Historique et Linguistique générale. Paris: Champion, 130–149].Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Palsgrave, J. (1530). Lesclarcissement de la langue françoyse. London: John Hawkins. [Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1972].Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pottier, B. (1962). Systématique des éléments de relation. Étude de morpho-syntaxe structurale romane. Paris: Klincksieck.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rainsford, T. (To appear). De-prefixed spatial Ps in medieval French. Proceedings of Going Romance 2016.
Schiffrin, D. (1987). Discourse markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schøsler, L. (2008). L’expression des traits manière et direction des verbes de mouvement. Perspectives diachroniques et typologiques. In E. Stark, R. Schmidt-Riese & E. Stoll (Eds.), Romanische Syntax im Wandel (pp. 113–132). Tübingen: Gunter Narr.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. (1996). Two ways to travel: verbs of motion in English and Spanish. In M. Shibatani & S. A. Thompson (Eds.), Grammatical constructions: Their form and meaning (pp. 195–220). Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2004). The many ways to search for a frog: linguistic typology and the expression of motion events. In S. Strömqvist & L. Verhoeven (Eds.), Relating events in narrative: Typological and contextual perspectives (pp. 219–257). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sneyders de Vogel, K. (1919). Syntaxe historique du français. Groningen / The Hague: J. B. Wolters.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Svenonius, P. (2010). Spatial P in English. In G. Cinque & L. Rizzi (Eds.), Cartography of Syntactic Structures (pp. 127–161). Vol. 6. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Svorou, S. (1994). The grammar of space. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: J. Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Talmy, L. (1985). Lexicalization patterns: semantic structure in lexical forms. In T. Shopen (Ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, vol. 3: Grammatical categories and the lexicon (pp. 57–149). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1991). Path to realization: A typology of event conflation. Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 480–519. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2000). Toward a cognitive semantics: typology and process in concept structuring, Vol. 2. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Traugott, E. C. (2008). Grammaticalization, constructions and the incremental development of language: Suggestions from the development of degree modifiers in English. In R. Eckardt, G. Jäger & T. Veenstra (Eds.), Variation, Selection, Development – Probing the Evolutionary Model of Language Change (pp. 219–250). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tremblay, M., Dupuis, F. & Dufresne, M. (2004). Les prépositions dans l’histoire du français: transitivité, grammaticalisation et lexicalisation, Verbum, 25, 549–562.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wagner, R.-L. (1946). Verbes, préfixes et adverbes complémentaires en ancien français. In Etudes romanes dédiées à Mario Roques par ses amis, collègues et élèves de France (pp. 207–216). Paris: E. Droz.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Databases
BFM2016 – Base de Français Médiéval. Lyon, ENS de Lyon, IHRIM Laboratory, 2016, <[URL]>.
Frantext Database. ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, <[URL]>.
Cited by (7)

Cited by seven other publications

Menete, Sérgio N. & Guiying Jiang
2024. Another member out of the family: the description of manner of gait in Changana verbs of motion. Folia Linguistica 58:2 ► pp. 401 ff. DOI logo
Anastasio, Simona
2023. L’ESPRESSIONE DEL MOVIMENTO DA PARTE DI APPRENDENTI D’ITALIANO L2 CON L1 FRANCESE E INGLESE: INCROCIO TRA FATTORI TIPOLOGICI E COGNITIVI. Italiano LinguaDue 15:2 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Wiesinger, Evelyn
2023. On the role of verb-particle constructions in Old Spanish. In Constructions in Spanish [Constructional Approaches to Language, 34], ► pp. 309 ff. DOI logo
Wiesinger, Evelyn
2025. Language contact and creolization. In Constructions in Contact 3 [Constructional Approaches to Language, 40], ► pp. 111 ff. DOI logo
Madlener-Charpentier, Karin & Elsa Liste Lamas
2022. Path Under Construction: Challenges Beyond S-Framed Motion Event Construal in L2 German. Frontiers in Communication 7 DOI logo
Anastasio, Simona & Sandra Benazzo
2020. L’expression du déplacement en italien et français L2 : influence translinguistique vs tendances communes. Discours :26 DOI logo
Iacobini, Claudio
2019. “Rapiéçages faits avec sa propre étoffe”: Discontinuity and convergence in Romance prefixation. Word Structure 12:2 ► pp. 176 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 10 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue