Cover not available

In:Information Structure and Syntactic Change in Germanic and Romance Languages
Edited by Kristin Bech and Kristine Gunn Eide
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 213] 2014
► pp. 271–294

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

Formal properties of event-reporting sentences in Old High German and Old French

 | Bergische Universität Wuppertal
 | Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
Published online: 7 May 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.213.10pet
This article investigates the interplay between syntax and information structure by comparing the discourse conditions under which a special class of root clauses in two Old High German (OHG) and Old French (OF) texts occur. The focus is on sentences with post-verbal subjects and either the inflected verb or an adverbial phrase in sentence initial position. The empirical investigation shows that this pattern is preferred over the canonical SV orders in contexts which disfavour a topic–comment division in the clause.
References (58)
References
Text editions
OHG
Isidor Der althochdeutsche Isidor. Nach der Pariser Handschrift und den Monseer Fragmenten , ed. H. Eggers. Tübingen: Niemeyer. 1964.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tatian Die lateinisch-althochdeutsche Tatianbilingue Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen Cod. 56, ed. A. Masser. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 1994.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
OF
Villehardouin Josfroi de Villehardouin: La Conqueste de Costentinoble: d’après le manuscrit no. 2137 de laB.N., C.R.A.L.; Nancy, 1978.
Secondary literature
Adams, Marianne. 1987. From Old French to the theory of pro-drop. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 5: 1–32. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1988. Parametric change: empty subjects in Old French. In Advances in Romance Linguistics , David Birdsong & Jean-Pierre Montreuil (eds), 1–16. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Asher, Nicholas & Lascarides, Alex. 2003. Logics of Conversation . Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. The verb-second property in Old High German: different ways of filling the pre-field. In New Approaches to Word Order Variation and Change in the Germanic Languages, Roland Hinterhölzl & Svetlana Petrova (eds), 17–44. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, Robin & Roberts, Ian. 1993. A computational model of language learnability and language change. Linguistic Inquiry 24(2): 299–345.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Costa, João. 2004. Subject Positions and Interfaces: The Case of European Portuguese . Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Diez, Friedrich. 1877. Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen , Vol. 3. Bonn: Weber.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Donhauser, Karin & Petrova, Svetlana. 2009. Die Rolle des Adverbs tho bei der Generalisierung von Verbzweit im Deutschen. In Gesprochen – geschrieben – gedichtet. Variation und Transformation von Sprache, Monika Dannerer, Peter Mauser, Hannes Scheutz & Andreas E. Weiss (eds), 11–24. Berlin: Erich Schmidt.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eide, Kristine. 2006. Word Order Structures and Unaccusative Verbs in Classical and Modern Portuguese. The Reorganisation of Information Structure. PhD dissertation, University of Oslo, Universitetsforlaget.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Endriss, Cornelia & Gärtner, Hans-Martin. 2005. Relativische Verb-Zweit Sätze und Definitheit. In Proceedings of the Symposium Deutsche Syntax: Empirie und Theorie , Franz-Josef d’Avis (eds), 195–220. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Elsig, Martin & Rinke, Esther. 2007. Les adverbes et l’inversion en ancien français. Le Nouveau Corpus d’Amsterdam soumis à l’analyse linguistique. In Le Nouveau Corpus d’Amsterdam. Actes de l’atelier de Lauterbad, 23–26 février 2006, Pierre Kunstmann & Achim Stein (eds), 161–180. Stuttgart: Steiner.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fanselow, Gisbert. 2003. Münchhausen-style head movement and the analysis of verb second. In Syntax at Sunset: Head Movement and Syntactic Theory , Anoop Mahajan (ed.), 40–76. Los Angeles: UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2004. Cyclic phonology-syntax-interaction: Movement to first position in German. Interdisciplinary Studies in Information Structure (ISIS) 1:1–42.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ferraresi, Gisella & Goldbach, Maria. 2002. Particles and sentence structure: a historical perspective. In Syntactic Structures and Morphological Information , Uwe Junghanns & Luka Szucsich (eds), 101–127. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fleischer, Jürg, Hinterhölzl, Roland, & Solf, Michael. 2008. Zum Quellenwert des AHD-Tatian für die Syntaxforschung: Überlegungen auf der Basis von Wortstellungsphänomenen. Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik 36: 210–239. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Frey, Werner. 2004. The grammar-pragmatics interface and the German prefield. Sprache und Pragmatik 52: 1–39.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Groenendijk, Jeroen & Roelofsen, Floris. 2009. Inquisitive semantics and pragmatics? Stanford Workshop on Language, Communication and Rational Agency, May 30–31, 2009.
Haider, Hubert. 1997. Projective economy. In German: Syntactic Problems – Problematic Syntax , Werner Abraham & Elly van Gelderen (eds), 83–103. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hinterhölzl, Roland & Petrova, Svetlana. 2011. Rhetorical relations and verb placement in Old High German Tatian. In Salience. Multidisciplinary Perspectives on its Function in Discourse, Christian Chiarcos, Berry Claus & Michael Grabski (eds), 173–201. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1979b. Aspect and Foregrounding in discourse. In Syntax and Semantics , Talmy Givón (ed.), 213–241. San Diego CA: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jacobs, Joachim. 2001. The dimensions of topic–comment. In Linguistics. An Interdisciplinary Journal of the Language Sciences 39(4) :641–681.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kaiser, Georg. 2002. Verbstellung und Verbstellungswandel in den romanischen Sprachen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Kemenade, Ans. 1987. Syntactic Case and Morphological Case in the History of English . Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Klein, Wolfgang. 1994. Time in Language . London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Klein, Wolfgang & von Stutterheim, Christiane. 1987. Quaestio und referentielle Bewegung in Erzählungen. Linguistische Berichte 109: 163–183.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1992. Textstruktur und referentielle Bewegung. Zeitschrift für Literatur und Linguistik 86: 67–92.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. How to solve a complex verbal task. Text structure, referential movement and the quaestio. Aquisição de Linguas Estrangeiras 30–31: 29–67.
van Kuppevelt, Jan. 1995. Discourse structure, topicality, and questioning. Journal of Linguistics 31: 109–147. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kuroda, Sige-Yuki. 1972. The categorical and the thetic judgment. Evidence from Japanese Syntax. Foundations of Language 9: 153–185.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information Structure and Sentence Form. Topic, Focus and the Mental Representation of Discourse Referents. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Marchello-Nizia, Christiane. 1999. Le français en diachronie: Douze siècles d’évolution . Gap: Ophrys.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martins, Ana Maria. 1994. Cliticos na história do português. PhD dissertation, Universidade de Lisboa.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Molnár, Valéria. 1993. Zur Pragmatik und Grammatik des TOPIK-Begriffs. In Wortstellung und Informationsstruktur, Marga Reis (ed.), 155–202. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Petrova, Svetlana. 2006. A discourse-based approach to verb placement in early West-Germanic. In Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS) 5, Shinichiro Ishihara, Michaela Schmitz & Anne Schwarz (eds), 153–185. Potsdam: Universitätsverlag.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. Modeling word order variation in discourse: On the pragmatic properties of VS order in Old High German. In Indo-European Syntax and Pragmatics: Comparative Approaches , Eirik Welo (ed.), special issue of Oslo Studies in Language 3(3), 209–228.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Petrova, Svetlana & Solf, Michael. 2008. Rhetorical relations and verb placement in early Germanic: A cross linguistic study. In ‘Subordination’ versus ‘Coordination’ in Sentence and Text: A Cross-linguistic Perspective [Studies in Language Companion Series 98], Cathrine Fabricius-Hansen & Wiebke Ramm (eds), 329–351. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. Pronominale Wiederaufnahme im älteren Deutsch. Personal- vs. Demonstrativpronomen im Althochdeutschen. In Historische Textgrammatik und historische Syntax des Deutschen. Traditionen, Innovationen, Perspektiven, Arne Ziegler & Christian Braun (eds), 339–364. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Petrova, Svetlana, Solf, Michael, Ritz, Julia, Chiarcos, Christian & Zeldes, Amir. 2009. Building and using a richly annotated interlinear diachronic corpus: The case of Old High German Tatian. Traitement Automatique des Langues 50(2) : 47–71.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Reenen, Pieter & Schøsler, Lene. 2001. The pragmatic functions of the Old French particles AINZ, APRES, DONC, LORS, OR, PUIS, and SI, In Textual Parameters in Older Languages [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 195], Susan C. Herring, Pieter van Reenen & Lene Schøsler (eds), 59–106. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Reinhart, Tanya. 1981. Pragmatics and linguistics: An analysis of sentence topics. Philosophica 27: 53–94.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Richter, Elise. 1903. Zur Entwicklung der romanischen Wortstellung aus der lateinischen . Halle: Niemeyer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rinke, Esther. 2003. On the licensing of null-subjects in Old French. In Syntactic Structures and Morphological Information, Uwe Junghanns & Luka Szucsich (eds), 217–249. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
&. Meisel, Jürgen M. 2009. Subject-inversion in Old French: Syntax and information structure. In Proceedings of the Workshop “Null-subjects, Expletives, and Locatives in Romance” , Georg Kaiser and Eva-Maria Remberger (eds), 93–130. Konstanz: Universitätsverlag.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Roberts, Ian. 1993. Verbs and Diachronic Syntax A Comparative History of English and French . Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Santorini, Beatrice. 1989. The Generalization of the Verb-second Constraint in the History of Yiddish. PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sasse, Hans-Jürgen. 1987. The thetic/categorical distinction revisited. Linguistics 25: 511–580. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sasse, Hans-Jürgen. 1995. “Theticity” and VS order: a case study. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 48(1–2): 3–23.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sigurðsson, Halldór Armann. 1990. V1 declaratives and verb raising in Icelandic. In Modern Icelandic Syntax, Joan Maling & Annie Zaenen (eds), 41–69. San Diego CA: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sitaridou, Ioanna. 2012. A comparative study of word order in Old Romance. Folia Linguistica 46(2): 553–604. Special issue The Pace of Grammaticalisation in Romance , Anne Carlier, Béatrice Lamiroy & Walter De Mulder (eds). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sternefeld, Wolfgang. 2007. Syntax. Eine morphologisch motivierte generative Beschreibung des Deutschen , Vol. 1. 2nd edn. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
von Stutterheim, Christiane & Klein, Wolfgang. 1989. Text structure and referential movement. In Language Processing in Social Context, Rainer Dietrich & Carl F. Graumann (eds), 39–76. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vance, Barbara. 1997. Syntactic Change in Medieval French: Verb-second and Null-subjects. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zeldes, Amir, Ritz, Julia, Lüdeling, Anke & Chiarcos, Christian. 2009. ANNIS: A Search Tool for Multi-Layer Annotated Corpora. In Proceedings of Corpus Linguistics 2009. Liverpool.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Karen De Clercq, Liliane Haegeman, Terje Lohndal & Christine Meklenborg
2023. Adverbial Resumption in Verb Second Languages, DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 november 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