Cover not available

In:The Determinants of Diachronic Stability
Edited by Anne Breitbarth, Miriam Bouzouita, Lieven Danckaert and Melissa Farasyn
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 254] 2019
► pp. 157–190

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

Chapter 7
V1 clauses in Old Catalan

 | Queens’ College/Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge
Published online: 20 March 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.254.07puj
Abstract
This paper explores verb initial clauses in Old Catalan, contributing to the debate surrounding Old Romance verb placement. Using data from El Llibre dels Feyts, a 13th century Catalan chronicle, it is established that analyses proposed for V1 clauses for other Old Romance languages do not generally hold for Old Catalan. Instead, V1 clauses from El Llibre dels Feyts behave like Modern Catalan V1 clauses, that is, like V1 clauses of an SVO language. V1 clauses are examined in relation to information structure and predicate types, and systematically compared to their Modern Catalan counterparts. Through this analysis it is established that the uses and structure of Catalan V1 clauses have remained stable through the centuries.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology
  • 3.Old Catalan: A V2 language?
    • 3.1Lack of V-to-C movement in declarative clauses
    • 3.2Lack of Germanic-style inversion
    • 3.3The preverbal field is specialised for hosting subjects
    • 3.4Null subjects in main and embedded clauses
  • 4.V1 clauses: Types and frequency
    • 4.1V1 clauses preceded by e
    • 4.2Two particular cases: Verba dicendi and unaccusative verbs
      • 4.2.1Verba dicendi
      • 4.2.2Unaccusatives
    • 4.3Absolute V1 clauses
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (83)
References
Adams, Marianne. 1987. From Old French to the Theory of Pro-Drop. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 5 (1): 1–32. <[URL]>
Alexiadou, Artemis, Anagnostopoulou, Elena & Everaert, Martin (eds). 2003. The Unaccusativity Puzzle. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aurell, Jaume. 2005. From genealogies to chronicles. The power of the form in Medieval Catalan historiography. Viator 36: 235–64. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. La chronique de Jacques Ier, une fiction autobiographique. Auteur, auctorialité et autorité au moyen âge. Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 63: 301–18.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Axel, Katrin. 2007. Verb first declaratives. In Studies on Old High German Syntax Left Sentence Periphery, Verb Placement and Verb-Second, [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 112], 113–172. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Batllori, Montserrat. 2015. Análisis comparativo de las construcciones de dislocación a la derecha y su incidencia en el orden de palabras del español, catalán y portugués medievales. In El orden de palabras en la historia del español, Mónica Castillo Lluch & Marta López Izquierdo (eds). Madrid: Visor.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Batllori, Montserrat, Iglesias, Narcís & Martins, Ana Maria. 2004. Sintaxi dels clítics pronominals en català medieval. In Simposi internacional. Vers una sintaxi històrica del català: Metodologia i objectius. La Nucia, Alacant.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Belletti, Adriana. 1988. The case of unaccusatives. Linguistic Inquiry 19 (1): 1–34.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1999. Italian/Romance clitics: Structure and derivation. In Clitics in the Languages of Europe, Henk van Riemsdijk (ed.), 543–580. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Benincà, Paola. 1984. Un’ipotesi sulla sintassi delle lingue romanze medievali. Quaderni Patavini Di Linguistica 4: 3–19.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2004. The Left Periphery of Medieval Romance. Studi Linguistici e Filologici Online 2: 243–297. <[URL]>
. 2006. A detailed map of the Left Periphery of Medieval Romance. In Crosslinguistic Research in Syntax and Semantics Negation Tense and Clausal Architecture, 2, Rafaella Zanuttini, Héctor Campos, Elena Herburger & Paul Portner (eds), 53–86. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press. <[URL]>
Benincà, Paola & Poletto, Cecilia. 2004. Topic, Focus, and V2. In The Structure of CP and IP, Luigi Rizzi (ed.), 52–75. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Berman, Ruth A. 2015. Language development and use beyond the sentence. In The Cambridge Handbook of Child Language, 2nd edn, Edith L. Bavin & Letitia R. Naigles (eds). Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biberauer, Theresa & Roberts, Ian. 2008. Subjects, tense and verb movement in Germanic and Romance. Cambridge Occasional Papers in Linguistics 3: 24–43.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Borer, Hagit. 1980. Empty subjects in Modern Hebrew and constraints on thematic relations. Proceedings of the North Eastern Linguistic Society 10.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bruguera, Jordi. 1991. El Llibre dels fets del rei en Jaume. Barcelona: Barcino.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1998. Llibre dels fets. Barcelona: Proa.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. Prioritats textuals i filiació dialectal del ‘llibre dels fets’ de Jaume I. In El Llibre dels feits. Aproximació crítica, Germà Colón I. Domènech (ed.), 37–46. València: Publicacions de l’Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo. 1993. A Null Theory of phrase and compound stress. Linquist Inquiry 24: 239–97.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1999. Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cuenca, Maria Josep. 2008. Els connectors textuals i les interjeccions. In Gramàtica del català contemporani, III, Joan Solà, Maria-Rosa Lloret, Joan Mascaró & Manuel Pérez Saldanya (eds), 3173–3238. Barcelona: Editorial Empúries.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Devine, Andrew M. & Stephens, Laurance D. 2006. Latin Word Order. Oxford: OUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Diesing, Molly. 1990. Verb movement and the subject position in Yiddish. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8: 41–79. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Donaldson, Bryan. 2016. Preverbal subjects, information structure, and object clitic position in Old Occitan. Journal of Linguistics 52(1): 37–69. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eide, Kristine & Sitaridou, Ioanna. 2014. Contrastivity and information structure in the Old Ibero-Romance Languages. In Information Structure and Syntactic Change in Germanic and Romance Languages [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 213], Kristin Bech & Kristine Gunn Eide (eds), 377–412. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ferrando i Francès, Antoni. 2012. Interès dels manuscrits C i D del ‘Llibre dels fets’ per a la fixació textual de la crònica Jaumina. In El Llibre dels feits. Aproximació crítica, 47–84. València: Publicacions de l’Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fischer, Susann. 2002. Catalan Clitic System: A Diachronic Perspective on its Syntax and Phonology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Forcadell, Montserrat. 2013. Subject informational status and word order: Catalan as an SVO language. Journal of Pragmatics 53: 39–63. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fraser, Bruce. 1998. Contrastive discourse markers in English. In Discourse Markers: Description and Theory [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 57], Andreas Jucker & Yael Ziv (eds), 301–326. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. An account of discourse markers. International Review of Pragmatics 1(2): 293–320. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane. 2014. West Flemish verb-based discourse markers and the articulation of the speech act layer. Studia Linguistica 68(1): 116–139. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hill, Virginia. 2007. Vocatives and the pragmatics-syntax interface. Lingua 117: 2077–2105. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Holmberg, Anders. 2015. Verb second. In Syntax – Theory and Analysis: An International Handbook, Tibor Kiss & Artemis Alexiadou (eds), 342–383. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hulk, Aafke & Pollock, Jean-Yves. 2001. Subject Inversion in Romance and the Theory of Universal Grammar. Subject Inversion in Romance and the Theory of Universal Grammar. Oxford: OUP.
de Jong, Irene. 2015. Narratology and Classics. A Practical Guide. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kaiser, Georg A. 2002. Verbstellung Und Verbstellungswandel in Den Romanischen Sprachen. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Katz, Jerrold & Postal, Paul. 1964. An Integrated Theory of Linguistic Descriptions. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ledgeway, A. 2007. Old Neapolitan word order: Some initial observations. In Histories and Dictionaries of the Languages of Italy, Anna Laura Lepschy & Arturo Tosi (eds), 121–49. Longo: Ravenna.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ledgeway, Adam. 2008. Satisfying V2 in Early Romance: Merge vs. Move. Journal of Linguistics 44(2): 437–470. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martí i Castell, Joan. 2002. Estudi lingüístic dels usatges de Barcelona. El codi a Mitjan Segle XII. Barcelona: Curial Edicions Catalanes. Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martins, Ana Maria. 1994. Clíticos na história do português. PhD dissertation, Universidade de Lisboa.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2005. Clitic placement, VP-ellipsis, and scrambling in Romance. In Grammaticalization and Parametric Variation, 175–193. Oxford: OUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Munaro, Nicola. 2010. Toward a hierarchy of clause types. In Mapping the Left Periphery, 125–162. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Partridge, Stephen & Kwakkel, Erik (eds). 2012. Medieval Authorship in Theory and Practice. Toronto: University of Tornoto Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Petrova, Svetlana & Hinterhölzl, Roland. 2010. From V1 to V2 in West Germanic. Lingua 120(2): 315–328. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pinto, Manuela. 1997. “Licensing and Interpretation of Inverted Subjects in Italian.” University of Utrecht.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Poletto, Cecilia. 2005. Sì and e as CP expletives in Old Italian. In Grammaticalization and Parametric Variation, Montserrat Batllori, Maria Luisa Hernanz, Carme Picallo & Francesc Roca (eds), 206–235. Oxford: OUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. Word Order in Old Italian. Oxford: OUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pujol i Campeny, Afra. 2017. Verb position in Old Catalan. Presentation given at the Diachronic Generative Syntax 19. University of Stellenbosch.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2019. Word Order in Old Catalan. PhD dissertation. University of Cambridge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ribeiro, Ilza. 1995. Evidence for a Verb-Second Phase in Old Portuguese. In Clause Structure and Language Change, Adrian Battye & Ian Roberts (eds), 110–139. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Riquer, Martín. 1964. Història de La Literatura Catalana. Barcelona: Ariel.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. The fine structure of the Left Periphery. In Elements of Grammar, Liliane Haegeman (ed.), 281–337. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 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
Rodríguez Molina, Javier. 2010. La gramaticalización de los tiempos compuestos en español antiguo. Cinco cámbios diacrónicos. PhD dissertation. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. La gramática oculta de la polaridad positiva en español antiguo. Revista de Filología Hispánica 30(3): 861–915.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Salvesen, Christine Mecklenborg & Walkden, George. 2017 Diagnosing embedded V2 in Old English and Old French. In Micro-Change to Macro-Change in Diachronic Syntax, Eric Mathieu & Robert Truswell (eds), 168–181. Oxford: OUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Saura, Víctor. 2014. Autocrítica als mossos d’esquadra. Mèdia.Cat. Observatori Crític Dels Mitjans.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Saurinyach, Jordi. 2010. Diu el fiscal. Blocs de Vilaweb. <[URL]>
Schiffrin, Deborah, Tannen, Deborah, Hamilton, Heidi E., Ward, Gregory & Birner, Betty J. 2001. 6 Discourse and information structure no. 1992.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Serra i Alegre, Enric & Prunyosa i Tomàs, Manuel. 2008. La coordinació. In Gramàtica del català contemporani, III, Joan Solà, Maria-Rosa Lloret, Joan Mascaró & Manuel Pérez Saldanya (eds), 2181–2246. Barcelona: Editorial Empúries.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sheehan, Michelle. 2015. On the lack of consistency in (Romance) consistent Null Subject languages. Presentation given at CamCos4, University of Cambridge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sigurdsson, Halldór Ármann. 1990. V1 declaratives and verb raising in Icelandic. Syntax and Semantics 24: 41–69.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sitaridou, Ioanna. 2011. Word order and information structure in Old Spanish. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 10: 159–184. <[URL]>
. 2012. A comparative study of word order in Romance. Special issue The Pace of Grammaticalisation in Romance of Folia Linguistica 46(2): 553–604.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. La anteposición de participio en español antiguo debida a la estructura de la Información del discurso. In El orden de palabras en la historia del español y otras lenguas iberorromances, Marta López Izquierdo & Mónica Castillo Lluch (eds), 111–143. Madrid: Visor.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. In this volume. Against V2 in Old Spanish. In The Determinants of Diachronic Stability, Anne Breitbarth, Miriam Bouzouita, Lieven Danckaert & Melissa Farasyn (eds), 131-156. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Soldevila, Ferran. 2007. Les quatre grans cròniques, Vol. 1: Llibre dels feits del rei en Jaume. Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Steiner, Britanny Devan Jelm. 2014. The Evolution of Information Structure and Verb Second in The History of French. PhD dissertation, Indiana University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thráinsson, Höskuldur. 2007. The Syntax of Icelandic. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tortora, Christina. 2001. Evidence for a null locative in Italian. In Current Studies in Italian Syntax. Essays Offered to Lorenzo Renzi, Guglielmo Cinque & Giampaolo Salvi (eds), 313–326. Oxford: Elsevier.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vallduví, Enric. 1993. Catalan as VOS: Evidence from information packaging. In Linguistic Perspectives on Romance Languages: Selected Papers from the XXI Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, Santa Barbara, February 21–24, 1991 [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 103], William Ashby, Marianne Mithun & Giorgio Perissinotto (eds), 335–350. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. L’oració com a unitat informativa. In Gramàtica del català contemporani, II, Joan Solà, Maria Rosa Lloret, Joan Mascaró & Manuel Pérez-Saldanya (ed.), 1223–1279. Barcelona: Editorial Empúries.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vance, Barbara. 1993. Verb-First declaratives introduced by et and the Position of pro in Old and Middle French. Lingua 89(2–3): 281–314. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1997. Syntactic Change in Medieval French : Verb-Second and Null Subjects. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vance, Barbara, Donaldson, Bryan & Steiner, B. Devan. 2010. V2 loss in Old French and Old Occitan: The role of fronted clauses. In Romance Linguistics 2009 – Selected Papers from the 39th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Tucson, Arizona, March 2009 [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 315], Sonia Colina, Antxon Olarrea & Ana Maria Carvalho (eds), 301–320. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wolfe, Sam. 2015a. Microvariation in Medieval Romance Syntax: A Comparative Study. PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015b. The nature of Old Spanish Verb Second reconsidered. Lingua 164: 132–155. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015c. Verb-Initial orders in Old Romance: A comparative account. Revue Roumaine de Linguistique LX(2–3): 147–172.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zwart, Jan-Wouter. 1997. The Germanic SOV languages and the Universal Base Hypothesis. In The New Comparative Syntax, Liliane Haegeman (ed.), 246–267. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue