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The decline of Latin left-peripheral presentational foci: Causes and consequences
Abstract
This chapter is concerned with the syntax and diachronic evolution of a particular focalization strategy in Latin, which involves displacement of presentational foci to the clausal left periphery. On the basis of a large‐scale corpus study, it is shown that this phenomenon starts to decline around the first half of the first century AD. It is suggested that this evolution is related to another syntactic change that took place in the same period, namely a decreasing frequency of verb‐final sentences. It is argued that both the predominant SOV word order of Latin and the occurrence of presentational foci in the left periphery can be accounted for by assuming that the entire vP is moved to the middle field, to a position higher than the tense phrase. Finally, the loss of vP movement can explain both of the aforementioned syntactic changes.
This paper considers the placement of the complementizer yád within the sentence and the functional value of yád in Old Indian. It will be noted that thecomplementizer yád, like other subordinating conjunctions in some ancient and modern Indo-European languages, can be preceded by a topicalized or a focalized phrase in its clause. In particular, in R̥gVeda there are many cases where yád is preceded by an element which seems to have moved from inside the sentence and also cases where yád is preceded by the inflected verb. Morover, some cases will be discussed showing the use of yád to introduce clauses governed by verbs of saying and knowing, both in Vedic and in Sanskrit, and a possible syntactic analysis of these structures.
Old French is considered by many to have been a verb-second (V2) language. Furthermore, 13th century Old French featured a V2 system with strong restrictions on the prefield, meaning only a single constituent was generally accepted to the left of the finite verb. This bears a strong resemblance to the pattern found in the Modern Germanic V2 languages and has occasionally given rise to suggestions that V2 was a Germanic property inherited from the language of the Franks. In this paper, a concrete hypothesis is developed for the diachronic evolution of Old French V2 from Late Latin. It is argued that the hypothesis of Germanic influence is not necessarily incorrect, but too simplistic, as the two synchronic components of the Old French V2 construction -namely V-to-C movement and restrictions on the prefield – most likely have their own and independent diachronies as well. Comparative and historical evidence is presented to show that V-to-C movement is very unlikely to have been a product of Germanic influence and should rather be considered an internal development from Latin. As for the restricted prefield (so-called ‘linear V2’), the scarcity or even absence of evidence does not allow firm conclusions, but some general theoretical insights from the literature on language change and second language acquisition combine to make the idea of Germanic influence quite plausible.
Full text: http://walkden.space/Walkden_2014_OSHNPS.pdf This paper investigates the position of 'heavy' nominal objects in Old Saxon and other Germanic languages. A new empirical study of Old Saxon is carried out and regression analysis performed, with information status, grammatical weight and case all serving as predictors. On the theoretical side it is argued that an analysis in terms of movement to specifier positions in a low left periphery goes some of the way towards capturing the observed facts, but still suffers from certain problems.
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