Koerner e Andersen 1987 - Historical Linguistics 1987 Papers From The 8th International Conference On Historical Linguistics, Lille, August 31-September...

HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS 1987
AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND

HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE
General Editor
E.F. KONRAD KOERNER
(University of Ottawa)
Series IV - CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY
Advisory Editorial Board
Henning Andersen (Los Angeles); Raimo Anttila (Los Angeles)

Thomas V. Gamkrelidze (Tbilisi); Hans-Heinrich Lieb (Berlin)
J. Peter Maher (Chicago); Ernst Pulgram (Ann Arbor, Mich.)
E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.); Danny Steinberg (Tokyo)
Volume 66
Henning Andersen and Konrad Koerner (eds)
Historical Linguistics 1987:

Papers from the 8th International Conference
on Historical Linguistics
HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS 1987
PAPERS FROM
THE 8TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
ON HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS (8. ICHL)
(Lille, 31 August - 4 September 1987)
Edited by
HENNING ANDERSEN
State University of New York at Buffalo
and
KONRAD KOERNER
University of Ottawa
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY

AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
1990
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
International Conference on Historical Linguistics (8th : 1987 : Lille, France)

Historical linguistics, 1987 : papers from the 8th International Conference on Histori
cal Linguistics (8. ICHL) : Lille, 31 August-4 September 1987 / edited by Henning
Andersen and Konrad Koerner.
p. cm. - (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science.
Series IV, Current issues in linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763; v. 66)
English and French.
Organized by Thomas Fraser.
1. Historical linguistics ~ Congresses. 2. Indo-European languages - History - Congres
ses. I. Andersen, Henning, 1934- . II. Koerner, E. F. K. III. Fraser, Thomas
(Thomas K. H.) IV. Title. V. Series.
P140.I5 1987
417'.7-dc20 89-26711
ISBN 90 272 3563 5 (alk. paper) CIP
© Copyright 1990 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or
any other means, without written permission from the publisher.
FOREWORD
The 8th International Conference on Historical Linguistics was held in

Lille, France from 31 August to 4 September 1987 under the auspices of the
Université de Lille III. The conference was organized by Professor Thomas
Fraser, President of the International Society for Historical Linguistics for
the term 1985-1987.
It was a highly successful meeting, both in academic terms and by the
spirit of conviviality that reigned from its official opening by Monsieur
Alain Lottin, President of the Université de Lille III, till the festive banquet
which marked its end. As Secretary of the Society, I am pleased to have this
opportunity to record here the gratitude of the participants in the confer
ence to our hosts in Lille, Thomas Fraser, his colleagues, and the staff and
students who made the meeting so enjoyable for all.
Due to unforeseen circumstances the preparation of this volume was
held up for over a year after the conference. In November 1988 I volun
teered to edit the conference proceedings. Unfortunately, additional delays
occurred and I would hardly have succeeded in concluding this task at this
date if Konrad Koerner had not offered his assistance. Konrad Koerner
assumed responsibility for the French-language papers, while I edited the
papers in English. We owe thanks to our assistants, Nancy Allessandra
Remondi, who keyboarded most of the French papers, and Betty Brown,
who helped me.
Buffalo, New York, July 1989 Henning Andersen

Contents
Foreword ν
Henning Andersen
The structure of drift 1
Kristjan Amason
Conflicting teleologies: drift and normalization in the history of
Icelandic phonology 21
Bernard H. Bichakjian
Language change: cyclical or linear? The case of the Romance
future 37
Lyle Campbell
Syntactic reconstruction and Finno-Ugric 51
Jan Terje Faarlund
Case assignment and NP movement in the history of Scandinavian 95
Jacek Fisiak
Domesday Book and Late Old English dialects 107
Pascal Gallez
Bilinguisme et interférences: le cas de l'anglais sud-africain 129
Erica . García
Reanalysing actualization, and actualizing reanalysis 141
Marinei Gerritsen
The rise of  in Middle Dutch infinitive constructions 161
Anna Giacalone Ramat
Discourse functions and syntactic change 175
Louis Goossens
Framing the linguistic communication scene: ask vs. acsian and
biddan 191
VIII CONTENTS
Marie-Line Groussier
La polysémie de of en vieil anglais et la métaphore spatialisante 211
Catherine Holm
Le cadre des changements phonétiques dans les langues romanes:
mot et 'syntagme phonétique' 231
Bernard Jacquinod
Le rôle du système dans l'évolution d'un verbe en grec ancien 245
Dieter Kastovsky
Whatever happened to the ablaut nouns in English — and why
did it not happen in German? 253
Douglas A. Kibbee
Sources negligees dans l'histoire du vocabulaire: les dictionnaires
bilingues du seizième siècle 265
Merja Kytö
Shall or will? Choice of the variant form in Early Modern English,
British and American 275
Jean-Marcel heard
Le développement de ce que en français et l'évolution du relatif-
interrogatif-exclamatif 289
H. Le ourdéliés
L'enfer de brumes et marais dans la tradition germano-celtique.
Un problème mythologique et linguistique indo-européen 303
Silvia Luraghi
The structure and development of possessive noun phrases in
Hittite 309
Maria Manoliu-Manea
The ghost of the agent in Romance 327
Jean-Pierre Y. Montreuil
Non-adjacency in geminate structure: an historical perspective 339
Stephen J. Nagle
Modes of inference and the gradual/rapid issue: suggestions from
the English modal 353
CONTENTS ix
Birgit Anette Olsen

A case of Proto-Indo-European allomorphy: the instrument
noun suffix *-tlom and its variants 363
Jacqueline Picoche
Ouir, entendre, comprendre: une vue psychoméchanique sur le
renouvellement du lexique 375
Michel Pierrard
Neutralisation sémantique et marquage fonctionnel: à propos de
l'évolution de certains emplois de celui et de ce en français 387
Rebecca Posner
Romance comparative grammar and linguistic change 399
Amanda V. Pounder
Local and global change in word formation 411
Jens Elmegård Rasmussen
Germanic Verschärfung: tying up loose ends 425
André Rousseau
Mécanismes et nature du changement syntaxique: le cas de la
phrase complexe en indo-européen 443
Thomas F. Shannon
The unaccusative hypothesis and the history of the perfect auxil
iary in Germanic and Romance 461
Dieter Stein
Functional differentiation in the emerging English standard lan
guage: the evolution of a morphological discourse and style
marker 489
Robert P. Stockwell & Donka Minkova
Verb phrase conjunction in Old English 499
Henriette Walter
Evolution droite ou sinueuse: les palatales du français 517
Brita Wårvik
On the history of grounding markers in English narrative: style
or typology? 531
χ CONTENTS
Margaret E. Winters
Cognitive Grammar and Kurylowicz's laws of analogy 543
Roger Wright
Semantic change in Romance words for "cut" 553
Index of Names compiled by Hans Boon 563
Index of Languages compiled by Hans Boon 573
THE STRUCTURE O F D R I F T
HENNING ANDERSEN
State University of New York at Buffalo
0. Introduction.
Since the beginnings of modern historical linguistics - since the times of

Rask and Grimm - it has been recognized that in language histories one can
observe not only individual changes, which run their course within the
lifetimes of at most a few generations of speakers, but also long-term
developments, often comprising numerous distinct changes which share a
common direction and apparently have the same degree of mutual coherence
and the same unity of rationale as individual changes, but are played out over
considerable spans of time - centuries, sometimes even millennia.
Such apparent long-term developments are epistemologically difficult, and
linguists have had very different attitudes toward them. Some have accepted
them as genuine observations of linguistic reality, awaiting a general
explanation, ultimately, in an adequate theory of linguistic change. Others
have looked on them with skepticism, wary that such observations might arise
spontaneously from the hindsight available to the historical linguist and so
possibly have no basis in objective reality. Still others have denied them any
status other than as the linguist's generalizations about groups of individual
changes and have viewed their apparent, or putative, internal coherence as
nothing but a chimera.
It is often the case, when a certain sort of phenomenon evokes different
attitudes in different observers, that some of these attitudes are more fruitful,
more productive of understanding and insight, and others less so. In the case
at hand, as in many other cases, there is no doubt that the optimists have
contributed more than the skeptics or the pessimists; and no wonder: the
optimists have after all accepted at face value observations that are in need of
explanation and thus represent an intellectual challenge.
In this paper I side with the optimists, for I want to draw attention to
aspects of long-term developments which, although occasionally noted in the
literature, do not seem to be sufficiently appreciated. They deserve to be
thematicized, inasmuch as:
2 HENNING ANDERSEN
(a) they strengthen the case for long-term developments really being what
they seem, that is, internally coherent, causally unitary historical events of
a greater order of magnitude than individual changes;
(b) they provide support for the structuralist explanations of drift, first put
forward in the 1920s and 1930s by such scholars as Sapir and Hjelmslev,
and more recently elaborated by Coserai; and
(c) they seem to have a basis in cognitive psychology such that we may
finally be able to identify the 'mechanisms' in individual psychology
which make generations of speakers of a language perform innumerable,
unconscious selections among existing and emerging variants in their
language with such uniformity that these selections are cumulative, over
the long run, in a specific direction.
0.1. The present paper is in essence a sequel to my contribution to the

1985 Pavia workshop on the historical development of auxiliaries (Andersen
1987).
In that paper I did two things. I presented a survey of the main parts of a
long-term development in Polish, in which original inflectional forms of the
auxiliary verb "to be" have become verbal desinences - a development which
began perhaps 700 years ago, and which is far from completed. Secondly, I
offered an interpretation of this development in terms of the theory of drift,
which - apart from helping to explicate long-term develoments as such - is
well suited to make sense of apparent inconsistencies in their actuation, as well
as to reconcile apparent internal contradictions in language states observed in
the middle of such a long-term development.
There was a third thing I intended to do, but which I had to delay until
now. I wanted to offer an explication of a number of details in the actuation of
this long-term development, facts about the chronology of parts of it which I
did mention in the 1987 paper but had neither time nor space to pull together
and discuss. They are the data that this paper is primarily about.
0.2. I shall begin with an outline of my interpretation of the Polish

development (Section 1). I do not aim to retell the entire story that is contained
in Andersen (1987), but will try to provide just enough information for the
reader who is not familiar with that paper to appreciate the interplay of theory
and data. The theme of this section will be the fact that, as Sapir put it, "the
linguistic drift has direction" (1921:155).
THE STRUCTURE OF DRIFT 3
In the following section (Section 2) I then take up the chronological details

which I could not treat in the earlier paper, but which demand an explanation.
Here I shall have to mention more aspects of the Polish development within a
brief compass than I can possibly present in a coherent way. The presentation
will be deliberately fragmented and non-chronological, but replete with
references. Its purpose will be to demonstrate, as one might put it, that the
linguistic drift has structure.
Section 3 will suggest that both the observed aspects of drift - direction
and structure - are projections in diachrony of synchronic properties of
languages, both of them rooted in the human mind.
1. The direction of drift.
1.1. The Polish story. First view. My chosen example of drift is

a development of original inflectional forms of the auxiliary verb "to be" -
from sentence clitics, regularly placed in clause-second position, to verbal
desinences marking person and number. The development, which may have
begun some time around 1300, comprises three parts that have been actuated in
different tempi.
(a) A new present tense paradigm of the verb "to be" was formed around
1600 as the enclitic participant markers shifted out of clause-second position to
be concatenated with the originally orthotonic third-person forms of "to be"
(cf. (1) below; Andersen 1987:36f., 40f.).
(b) In the preterite - which in Old Polish was composed of an enclitic
participant marker and an (originally resultative) participle in -/- of the lexical
verb in question - the participant markers appear to be gaining some freedom
of placement at about the time our attestation begins. As time goes by, they
gradually shift toward the right in clauses, though never further to the right
than the last I- form. Throughout the documented period, the frequency with
which participant markers are concatenated with I- forms increases steadily - to
the point where nowadays tmesis (the separation of I- form and participant
marker) by many Poles is evaluated as bookish or archaic. Cf. Table 1, the
paradigm in (1) and Andersen (1987:29f.). Note that the figures in Table 1
map into a nice approximation of the central portion of a regular S-curve.
(c) In the conditional - in Old Polish formed from an enclitic form of the
conditional "to be" and an I- participle of the lexical verb - the participant
markers early replaced the original desinences of the enclitic auxiliary through
analogical leveling (cf. Andersen 1987:34f.). Since the 1500s, the enclitic
strings composed of conditional and participant marker have begun to gravitate
out of clause-second position and toward concatenation with I- forms. Cf.
4 HENNING ANDERSEN
1300s-1400s 1500s 1600s 1700s 1800s 1900s Exp.pr.

10% 22% 50% 69% 72% 85% 92%
Table 1. Proportion of participant markers concatenated with 1- forms
in the Polish preterite. Thefiguresfor the 1900s separate artistic
prose from expository prose. Cf. Rittel (1975:91f.).
Table 2 and the paradigm in (1). The figures in Table 2 map into an
approximation of the initial portion of a regular S-curve.
1500s 1600s 1700s 1800s 1900s

7% 12% 17% 30% 37%
Table 2. Proportion of conditional plus participant-marker
strings concatenated with 1- forms in the Polish conditional.
Cf. Rittel (1975:149f.).
1.2. Quantity into quality? It is easy to see from the preceding

presentation that there is a tendency in this language for participant markers to
change from sentence clitics into desinences. But it is hard to pinpoint these
changes in time. Everyone would agree, probably, that the case of the present
tense of "to be" (item (a) in Section 1.1) can be considered closed. But how
does one decide whether the participant markers in the preterite or the
conditional are still sentence clitics or have definitively become desinences?
How often does a clitic have to be attached to a given class of hosts before it
becomes a desinence? Is there a sort of frequency threshold at which quantity
is transformed into quality?
Answers to these questions will be implicit in the presentation below, but
let us first consider another aspect of the drift.
Developments like this often include processes of univerbation by which
concatenations of the formerly separate entities are welded together. In the
case at hand one can speak of prosodie and of segmental (morphophonemic)
univerbation.
The prosodic univerbation is the formation of new domains for the
application of the Polish penultimate stress rule. The paradigms in (1) show
how the penultimate stress rule applies in the present tense of "to be" and in the
preterite and conditional of "to speak", which exemplifies verbs with
polysyllabic I- forms; 'separable desinences' are indicated with a =; the
examples here and below are in phonemic notation. It looks as if the rule
(1) Present of Preterite Conditional

"to be" "spoke" "would speak"
considers some participant markers part of the prosodic word, but others not
(the latter are in italics), even though all of them are still free to occur
unconcatenated with the 1- form ; cf. Andersen (1987:31 ff., 36). The contrast
between the prosodic univerbation in forms like muv' üem, muv'ües in (1),
and the apparent absence of univerbation in the corresponding plural forms
probably dates from the 1700s. Innovative stresses like muvil 'iśmy,
muv'il 'iśće are gaining in frequency in Modern Polish. They suggest that the
plural forms are currently undergoing univerbation.
Segmental univerbation includes several phenomena, the most interesting
one of them being the redistribution in one class of verbs (obstruent stems) of
the inherited alternants in the preterite. The inherited alternation in (2a) has
(2) (a) masculine feminine (b) masculine feminine
been preserved in some dialects of Polish, but in others - including those on

which the standard language is based - the masculine singular free form
occurring before the first and second person singular markers (note its
characteristic vocalism and word final devoicing) has been replaced by the
bound stem occurring in the feminine and the plural, as in (2b). This
morphophonemic univerbation took place in some varieties of Polish before the
1500s - at a time when the drift toward concatenation had barely gotten under
way (cf. Andersen 1987:39, 46).
Some might expect that concatenation would have to be overwhelmingly
the rule before univerbation could take place. The evidence shows that in this
6 HENNING ANDERSEN
instance of drift there is no such temporal relationship between the tendency

toward more frequent concatenation and morphophonemic or prosodic
univerbation. This is perhaps a useful hint. For the mutual independence of
these two kinds of process would make good sense if each of them was
conditioned or determined by some more basic property of the language.
1.3. The Polish story. Second v i e w . Looking around for some

linguistic change in Early Polish which might be equally relevant to the drift
toward concatenation and the processes of univerbation, I noted that
traditionally Polish linguists have spoken of the participant markers as
'auxiliaries' - with reference to all periods of the history of the language, even
Contemporary Polish. This made me wonder when these entities actually
ceased to be verb forms and became what they are now, mere markers of
person and number.
The answer to this question comes out of an analysis of the major
reorganization of the Polish tense system which took place, at least in some
parts of Poland, before 1300 (Andersen 1987:23-26).
The pre-Polish tense system comprised three simple tenses (present, aorist
and imperfect) and corresponding compound tenses (called perfect, pluperfect I
and pluperfect II) composed of a simple tense form of "to be" plus a resultative
participle of the lexical verb in question. In the 1200s, the aorist and imperfect
fell into disuse, being replaced by the perfect; and with the aorist and
imperfect, also the two pluperfects went out of use. This development left the
language with only two of the inherited tenses, the present and the original
perfect (which we now term the preterite).
The recasting of the tense system had consequences for both the original
auxiliary and the original participles. With the demise of the simple past
tenses, the original present tense forms of "to be" were no longer opposed to
any past tense forms with person marking. Furthermore, they occurred as
parts of compound preterite forms. Herewith the background was given for
two reinterpretations. The original present tense forms of "to be" could be
reinterpreted as mere person and number markers. And the original resultative
participles could be reinterpreted as finite non-present forms, the -7- in
particular as the preterite ('distal tense') marker.
The moment these reinterpretations of the CONTENT of the 7- forms and the
participant markers occurred, there would be grounds (a) for revaluating their
SYNTACTIC status and (b) for adjusting their EXPRESSION accordingly.
As for the syntactic status of the participant markers, let me confess at
once that the whole discussion of the drift toward concatenation above (Section
1.1), by following the tradition, was badly out of focus. Superficially it looks
as if the participant markers have undergone a significant change from sentence

clitics to desinences, and this is the way the development has always been
understood. In fact, however, the participant markers have always been
dependent on having a host at their left margin - they have always been
suffixes. The crucial syntactic innovation concerned the l- forms.
In Andersen (1987) I proposed that the entire drift toward concatenation of
1- forms and participant markers was powered by the consistent valuation by
learners of the language - ever since the reorganization of the pre-Polish tense
system - of l- forms as finite verb stems. In accordance with the
morphotactics of the language, they were consequently construed as bound
forms which require the attachment at their right margin of an affix marking
person and number.
This hypothesis explains the various moves toward univerbation which
have occurred in the past and are taking place now. It explains the ever so
gradual drift toward concatenation as resulting from a centuries-long tension
between two forces: the force of tradition, codified in the norms of the
language, and the drive toward internal conformity between the type of the
language and its system, and between the system and the norms. This
hypothesis, finally, agrees with the feeling of native speakers of Polish that the
participant markers are part and parcel of the verb forms, even though they
remain mobile.
1.4. The direction of drift. Here then is the Polish story explicated
in terms of the theory of drift, that part of the theory of language change which
specifically concerns internally motivated long-term developments.
By its type, Polish is and - as far back as we can go - has been
predominantly agglutinative (with some fusion and symbolism). Specifically,
its finite verb forms (present tense, imperative) comprise a bound stem
followed by markers of person and number.
Once the pre-Polish tense system had been reinterpreted, thefinitepreterite
forms would - given these typological premisses - more often than not be
construed as bound stems and the participant markers as their desinences. This
understanding of the system has made speakers - at any time since the 1300s -
produce usage containing a higher proportion of concatenated forms than was
sanctioned by the norms of the language at the given time. Of course the
norms of each generation have had to be abduced from the usage of their
predecessors - hence the slow, gradual increase in the frequency of
concatenated forms. The same understanding of the system has made the
speakers produce morphophonemic innovations, such as the use of bound
rather than free allomorphs of 1- forms in concatenated preterites, illustrated in
8 HENNING ANDERSEN
(2), an innovation that was early codified by the norms. And it has made them
produce innovations in stress placement, giving overt expression to the
morphosyntactic status of the concatenated forms as morphological - and
hence, ideally, prosodic - words.
The conservatism of the norms and the tension between the norms and the
system-motivated innovative usage is fairly well documented. In some
respects the power of the norms has been remarkable. For instance,
grammarians issue thefirstwarnings against penultimate stress in the italicized
forms of (1) around 1800. Penultimate stress may be gaining in currency
now, two hundred years later (Topolińska 1961:48), but it is still not accepted
by the Orthoepie norms. On the other hand, the growth in the frequency of
concatenation has been imperceptible, unremitting and ineluctable.
The development is a perfect example of the theory of drift elaborated by
Coseriu (1962, 1971, 1975) and integrated with the theory of evolutive change
of Andersen (1973; cf. also 1978, 1980). It corresponds well to what Sapir
understood by drift, and it will serve as a neat demonstration of how the
"groundplan" or "structural genius" of a language provides that "deep
controlling impulse to form that dominates [its] drift" (Sapir 1921:144, 170).
And it agrees as well with Hjelmslev's conception of the language type as an
optimum, which the given linguistic system, ceteris paribus, will tend to
approach through its changes (Hjelmslev 1934/1972:148).
But whether one accepts this theory or not, there is no denying that "the
linguistic drift has direction".
2. The structure of drift.
2.0. The structure of drift. In the preceding bird's-eye view of the

Polish drift toward an inflected preterite I mentioned only a few of the changes
that directly form part of this development. And since the focus in that section
was on the direction of the drift, I deliberately emphasized the very smooth,
gradual actuation of the main portions of the development, which - as I
mentioned - map neatly into S-curves.
In this section I shall touch on a few more aspects of this long-term
development with the specific aim of reporting on a number of observations,
recorded in the relevant literature, which concern its step-by-step actuation
(Sections 2.1-2.2).
As I mentioned in the introduction (Section 0.1), the presentation here will
be deliberately fragmented and non-chronological. This will enable me to give
a more concise exposition of the observations I want to mention.
There is a remarkable regularity among these observations, which will be

evident from Table 3, and which calls for an explanation. I shall offer some
discussion in Section 2.3, but let us first look at the data.
I begin with the main development, which is familiar from the presentation
in Section 1.
2.1. Concatenation. Section 1.1 surveyed the drift toward
concatenation in the present tense of "to be", in the preterite, and in the
conditional mood. It was noted that the drift was actuated at very different
rates in these three morphological contexts.
POINT NO. 1. Concatenation occurred earlier in the present tense (of "to
be") than in the preterite (of "to be" or other verbs).
POINT NO. 2. Concatenation occurred earlier in the indicative mood (the
present and preterite tenses) than in the conditional.
It is evident that these observations can be rephrased in terms of
markedness: concatenation occurred earlier in the unmarked than in the marked
tense, and earlier in the unmarked than in the marked mood. I will return to
this topic in Section 2.3. The observations mentioned here and below are
summarized in Table 3 below.
2.1.1. The following observations concern specifically the development

of the preterite.
POINT NO. 3. The singular participant markers were concatenated earlier
than the plural ones (Decaux 1955:28).
This is a matter of textual attestation. Note that this fact about
concatenation is distinct from the language internal evidence of prosodic
univerbation (cf. Section 1.2), but is consistent with it.
It is also consistent with the fact that, in Modern Polish, the plural
participant markers occur more frequently in tmesis than the singular ones
(Rittel 1975:86).
POINT NO. 4. In the singular, the first person marker was concatenated
earlier than the second person marker (Topolińska 1961:47).
In describing the development of the participant markers in Old Polish it is
important to distinguish their 'emancipation' from clause-second position from
their concatenation with finite verb stems.
POINT NO. 5. Deviations from clause-second position became common
earlier in main clauses than in subordinate clauses (Rittel 1975:88).
POINT NO. 6. Deviations from clause-second position became common
earlier in asyndetic clauses than in clauses introduced by a conjunction.
10 HENNING ANDERSEN
POINT NO. 7. Clauses beginning with a full noun phrase more commonly
deviated from the clause-second rule than clauses beginning with a pronoun
(Rittel 1975:88).
POINT NO. 8. Concatenation with l- fonns became common earlier in main
clauses than in subordinate clauses (Rittel 1975:88).
POINT NO. 9. Century by century, both deviations from the clause-second
rule and concatenation with l- forms are reflected more widely in prose than in
poetry (Rittel 1975:9 If.).
POINT NO. 10. In the modern period, concatenation is more frequent in
expository than in artistic prose (cf. Table 1; Rittel 1975:92).
POINT NO. 11. In Modern Standard Polish, concatenation is more
consistent in speech than in writing.
POINT NO. 12. Similarly, concatenation is more consistent in casual than in
formal speech.
Of these observations, points 1-4 refer to morphological categories;
points 5-8 refer to features of information structure which are evidently
correlated with grounding distinctions (in the sense of Hopper & Thompson
1980); points 9-10 refer to genre categories, point 11 to a difference between
media, and point 12 to a stylistic difference (cf. Table 3).
More compatible Less compatible Point

with innovation with innovation no.
Morphological present tense preterite 1

categories indicative mood conditional 2
singular number plural 3, 15
plural number dual 16
third person other persons 17
first person second person 4
Grounding main clauses subordinate clauses 5, 8, 13
distinctions asyndetic clauses syndetic clauses 6, 14
initial lexical noun initial pronoun 7
Genre categories prose poetry 9
expository prose artistic prose 10
secular content religious content 19
Media spoken written 11, 18
Styles casual formal 12
Table 3.
2 . 1 . 2 . Regarding the development of the conditional, Rittel makes a

couple of observations (1975:120).
POINT NO. 13. Deviations from clause-second placement of the conditional
clitic string are more numerous in main clauses than in subordinate clauses.
POINT NO. 14. Deviations are strongly disfavored in clauses introduced by
a conjunction.
2.2. The participant markers. In the development of the preterite

(Section 1.1), the auxiliary was regularly omitted in the third persons
(singular, plural and dual), already before the attested period (cf. Andersen
1987:25, 27ff.). This is why the third person forms in (1) have a zero
participant marker.
But side by side with the enclitic participant markers discussed in Section
1.1, Old Polish maintained the original orthotonic forms in emphatic function
until they were superseded by other expressive means (word order, sentence
stress and intonation). The emphatic third person forms went out of use in the
1400s-1600s, first jest "3rd sg.", then sa "3rd pl.", finally jesta "3rd du."
(Decaux l955:127ff.).
POINT NO. 15. New means of expression for the emphatic preterite
facilitate the omission of the (originally emphatic) third person predicator
earlier in the singular than in the plural.
POINT NO. 16. Similarly, the (originally emphatic) third person predicator
is omitted earlier in the plural than in the dual.
The orthotonic first and second person forms went out of use in the
1500s, being at first supplanted by combinations of the respective participant
marker plus an emphatic predicator, sa "pi.", jest "sg. or sg/pl." (Andersen
1987:28).
POINT NO. 17. New means of expression for the emphatic preterite
developed earlier in the third person than in the other persons.
POINT NO. 18. The demise of the orthotonic forms is attested earlier in texts
that reflect speech (e.g. depositions) than in texts composed in writing.
POINT NO. 19. The orthotonic forms disappear from usage earlier in secular
texts than in religious texts.
2.3. I have included in Table 3 all the observations regarding the process
of actuation that were enumerated in Sections 2.1-2.2.
At this point, before we consider the implications of these observations,
we should perhaps note that they were made by different investigators, without
any pre-existing explanatory theory in mind, and published by their authors
solely with the aim of describing as fully as possible what is plain to see.
12 HENNING ANDERSEN
There is no guarantee, consequently, that the variables mentioned in Table

3 are particularly germane to the phenomena they are intended to describe, or
that they describe them fully; nor that they will be particularly amenable to any
explanatory hypothesis.
On the other hand, haphazard and imprecise though the observations may
be, the fact that they were made without any ulterior motive speaks in favor of
their reliability as impartial testimony, and they may reasonably be taken at face
value.
2 . 3 . 1 . The observations summarized in Table 3 document that the

complex of changes which this development comprised was actuated with
intermediate steps defined with reference to a variety of grammatical, pragmatic
and (broadly speaking) stylistic categories.
As the table shows, several of these are relevant to more than one part of
the development. It is easy to imagine that this is in fact the case with more of
them than was noted by the several investigators, and one could wish for a
systematic investigation that would determine to what extent this is so. For the
time being, however, we must be content with the data we have. But even
with their limitations, these data document internal coherence, in this one
development, so pervasive that it cannot be set aside as coincidental, but must
be accepted as part of the factual material the historical linguist's account has to
describe and explicate.
Let us note the remarkable similarity of the variables in Table 3. True,
they are easily sorted into different categories. But every one of them can be
immediately recognized as forming a contrast or opposition in markedness.
And they are all identically aligned, with the unmarked term of each pair in the
left-hand column and the marked term to the right. The table, in short, attests
to a strong correlation, in this development, between the markedness of
different conceptual, grammatical and textual contexts, and their compatibility
with innovation.
2 . 3 . 2 . What this means on a general level is that there is more to be

understood about long-term developments than the fact that drift has direction.
The gross statistical data on a long-term development, such as the figures
cited in Section 1.1, may translate into a smooth curve. But the moment the
development is examined with a bit of attention to a few linguistic categories,
such as those in Table 3, it becomes apparent that the smooth curves capture
only a very small part of the total picture - the most superficial view. An
attempt to grasp the whole picture is rewarded with the discovery that in
reality, the superficially smooth transition in discourse between the initial stage
and the final stage of a long-term development is generated by a multiplicity of

variables, largely binary (or so regarded), which are inherent to the grammar of
the language or to the wider communicative codes that govern its use at every
stage during the development. What one discovers, when one looks beyond
the statistical curves, is that drift has structure.
3. From synchrony to diachrony.
3.0. The fact that drift has direction is generally recognized (at least
among the optimists who consider long-term developments real), and it is well
understood (by those who accept the theory of drift). The structure of drift -
the apparent correlation between markedness values in diverse linguistic
categories and their relative compatibility with innovations - is less well
established, and it is not fully understood by anyone yet.
In this section I want to supplement and compare the findings reported in
Section 2 with some additional observations, and I want to show how, in fact,
certain elements of the theory of drift make it understandable why markedness
relations in language would structure the actuation of linguistic change.
We must begin with a closer look at the theory of drift.
3.1. Why drift has direction. The chief ingredients in the theory of
drift - whether we consider Sapir's or Hjelmslev's early sketches or Coseriu's
more explicit version - are three hypotheses: (a) that a grammar is organized
into several levels of abstraction (norms, system and type); (b) that there may
be unconformities between adjacent levels of organization; and (c) that in the
normal course of events, such unconformities are eliminated, the system being
brought into conformity with the type, the norms into conformity with the
system.
3.1.1. If we inquire why drift has direction, the answer must mention
the fact that language is transmitted from generation to generation - or, rather,
that grammars are acquired by one generation after another. And the answer
must make explicit the following hypothetical view of the relative importance
of type, system and norms in language acquisition.
In the acquisition of a grammar, typological properties of it (aspects of the
'groundplan', alias 'parameter settings') are inferred concurrently with the
system and may form part of the premisses that enter into the learner's
inference of the system. As a consequence, elements of a system may be
construed not so much on the basis of the evidence of usage available to the
learner (abductively), but rather by the imposition of preconceived solutions
14 HENNING ANDERSEN
(deductively; cf. Andersen 1987:42, 48 and the example in Section 1.4

above).
The system is inferred concurrently with the norms and forms the basis
for the individual's definition of the norms - both in those respects where the
norms codify usage that is derivable by productive rules of the system and
where the usage codified by the norms is motivated only by tradition.
The usage of the individual speaker will to a large extent correspond to the
norms (as he perceives them), but whenever a speaker goes beyond his
linguistic experience, his usage will usually reflect the productive rules that
form the core of his competence. Community usage will consequently always
contain deviations from the norms, deductive innovations, which in some
measure will strengthen the norms, in some measure weaken them. The
innovations will strengthen, respectively weaken the norms in the sense that
for subsequent learners usage will appear more uniform in the respects in
which the norms conform to the system, but variable in those respects in which
the norms are at variance with it.
3.1.2. But in this account the real reason why drift has direction has
nothing essential to do with the dimension of time. Rather, the directedness of
drift is a consequence of the assumed rank relations among the three levels of
organization.
The two hypotheses (a) that grammar is organized in this way and (b) that
there may be unconformities between different levels of organization (cf.
Section 3.1) are needed independently of the phenomenon of drift. (Cf.,
specifically regarding the system vs. norm distinction, Sapir 1921:148f.,
156f., 164f.; Hjelmslev 1934/1972:27-34; Coserai 1962, 1975.)
Among other things, we need these hypotheses in order to understand
such internally inconsistent language states as the Polish one that was briefly
touched on in Sections 1.1-1.2. Without these or similar hypotheses there is
no escape from the nominalist murk in which the Polish participant markers are
recognized as desinences when they are attached to an ƒ- form and as enclitics
elsewhere. But with this understanding of the differentiated organization of
grammar we can see, beyond the brute facts of usage, that in the system of this
language these are desinences (as we would expect from its type), which the
conservative norms allow to occur detached from their stems with specific
stylistic values, but which are more naturally concatenated with their stems.
3.1.3. The real source of the direction of drift, then, is the relations
between type and system and between system and norms.
To understand these relations it would be useful to be able to compare the

three-level organization of grammar to other cognitive structures. Now, the
type-system-norms tripartition has been proposed for language as suigenerìs,
solely in order to account for facts of linguistic synchrony and diachrony. But
it seems reasonable to assume that also other aspects of human behavior are
dependent on similarly structured competences - with socially valued routines
on one level, productive rules or schemas of action on another, and principles
of rule formation or planning on a third.
In fact, despite the vast differences, it is possible to compare the putative
organization of linguistic knowledge to taxonomic structures. It exhibits a
similar kind of relation between adjacent levels to those of a taxonomy in that
the functional relationship is one of similarity. Obviously, it differs radically
from taxonomies by allowing for the existence of unconformities. But these
are clearly non-optimal elements. The relationships, on the level of the norms,
between systemically motivated and unmotivated patterns are markedness
relations - which is why unmotivated patterns are exposed to elimination.
Similarly, on the level of the system, typologically incongruent patterns are
marked in relation to the congruent ones, which is why, as Hjelmslev put it,
the system - as it changes - will approach the optimum of the type.
These synchronic markedness relations, then, are part of the explanation
for the direction of drift. They are central, as well, to an explanation of the
structure of drift.
3.2. Why drift has structure. A correlation between markedness

values, as in the variables listed in Table 3, and relative compatibility with
innovations was first noted, with reference to phonology, in Andersen (1972)
and was subsequently explored in historical syntax by Timberlake (1977).
Timberlake examined several syntactic changes (in Finnish and Russian)
and found that each of the changes was "actualized earlier in contexts that are
unmarked ... and later in contexts that are marked ... ", adding the proviso that
the markedness values of the respective contexts be defined in relation to a
superordinate semantic or conceptual feature relevant to the change in question
(1977:162). Thus, for instance, in the gradual replacement of the genitive of
negation with the accusative in Russian, the category terms in the left-hand
column in Table 4, which favor the innovation, are unmarked, and those in the
right-hand column marked, in relation to the general notion of "individuation',
which is directly relevant to the difference in grammatical meaning between the
two cases involved in change.
Although Timberlake's paper has been widely cited, it seems that its
theoretical claim regarding the role of markedness in the actuation of syntactic
16 HENNING ANDERSEN
More compatible Less compatible

with innovation with innovation
proper noun common noun
human non-human
animate inanimate
concrete abstract
singular plural
definite indefinite
Table 4.
change has been largely passed over. Perhaps the widespread skepticism
regarding the utility of the notion of markedness has played a role here. But I
suspect that the chief reason is the apparent success with which Timberlake
was able to explain the gradual actuation of the changes he examined, as
'naturar in terms of the governing semantic or conceptual features. This
success may have made his appeal to markedness seem an inessential and
dispensible part of his theory of reanalysis and actualization, even though he in
fact made this a central part of his presentation.
In the case of the Polish drift towards verbal inflection it is less easy to
disregard the markedness values in its actuation.
For one thing, the variables in Table 3 have nothing in common other than
this very general relational character. Of course, it is possible to extend the
notion of grounding, reflected in some of the syntactic variables, to some of
the morphological categories in the table. But by the time one has extended
this notion to cover all the variables attested in the drift, all one will be left with
is the general relational character of markedness.
For another thing, there is no way in which the step-wise actuation of this
development can be explained by reference to semantic features. The
development from non-concatenation to concatenation is as purely syntactic a
change as one can imagine.
The comparison with Timberlake's examples of syntactic change is useful
indeed. It shows that markedness values may be defined in relation to a
context (contiguous or concurrent) or absolutely (cf. Andersen 1972:45). But
once allowance is made for this distinction, Timberlake's examples and the
Polish drift are on a par and demand, with equal urgency, an explanation of the
apparently greater compatibility of unmarked contexts with innovation.
3.2.1. In the illustration of the direction of the Polish drift in Section

1.4 (cf. also Section 3.11), it was shown how - once /- froms and participant
markers were defined as stems and desinences in the system of the language -
successive generations of speakers would unwittingly allow the relative
frequency of concatenated forms to increase. This account of drift is adequate
to explain such gross statistical data as the figures in Tables 1 and 2. But it
seems to imply that the general drift toward concatenation was unordered -
which it was not.
The orderly actuation of the Polish development is evidence that the
attested usage was produced by (the natural language equivalent of) variable
rules. A systematic investigation of the textual record may allow us to track the
emergence of some of these rules (when the innovation begins to occur and
gain in frequency in unmarked contexts), their development to categorical
form, and their decline (as the innovation becomes as frequent in the
corresponding marked contexts). But more likely, the picture will remain
fairly fragmentary, for the textual attestation reflects not a representative
sample, but a haphazard collection of voices with geographical and
generational differences we cannot control for. In any case, the relatively
abundant documentation of this long-term development indicates that during its
entire course, the system-motivated concatenations of preterite stems and
desinences have been eased into usage - imperceptibly and ineluctably -
through a complex of variable rules whose entirety remains to be determined.
The rules raise more questions than I can answer, but there is no harm in
trying.
3 . 2 . 2 . One wonders how these variable rules arose, what sort of usage
they may have been abduced from.
In the case of the changes discussed by Timberlake (1977), one can
imagine how the semantic affinities between, say, one of the two alternative
cases and one type of context would produce a sufficiently skewed distribution
in usage that it would serve as a basis for the abduction of a variable rule. This
is in fact the spirit of Timberlake's account. In the case of the Polish drift,
where the two variants have never differed in meaning, this seems quite
unlikely. Most probably, the variable rules attested in this development have to
be understood as spontaneous innovations (in the sense of Andersen
Forthcoming b), that is, as regularizations - initially tentative and individual -
of mere fluctuation in usage, only secondarily giving rise to discernible
distributional regularities. Of course, we cannot really know. But as part of
the answer to the question why drift has structure, it has to be noted that such
structure may result when speakers of a language impose order where
previously there was none.
18 HENNING ANDERSEN
One wonders why the variation was defined in terms of precisely the
variables listed in Table 3.
The absence of any indications of sociolinguistic variation is interesting,
though perhaps not significant. One might guess that in a society where there
is no particular use for sociolinguistic indexes, variation rules simply make
reference to more central linguistic categories. The absence of any semantic
value attached to the pairs of variants (concatenated and not) may be a relevant
consideration, too. But on the whole, here is a question that is best
approached after contrastive material has been collected from other long-term
developments.
What motivated the correlation between innovation and unmarked
contexts?
I think it takes several steps to answer this question.
In the first place, it seems, we must determine the markedness value of the
innovated forms we have discussed. In accordance with the remarks at the end
of Section 3.13, the (innovated) concatenated forms, being in accordance with
the speakers' understanding of the system, may be considered unmarked in
relation to the non-concatenated forms. This means that the correlation we
wish to understand is between the markedness values of the two variants of the
inflected forms and the equivalent markedness values of a variety of contexts in
which they are distributed.
The second step is to motivate this correlation of unmarked with unmarked
and marked with marked. I can do no better, at this point, than suggest the
relevance of a generalization I have presented elsewhere (Andersen
Forthcoming a) regarding a number of different types of rule-governed
behavior. In ritual, in grammatical parallelism, in the structure of narratives, as
in phonetics, morphophonemics and the variable rules of syntax, it seems to be
the case that the opposite terms of any feature or variable which is not being
exploited for communicative purposes, will be distributed in the most orderly
fashion possible, which is, in such a way as to maximize homogeneous
syntagmatic combinations. On the background of this generalization, one
would expect precisely that the unmarked Polish preterite forms would occur in
unmarked contexts and the marked ones in marked contexts - if such a variable
rule were to be stabilized as part of a synchronic grammar. Given the stable
internal pressure in favor of the concatenated forms, the usage of the language
has reflected the diachronic counterpart of such a variation, the gradual
ascendancy of the new forms, first in unmarked contexts and then in the
corresponding marked ones.
But there is a third unknown behind this answer. To understand why
concatenated and unconcatenated forms of the Polish preterite would be aligned
with different categories of person and tense, different kinds of clauses,

different genres and styles of discourse, one must envisage a vast network of
association that readily relates unmarked with unmarked and marked with
marked, in part irrespective of the substantive character of the categories, in
part precisely respecting this substantive content.
It is this structure that is reflected, however selectively, in the linguistic
drift.
3.3. Conclusion. In the last few pages I have tried to show that both
the direction of drift and the structure of drift reflect aspects of language
structure. This is in complete accord with the approach of Edward Sapir,
whose inspired, but sketchy account of drift I have tried to develop in various
directions.
I think now that it is possible to substantiate the claim, first formulated by
Sapir, that "the drift of a language is constituted by the unconscious selection
on the part of its speakers of those individual variations that are cumulative in a
special direction" (1921:155). As long as one looks only at the surface of the
current of change in a language - changes in relative frequency such as those
cited in Section 1 - the claim that the speakers unconsciously control the
direction of change may seem far-fetched, and it is perhaps understandable that
many would think twice about holding the poor unconscious speakers
accountable. But when the linguistic dimensions of a drift are brought to light,
and it is shown that the drift reflects the gradual modification of variable rules,
it becomes difficult to abstract from the speakers. When one considers the
possible origins of such regularities, it becomes impossible.
Sapir saw that "we shall not advance seriously until we study the
intuitional bases of speech". He asked rhetorically - and I take the liberty of
generalizing his question by omitting the reference to phonetics - "How can we
understand the nature of the drift that frays and reforms ... patterns when we
have never thought of studying ... patterning as such and the 'weights' and
psychic relations of the single elements ... in these patterns?" (p. 183)
By opening up the question of the structure of drift and looking at the
weights and psychic relations of the elements involved, I hope to have
contributed to our advance.
REFERENCES
Andersen, Henning. 1972. "Diphthongization". Language 48.11-50.

20 HENNING ANDERSEN
Andersen, Henning. 1973. "Abductive and deductive change". Language

49.567-595.
Andersen, Henning. 1978. "Vocalic and consonantal languages". Studia
Linguistica Α. V. Lssatschenko ab Collegis et Amicis oblata ed. by L.
Durovič etai., 1-12. Lisse: de Ridder Press.
Andersen, Henning. 1980. "Morphological change: towards a typology".
Recent Developments in Historical Morphology ed. by Jacek Fisiak, 1-
50. The Hague: Mouton.
Andersen, Henning. 1987. "From auxiliary to desinence". The Historical
Development of Auxiliaries ed. by Martin Harris & Paolo Ramat, 21-51.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Andersen, Henning. Forthcoming a. "On the projection of equivalence
relations into syntagms". New Vistas in Grammar: Invariance and
Variation ed. by Stephen Rudy. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Andersen, Henning. Forthcoming b. "Understanding linguistic innovations".
Language Change: Do We Know Its Causes Yet Papers from a Sympo
sium ed. by Leiv Erik Breivik & Ernst Håkon Jahr. Berlin: Mouton de
Gruyter.
Coseriu, Eugenio. 1962. "Sistema, norma y habla". Teoria del lenguaje y
lingüistica general. Cinco estudios, 11-113. Madrid: Gredos.
Coseriu, Eugenio. 1971. "Synchronie, Diachronie und Typologie". Sprache,
Strukturen und Funktionen. XII Aufsätze zur allgemeinen und
romanischen Sprachwissenschaft ed. by Uwe Petersen, 91-108.
Tübingen: Narr.
Coseriu, Eugenio. 1975. "System, Norm und Rede". Sprachtheorie und
allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft. 5 Studien translated by Uwe Petersen,
11-101. Munich: Fink.
Decaux, Etienne. 1955. Morphologie des enclitiques polonais. Paris: Institut
d'Etudes Slaves.
Hjelmslev, Louis. 1972. Sprogsystem og sprogforandring. (= Travaux du
Cercle linguistique de Copenhague, 15.) Copenhagen: Nordisk Sprog-
og Kulturforlag.
Hopper, Paul J. & Sandra A. Thompson. 1980. "Transitivity in grammar and
discourse". Language 56.251-299.
Rittel, Teodozja. 1975. Szyk, członów w obrębie form czasu przeszłego i
trybu przypuszczającego. Wrodaw, Warsaw, Kraków: Ossolineum.
Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language. An Introduction to the Study of Speech.
New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
Timberlake, Alan. 1977. "Reanalysis and actualization in syntactic change".
Mechanisms of Syntactic Change ed. by Charles N. Li, 141-180. Austin:
University of Texas Press.
Topoliriska, Zuzanna. 1961. Z historii akcentu polskiego od wieku XVI do
dziś. (= Prace Językoznawcze, 27.) Wrocław: Ossolineum.
CONFLICTING TELEOLOGIES: DRIFT AND
NORMALIZATION IN THE HISTORY OF
ICELANDIC PHONOLOGY
KRISTJÁN ÁRNASON
University of Iceland
1. Teleology and sound change.
As a background for the following discussion I want to keep in mind a

distinction between two approaches to the study of linguistic change in general
and phonological change in particular.
On one hand there is the structuralistic point of view in the broad sense,
including classical structuralism and generative phonology. The view is that
linguistic change should be studied in terms of the system it affects and
produces, and changes are classified according to the systematic effects they
have: phonological merger, split, rule addition, rule inversion, change in rule
order, etc.
Typical examples are Kiparskyb suggestion (1968) that changes in the
form and order of rules can be explained in terms of the formal relations
between the rules at the stage before the change, and Hreinn Benediktsson's
(1959) thesis that the development of the Icelandic vowel system was
determined by the hierarchical relations between phonological features before
or at the time of the changes.
As has been pointed out by, e.g., Jakobson (1931), a logical extension of
this way of thinking is that change may be "purposeful" or teleological in a
broad sense. Systematic relations may call for amendatory rearrangements, or
changes may occur according to a plan, latent in, but insufficiently carried out
by the preexistent corpus.
Lass (1974) sees several changes affecting the length of vowels in the
history of English as a "historical conspiracy" which aims at a simplification of
the system of vocalic length. I myself (1980) have made tentative suggestions
in a similar vein concerning the development of quantity and length in
Scandinavian.
In spite of its somewhat insecure status on the list of reputable terms in
historical linguistics, it is clear that the structuralist way of thinking entails the
22 KRISTJÁN ÁRNASON
concept of historical conspiracy and teleology, as long as we do not reduce it

to the absurd idea that languages somehow police their own changes by some
mystical will that they have (cf., for example, Vincent 1978). This is so
because the idea that structure lies behind actual linguistic data opens up the
possibility of thinking of structure which, given the complexities of real life,
still does not quite match any actual language data. Thus the concept of
historical conspiracy seems to be perfectly legitimate, once you adopt the,
some might say, mystical concept of linguistic structure.
Closely related to this way of thinking is Sapifs idea of drift. According
to Sapir (1921:155) drift "is constituted by the unconscious selection on the
parts of speakers of those individual variations that are cumulative in some
special direction", this direction presumably being defined by some abstract
structure.
The other approach to historical change that I would like to refer to briefly
at the outset is the sociolinguistic one. Linguists like William Labov, Peter
Trudgill and many others have shown that social factors will have an effect on
linguistic evolution. Social pressure can affect speech and influence speakers
in their choice of variable speech forms, and linguistic variables correlate with
social variables. This in turn will affect the fate of these linguistic features in
incidence and historical development. I have shown (Árnason 1987) that
speakers' awareness of linguistic variants may have an effect on the fate of
dialect features, and that official language policy may also play a role, even
though the direction or nature of the effect is not predictable.
Here again teleology, appropriately understood, enters the discussion,
since it would seem fair to say that, e.g., those speakers that drop their non-
prestige variants and pick up other ones in order to conform to some norm, do
so on purpose. This purpose may be nonetheless real for the fact that speakers
may not be aware of the phonetic details of the variants that they manipulate.
What is essential for this sort of change is that there be created a system of
variables defining the correlation between social values and linguistic features.
I will discuss here what I shall call two metarules, to borrow a term
coined, I think, by Roger Lass. I will show how these metarules are treated
differently by the social forces that interfere with the structural teleology.
2. The conspiracy for a stop in the rhyme.
The first three of these belong to something which I would call in

broader, perhaps somewhat more controversial terms, 4The conspiracy for a
stop in the rhyme'.
CONFLICTING TELEOLOGIES IN ICELANDIC PHONOLOGY 23
2 . 1 . F r i c a t i v e s after s o n o r a n t s . As can be seen from Table I, all

the Germanic languages show signs of a change from a voiced fricative to a
stop after sonorants (cf. Moulton 1954), but it is just as evident that each
dialect has its own way of realizing this in detail. The capitalized forms are
those where a stop has developed according to Moulton {op.cit).
Table 1.
Old High German is not relevant here, since all voiced fricatives have become
stops regardless of position.
The tendency to form a stop after sonorants can be described with the
help of a metarule:
This metarule can then be used to refer to the overall drift, and all the
individual changes that occur and conform to the rule can be said to conspire
towards reaching the goal of making it complete.
To describe the Old Icelandic situation, we have to write something like

this:
This is a fairly complex rule, but the situation is in fact even more
complicated, since when the Proto-Nordic syncope created new clusters of
sonorant + voiced obstruent, as in hvild (< ) "rest", talöa (<
* t a l i õ õ ) "considered", reynda (< *rauniöõ ) "tried" (from reyna (<
*raunijan ) "try"), the new clusters developed stops in more than one step. In
the earliest records of Old Icelandic, stops had developed only after heavy
stems. Thus forms like hçîõr "man", talöa "counted" and vanda "trained"
still have fricatives in Old Icelandic of the 12th and 13th centuries and did not
develop stops until the 14th century (cf. Celander 1906:57).
2.2. Historical changes. I will discuss here four changes that have
occurred in the history of Icelandic to alter the situation described in Table 1.
These are summarized in (3).
(3) a. ry, 1γ > rg, lg: borg, volg (general),

b. Ö > d after 1, η in light stems, and noncoronals in heavy stems:
talöa > taldi, vanva > vandi', démva > dæmdi (general).
c. rν > rb, lv > lb: orf> orb, tol f > tólb (dialectal).
d. rÖ> rd, (γ∂> yd> vö >vd): haröur >hardur (dialectal).
First, contrary to Old Icelandic, Modem Icelandic has a velar (or palatal)
stop after /r/ and N: borg [bore], varg [vart], volg [volt] "warm", gálgi
[gauljl]. This is uniform throughout the modern dialect area.
Secondly, the dental fricative becomes a stop after l and n in newly
developed light stems, and some environments in newly developed heavy
stems. The forms talöa, hçî∂r, dem∂n, etc., developed a d? to conform to the
other forms: talöa > taldi, hçî∂r > höldur, and dém∂a > dæmdi. This
happened in the 14th century (Celander 1906).
Thirdly, a change rv, lv > rb, lb is usually dated to the 14th century or
so (cf. Björn K. pórólfsson 1925:XXVI, Asgeir Bl. Magnusson 1959:18).
Thus orf > orb "hoe", kálfr > kálbr "calf. According to Björn K.
pórólfsson, this was a widespread dialect feature during the 15th, 16th and
17th centuries and, according to Asgeir Bl. Magnusson (loc.cit. ) the change
originated in the West and from there spread to the North, only to recede
again. There are some scanty records of this as late as the 19th century (cf.
Asgeir Bl. Magnusson 1959:23).
The variable representing this change was commented on by Eggert
Ólafsson, an 18th century reformist, who says in his book of spellings: "
vita allir a∂ pessi frambur∂ur me∂ b kallast nú bogumæli almúgans"
("Everyone knows that this pronunciation with b is now considered as the
deformed speech of the common people") (cf. Ami Bö∂tvarsson 1951:171).
The last variable in (3) involves more than adherence to Metarule I, since
it involves the development of a stop not only after a sonorant/i/, but also after
a fricative. We will see later that as a socially determined variable, hai∂'ur >
bardur is grouped with a change of the dental fricative to a stop after the labial
and the velar fricative: haf∂'i > hafdi, sagô'i > sagdi.
In a careful study, Asgeir Bl. Magnusson (1959) has shown that the
changes harô'ur > hardur, haf&i > havdi and sagô'i > sagdi , which
usually are called a dialect feature of Vestfiidir (the Western Fjords), must
have spread over a considerable part of the language area, from Myrasysla in
the West to Fljótsdalshéraö in the East, only to disappear again. There is
scattered, but conclusive, evidence to show that this feature survived down to
this century in places other than the Western Fjords, where it existed the
longest, but is now just about extinct (cf. Halldór Årmann Sigui∂sson 1982).
2 . 3 . Fricatives before sonorants. Besides developing stops out

of fricatives when followed by sonorants, Icelandic also shows a tendency to
develop stops before sonorants. This general tendency can be described with
the help of a metarule like:
But as can be seen from Table 2, there are notable exceptions from this. The
dental fricative has not been affected, and no change has occurred in front of
/r/.
The usual assumption is that in Old Icelandic all of these clusters had
fricatives as their first members, the forms with stops having developed in the
history of Icelandic.
The changes vl >  and vn > bn are usually dated to the 14th or 15th
centuries. According to pórólfsson (1925:XXVII) this pronunciation had
reached all geographical locations around 1600. The changes yl > gl and yn
> gn may have occurred somewhat later.
There is no dialect difference in the modern language connected with this
metarule. The features may all have escaped from social effects. Eggert
Ólafsson, the above-mentioned 18th-century scholar, is well aware of the
change vi >  (he does not mention the others), but it seems to have reached
all dialects in his time, and he does not make any judgements of its value.
2 . 4 . Fricative clusters. We have seen that clusters of two voiced

fricatives have also been affected by the tendency to develop stops in
postvocalic consonantism.
It is generally assumed that already in Common Germanic stops had
developed out of geminate voiced obstruents, but clusters of dissimilar voiced
obstruents are usually assumed to have been fricatives. The changes in
Icelandic either involved a change of the first or the second member of the
cluster into a stop. Table 3 summarizes the results as reflected in Modern
Icelandic. As can be seen, the conspiracy has not yet been completely
successful.
Proto-Germanic Cluster Modern Icelandic
The following changes have affected clusters of fricatives in the history of

Icelandic:
(5) a.
b . ( 3 d ) )
c.
Let us start by looking at the change of the first member of the cluster into
a stop, as pictured in (5a). This was a change of a fricative + fricative to stop
+ fricative: .
"said" >
The date of this change is uncertain, but it has been suggested that it
occurred in the 14th or 15th century, about the same time as some of the other
changes that we have been looking at.
As we shall see in Section 3, the pronunciation [b∂] and [g∂] is rapidly
on the decline. It is fairly common among older speakers, especially in the
northern and to some extent the western parts of Iceland, but very rare among
the younger generation. But as shown by Sigriffur póröardóttir (1977:32-33),
this feature must have been much more widespread in the 19th century. Her
evidence indicates that even in this century it was known throughout most of
the country, except for the East and Southeast.
Secondly, a fricative + fricative may become a fricative + stop:
As already mentioned (Section 2.2), the pronunciation [vd], [yd] (and

[rd]) is now just about extinct (cf. Halldór Armann Sigur∂sson 1982), but was
earlier to be found in several areas.
According to Ásgeir Blöndal Magnusson (1959), the change responsible
for this dialect feature started in the 14th or 15th century and gained ground in
some areas in the West, the North and the East, only to be driven back again,
presumably as a stigmatized variant.
The formal similarity between the changes in (5a) and (5b) makes them
compete for the same input. If they were both allowed to apply, that would
lead to the development of clusters of two stops: bd and gd. And indeed,
there are, albeit rare, records of such variants to be found.
Both of the stop variants (5a) and (5b) have been stigmatized. As late as
in 1954, a committee appointed by the Faculty of Philosophy at the University
of Iceland suggested that the pronunciation [bv] and [gv] should be avoided
(Halldórsson 1971:90). People using the pronunciation [vd] and [yd] are
known to have been the object of ridicule.
The third change (listed in (5c)), that of velar stop after a labial or a dental
fricative, has spread throughout the country. There are no signs of
stigmatization.
The net result for Modern Standard Icelandic is that only cluster final g
has become a stop in all environments.
2.5 The socio-historical effect. From the point of view of

dialectological incidence and success in the history of Icelandic, the processes
involving the development of stops after sonorants and fricatives can be
grouped as in (6):
(6)
But a classification like the one in (7) would be more natural from the
structural point of view:
(7)
Thus the socially defined variables are by no means predictable on

linguistic or structural grounds. Even though the actual clustering into
variables is, of course, not totally arbitrary, there is no apparent reason why
the subrules of the conspiracy should not cluster as in (7), which in fact is
formally simpler. Indeed, a host of other ways of clustering of the subrules
into variables can be thought of.
For example, formally Iv > rd, as in harõur > hardur "hard" could
easily be collapsed with lv > lb (tolf > tólb "twelve"), rv> rb (orf> orb
"hoe") and ry >rg (sorg "sorrow") under metarule (1) describing the
development of stops after sonorants. This would have filled all the empty
slots in Table 1. But the fact is that rö/rd was grouped with yd/yd and vυ/vd,
where the preceding consonant is a fricative. Also, on purely phonological
grounds νv' > vd and yv' >yd could just as easily have been grouped with vy
> vg and d'y > Òg, which spread throughout the dialect area.
A similar arbitrariness may be noted in the grouping of linguistic features
into sociolinguistic variables in a stigmatized syntactic variable in Modern
Icelandic. The so-called 'pkgufallssyld' 'dative sickness' refers to ' improper '
use of the dative case instead of the accusative in certain syntactic
environments. But for some speakers at least the term is applied to two
syntactically different things. On one hand, it refers to an analogical change
affecting non-nominative 'subjects' of verbs like langa "want" and vanta
"need". Thus the 'proper' Mig (ace.) langar "I want" becomes Mér (dat.)
langar, presumably on the analogy of Mér synist "I think, it seems to me".
But the term 'dative sickness' is also applied by some speakers (myself as a
youngster among them) to the 'improper' use of the dative in the object of the
verb pora "dare". Égpon  (.) "I dare it" is the appropriate usage as
opposed to the improper Égporípví (dat.). Here two formally different
things form in the mind of the speaker a single socially defined variable. From
the formal linguistic point of view the classification is quite arbitrary. What
counts is the social aspect. True, there has to be a structural feature by which
the variable is identified. In the case of dative sickness this is the relation
accusative-dative. In the case of, for example, the rd, fd, d variables, the
common denominator is v/d. But the basic point is that the choice of the
feature defining the variable is not uniquely determined on structural grounds.
3. Loss of stop after nasal.
The other conspiracy that I would like to talk about in this paper is the one
accounting for the deletion of stop after nasal in Icelandic.
The situation in Modern Icelandic is approximately the one given below:
(a) Regular deletion of all stops before stops:

hrìngdiang"
kembdi "combed"
(b) Optional deletion of all consonants before /s/:

lambsins [lamslns] / [lamtøslns] "the lamb (gen.def.)"
landsins [landslns] / [lanslns] "the land"
hringsins "the ring"
(c) Optional deletion of velar before nasal:

kambnum [kamljnYm] "the comb (dat.)"
sendnir "sandy (nom.pl.masc)"
vs.
"swollen (nom.pl. m.)"
(d) Dialectal deletion of velar, otherwise no deletion, before/V:

sumbla [sYmbla] "to drink" (all dialects)
svindla [svindla] "cheat" (all dialects)
krìngla [krirjla] "roll" (most areas)
krìngla [krirjêla] "roll" (the ngl-area)
(e) No deletion before /r/

gimbrar | "(female) lambs"
hindra [hindra] "to hinder"
angra "to annoy"
Although the tendency is clear (call it Metarule II), accounting accurately

for the Modern Icelandic situation requires extremely complicated statements,
as in the case of Metarule I, and the situation is far from being structurally
stable.
But there is a clear difference between the two metarules from the
sociolinguistic point of view. There have not been recorded, either in the
history of Icelandic or in the present-day discussion of language policy, any
observations or value judgements as to the social significance of any of the
variables connected with the loss of stop after nasal, either the geographically
limited one or the free ones.
It is difficult to picture the exact situation in Old Icelandic, but there are no
compelling reasons to assume that it was greatly different. Manuscript
spellings do not seem to indicate any great vacillation in this area. In fact,
since, for instance, no neutralization is associated with the loss of the stop after
a velar nasal and the nature of the deleted stop can be reconstructed on the
basis of the place of articulation of the preceding nasal, the loss is not likely to
be reflected in the spelling. The same applies to metrical evidence: the loss of
the stop did not involve any changes in the metrical value of linguistic fonns.
The so-called 'ngl-pronunciation', as studied by Björn Guofinnsson
(1946, 1964), is a feature of some northern areas in Iceland. Table 4 shows
statistics from three villages in the North. The town of Húsavík, in the region
of Suður-pingeyjarsysla in the eastern part of the North, showed the greatest
incidence of this variable in Guðfinnsson's survey in the early 1940s. Here,
50% of school children from 11 to 13 years of age had this pronunciation
regularly in their speech, whereas 10% had no traces of it. In other
communities in the North, such as Sauðárkrókur in the region of
Skagafjarðftarsysla, this feature was less common, as can be seen from Table
4.
Pure ngl 6.45 42.19 50.00

Mixed 48.39 43.75 40.00
Pure nl 45.16 14.06 10.00
Table 4. Ngl-pronunciation in the 1940s.
It is clear that both structurally and geographically the ngl-pronunciation

was a minor feature in the 1940s. Consequently, in view of the general
tendency for indigenous dialect features to give way to more standard ones, we
might have expected it to recede rather fast in the time that has passed since.
However, the opposite seems to be the case.
In a recent survey carried out in 1980 (Árnason 1987, Höskuldur
práinsson & Kristján Amason 1986), it turns out that the ngl-pronunciation is
relatively stable compared to other indigenous dialect features in the area. This
can be seen by comparing the results shown in Table 4 and Table 5.
The comparison shows that in the communities of Sauðárkrókur, Dalvik
and Húsavík the incidence of the ngl-variant has not decreased dramatically in
comparison to some other indigenous dialect features (cf. Árnason 1987). In
Dalvik, in fact, one might want to interpret the figures as showing a slight
increase in its incidence.
Age Age Age

12-20 Total 12-20 Total 12-20 Total
% % % % % %
Pure ngl 0.00 5.26 64.29 48.65 47.37 48.28
Mixed 20.00 15.79 14.28 21.62 21.06 20.69
Pure nj 80.00 78.95 21.43 29.73 31.57 31.03
Table 5. Ngl-pronunciation in the 1980s (figures from
Sigriður Sigurjónsdóttir 1985:15-16)
The relative stability of the feature can further be illustrated with the help
of Fig. 1, which shows the age distribution of the ngl-pronunciation in the
region of Skagafjörður, including the town of Sauðarkrókur. As can be seen,
it tums out that, unlike the other indigenous features, this one is least common
among the older speakers.
Mean: 124.2
Fig. 1. Ngl-pronunciation in Skagafjörður.
A typical indigenous feature is one that we have seen under Metarule I, namely
the stop pronunciation habbði and saggði (cf. (5b) and (6d) in the same area)
(cf. Árnason 1987, Höskuldurprainsson & Kristján Amason 1986).
In the 1940s this was found in northern areas, from Hunavatnssysla to

Norður-pingeyjarsysla. The center of this feature was Suður-pingeyjarsysla,
but it was also quite common in SkagafjörÖur and Eyjafjarðarsysla, as can be
seen from Table 6 (cf. Björn Guðffinnsson 1964:162-165).
Stop 13.93 22.30 34.17

Mixed 28.36 28.85 38.33
Fricative 57.71 48.85 27.50
Table 6. Stop pronunciation habðì and sagði in the 1940s.
Fig. 2, giving data from Skagafjarðarsysla and Sauðárkrókur, shows

clearly that this feature is rather dramatically on the decrease. It is virtually
unknown among the youngest speakers. The only age groups that have this
pronunciation to any considerable extent are the oldest ones.
Mean: 117.1
Fig. 2. Stop pronunciation in Skagafjördur in 1980.

4. Conclusion.
I have described here a series of recurrent changes in Icelandic that can be
said to follow metarules, in the sense that if successful, the results can be
accounted for by structurally simple statements. But the changes are not
carried out to the extent that the rules get to account for the resulting structure
in their simplest forms. As far as I can understand the concepts of drift and
conspiracy, if people are willing to speak in such terms, this is the sort of data
that would fit them.
But there is a difference between the rules belonging to the stop
conspiracy and the loss of stop after nasal in more than one respect. The
conspiracy for a stop in the rhyme seems to be more active or conspicuous, so
to speak, and to have caused more instability. More changes seem to have
occurred in the history of Icelandic that might be connected with this metarule
than with Metarule II, the one of deletion after nasal. The other, probably
related difference between the two is that Metarule I has been much more
subject to social forces than Metarule II, and linguistic features that may be
classified as belonging under Metarule I have even been the subject of overt
judgements by language authorities.
The changes according to the mie for deletion of stop after nasal, which is
left undisturbed, seem to spread more slowly than changes according to
Metarule I. This speaks against the otherwise somewhat attractive hypothesis
that if left alone by sociolinguistic forces, metarules would do their job as soon
as they could and have the changes over with. In fact, the force behind the
loss of stop after nasal is not enough to make the change complete in spite of
the fact that no disturbance seems to have occurred from social forces.
One more question remains, namely: why should one metarule be more
the subject of social marking than the other? How do linguistic features
acquire social values? It is clear that social forces can act negatively to thwart,
or positively to enhance, changes that have already started, but it is not
particularly likely that the difference in the initial 'strength' of the metarule can
be explained on social grounds. Nor can the social factors be held responsible
for the success, or lack of it, of all metarules.
It might be suggested that the difference in the extent to which the features
have become subject to social forces lies in the difference mentioned above,
that Metarule I typically involves a substitution of one phoneme, a stop, for
another, a fricative, whereas in the case of Metarule II, no phonemic
substitution occurs and the underlying stop is in many cases easily
reconstructable from the place of articulation of the remaining nasal. This is
the case since a nasal, not agreeing in place with its following consonant as,
for example, in lengd [leirjcįL or with a marked value like velar or palatal,
presupposes a floating stop responsible for the place features. This would
then perhaps make the variation resulting from the deletion of stop after nasal
less likely to be picked up by speakers as a variable. In other words, the

structural difference between the processes could be responsible for the
difference in the amount of interference from social forces. This can be related
to what Nigel Vincent (1978:416-417) calls the "Principle of Speaker's
Control", according to which a hierarchy of linguistic features may be set up
with semantics at the top and phonetics at the bottom. The idea is that the
further up the hierarchy the systemic difference lies between terms of variable
forms, the more easily it comes under the control of speakers.
But not all is told, since it is quite common for what would be called
subphonemic phonological differences to be markers of dialect. Thus the
difference between types of/r/, and the rules of its distribution, is one of the
clearest markers or indices of English dialects. This shows that distinctive
function is not a necessary condition for a systemic difference to become a
dialect marker. But Vincent's principle is only a cline, and it does not exclude
this sort of thing. Further research is needed in order to clarify this, but the
simple fact that a difference can be detected and a choice can be made makes
any variability in expression a potential candidate for a sociolinguistic marker.
The semiotic connection between the linguistic marker and its social value may
be clarified by lexicalizing it, that is to say by associating it with some lexical
material. This seems to have been the case in the famous test-word used by
the Geladites to identify the Ephraimites: shibboleth (with an alveolar or a
palatal sibilant). Although it may be that the Geladites made a phonemic
distinction that the Ephraimites did not, it is easy to imagine speakers coining
such test-words to identify subphonemic dialect variants. But it may still be
true that, other things being equal, it is more likely that phonemic differences
are picked up as dialect features than subphonemic ones.
REFERENCES
Árnason, Kristján. 1980. Quantity in Historical Phonology: The Case of

Icelandic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Árnason, Kristján. 1987. "Icelandic dialects forty years later: the
(non)survival of some northern and south-eastern features". The Nordic
Languages and Modem Linguistics 6 ed. by Pirkko Lilius & Mirja Saari,
79-92. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press.
Benediktsson, Hreinn. 1959. "The vowel system of Icelandic: a survey of
its history". Word 15.282-312.
Böðvarsson, Arni. 1951. "páttur um málfraðistorf Eggerts Ólafssonar".
Skírnir 125.156-172.
Celander, Hildig. 1906. Om ðvergangen ð > d i fornisländskan och
fornnorskan. Lund: Berlingska Boktrykkeriet.
GuÖfinnsson, Björn. 1946. Mállyzkur, I. Reykjavik: ísafoldarprentsmiðja.
Guðfinnsson, Björn. 1964. Mállyzkur, II. Reykjavik: Heimspekideild

Háskóla islands, Bókaútgáfa Menningaisjóðs.
Jakobson, Roman. 1931. "Prinzipien der historischen Phonologie". TCLP
4.247-267.
Kiparsky, Paul. 1968. "Linguistic universais and linguistic change".
Universals in Linguistic Theory ed. by Emmon Bach & Robert T.
Harms, 170-202. London, New York, Sydney & Toronto: Holt,
Rinehart & Winston.
Lass, Roger. 1974. "Linguistic orthogenesis? Scots vowel quantity and the
English length conspiracy". Historical Linguistics. Proceedings of the
First International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Edinburgh, 2- 7
September 1973, II ed. by John Anderson & Charles Jones, 311-352.
Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Magnusson, Asgeir Bl. 1959. "Um frambuiøinn rd, gd, fd". íslensk tunga -
Lingua Islandica. 1.7-25.
Moulton, William G. 1954. "The stops and spirants of Early Germanic".
Language 30.1-42.
Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech.
New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.
Sigurösson, Halldór Armann. 1982. "Smasaga vestan af fjördum". íslenskt
mal ogalmennmálfreedi 4.285-292.
Sigurjónsdóttir, Sigríður. 1977. Athugun a [ngl]-framburÕiípremursyslum
norðanlands. Ms. Reykjavik: University of Iceland.
Vincent, Nigel. 1978. "Is sound change teleological?". Recent
Developments in Historical Phonology ed. by Jacek Fisiak, 409-430.
The Hague: Mouton,
pórðardóttir, Sigrídur. 1977. "Um mismunandi framburda fð og gð í
íslensku". Mímir: blað'studenta í íslenskum frædum 25.28-38.
pórólfsson, Björn . 1925. Um íslenskar orðmyndir. Reykjavik:
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Íslenskt mál og ålmenn málfiæði 8.31-62.
LANGUAGE CHANGE: CYCLICAL OR LINEAR?
THE CASE OF THE ROMANCE FUTURE
BERNARD H. BICHAKJIAN
Catholic University, Nijmegen
1. Conflicting endeavors.
Language change has drawn from historical linguists varied and often
conflicting endeavors. Some have tried to explain it; others have sought to
score points by poking fun at these explanations. This is not the place to
discuss the theories of insightful thinkers such as Jespersen, Jakobson and
Martinet, or to review the conclusions of perspicacious observers such as
Meillet, Sapir, Weinreich or Labov.
My objective here will be to show that language changes are neither
exclusively cyclical nor exclusively linear. Both types exist, but, since lately
the tendency has been to conclude from cases of recurrent changes that all
linguistic changes are cyclical, I shall place emphasis on the linear changes
and, using the development of the French future as an example, shall
demonstrate that apparent cyclical changes should not block our view of the
underlying linear processes.
2. Cyclical changes.
Among the cyclical changes one may distinguish at least two types, the
pendular type and the recursive one. In both cases a given linguistic feature
appears periodically in a given language, but the two processes are different:
the first is one of reversal, the second of substitution.
2.1. Pendular changes. Changes are pendular when B, issued from

A, becomes A again. Such changes are not rare. Voiceless consonants, for
instance, can become voiced and change back to voicelessness (cf. Lat. s,
which became ζ in Old Spanish and later reverted to s). Diphthongs may be
simplified, yielding a monophthongal reflex which later develops into a new
diphthong (cf. Lat. ae, which became ε: in Late Latin and je in French, as in
caelum > ciel "sky"). Syllable structure may also change back and forth. It
38 BERNARD H. BICHAKJIAN
was predominantly CVC in Vulgar Latin; it became CV in Old French, and it

has been increasingly CVC since then (cf. Klausenburger (1970) for statistical
data). The pendular nature of these processes becomes clearer when these
changes are contrasted with irreversible ones. In an article on diachronic
universais, Greenberg rightly observed that "ii is a possible source for i, but i
is not a possible source for ΰ" (1966:516). Therefore, voicing is a pendular
change, but the unrounding of y is not.
2.2. Recursive changes. In pendular changes the recurrence of the

original is produced by the reversal of the initial process. But it is also
possible for the apparently original item to derive from another source.
Through a recursive process, A can become  and be endlessly replaced by
new As whose outputs keep supplanting B. Through such a process, perfects
slip into the role of preterites and are later unseated by subsequently-formed
perfects. The Lat. feci "I have done" came to mean "I did", and later its
French reflex je fis was replaced by j'ai fait, which originally had been
formed to serve as a perfect, but which also had acquired preterital value.
Another example of a recursive change is provided by the process whereby
structures are often replaced with analytic ones as they become synthetic. The
Lat. unde "whence" was originally a compound form made of pronominal and
ablative morphemes, but when the identities of the two elements had become
blurred, i.e. when unde had become a synthetic form, speakers began saying
*de unde, an analytic form which in turn became synthetic (cf. Fr. dont).
Today, when it is a relative, dont is generally replaced by d'où. In
interrogative constructions, d'où is the only form possible. This recursive
creation of analytic formations may be integrated into the broader quest for
transparency (cf. Eng. I am going to, which is often preferred to I will, and
in our own linguistic jargon such terms as 'insertion' and 'truncation' which
are used instead of the less transparent 'epenthesis' and 'apocope').
The above examples of recursive changes yield a twofold observation.
On one hand, the original item reappears periodically (the perfect tense or a
synthetic form). On the other, the processes themselves are not reversible:
preterites do not become perfects and synthetic forms do not become analytic.
Therefore, what is cyclical in recursive changes is the periodic reoccurrence of
a given item. In pendular changes the original item also reappears, but the
process is also reversible.
LANGUAGE CHANGE: CYCLICAL OR LINEAR? 39
3. Linear changes.
The history of languages also offers changes where neither the process
reverses itself nor does the original item return through another natural change.
I shall call these changes linear or evolutionary.
In the Indo-European languages vowel quantity has been receding, while
vowel quality is taking over the burden of providing phonological distinctions.
A lopsided consonantal system made up almost exclusively of stops with
secondary and tertiary articulations has evolved into systems with largely
simple consonants evenly or nearly evenly divided among stops and fricatives,
cf., for instance, the Indo-European and French sets of obstruents.
Declensions have given way to prepositions and articles; personal

endings are replaced with subject pronouns; bound morphemes expressing
causality, mood, voice, tense and the like have been supplanted by auxiliaries;
aspect-dominated conjugational systems have turned into tense-dominated
ones. In syntax subordination has developed and replaced many participial
and infinitival constructions, cf., for instance, Lat. Credebas dormienti haec
tibi confecturos déos? (Ter. Ad 693), which requires two subordinate
clauses in English: "Did you think that the gods would take care of things for
you while you slept?" Finally all grammatical structures have been shifting
gradually from the left- to the right-branching type, e.g. Lat. [[[[mell]e]
dulcjior]and the Fr. [plus [doux [que [le miel]]]] "sweeter than honey" (for a
detailed study of the shift from left to right branching, cf. Bichakjian 1987).
These processes have not worked at the same rate in all Indo-European
languages, and occasional outside attempts to reverse these natural processes
are not excluded. The Renaissance grammarians' efforts to reshape the
languages of Europe after the Latin model is a telling example. But such
interventions remain artificial, and languages inevitably resume their natural
evolutionary course, be it at their own individual rates and in their own
individual fashion (for a discussion of the ill-fated attempt to introduce vowel

quantity in French, cf. Bichakjian 1986).
The above examples of evolutionary changes and the attendant caveats
belong admittedly to the Indo-European languages, but the processes involved
do not conflict with those found in the Afro-Asian, Finno-Ugric, Altaic or
Dravidian languages. In fact, they apply at least partially to them as well.
There is no conflict either with the American Indian, African and Sumerian
languages, but since these languages display structures that are somewhat
different from those observed in the Indo-European ones other or additional
evolutionary processes will probably be found in them (for an exploratory
study, cf. Bichakjian, Forthcoming). Whatever the disparities it is interesting,
for instance, to observe in Sumerian, a language spoken in Mesopotamia
before ca. 1600 B.C., the occurrence of postposed relative clauses in ordinary
style and of preposed ones "in poetischer oder gehobener Sprache" (Poebel
1923:100). This observation, along with other data, suggests that Sumerian
had already started with the initial steps of a shift from left to right branching.
But this is not the place to compare the features of non-Indo-European
languages with those of the Indo-European family. It is sufficient that the
above examples of linear changes may be said either to apply to the non-Indo-
European languages or at least not to conflict with them.
In the absence of data conflicting with the linear nature of the processes
given in this section - future research may of course reveal the need to amend
certain statements - the analysis of spontaneous changes can be summarized as
such. Either (a) the input of a change returns through a reversal of the process
or comes from another source (cf. respectively, the alternate voicing and
devoicing of Latin s in Spanish and the successive creation of new perfects to
replace former ones that have become preterites), or (b) the input disappears
from the language (cf., for instance, the elimination of declensions). The
evidence permits us, therefore, to conclude that languages undergo not only
cyclical changes but also linear ones. By the very nature of their linearity these
changes embody the evolution of languages.
4. The evolution of the French future.
The foregoing was not a detailed discussion of spontaneous changes, but

I hope sufficient data were presented to show the existence of both cyclical and
linear changes. In the remaining sections of this paper I shall focus on the
French future and argue that a series of superficial cyclical changes should not
obscure our view of the linear process that underlies the origin and
development of this tense.
4 . 1 . The superficial view. If one considers the forais Lat. cantãbõ

(< canta + a cognate form of Eng. I be), Fr. je chanterai (< cantare habeõ)
and je vais chanter, all meaning "I shall sing" or "I am going to sing", one
may be tempted to conclude that language change is cyclical and support this
view with the recursive creation of analytic sequences to replace previous
forms that were or have become synthetic. As already mentioned in Section
2.2, the periodic replacement of synthetic forms with analytic ones is an
empirical matter and, as such, cannot be disputed. However, there is more to
the evolution of the future than the above cycle.
4 . 2 . A less superficial view. To understand the evolution of the

French future one must start at its source, which is shrouded in the haze and
mist of the dawn of Latin. Indo-European had no future tense. Indeed only
one temporal distinction was made in the protolanguage, that between the
present and the past. This distinction, moreover, was possible only in the
imperfective aspect of the indicative. In contrast with this poorly developed
temporal system, Indo-European, in addition to the indicative and the
imperative, had two moods: the subjunctive and the optative. The former
indicated "un procès qu'on compte voir se réaliser, soit qu'on le veuille ... soit
qu'on l'attende simplement", while the latter served to express "une chose
possible ... [ou] souhaitée" (Meillet 1964:224-226; emphasis omitted).
4 . 2 . 1 . The temporalization of the future. Latin initiated in the

above-described part of grammar a double change. On one hand, it reduced
the two subjective moods to one, creating a new subjunctive, parts of whose
suppletive morphology can be traced back to the thematic markers of the Indo-
European optative (cf. the subjunctives velim "I want" and edim "I eat"). On
the other hand and in a related change, Latin converted the ancestral
subjunctive into a future tense whose forms, except for the first person
singular and for the first two conjugations, are those of the Indo-European
subjunctive (cf. the Lat. ferëtis "you (pl.) will bear" and the cognate Greek
and Vedic subjunctives phérëte and bháratha respectively; these and the
preceding examples are from Meillet & Vendryès 1979:294 and 291).
This reorganization of the Indo-European verbal system clearly indicates
that Latin replaced a modal distinction with a temporal one. This is not to say
that the Latin future could not have a modal value at times. Meillet & Vendryès
give examples showing that it could also express inner deliberation,
probability, mild commands and general truths (1979:290), and such nuances
can also be conveyed by the Modern French future (cf. Grevisse 1961:641-
642 for comparable examples and also Fleischman 1982:129-133). Yet, none
of these peripheral values can take away the fact that the primary function of
the French and Latin futures is to indicate "la simple postériorité d'un fait par
rapport au moment où I'on parle" (Grevisse 1961:641). For that reason they
are tenses which, moreover, are well integrated into the temporal system of
their respective languages. Thus the first step in the development of the future
was a shift from a modal to a temporal distinction. Such a shift is not cyclical,
but belongs to the linear evolution of languages.
In an otherwise solid piece of scholarship, Suzanne Fleischman has:
envisaged ... a continuous three-stage process
[based on her interpretation of] the simple Romance futures (Fr. chanterai, Sp.
cantaré, Ptg. cantarei)( 1982:108).
She argues that:
as they evolve progressively into markers of primary modality, their tense function
comes to be taken over by analytic go-futures, which have begun to fuse in certain
Hispanic dialects, thereby initiating a new phase of the cycle, as it were {ibid).
First of all, the fusing of voy a dormir "I am going to sleep" into yo
vadormir approximately "I gonna sleep" is irrelevant for the discussion of the
alleged cyclical alternation of modality and tense. The periodic replacement of
synthetic forms by analytic ones is not disputed, of course, but it is another
matter; and purely morphological changes should not be confused with the
evolution of grammatical distinctions. Grammatical values may change while
their markers remain the same (cf., for instance, the Indo-European sub
junctive which in part became a future in Latin while the corresponding
marker, -è-, remained the same, at least in the root verbs; and conversely
cantare habeõ, which supplanted cantãbõ without there being a change in the
temporal system of the language).
Second, French, for one, lends scarce empirical evidence for saying that
"as they [i.e. the Romance simple futures] evolve progressively into markers
of primary modality, their function comes to be taken over by analytic futures"
(Müller 1975:82). A change is indeed taking place: je vais chanter is in the
process of replacing je chanterai, but although it is receding in frequency je
chanterai has by no means lost its temporal value.
Discriminating speakers may perceive a difference between the two

futures, but the difference is aspectual. To Sauvageot "il semble bien qu'une
distinction soit sentie ... la construction périphrastique indiquerait une sorte de
futur de certitude .... En d'autres termes ... un futur perfectif" (1962:96).
Imbs presents a concurring analysis. In elle se manera Van prochain "she will
marry next year", "le tour est... neutre", but in elle va se maner l'an prochain
"she is going to marry next year" aller builds "un pont entre le présent et
l'avenir" (1960:56). Thereby a future is produced which mirrors the present
perfect - a parallel which is also observed by Fleischman (1982:98-99).
It is clear from both analyses that if there is a difference between the two
futures the distinction is not made by the synthetic form being marked for
modality, but by the analytic one being marked for aspect. And as this
aspectual feature is lost (for the positive markedness of the perfective future,
cf. Comrie 1976:119), the analytic form replaces the synthetic one. The
replacement of je chanterai by je vais chanter can be analysed as the
temporalization of the latter, but not as the modalization of the former.
Moreover, there is no indication that the French synthetic future is
becoming a "marker... of primary modality" in idiolects or registers where the
future tense takes only the analytic form. In such grammars, the modalities
that could be conveyed by the future tense are expressed either with the
analytic form itself or, when that is not possible, with a specific modal
auxiliary, an adverb, or simply with the present tense. Therefore, instead of
Vous prendrez bien une tasse de thé avec moi?
"You'll have a cup of tea with me, won't you?"
exclusive users of the analytic form will say
Vous allez bien prendre...
"You are going to have ..."
instead of
Il aura oublié notre rendez-vous.
"He probably forgot our appointment."
either
Il a dû oublier...
"He must have forgotten ..."
or, as in English,
II a sans doute oublié...

"He has probably forgotten ..."
and, finally, instead of
A regard des voleurs, on ne sera jamais assez prudent

"When it comes to thieves, one can never be too careful"
something like
Contre les voleurs, on (ne) prendjamais assez de précautions.

"Against thieves, you're never too careful."
(The examples of synthetic futures and their glosses are from Fleischman
1982:129-132.)
Whatever the alternatives, the French data lend no empirical support to the
idea that the synthetic forms of the future tense are becoming those of a mood,
and thereby raise serious doubts about the basis of the alleged mood-tense-
mood cycle. Instead, the empirical evidence shows that modality conveyed
once by grammatical moods and later as overtones of a tense is now more and
more expressed by the corresponding adverb or auxiliary. This series of
changes suggests that the main process is not cyclical but linear.
As I stated above, the evolution of the grammatical system and that of the
morphological items that represent it should be clearly distinguished. The
mood-and-aspect-dominated verbal system of the protolanguage developed
into an increasingly more tense-dominated system, starting in Latin and
continuing to this day. At one time in the prehistory of Latin, this process
produced a future tense - with possible ' modal applications' - but from the
earliest Latin texts to the French of today there has always been a future tense.
The markers have been renewed, and each time the new periphrastic
constructions became devoid of their original values, but the grammatical value
of the future tense has remained primarily that of a tense.
Perhaps an example from American political life can help make my point.
Every four or eight years a new president takes office. The new chief
executive may have served previously as senator or governor, but no one
would claim that the American presidency alternates periodically with the
offices of senator or governor. The office holders come and go, but the office
remains essentially the same. In the case of the future, the forms go on
succeeding each other, bringing about the periodic return of analytic forms, but
the grammatical function (tense + attendant 'modal applications') has remained
the same since it emerged.
Until someonefindsa language that had first a verbal system with a future
tense and no subjunctive mood, and through a natural evolutionary process has
shifted to a system without a future tense but with a subjunctive mood in its
stead, the temporalization of the future can rightly be considered a linear
process.
4.2.2. The change of auxiliary from BE to HAVE. Behind the
cyclical return of analytic forms, the morphology of the future has also
undergone linear changes. As mentioned above, the root verbs, i.e. those of
the third and fourth conjugations, used for their futures the thematic vowel of
the ancestral subjunctive, i.e. e, for all but the first person singular, and for
the latter the thematic vowel of an Italic subjunctive, i.e. a. But in the absence
of a suitable etymological vowel for the first and second conjugations, Latin
had recourse to a periphrastic construction in which the nominal form of the
verb was combined with the subjunctive aorist of the Latin cognate of to be,
hence cantābõ and monebõ. While these forms are normally glossed as "I
shall sing" and "I shall warn", respectively, it should be borne in mind that
with the auxiliary being in the subjunctive aorist these periphrases originally
must have had a perfective value (cf. for their Modern French equivalents
Sauvageot and Imbs quoted above in Section 4.2.1).
Attempts to level the -ë-/-bo allomorphy and to reshape the future of the
fourth conjugation on the model of the first two were, of course, to be
expected. Not only was the -bō future more transparent, or at least more
substantial, but the verbs of these conjugations were morphologically more
popular (cf. cantōre for  "to sing" and Late Latin or Romance endere
for cndere). Forms such as audîbo are indeed attested throughout the
history of Latin, but the analogical future "a été évité par les écrivains
classiques" (Meillet & Vendryès 1979:291). The elegant way of eliminating
the allomorphy and solving the phonological problems that developed in the
later years was to replace the two futures (the one in-e-and the one in -bõ)
with a new periphrasis, hence cantare habès and audîre habës instead of the
allomorphic cantnbis and audiës.
Doing away with infelicitous allomorphy and introducing by the same
token a more transparent construction are common and indeed cyclical
phenomena (cf. the Humboldt universal which stresses the naturalness of the
one-form-one-meaning correspondences and also Fleischman 1982:103-108
for a discussion of the synthetic-analytic cycles). But it should be observed
that along with these cyclical phenomena there occurred another change which
deserves special consideration: the auxiliary is no longer BE but HAVE.
The observed change in auxiliaries is not a cyclical one. BE and HAVE

do not alternate periodically in this function; instead there is a unidirectional
shift from BE to HAVE (cf. Vendryès 1937 for a broad selection of examples).
The shift from BE to HA VE, which is also visible in the formation of Romance
perfect tenses, belongs to a very profound change in the conception of
grammar.
As auxiliary or lexical item, HAVE is a latecomer in languages. Indo-
European did not have such a verb and indicated possession through the well-
known construction illustrated by the Lat. mihi est liber "to me is a book" or
in modern phraseology "I have a book". To understand this lexical lacuna and
the attendant syntactic idiosyncrasy one must recall that the protolanguage
made a distinction between active and middle verbs. Active verbs denoted an
activity outside the subject, while the middle indicated that the subject was the
seat of the action (cf. Benveniste 1966:172). Like live, go, eat, etc., BE was
an active verb, hence the possibility of having mihi est liber. But apparently
HAVE could not be integrated into such a system since it was neither active (cf.
the present day impossibility of saying *a book is had by me ) nor middle.
Indeed, extant languages that make a grammatical distinction between subject-
exterior and subject-interior types of action have no verba habendi (Klimov
1977:315).
The ancestral active-vs.-middle diathesis was at first preserved in Latin
(cf. on one hand the active vivō "I live", i.e. "I exercise the activity of living"
and on the other the deponent  "I die", i.e. "I undergo death"). This
was a cognitive distinction, but Latin gradually moved away from such
distinctions and developed purely grammatical functions, e.g. subject and
object instead of agent and seat of action, and active and passive voices instead
of an active-vs.-middle diathesis. These developments undermined the
existence of deponent verbs and made a verbum habendi possible. Hence the
Lat. habeõ, meaning formally "to hold" (see also Bichakjian 1988a:95-107).
Moreover the ancestral aspectual system, based on a hie et nunc
apprehension of the cognitive data, gave way to a more reasoned system, one
organized around temporal distinctions (cf. Bichakjian 1988b for a discussion
of the development of Latin and Romance verbal systems). This change
brought along a shift from BE, a characteristic feature of aspectual systems, to
HAVE, the auxiliary of languages with predominantly temporal distinctions.
The creation of a true passive, the receding course of deponents, the
appearance of a verbum habendi, the rise of temporal distinctions and the
replacement of the auxiliary BE with HAVE do not just coincide by chance.
These developments are all related to the gradual shift from cognitive to
grammatical distinctions. Therefore, behind the cyclical return of an analytic
form one must not fail to see in cantare habeõ the linear change of the
auxiliary from BE to HAVE, including the underlying processes.
4.2.3. From left to right branching. After a future tense evolved

out of a modal ancestor and in a subsequent change HA VE came to be used
instead of BE, a new process began to operate: je vais chanter is now
replacing je chanterai. The psycholinguistic advantage is manifest:
Dans la conversation familière et dans le langage soutenu, le rôle des temps
périphrastiques (futur ... du type: il va venir) est peut-être un moyen d'esquiver la
difficulté des conjugaisons, et non exclusivement une façon de s'opposer aux temps
simples correspondants, par une valeur spécifique (Désirat & Horde 1976:142).
(Cf. also Section 4.2.1 above and mutatis mutandis Section 4.2.2.) Hereby
an analytic form is again supplanting a synthetic one. The cyclical nature of
this process is of course obvious and thereby undeniable. But it should also
be noted that the receding item is the former cantare habeõ, where the auxiliary
followed the infinitive, and the advancing one je vais chanter, where the
auxiliary precedes.
The discussion concerning the order of syntactic and, to the extent they
are included, of morphological elements has often been conducted in terms of
the relative position of Subject and Object in reference to the Verb, a mode of
patterning clearly inspired by Greenberg (1963). There can be no doubt that
Greenberg's typological data and the corollary implicational universais are
extremely useful, but they are data and as such require careful interpretation.
Such a carefully thought-out interpretation of Greenberg's data was
offered by Chomsky (for an acknowledgement of his debt, cf. Chomsky
1986:21). Chomsky, who had briefly observed the dichotomy between left-
and right-branching structures (1965:12-14), went on, after the X-Bar Theory
had formalized the notions of 'head' and 'modifier' (or 'complément'), to posit
in his modular conception of grammar the existence of a "head-complement
parameter", which "languages may ... set... in one way or another" (1981:7
and cf. also 1986:88). In other words, languages are either left or right
branching (i.e. modifier-head or head-modifier). In reality, this generalization
is extreme: there are left- and right-branching structures, and individual
languages include a more or less overwhelming majority of one or the other.
Nevertheless, the true distinction is indeed between left and right branching.
When one applies the branching dichotomy to the analysis of the historical
data, it becomes apparent that grammatical structures have been steadily
shifting from left to right branching (for a discussion of this process in the
Indo-European languages, cf. Bichakjian 1987 and 1988a: 141-147, and fora
detailed study of this process in Latin and French, cf. Bauer 1987). And as je
vais chanter, where the auxiliary is the head and the infinitive the modifier, is
replacing the former cantare habeö, another left-branching structure is
making room for aright-branchingone. This is an example, therefore, not just
of an analytic form replacing a synthetic one but also rather of a head-first
structure supplanting the more archaic type. By so doing, the language is
moving one step further in the evolutionary course that goes from left to right
branching. This process is not cyclical, but linear.
5. Cyclical changes and evolutionary processes.
After arguing that "linguistic drift has direction", Sapir poignantly added:
"We feel rather that our language is practically a fixed system and that what
slight changes are destined to take place in it are as likely to move in one
direction as another. The feeling is fallacious" (1949:155).
The history of the Latin and French futures lends mutatis mutandis full
support to both the positive and negative parts of Sapins conclusion. On one
hand, the periodic replacement of a synthetic form with an analytic one may
lead an observer to assume that all linguistic changes are cyclical, but the
assumption is "fallacious". On the other hand, the temporalization of a mood,
the change of auxiliary from BE to HAVE, and the shift from left-branching to
right-branching structures, all of which are linear processes, support the view
that language evolution "has direction" (for a discussion of how this direction
can be described and of what could explain the process, cf. Bichakjian 1988a).
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syntaxiques du latin au français". Travaux de Linguistique 14-15:95-
107.
Benveniste, Emile. 1966. "Actif et moyen dans le verbe". Problèmes de
linguistique générale, vol. I, 168-175. Paris: Gallimard.
Bichakjian, Bernard H. 1986. "When do lengthened vowels become long?
Evidence from Latin and French, and a paedomorphic explanation".
Studies in Compensatory Lengthening ed. by W. Leo Wetzeis & Engin
Sezer, 11-36. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Foris.
Bichakjian, Bernard H. 1987. "The evolution of word order: a
paedomorphic explanation". Papers from the Vllth International
Conference on Historical Linguistics ed. by Anna Giacalone Ramat,
Onofrio Carruba & Giuliano Bernini, 87-107. (= Current Issues in
Linguistic Theory, 48.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
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Bichakjian, Bernard H. Forthcoming. "From family tree to phylogeny".
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Paris: Bordas.
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Strukturen, Tendenzen. Heidelberg: Winter.
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Klincksieck.
SYNTACTIC RECONSTRUCTION AND FINNO-UGRIC
LYLE CAMPBELL
State University of New York at Albany
0. Introduction.
Throughout the history of comparative linguistics a prevalent opinion has

been that syntactic reconstruction is difficult (if not impossible) and often that it
is fundamentally different from phonological and morphological recon
struction, e.g., as stated by Jucquois (1976:232, 251):
La reconstruction syntactique n'est généralement pas bordée dans les travaux
comparatifs. Elle diffère fondamentalement de la comparaison phonologique et de la
comparaison morpho-lexicale et ne permet pas d'aboutir au même type de résultats.
En résumé, la comparaison syntactique n'est possible que dans certains cas.
Watkins (1969:17) assessed the history of Indo-European comparative syntax

equally pessimistically.
Wir dürfen uns darüber keine Illusionen machen: Nach 150-jähriger Entwicklung
und Verbesserung der vergleichenden Methode und Herstellung des
Urindogermani schen sind wir heute nicht fähig, auch nur einen einzigen
wohlgeformten Satz von trivialster Verwickeltheit in dieser Sprache zu
rekonstruieren.
The abundant recent attention to the topic has not improved the situation much.
Winter (1985:623), for example, favors one extreme:
there cannot be a reconstructional comparative syntax except for the marginal area
of strings transmitted with the intent that they be learned as such.
Hock (1985:49) falls at the other extreme:

the claimed fundamental difference between phonological and syntactic
reconstruction is spurious. In addition, the general conclusion, that syntactic
reconstruction is impossible, will be shown to be unacceptable.
Recent attitudes toward syntactic reconstruction range from favorable (e.g.,

Dressier 1971; Harris 1985, 1986; Hock 1985; Vincent 1980; Watkins
52 LYLE CAMPBELL
1963, 1964) to extremely pessimistic (Lightfoot 1979:154-166, Winter 1984;

cf. also Campbell & Mithun 1981, Jeffers 1976, and Norman & Campbell
1978). From all sides, however, there is considerable agreement concerning
the difficulty of reconstructing grammar. My purposes in this paper are: (a) to
examine the claimed obstacles to syntactic reconstruction via the comparative
method; (b) to assess the potentials for circumventing the troubles they
occasion; and (c) ultimately to determine how bright the prospects for
successful syntactic reconstruction are. I will illustrate the difficulties and
proposed solutions to them with comparative grammatical material from the
Balto-Finnic and related Finno-Ugric languages.
1. Obstacles.
Syntactic reconstruction is understandably made difficult by the factors

that typically complicate the comparative method in general, e.g., ANALOGICAL
CHANGE (OR RESTRUCTURING), BORROWING, ACCIDENTAL SIMILARITY, AND PARALLEL
DEVELOPMENT IN ACCORD WITH TYPOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS AND LINGUISTIC
UNIVERSALS. In addition, as many affirm, syntactic change lacks a direct
analogue to the REGULARITY and DIRECTIONALITY of sound change, which are so
useful in phonological reconstruction (cf. Campbell & Mithun 1981, Harris
1985, Hock 1985, Jeffers 1976, Lightfoot 1979, Miranda 1976). In addition,
it has been claimed (e.g.,Lightfoot 1979, 1981; Warner 1983) that syntactic
reconstruction in principle is not possible, since grammars are created anew by
each subsequent generation, i.e. there is no continuity between grammars of
different generations. This potentially serious obstacle is also addressed.
In this paper I will be concerned mainly with the complicating factors, but
will also consider things claimed as positive aids to the reconstruction of
grammar, viz. morphological reconstruction, relics and archaisms, and pattern
regularities. The final objective is to assess the prospects for successful
syntactic reconstruction.
Some issues often presumed to be serious obstacles to syntactic
reconstruction I do not take up here. For example, some cite limitations on
available data (e.g., lack of earlier attested stages or gaps in the corpus of
available texts for dead languages) as a serious problem (e.g., Lightfoot
1979:5-7). The quality of the available information is an important
consideration in all historical enterprises and has no special status in historical
syntax; one does the best one can with the extant material. In the many
instances where one compares the grammars of living languages, serious gaps
in the data should not be a serious problem, since they could be filled in
through additional investigation. The same comment holds for the lament
SYNTACTIC RECONSTRUCTION AND FINNO-UGRIC 53
about the lack of native-speaker intuitions for dead languages; one has to work
with what is available. With living languages, one can be on firmer ground;
with texts one has to employ careful philological techniques. Another oft-
heralded problem is the current lack of an adequate synchronic theory of
syntax. This is unfortunate, but it can hardly be the case that in the absence of
a definitive formal theory we cannot talk about grammatical developments in
the languages we study. With both traditional grammar and the modern
theories there is enough clear terminology and common concepts for us to be
able to talk reasonably well about how grammars work, how their pieces fit
together, and how they might change. Lack of complete success at framing an
adequate formal theory of language in no way means that we cannot describe
and compare aspects of grammars for the purposes of postulating earlier stages
in clear, respectable and replicable ways. The current attention to linguistic
typology is a case in point; it reveals much about the interaction of
grammatical elements without the benefits of a formal theory. Surely our
historical comparative interests are no worse off for the lack of an adequate
synchronic theory of syntax than these cross-linguistic typological
comparisons.
2. Balto-Finnic and related languages.
The data against which the obstacles to and prospects for comparative
reconstruction of syntax will be judged are primarily from the Balto-Finnic
subgroup of the Uralic family, of which the Finno-Ugric branch is best
known. The relationship among these languages is shown in Table 1, the
Uralic family tree.
Uralic scholars have been very successful in reconstructing the grammar
of this family and its subgroups. Some general features postulated for Proto-
Uralic (PU) and for Proto-Balto-Finnic (PBF) are mentioned here as a prelude
to the assessment of how well this syntactic reconstruction holds up against the
obstacles to reconstruction that must be dealt with.
Some general features of Proto-Uralic grammar are the following. Dual
(*-(-)) contrasted with plural (*-t and *-j) and singular (ø). There were
three so-called grammatical cases and three relational (locative) cases. The
accusative was the ordinary case of the object, but the object of a finite verb in
the imperative mood had no accusative marker. Case marking and definiteness
were linked; the genitive and accusative cases implied definiteness; indefinite
nouns took no marking (called 'absolutive', equivalent to nominative). In its
syntactic functions, the genitive case, called an 'attribute', served to signal the
adjunction of possessed noun with possessor and of an adjective attribute
54 LYLE CAMPBELL
Group Population
A. Finno-Ugric Division
1. Balto-Finnic group
Finnish 5,000,000
Estonian 1,000,000
Karelian 138,000
Veps 16,000
Votie a few dozen
Livonian 300
2. Lapp* 36,000
3. Volga Balto-Finnic group
Mordvin 1,200,000
Cheremis (or Mari) 622,000
4. Permic group
Zyrian (or Komi) 478,000
Votyak (or Udmurt) 714,000
5. Ob-Ugric group
Ostyak (or Khanty) 21,000
Vogul (or Mansi) 7,600
6. Hungarian 14,000,000
B. Samoyedic Division
1. Nenets (or Yurak) 25,000
2. Enets (or Yenesey Samoyed) 400
3. Ngansan (or Tavgi) 1,000
4. Selkup (or Ostyak Samoyed) 4,300
♦Lapp and BF together called BF-Lapp.
Table 1. The Uralic family (after Korhonen 1984).
before its head noun. It has been hypothesized that a separate objective
conjugation existed which refers to the definite object of a transitive verb; it
was formed through the substitution of the possessive suffixes of the nominal
declension for the ordinary verbal personal endings for the 'actors' (agents?).
Proto-Uralic had the tenses: *-j "past", *- "past (perfect)", *-pA "present",
*-śA "past". Imperative forms and the tenses were formed on verbal noun
bases. The 2nd person singular was otherwise unmarked and hence had *-k,
equivalent to the derivation of verbal nouns with *-k. There was a negative
(auxiliary) verb, *e-. A sentence minimally consisted of a nominal subject + a
verbal or nominal predicate; the subject could be signaled by use of the
'personal conjugation', i.e. with personal suffixes on the predicate (noun or
verb). The predicate agreed with its subject; no other agreement existed. In
embedded clauses, the predicate was expressed as a verbal noun without the
personal conjugation (i.e. the usual personal suffixes of the verb), but rather
by use of personal possessive suffixes to signal its subject. The role of the
embedded clause in the matrix sentence was shown by the appropriate case
marking on the verbal noun (nominalization) of the subordinate form. No
conjunctions nor relative pronouns existed; embedded verbal noun
(nominalization) constructions were the only means of showing subordination.
Finally, word order was SOV. (Cf. Hakulinen 1968; Janhunen 1982;
Korhonen 1981a, 1981b, 1984; Laanest 1982.)
The Balto-Finnic subfamily has been fairly innovative syntactically.
Some general characteristics are the following. It has roughly three times as
many cases as Proto-Finno-Ugric had, and most case functions have changed,
at least in part. The dual has been lost, in verb conjugations all but the first
and second person singular present are of secondary development. Of the
imperative forms, only the second person singular goes beyond early Proto-
Balto-Finnic. The negative verb in part has lost its tense and aspect markers.
Of the verbal nominalization forms, only the so-called third and fourth
infinitives go back beyond early Proto-Balto-Finnic. The first and second
infinitives and both participle markers have developed their modern functions
only in early Proto-Balto-Finnic times or later. The most notable syntactic
departures of Balto-Finnic from general Finno-Ugric, which will be the topic
of discussion in this paper, are:
(a) Copula: Balto-Finnic and Lapp have a copula (the verb olla "to be" or its
cognates) with nominal predicates. Other Finno-Ugric languages have no
copula except where it is needed to bear tense, mood or person.
(b) Agreement: adjectives agree with their heads in case and number in
Balto-Finnic, but not in other languages.
(c) Word order: Balto-Finnic and Lapp have SVO basic word order; other
members of the family typically are SOV.
(d) Complex sentences: coordination and subordination are by conjunctions

in Balto-Finnic and Lapp; many other Finno-Ugric languages have
asyndetic adjunction rules, and subordination is uniquely or mainly
through the nominalization of verbs. In a few of the other languages the
use of conjunctions has only in the very latest times begun to increase,
under Russian influence.
56 LYLE CAMPBELL
(e) Partitive: Balto-Finnic languages have created a partitive case; object

marking has been split, differing conditions requiring either nominative,
accusative or partitive case marking; grammatical conditions for subjects
may require nominative, partitive or genitive, depending on the
construction. (Cf. Korhonen 1981b, 1984).
3. Obstacles.
Assumed obstacles to syntactic reconstruction are: lack of regularity in

syntactic change, no analogue of directionality in grammatical changes, the
difficulty of recovering prior states after analogical change (reanalysis,
restructuring) and complications occasioned by borrowing. I take these up in
turn.
3 . 1 . R e g u l a r i t y . A frequent opinion is that the application of the

comparative method to syntax is severely limited because syntactic change has
no analogue to the regularity of phonological changes. Thus, a single sound is
learned conventionally in combinations with other sounds and in association
with the meanings as it recurs in different morphemes. The sound, a type, has
multiple tokens in its repeated occurrences in the morphemes that contain it.
Regularity means that the same sound (type) under equivalent conditions
changes in the same way in its various occurrences (tokens) in the different
morphemes. It has been claimed that syntactic patterns or rules are different;
they are not acquired embedded in some broader conventional context -
individual sentences are not learned, but generated by the rules of grammar.
The rule is the type and has but a single token, the rule itself, learned without
phonological substance, hence without broader associations of the kind that
make it possible to view phonological change as regular (cf. Campbell &
Mithun 1981, Norman & Campbell 1978). Antiila's (1976:11) characteri
zation is very apt: syntax is iconic and as such does not have "enough
symbolic meat to get your teeth into". Jeff ers (1976:4) states it this way:
In syntax, only patterns can be compared, and patterns, in general, do not 'evolve'
the way sounds do. There is no series of one to one correspondences between the
syntactic patterns of a language and the syntactic patterns of that language at some
earlier point in its history, as there are between the sounds of a language between
any two stages in its history. A straightforward transfer of the principles of the
comparative method to the reconstruction of syntax seems totally inappropriate ...
The history of syntactic systems is a history of pattern replacement and reanalysis.
In phonological reconstruction, when sounds do not reflect the continuous tradition
which results from the operation of sound changes ... CM [the comparative
method j collapses.
Winter's (1985:616) view is that:

reconstructional comparative linguistics as practiced in the fields of phonology and
morphology ... is a discipline concerned with both substance and form (with
substance taking precedence), while comparative syntax à la Lehmann is limited to
a comparison of form. Or, to use a different terminology, comparative phonology
and morphology are interested in tokens and, through them, in types, whereas the
domain of comparative syntax as practiced in recent years is exclusively that of
types.
He continues (pp. 622-623):

Reconstructional comparative linguistics is concerned with what is 'inherited' ...
acquired through a learning process ... For sentences ... acquisition by learning is
most unusual ... Sentences are formed, not learned; morphemes and simple
lexemes are learned, not formed ... Syntax deals almost exclusively with entities
not learned, but constructed - or generated.
(Cf. also Campbell & Mithun 1981, Ivanov 1965 [quoted in Birnbaum
1977:33], Jeffers 1976, Jucquois 1976:243-244, Lightfoot 1979:9.)
While the problem of syntactic change lacking a direct analogue of the
regularity principle is serious, there are at least two partial compensations
which weaken the devastation this criticism is thought to bring with it for
syntactic reconstruction. The first involves the parts of grammar that are
grounded in phonological substance. The second involves grammatical
patterns embedded in the context of broader syntactic environments where the
syntactic form can legitimately be seen to recur in multiple situations. Relics
and archaisms, to be taken up below, might be considered a third, since they
are learned conventionally (and hence have 'substance'), unlike sentences
which are generated by the normal workings of a grammar.
3.1.1. Morphological reconstruction. There is typically a

continuum in grammars from more concrete, phonologically endowed
elements to more abstract ones (without phonological correlates). Morphology
and syntax cannot reasonably be separated, thus to the extent that morphology
can be reconstructed by the comparative method, many aspects of a
protosyntax will become clear. That is, the normal techniques of lexical
reconstruction, based on the sequence of recurring sound correspondences in
cognate words, can be used to reconstruct polymorphemic words.
Morphological analysis of these reconstructed protowords provides the
morphology free, as it were, so long as the cognate morphemes have not
undergone substantial functional or positional shifts. In the history of Indo-
European studies, this kind of morphological reconstruction was often taken to
58 LYLE CAMPBELL
be the major part of 'comparative grammar', where the reconstruction of

morphological (and grammatical) paradigms attracted the most attention (cf.
Allen 1953, Birnbaum 1977:25-30, Jeffers 1976:3-4, Jucquois 1976:233-234;
for some typical examples, cf. Brugmann 1904, Krahe 1972, Watkins 1969).
For example, the following reconstructions, which will play a role in
subsequent discussions, illustrate this technique. Table 2 establishes the case
distinctions in Balto-Finnic which signal the grammatical roles of nominal
arguments, "nominative", "genitive" and "partitive", using the 1st person
singular pronoun ("I"):
Nominative
Genitive
Partitive
Table 2.
Given well-established sound changes (e.g., vowel apocope, vowel

syncope and loss of final - in Estonian, Livonian and Votic [with
compensatory lengthening in the latter], loss of intervocalic -t-, seen here in
Finnish and Votic), the reconstruction of these grammatically salient cases is
clearly established via the normal procedures of lexical reconstruction. (Note
that in Estonian orthography, b, d, g are roughly simple voiceless stops,
while p, t, k are longer voiceless stops.)
Table 3 illustrates syntactically important aspects of verb morphology,
illustrated with the verb "to read".
Again, the reconstruction of this morphology follows directly from the
lexical reconstruction by the comparative method, given the sound changes
mentioned above. (Note that γ in the reconstructions represents the weak
grade of *k in closed syllables.) The only real complications stem from: (a)
the Finnish present passive which has changed by analogy to look more like
the first infinitive {-ta in many verb classes); also, Votic ss < As ; the last a
of both Finnish and Votic is from the assimilation of e to the preceding a ; and
(b) Estonian first person indicative past, lugesin ; the past originally was *-i,
but was lost in the endingless 3rd person due to apocope; a large class of
verbs with t changed this to s before the past i (cf. Finnish vastata "to
answer", vastas-i "he answered"); the 5 of these verbs was extended by
analogy to others that had formerly had no t in the root to signal past tense in
SYNTACTIC RECONSTRUCTION AND FIΝΝΟ-UGRIC 59
Proto-
Finnish Votic Estonian Balto-Finnic
1st sg. ind. luen lugen loen *luye-n

1st ind. past luin lud'in lugesin *luy-i-n
1st ind. perf. olen lukenut elenlukennu olenlugenud *ole-n luke-nut
pres. pass. luetaan lukeassa loetakse *luye-tta-k-sen
past pass. luettiin lugetti: loeti *luye-ttiin
1st inf. lukea lukea lugeda *luke-ta(X)
3rd inf. lukemaan lukema: lugema *luke-ma-han
pres. part. lukeva lukeva lugev *luke-vaX
past part. lukenut lukennu lugenud *luke-nut
pr. pass. part. luettava lugettava loetav *luye-tta-vaX
past pass. part. luettu lugettu loetud *luye-ttu
(Laanest 1982:250-271.)
Table 3.
compensation for the lost -i, the former past tense. This morphological
reconstruction gives us a good beginning on the syntax; for example, from
these forms it is clear that Proto-Balto-Finnic had a passive construction and
both indicative and passive participles (both with present and perfect versions),
involved in subordinate clauses (complex sentences) (see below).
Morphological reconstruction via the comparative method thus can
provide much syntactic information about the protolanguage.
3.1.2. Constructions embedded in broader syntactic patterns.

Harris (1986:4) has argued that regularity can be observed in syntactic
correspondences if regularity is taken to mean not 'exceptionless', but 'rule-
governed and non-random'. She notes a regular shift in case alignment in a
variety of sentence types that distinguish Standard Laz and the Maxo dialect
which results in a regular correspondence between them. Given that case
marking serves to signal grammatical roles and is employed in a variety of
different grammatical contexts (e.g., both transitive and intransitive sentences
with different verb classes), it can be said to illustrate a recurring regularity
akin to that so useful in phonological reconstruction, where the case change is
embedded in the broader pattern of case usage in different syntactic
constructions. To make this more concrete, the following example should
help. In Standard Finnish verbs of obligation take genitive subjects (with fully
affected direct objects, if present, in the nominative case), e.g.:
60 LYLE CAMPBELL
(1) minu-n täyty-y sanoa se

I-Gen must-3rd:Pres torsay it:Nom
"I have to say it"
This includes a sizable number of lexemes (tulee "must", tulisi "should",
pitää "must", pitäisi "should", täytyy "must", on verb + pres.pass.prt
"must", on pakko "it is necessary that", etc.). In Western Finnish dialects,
however, these verbs of obligation have shifted to the pattern of other non-
obligation verbs, no longer taking genitive subjects (and nominative objects,
where appropriate), but rather nominative subjects with which the verb agrees
(and accusative objects when fully affected), e.g.:
(2)
(I:Norn) must-I tordo (youiNom) must-You to:go
"I must do (it)" "you must go"
(Cf. Saukkonen 1984:184.)
It can be said that the Western Finnish grammatical change is regular in the
sense of phonological regularity in that it did not change randomly in only one
or a few of the obligation forms, but rather it regularly changed the entire
pattern, shifting from former genitive marking for subjects to the nominative
case with verb-agreement in each of the verbs and compound constructions
involving obligation, and with all persons ("you", "he/she/it", etc.). Here it is
the recurrence of the same grammatical element in the multiple forms of a
particular grammatical pattern that renders it possible for the change to be
considered regular.
I am suggesting here that patterned (i.e. paradigmatic) syntactic
phenomena can be compared and changes in them seen as regular since they
76can, in effect, recur in the broader context of patterns, but that this is only
partial compensation for the lack of regularity in syntagmatic syntactic
constructions. Others have held similar opinions, though sometimes arguing
against any other kind of syntactic comparison, e.g., Hock (1985:57): "it is
syntactic patterns, rather than individual sentences, which form the basis for
syntactic reconstruction". Collinge (1960:86) expressed the pattern principle
this way:
The external corroboration needed in this study will be the demonstration that the
supposedly equivalent grammatical elements do in fact operate in several different
structures in each of the compared languages, and that all those structures are
respectively related to similar contextual situations in similar fashion as between
languages. This will be a kind of 'compared' or 'collective' syntax which will be
an essential part of comparative syntax ... the items compared will remain
individual items, merely implying the existence of systems, in individually

appreciated structures.
Ivanov (1965, quoted from Birnbaum 1977:33) seems to have had roughly the
same opinion as expressed here:
[syntactic] reconstruction could be achieved with relatively most success in those
instances where the syntactic phenomena were closely intertwined with phenomena
of other, 'lower' strata of linguistic structure: the phonological level ..., the
morphological level ..., and the lexical level.
I hasten to add that not all syntactic change is regular, even when a more
encompassing pattern surrounds it. For example, Standard Finnish grammar
requires the so-called 'third infinitive' in the illative ("into") case with main
verbs of motion, the first infinitive otherwise (for historical details, see
below), e.g.:
(3) tulee puhu-ma-an
comes speak-3rd.Inf-Illative
"come to speak"
(4) haluaa puhu-a
wants speak-lst.Inf
"wants to speak"
There is also a sizable number of verbs with no clear meaning of motion, but
which nevertheless govern 'third infinitives', e.g.:
(5) rupeaa puhu-maan "begins to speak"
pyrkii puhu-maan "strives to speak"
pystyy puhu-maan "is able to speak"
In Vermland and Häme dialects some of these have shifted to govern 'first
infinitives', based on analogy with other verbs of similar meaning already in
that pattern, e.g.: rupeaa puhu-a (cf. alkaa puhu-a "begins to speak"), pyrkii
puhu-a (ef. ynttää puhu-a "tries to speak"), while others have remained with
'third infinitive' complements (Saukkonen 1984:182-183). The pattern is
clear, but the change is sporadic. This should not, however, occasion much
speculation about the inapplicability of the comparative method in syntax, since
this example is quite parallel to the analogical changes which otherwise
complicate phonological reconstruction (see below).
At this point in the discussion Winter's (1985:618) opinion should be
added. He holds that, "If 'historical syntax' ... proposes to compare patterns
62 LYLE CAMPBELL
and not realizations of patterns, it cannot be considered part of 'normal'

reconstructional-comparative linguistics". This view in its requirement for
phonological substance is perhaps too strong, but in spirit agrees with the
claims I make: the more grounded in phonological substance or other recurrent
patterns (a kind of 'realization of patterns'?), the better for comparison and
reconstruction.
Finally, it should be noted that Hock (1985:52) has praised the lack of
regularity in syntactic change as valuable to reconstruction: "the fact that
analogy and syntactic change are not as regular as sound change may actually
be a help in reconstruction, since relics of an earlier stage may be preserved".
This claim is considered below (Section 4) in conjunction with the value of
archaisms in syntactic reconstruction, the context in which Hock intended it. I
hasten to add that I do not subscribe to this view.
3.2. Directionality. The predictable direction of many sound

changes is helpful to phonological reconstruction. For example, the change of
ρ to b between vowels is natural and recurs independently in many lan
guages, while the reverse (b > p / V V) is rare indeed. Knowing this helps
reconstruction in a case where one language has VpV and a related language
VbV; all else being equal, the typical direction of this change requires us to
postulate *p, with the change to b intervocalically in the latter language.
Lightfoot (1979:10) has taken a dim view of the value of implicational
universais in establishing directionality for syntactic change (cf. also Jeffers
1976, Winter 1985:616); Campbell & Mithun (1981) were optimistic, but
noted that not many such universais had yet been established (see also Dressier
1971). Miranda (1976:14) made the point about the value of directionality for
syntactic reconstruction, alluding to cases where something of the direction of
grammatical change is known, i.e. of postpositions to case suffixes, of modal
auxiliary verbs to modal suffixes, and of passive constructions to ergativity,
but not in the opposite direction. Hock (1985:52-53) asserts that there is more
directionality to syntactic change and less to phonological change than
commonly believed, making them not so distinct, after all. Today, the
prospects for understanding the direction of many kinds of grammatical
changes seem much brighter, and progress on implicational universais and
typological interconnections is helping to establish this directionality -
information useful for syntactic reconstruction. This is illustrated in the
following example.
3.2.1. Postpositions and cases. It is now generally taken as

established that postpositions and cases evolve directionally following the
SYNTACTIC RECONSTRUCTION AND FINΝΟ-UGRIC 63
scheme: Head Noun > Postposition > Clitic > Case (cf. Comrie 1980;
Givón 1971, 1984; Langacker 1977; see Miranda 1976:14 for a similar point
about directionality of syntactic change involving postpositions in one
language, cognate with case suffixes in another; this is included in Vincent's
(1980:58) claim that the 'grammaticalization' of lexical items is generally
irreversible).
New postpositions in Balto-Finnic have developed from former noun
roots, e.g., in Finn, koda-n taka- [hut-Gen back-in] "behind the hut",
venee-n luo-ta [boat-Gen presence-from] "from the boat". The postposition
developed from a constituent containing a noun 'head' (usually in the genitive
case) with a noun modifier or attribute (often bearing locative case endings)
used adverbially, e.g., Finn, talo-η ede-ssä [house-Gen front-in] "in front of
the house". Postpositions developed out of the relationship between the main
word and its nominal attribute, as seen in the still ambiguous Finnish example:
lapse-η rínna-lla [child-Gen chest-on], meaning either "on the chest of the
child", the literal reading with "child-Gen" as an attribute to the head noun
"chest-on", or "beside the child/side by side with the child" (cf. Eng. abreast
of), where "chest-on" has been reinterpreted as a locative postposition
governing genitive case, with "child-Gen" as the object of this postposition.
One frequent avenue for the development of new cases has been from
postpositions (the other means is by combination of already existent case
suffixes). Cases develop from postpositions when the postposition is felt to
be so closely connected to its attribute noun that together they are reinterpreted
as one word; semantic and morphophonemic changes (e.g., vowel harmony)
often take place which conceal the word boundary and change the status of the
elements, resulting in new case suffixes.
In Balto-Finnic the fusion in several instances is so late that
corresponding postpositions are still found alongside cases, e.g., Est. poja-ga
[boy-with], Finn, poja-η kanssa [boy-Gen with] "with the boy". In fact,
Finnish dialects illustrate an intermediate step in this development. Standard
Finnish has the postposition kanssa "with" (with dialect shapes of kans, ka:s,
kah, etc.), e.g., lapse-η kanssa [child-Gen with] "with the child". In several
Upper Satakunta and Savo dialects, however, this has developed into a
'comitative/instrumental' clitic or case, -ka(h), -ka:n, e.g., isänka "with
father" (isä "father"), koiranka:n "with the dog" (koira "dog") (Kettunen
1930:29, Oinas 1961). The history of Estonian attests the gradual development
of the ka postposition into a case suffix. In the earliest period of Northern
Estonian literature (16th and 17th centuries), there appeared the postpositions
kas, kaes, kaas, kaass, kahs (cognate with Finn.kanssa), which governed the
genitive case. These forms were in use until the third quarter of the 17th
64 LYLE CAMPBELL
century. At the same time that kaas, etc., were used in the Northern Estonian
literary language, forms with -n - kaen, käen, kahn, gan - were employed in
the Southern Estonian literary language. The -n forms were mostly confined
to the 17th century. In the Northern Estonian literature, forms ending in a
vowel (kaa, ka} kah) appeared somewhat later. (Laanest 1982:174-175,
Oinas 1961).
The development from postposition to case suffix is aided by the fact that
main stress falls on the first syllable of a word or phrase, meaning that the first
syllable of the main noun (object of the postposition) takes primary stress,
while the postposition receives only secondary stress, allowing it to cliticize to
the noun attribute.
Balto-Finnic languages provide abundant examples of this process. The
Finnish postposition päin "toward" is cognate with the Veps elative and
ablative case suffix which developed from this postposition: -pai/-pai,
-pä: /-pa:, e.g., Veps seinha-pä: "to the wall", Finn.seinä-(h)än päin [wall-
into towards] "towards the wall". Another example is *lo:-na "at, in the
presence of', e.g., Veps ikna-lon "by the window"; cf. Finn, ikkuna-n luo-na
"by the window". (The suffix status is assured by the fact that several of these
suffixes undergo vowel harmony).
Many Hungarian case suffixes arose through agglutination in this way,
where their development in historical times is easily traceable in written
records. One intricate example involves the development of three cases. The
Hungarian 'incessive' -ban/-ben (e.g., ház-ban "in the house", kéz-ben "in
the hand") arose from the postposition benn ; today it appears in a non-case
form only in adverbial usage with possessive suffixes (e.g., bennem "in me",
benned "in you"). In the oldest Hungarian literature, a monument from the
13th century, it appeared only in front-vowel form, -ben, with no vowel
harmony, representing an intermediate stage between postposition and case
suffix. The elative case -ból /-bòi (e.g., báz-ból "out of the house", kéz-ból
"from the hand") developed from the postposition belaiy as older literary
records indicate. The illative case -ba/-be (e.g., ház-ba "into the house",
kés-be "into the hand") occurs in dialects and in Old Hungarian in the form
bele, where it represents an earlier stage of the ending (cf. adverbial belém
"into me", beléd "into you"). The above postpositions from which these
locative cases evolved, benn, belōl and bele, are originally from the single
noun bel "inside(s), intestines, entrails, core" in three different case forms.
(Laanest 1982:172-175; Oinas 1961).
Knowing that the direction of change is generally from Noun >
Postposition > Clitic > Case, we have an analogue to the directionality of
sound change which can stand us in good stead in syntactic reconstruction
when compared languages involve correspondences between postpositions and

cases. For example, confronted with the following Balto-Finnic
correspondences and given the known direction of such changes, it is
incumbent upon us to reconstruct the postposition (postp. 'postposition', com.
'comitative case'):
Standard Esto Livo- Proto-

Finnish Karelian Veps nian Votic nian Balto-Finnic
kanssa kanssa -ka -ga kaisa ka:zu *kans(s)aX "with"

postp. postp. com. com. postp. postp. postp.
-ka: -ka/
com. -k/-ks
com.
Table 4.
Note that cognates both inside and outside Balto-Finnic show that the
postposition is derived ultimately from the noun root *kansa "people" (Oinas
1961).
3.2.2. Partitive case. The second example of directionality in

grammatical change involves the development of the partitive case in Balto-
Finnic. In general, constructions for signaling objects only partially affected
by the action of the verb develop from locatives (with the meaning of roughly
"from") or genitives ("of"). For example, in the French partitive construction,
as in j'ai mangé du poisson "I ate (some) fish", the partitive marker du is
from de "from" + an article. The Baltic languages use the genitive for partitive
objects, as does Russian, where Indo-European ablative and genitive merged.
English has a partitive sense in the somewhat archaic sounding, e.g., eat of my
food and drink of my wine. First I will consider the historical development of
the Balto-Finnic partitive case, then apply it to the issue of directionality in
syntactic reconstruction.
Most Uralic languages have no such case for partial objects. Originally,
the *-m "singular accusative" indicated that the object was animate or specific,
while inanimate and/or non-specific objects were in the nominative case, that
is, they had zero case marking. This is still the case in some other Uralic
languages. There was no such distinction with plural objects, and hence both
nominative plural and accusative plural were signaled by *-t, as they are still
today in Finnish and some other Balto-Finnic languages. The partitive object
case is an innovation in Balto-Finnic and close relatives from a former ablative
66 LYLE CAMPBELL
case ending. In Mordvin there is a small number of verbs (e.g., "eat",

"drink") which employ the ablative case for objects, as in:
(6) Moksha Mordvin:
aru vet'-ta sima-n
pure water-Abl drink-I
"I drink pure water"
cf. Finnish:
juo-n puhdas-ta vet-tä
drink-I pure-Part water-Part
(7) Eiza Mordvin:
vergizes vergiz-de a suski
wolf:Nom wolf-Abl Neg bite
"a wolf does not bite (any) wolf'
(Laanest 1982:298).
This shows the beginnings in the Volga Balto-Finnic period of the

development of the syntactically and functionally complicated partitive case
from the ablative case to one that expresses a partial object. The Mordvin
ablative can be used as a 'restricting' object case, for instance where "to eat
oi7from bread" develops the meaning "eat some (of the) bread", from which
the grammatical function of the partitive case developed, used at first only with
certain irresultative acts: "to seek, to ask for, to follow, to hope for, to long
for", etc.
Lapp has only one object case, called accusative', but only because the
accusative and partitive uses have been realigned. Lapp's accusative plural
corresponds to the Balto-Finnic partitive historically (e.g., Proto-Lapp
*ko:dijde: "huts", from Proto-Balto-Finnic-Lapp *kota-j-ta [hut-Pi-Part], cf.
Finn, kotia "plural partitive" (Korhonen 1981a:214-215). Remnants of the
former partitive are preserved in Eastern Lapp in the comparative construction,
in conjunction with numbers larger than "six", and with certain postpositions
(Korhonen 1981a:216). The Balto-Finnic partitive and the Mordvin ablative
(as well as the Baltic genitive) are comparable in sharing the same use in the
situations involving: unspecified object of "to eat" and "to drink" (secondarily
"to burn", "to smoke [tobacco]" and with a few other verbs [rarer in
Mordvin]); and the objects of "to fear", "to be happy". In Finnish it occurs in:
(a) the object of negative verbs (e.g., mies ei osta-nut talo-a [man:Nom Neg
buy-Past house-:Part] "the man did not buy the house"); and (b) nouns after
numbers (e.g., kuusi mies-tä [six man-Part.Sg] "six men").
Finnish has relics of the partitive's former 'ablative' functions. The
modern 'separation' cases are -stA "from within" and -ItA "from without",
the result of fusion of the old ablative *-ta and locatives *-s and *-l. However,
relics of *-ta are found in some pronouns and postpositions, even in
combination with nouns and adjectives which bear the new separation cases.
For example (note *t is lost intervocalically after a short unstressed vowel,
giving the allomorphs -ta and -a, -tä and ä):
(8) sii-tä talo-sta [it-from house-from] "from that house"

talo-η taka-a [house-Gen back-from] "from behind the house"
isä-n luo-ta [father-Gen presence-from] "from father's presence"
This former ablative value is also seen in certain other constructions, e.g.:
(9) a. mies on suur-ta suku-a

man is big-Part family-Part
"the man is from an important family"
b. veitsi on teräs-tä
knife is steel-Part
"the knife is (made) out of steel"
 mi-tä mieh-i-ä te ole-tte?
what-Part man-Pi-Part you are-You?
"what kind of men are you?"
d. kärsiä nälkä-ä
to:suffer hunger-Part
"to suffer from hunger"
e. ontua jalka-a
to:limp foot-Part
"to limp due to one's foot"
(Hakulinen 1968:437; Laanest 1982:299).
One of the Finnish comparative constructions employs the partitive case as a

holdover from a former ablative sense, as seen in, e.g.:
(10) Jussi on sinu-a vanhe-mpi

Jussi:Nom is you-Part old-Comparison
"Jussi is older than you (are)"
Given the distribution of partitive and ablative cases in the Finno-Ugric

languages and the knowledge that partitive cases may develop from restricting
case markings (e.g., ablatives), but not vice versa, we can reconstruct Balto-
Finnic object marking (Part 'partitive'; Acc 'accusative'; Spec 'specified'; Abl
'ablative'; Loc 'locative'):
68 LYLE CAMPBELL
Table 5.
3.2.3. Word order changes and directionality. Balto-Finnic

(together with Lapp, for the most part) has the basic word order SVO, while
the rest of the Uralic languages reflect SOV. While reconstruction via
supposed consistency among different word-order patterns has been heavily
criticized (cf. Campbell & Mithun 1981, Hawkins 1983), there are some
aspects of the tendency for different orders to cluster which are useful in the
reconstruction of Proto-Uralic basic word order and in explaining the Balto-
Finnic changes.
Finnish, for example, exhibits the word-order patterns:
S-V-O
Adjective-Noun
Genitive-Noun
Noun-Postposition
Auxiliary-Main Verb
Adverb-Adjective
Relative clause-Head/Head-Relative clause
Adjective-Marker-Standard/Standard+Part-Adjective
While SVO languages show much greater variation across these patterns
than do, for example, SOV or VSO languages, these data, nevertheless, can
prove useful in reconstruction. In effect, only SOV languages can naturally
have Relative clause-Head (preposed relative clauses). That is, verb-initial
languages tend to have Head-Relative clause in harmony with their typical
Head-Modifier orders within the NP. SOV languages may have Relative
clause-Head in accord with the tendency towards Modifier-Head orders.
Nevertheless, the 'heaviness principle' is also involved, that heavier
constituents tend to be placed to the right of their heads to avoid the perceptual
difficulty of processing the roles of nominal arguments (Hawkins 1983:90).
In effect, then, only some SOV languages naturally contain Relative clause-
Head in harmony with their preferred Modifier-Head orders, while many
others conform to the heaviness principle with relative clauses shifted after
their head Nouns. This being the case, only in an SOV language could
Relative clause-Head arise naturally. Comparing Finno-Ugric, we find that the
SOV languages have preposed relative clauses (though a few have also
developed postposed relatives under foreign influence). Moreover, as in many
SOV languages, these preposed relative clauses do not contain finite verb
forms, but rather are made of nominalized or participial constructions which
bear case markings and contain no relative pronouns (Keenan 1985). While
Balto-Finnic also has postposed relative clauses (consistent with its SVO order
and with the heaviness principle), the presence of its preposed relative clauses
strongly suggests former SOV structure, since only in SOV languages is
Relative clause-Head natural. These two relative-clause orders are illustrated
in the following Finnish examples:
Relative clause-Head:
(11) huomas-i-n kova-lla ääne-llä puhu-va-n miehe-n
notice-Past-I hard-by voice-by speak-Pres.Part-Acc man-Ace
"I heard the man who speaks with a loud voice"
(12) nä-i-n joke-en aja-nee-n miehe-n
see-Past-I river-into drive-Past.Part-Acc man-Acc
'T saw the man who drove/has driven into the river"
Head-Relative clause:
(11) huomas-i-n miehe-n joka puhu-u kova-lla
notice-Past-I man-Ace Rel.Pron:Nom speak-3rd:Pres hard-by
ääne-llä
voice-by
(same meaning as ( 11))
(12') nä-i-n miehe-n joka ajo-i joke-en
see-Past-I man-c Rel.Pron:Nom drive-Past river-into
(same meaning as (12))
Secondly, the order Standard-Marker-Adjective in constructions of

comparison is very much like preposed relative clauses, essentially occurring
only in SOV languages, while Adjective-Marker-Standard order is most
common in other word-order types. The fact that Balto-Finnic has both, but
would not have acquired Standard-Marker-Adjective without an SOV
background, argues for its former SOV status. Some examples from Finnish
are:
Standard-Marker-Adjective:
70 LYLE CAMPBELL
(13) hän on sinu-a nopea-mpi

he:Nom is you-Part fast-er
"he is faster than you (are)"
(14) hän juokse-e sinu-a hitaa-mmi-n
he:Nom run:3rd:Pres you-Part slow-er-Adv
"he runs slower than you (do)"
Adjective-Marker-Standard:
(13') hän on nopea-mpi kuin sina
he:Nom is fast-er than you:Nom
(14') hän juokse-e hitaa-mmi-n kuin sina
he:Nom run-3rd:Pres slow-er-Adv than you:Nom
Finally, while postpositions are sometimes found in other word orders,

they are most consistent with SOV.
Given these restrictions, that Relative clause-Head and Standard-Marker-
Adjective can co-occur with SVO order, but that they do not develop in non-
SOV orders, it seems clear that the reconstruction of SOV with Relative clause-
Head, Standard-Marker-Adjective, and Postpositions is on safe ground. For
syntactic reconstruction, then, given the correspondences:
Finnic Others
Head-Relative clause/Relative clause-Head Relative clause-Head
Standard-Marker-Adjective/Adjective- Standard-Marker-
Marker-Standard Adjective
Postpositions Postpositions
SVO SOV
the direction of change away from Relative clause-Head and Standard-Marker-

Adjective in non-SOV languages, which has given Balto-Finnic the dual
orders, supports the reconstruction of SOV with Relative clause-Head and
Standard-Marker-Adjective in the protolanguage.
These examples illustrate how the known direction of certain syntactic
changes proves useful for syntactic reconstruction.
3.2.4. Analogy and reanalysis. Analogical changes in grammar

have been considered particularly devastating to attempts at syntactic
reconstruction. As Lightfoot (1979:164) puts it:
syntactic change is in large measure analogical, based on a re-analysis or

'regrammatization' of old surface structure patterns, levelling former distinctions or
creating new ones. That is, existing strings are given a new structural analysis,
which eventually supplants the former analysis, presumably by some kind of
analogical function ... Such analogical processes will cause as much interference
for the usual methods of reconstruction as they do in phonology and other areas og
grammar; BUT IN SYNTAX SUCH CHANGES ARE THE NORMAL TYPE AND
THEREFORE THE METHODS WILL BE PARTICULARLY LIMITED (emphasis added,
L.C.).
(Cf. Jeffers 1976:4.)

Again, it is possible to admit the serious effects of analogy in syntactic
change and still remain optimistic about reconstruction. That is, analogical
change may obscure phonological correspondences, making reconstruction of
phonology more difficult, but the weight of the conforming daughter
languages often supersedes these effects, allowing for successful
reconstruction. For example, given the cognate set:
English German Gothic Old Norse
adder natter nadr- nadra "adder"
English is clearly deviant and the testimony of the other languages would lead
us to postulate an initial *n- in the protolanguage, while seeking an explanation
for the English deviation. Knowing the article pattern in English of a #C-, an
#V-, we would postulate an analogical reinterpretation of a #nadder as an
#adder virtually on the strength of the correspondences in this cognate set
alone. However, there is abundant evidence in English of this sort of
reanalysis in other cases, e.g., in changes attested in documents (as in the case
with adder), and in parallel forms, e.g., napkin/apron, etc. The effects of
the analogical change are not devastating to reconstruction in this case, and it is
the application of the comparative method which helps determine that such a
change has in fact taken place. Analogical change is also recoverable in
syntactic reconstruction in many cases. For a stimulating example of the
reconstruction of aspects of Indo-European sentence structure, recovering the
effects of a series of boundary reanalyses, surface reinterpretati ons and
levelings in Old Irish, through comparison with Hittite, Vedic Sanskrit, etc.,
see Watkins (1963, 1964). In Finnish, for example, the negative imperfect
and perfect constructions illustrate this point. Balto-Finnic and Lapp have a
complex perfect with a copular auxiliary verb; the other languages use zero
copula where possible (see below). Thus where formerly Balto-Finnic would
have had, for example, koivu vihreä [birch green] "the birch is green", the
copula was adopted and now the form is koivu on vihreä [birch is green].
72 LYLE CAMPBELL
The copula was extended automatically to the perfect: i.e. formerly the form
was, e.g., koivu kaatu-nut [birch fall-Past.Prt, literally "birch fallen"] "the
birch has fallen"; after the adoption of the copula it was koivu on kaatu-nut
[birch is fall-Past.Prt]. This development, however, complicated the negative
paradigm which is based on negative verbs in Uralic. Before the adoption of
the copula, forms illustrated in the following were employed:
Positive Negative
Present mina tule-n minä en tule

I come-I I Neg:I come
"I come" "I don't come/am not coming"
isä tule-e isä ei tule
father come-3rd:Pres father Neg: 3rd come
"father comes" "father doesn't come/isn't coming"
Preterite mina tul-i-n minä esin tule
I come-Past-I I Neg:Past:I come
"I came" "I didn't come"
isä tul-i isä esi tule
father come-Past father Neg:Past :3rd come
"father came" "father didn't come"
Perfect mina tul-lut mina en tul-lut
I come-Past.Prt I Neg:I come-Past.Prt
"I have come" "I have not come"
isä tul-lut isä ei tul-lut
father come-Past.Prt father Neg:Past:3rd come-Past.Prt
After the introduction of the copula, the negative perfect also came to be
formed with the copula (e.g., isä ei ole tul-lut [father Neg:3rd Copula come-
Past.Prt] "father has not come"), corresponding to the positive (e.g., isä on
tullut "father has come"), leaving the former copulaless negative perfect (isä ei
tullut "father has come") in competition with the original negative 'preterites',
e.g., isä esi tule, for the marker of negative preterite, as in:
Preterite minä tul-i-n minä esin tule

I come-Past-I I Neg:Past:I come
"I came" "I didn't come
isä tul-i isä esi tule
father come-Past father Neg:Past:3rd come
"father came" "father didn't come"
minä en tul-lut
I Neg:I come-Past.Prt
"I didn't come"
isä ei tul-lut
father Neg:3rd come-Past.Prt
Perfect minä ole-η tul-lut minä en ole tul-lut

I be-I come-Past.Prt I Neg:I be come-Past.Prt
"I have come" "I have not come"
isä on tul-lut isä ei ole tul-lut
father is come-Past.Prt father NegrPast:3rd is come-Past.Prt
"father has come" "father hasn't come"
The competition was sorted out; some Balto-Finnic-Lapp languages (among

them Finnish, Estonian dialects, Norwegian Lapp, Southern Lapp) eliminated
the past negative verb constructions (those with esi, esin ) entirely, leaving the
mina en tullut form as the only past negative; others (e.g., Livonian, some
Estonian dialects [Kodavaere], Swedish Lapp) eliminated these former
copulaless perfect forms, retaining the past negative verbs (the minii esin tule
forms) for the past negatives.
When we consider the corresponding forms in other Finno-Ugric
languages, the reanalysis of the former copulaless negative perfect (ei tullut )
to the negative preterite is clear, e.g.:
(a) Kodavaere Estonian (Balto-Finnic):
ma essin annà "I didn't give"
sa essiD annà "you didn't give"
ta es annà "he didn't give"
(b) Livonian (Balto-Finnic):
ma iz UD "I wasn't"
sa ist ùo "you weren't"
ta iz ùo "he wasn't"
(c) ErzaMordvin (Volga group):
eźiri pala(k) "I didn't kiss"
eźit pala(k) "you didn't kiss"
es pala(k) "he/she didn't kiss"
(d) Cheremis (Volga group) :
sam bit [Neg:Past:I tie] "I didn't tie"
(e) Zyrian (Permic group):
eg mun [Neg:Past:I go] "I didn't go"
(Korhonen 1981a:305-306, Laanest 1982:244.)
Given the correspondence in the past (or preterite) forms of the negative verb
in these languages, with representatives both within the Balto-Finnic branch
and beyond, it seems clear that the 'negative preterite' must be reconstructed
74 L YLE CAMPBELL
with a negative verb conjugated for person plus a personless main-verb stem.
Given this clear situation, the Finnish negative preterite with a verb form
corresponding to the past participle which is used with the 'perfect' in other
instances is odd and these data call for an explanation. With the knowledge of
the later addition of copulas to the complex tenses, it is not hard to understand
the shift in the negative paradigm, and in the negative preterite form in
particular. It presents no great obstacle to reconstruction in this case, given the
weight of evidence from the other languages.
An example with more complex syntax involves reanalysis of Finnish
participial constructions (an example often cited, cf. Anttila 1972, Breckridge
& Hakulinen 1976, Hakulinen & Leino 1985, Ikola 1959, Svensson 1983,
Timberlake 1977, etc.).
Finnish has four participles which play roles in complex sentences:
(15)puhu-va [present active] "speaking"
puhu-nut [past active] "spoken"
puhu-tta-va [present passive] "is spoken"
puhu-ttu [past passive] "has been spoken".
These occur principally in two types of construction. In one, the participle

functions as the object of the main verb (from the class of 'perceiving and
saying' verbs), with the participle's subject in the genitive case, e.g.:
(16) a. näe-n miehe-n tule-va-n
see-I man-Ace.Sg come-Pres.Prt-Suf
"I see the man comings see that the man is coming"
b. kuul-i-n häne-n puhu-nee-n sii-tä
hear-Past-I he-Gen.Sg speak-Past.Prt-Suf it-from
"I heard that he had spoken about it"
The other type has an intransitive main verb of the 'seem, appear, feel' class;
the logical subject of the participle is simultaneously subject of the main verb,
e.g.:
(17) hän näky-y asu-va-n sie-llä

he:Nom.Sg appear-3rd:Pres live-Pres.Prt-Suf there-at
"he seems to live there"
(18) te kuulu-tte asu-nee-n sie-llä
you:Nom.Sg are:heard-2nd.Pl live-Past.Prt-Suf there-at
"if s said/one hears that you have lived there"
Originally, the subject of the participle was the object of the main verb in the
first type:
(19)*näe-n miehe-m tuleva-m

see:I man-Acc.Sg come-Acc.Sg
"I see the man coming/that is coming"
The participle was more in the order of an adjectival modifier of the noun,
agreeing in case. In the second type, the subject of the participle was at the
same time subject of the main verb:
(20) mies näky-y tule-va

man:Nom.Sg appear-3rd:Pres come-Pres.Prt:Nom
"the man seems to be coming"
Here, the participle was a complement of the intransitive verb while modifying
the noun. In Balto-Finnic final *-m changed to -n, making the accusative
singular and the genitive singular homophonous, both -. This syncretism of
case endings led to a reanalysis in the first type, where the participle was taken
to be the object of the transitive verb, with the NP as its genitive modifer,
representing its role as subject of the participle. This reinterpretation is
particularly clear from plural nouns, where the accusative and genitive were
not homophonous. Thus Old Finnish had examples such as:
(21) nä-i-n venee-t purjehti-va-n

see-Past-I boat-Acc.Pl sail-Pres.Prt-Acc.Sg.
"I saw the boats sailing/I saw that the boats sail"
This is in Modern Finnish:
(21) nä-i-n vene-i-den purjehti-va-n

see-Past-I boat-Pi-Gen
The participle itself became petrified in the accusative form (ending in -),
which then spread analogically to the second type which historically received
no accusative -n, since intransitive verbs were involved. Compare Old
Finnish (22) with Modern (22'):
(22) mies näky-y tule-va

man:Nom.Sg appear-3rd:Pres come-Pres.Prt:Nom
"the man seems to be coming/it seems that the man is coming"
76 LYLE CAMPBELL
(220 mies näky-y tule-va-n

man:Nom.Sg appear-3rd:Pres come-Pres.Prt-Suf
same meaning as (22))
Related languages retain clear evidence of the former state, where NPs of
the participial clause are still treated as objects of the main verb rather than as
genitive subjects of the participle. Thus, while Finnish has undergone rather
wide-reaching reanalyses in these constructions, reconstruction is not greatly
hampered, since the other languages provide abundant evidence to establish the
original pattern and to indicate that Finnish has departed from it. Compare, for
example, the following:1
(a) Estonian (Raun & Saareste 1965:33):

näg-i-n te-da tule-va-t
see-Past-I he-Part:Acc come-Pres.Prt-Acc
"I saw him coming/that he comes"
cf. Finnish:
nä-i-n häne-n tule-va-n
see-Past-I he-Gen.Sg come-Pres.Prt-Suf
ln Estonian and Votic, and formerly in Old Finnish, the partitive case marks pronoun
object where one would expect the accusative. The reason for this has to do with the same
change of *-m to -n. Formerly distinct pronouns, e.g. minu-m [I-Acc.Sg] and *minu-n [I-
Gen.Sg] ("my"), were left homophonous after the change, both as minu-η. The partitive
case already functioned to signal objects in many instances, e.g. partial (not totally affected)
objects, objects of negative verbs, etc. Since humans whom the pronominal forms represent
are not normally acted upon in parts or pieces, either objective case, partitive or accusative,
would signal a full proniminal object. Thus, the partitive took the place of the accusative in
pronouns in order to prevent misunderstanding with the genitive case, identical in shape with
the accusative, which was lost for pronouns.
Old Finnish has examples both of pronominal objects in the partitive case and in the
ambiguous genitive-like accusative. However, in time Finnish stabilized with an alternative
solution; namely, it promoted the plural accusative ending (-r ) to signal the singular
accusative of pronouns. Thus today Finnish pronouns bear the following endings, as
illustrated for "I"
mina Nom.
minu-t Acc. (cf. miehe-t [man-Pl.Acc] "men")
minu-a Part.
minu-η Gen.
Note that this use of partitive case in place of the accusative for pronouns in some Balto-
Finnic languages is an additional instance of restructuring which can be recovered via the
comparative method, since none of the other related languages shares such a development. In
Zyrian, Votyak and Ostyak, corresponding pronouns are in the (original) accusative case. In
comparisons, then, the accusative correspondences win for reconstruction; in seeking an
explanation for the deviance in these languages we soon turn up the shift that took place in
order to create an unambiguous pronominal object form. (Hakulinen 1968; Ikola 1968.)
(b) Votie (examples from Ariste 1986):

näin me:ssä tuLe-va: te:tä mö
I:saw man:Acc come-Pres.Prt (:Acc) street:Part along
"I saw a man coming/that comes along the street"
cf. Finnish:
nä-i-n miehe-n tule-va-n tie-tä pitkin
I:saw man-Acc.Sg come-Pres.Prt-Suf road-Part along
That Votic treats the NP as a direct object of the main verb and not as a
genitive-bearing subject of the embedded participle is clearer with negative
verbs, which in Bal to-Finnic require the object to be in the partitive case:
en tä: täta eLe-va: ...

Neg:I know he:Part be-Pres.Prt(:Nom/Acc)
"I don't know that he is ... "
cf. Finnish:
en tiedä häne-n ole-va-n
Neg:I know he-Gen be-Pres.Prt-Acc
(c) Lapp (Korhonen 1981:300):

son oia'dna boc'cu-i-d vuol'-ga-m
he see reindeer-Pl-Acc leave-Past.Prt-Perf
"he sees that the reindeer have left"
cf. Finnish:
hän näke-e poro-j-en lähte-nee-n
he see-3rd:Pres reindeer-Pi-Gen leave-Past.Prt-Acc
From the comparison of these structures in Balto-Finnic-Lapp languages, it is

clear that the normal correspondence is with an NP as object of the main verb,
bearing an object case, not a genitive as in Finnish. Moreover, given the
deviance of the construction in Finnish, we are impelled to seek an
explanation. Knowing that a sound change left the accusative and genitive
singulars identical in shape, we have little trouble identifying the reanalysis in
Finnish grammar which produced its difference in this grammatical
correspondence set. We reconstruct the pattern represented by the majority of
the languages, and we recover the analogical change in Finnish, just as we do
in cases where analogical changes produce departures from phonological
correspondences. (Should there be any doubt, in this instance we are fortunate
enough to have rich documents which attest the earlier stage in Old Finnish, cf.
Ikola 1959, Svensson 1983).
3 . 2 . 5 . Discontinuity o f grammar acquisition. In reality I have

already answered in the last section the claim (cf. Lightfoot 1979, 1980, 1981,
78 LYLE CAMPBELL
Warner 1983:189) that syntactic reconstruction is in principle impossible due

to radical reanalyses:
[g]rammars are not transmitted historically, but must be created afresh by each new
language learner[, and] [e]ach child hypothesizes or 'abduces' a grammar; this
enterprise is quite independent of what his parents hypothesized ... one generation
earlier." (Lightfoot 1980:37.)
As Lightfoot (1980) puts it:
The problem is that the kinds of re-analyses [i.e. radical] that I have mentioned
constitute cut-offs to historical recapitulation, (p. 33)
... a different view has emerged, that one can use changes between a reconstructed
system and the daughter languages as a 'data-base' for investigating the nature of
change ... I wish to show here that this view ... has no merit, (p. 33)
One can deduce very little about the form of a proto-grammar merely through an
examination of the formal properties of the daughter grammars, (p. 37)
If there are no formal constraints on possible reanalyses, imposed by a theory of
change, then we cannot use such things as a basis for claiming historical reality for
our reconstructions; nor is the mapping of one grammar into another of any
interest in itself as a method of illuminating possible changes, (p. 40)
... it is not an appropriate goal for work on syntactic change to try ... to
reconstruct a proto-syntax. Rather, it is productive to examine historical
reanalayses and to show how the point at which they occur might follow from a
reeasonable theory of grammar, (p. 41 )
To begin with, such reanalyses (which may not be as frequent as

Lightfoot's emphasis seems to suggest) are in Lightfoot's view detectible only
by comparison of different grammars for distinct stages of a language
(Lightfoot 1980:41). The same evidence, however, is presumably available to
the comparativist who has an even greater vantage point, given that the
reanalyses can also be seen to have happened against the backdrop of the
related languages he or she compares which did not undergo the reanalyses, as
illustrated in the discussion of analogy above. Thus, unraveling analogy (see
above) can overcome Lightfoot's assumed generational obstacle. Rather than
discontinuities of grammar acquisition thwarting syntactic reconstruction, it is
the application of the comparative method which can help to identify when
such discontinuities have taken place, and what the grammars lying behind
them in time were like.
3.2.6. Borrowing. It is to be presumed that grammatical borrowing

may complicate reconstruction of syntax just as it does the reconstruction of
phonology, morphology and the lexicon. It should follow that the same
techniques for dealing with complications occasioned by borrowing in these

areas should also be helpful in syntactic reconstruction (cf. also Birnbaum
1977, 1985). For example, we find cognates across the Finno-Ugric
languages reflecting *ema "mother", but Finnish aiti "mother" clearly does not
fit this set. Its very lack of fit leads us to suspect possible borrowing, and
seeking a source, we find it in Germanic (cf. Goth, aipei, OHG eidi
"mother"). Similarly, syntactic deviations in some daughter language from an
otherwise common pattern shared by the other daughters of a family suggest
possible borrowing and urge us to investigate further for possible sources. To
take one example, Western Finnish has changed the pattern with verbs of
obligation from original subjects in the genitive case (e.g., minu-η täyty-y
menna [I-Gen must-3rd:Pres to:go] "I have to go") to conjugated verbs with
nominative subjects and verbs in agreement (e.g., minä täydy-n mennä
[LNorn must-I to:go] "I have to go"; see above). Scholars of Finnish have
generally attributed this change to Swedish influence (cf. Saukkonen
1984:184); Swedish has been strong in Western Finland, and many other
examples of the impact of Swedish on local Finnish exist. When this
borrowed Western Finnish pattern (with nominative subjects) is compared
with that of the many other Finnish dialects which have the genitive-subject
pattern, it is clear that Western Finnish is out of sympathy in the
correspondence set, e.g.:
(a) Western Finnish:

mä pidä-n mennä "I must go"
(b) Standard Finnish:

minu-η pitää mennä
(c) Eurajoki:
se-η täyty ols semmosta ku sano-ttin
it-Gen.Sg must be that:kind as say-Past.Pass
"it has to be some such thing as was said"
cf. Standard Finnish:
se-η täyty-y olla(s) semmoista kuin sano-ttiin
(d) Veimland:
niij-en ois pitän-nä kagata oamuśe-lla
these-Pl.Gen would must-Past.Prt to:slaughter morning-on
"they should have (were supposed to) slaughter in the morning"
nii-den ol-isi pitä-nyt lahdata aamu-lla
these-Pl.Gen be-Cond must-Past.Prt slaughter morning-on
80 LYLE CAMPBELL
(e) Pieksämäki:
häe-m pit ruvetal lapikkaan-tekko-o'
he-Gen.Sg mustrPast start leather.boot-deed-into
"he had (was supposed to) begin the leather-boot making"
cf: Standard Finnish:
häne-n pit-i ruvetaØ) lapikkaa-n-teko-on
he-Gen.Sg must-Past
(0 Parikkalæ
miu-m pitää marja-t poimiiv vasemma-la käi-lä
I-Gen. Sg must berry-Acc.Pl pick left-with hand-with
"I have to pick the berries with my left hand"
minu-η pitää marja-t poimia(v) vasemma-lla käde-llä
I-Gen.Sg must berry-PLAcc pick
(g) Inkeri (Koprina):

sulhase-n pit' antaa kolme rupla-a
bridegroom-Gen. Sg must:Past give three rubles-Part. Sg
poj-i-1 viina-raha-a
boy-Pi-to wine-money-Part. Sg
"The bridegroom had (was supposed) to give three rubles to the boys to
buy liquor"
sulhase-n pit-i antaa kolme rupla-a poj-i-lle
bridegroom-Gen.Sg must-Past ...
viina-raha-a
(Examples from Virtaranta & Soutkari 1964.)
These dialects extend from Sweden (Vermland) to the present-day Soviet

Union (Inkeri). It is clear from this widespread correspondence that the
genitive-subject pattern is to be reconstructed for Finnish, and that Western
Finnish has departed from the original state of affairs. Swedish influence is
the very probable explanation for the change. Given the weight of the
correspondences in the daughter dialects (and the natural tendency to change
from marked genitive subjects to unmarked nominative subjects), borrowing
presents no great obstacle to reconstruction in this case.2
2
While Finnish scholars agree in attributing the change to Swedish influence, it is not
difficult to imagine that the weight of the nominative-subject pattern of the non-obligation
verbs has exerted pressure for these to conform to the larger class as well. For example,
Estonian and Votic also have 'personal' verbs (with nominative-subjects) in this case,
normally attributed to Germanic influence. In any event, for the purposes of reconstruction it
is ultimately of no real consequence whether the Western Finnish (and the Estonian and
Votic) personal pattern (with nominative subjects) is borrowed or due to internal reanalysis,
Not surprisingly, many of the special features of Balto-Finnic languages

which represent innovations from Proto-Uralic or Proto-Finno-Ugric have
occasionally been attributed to foreign influence. The development of the
partitive case, adjective agreement, copula, various subordinate structures and
the change from SOV to SVO are often said to be due to influence from Indo-
European languages. These constructions are considered below with respect
to the reconstruction of Finno-Ugric.
It should be noted that the success of the Proto-Uralic or Proto-Finno-
Ugric reconstruction in these cases does not rest on whether or not it is
possible to show these reconstructions conclusively to have been borrowed in
Balto-Finnic. The reconstruction is secure, based on the sheer weight of the
distribution of corresponding structures through the other subgroups of the
family and on the directionality of change that can be brought to bear in
explaining these innovations.
4. Archaisms.
Archaisms are held by many scholars to be perhaps the single most useful
source of evidence for syntactic reconstruction. Hock (1985:33) states this in
strong terms:
the traditional approach with its emphasis on aberrant, archaic patterns can be
applied without circularity and ... it yields more satisfactory results than an
approach which focuses on the synchronically most regular patterns.
This is Meillet's famous dictum that we reconstruct on exceptions, not on rules

(Watkins 1976:312). The kind of data intended in these claims are frozen
compounds, poetic collocations and legal language (Winter 1985:621), and
proverbs, of which Watkins (1976:317) offers:
It is the nature of proverbs and proverb-like utterances to preserve frozen syntax,

that is, to preserve syntactic constructions that may have been given up in ordinary
discourse ... For this reason they are particularly valuable evidence for
reconstruction exactly as frozen, anomalous, or non-productive morphology is.
since in either case these are seen to deviate from the pattern of the other cognate dialects (and
languages, where earlier states are attested in documents), leading us to base our
reconstruction on the clear, widespread correspondence, not on the one deviation from it,
which otherwise has very plausible explanations for how and why it changed.
82 LYLE CAMPBELL
That is, certain types of language tend to preserve relic forms best, e.g., legal
documents and traditional literary forms, such as epic poetry, popular ballads
and folk narratives (Hock 1985:54).
While there is probably little dispute in general about the value of true
relics or archaisms for reconstruction, in practice there is the problem of how
they are to be identified and how one can be certain that a relic is at stake rather
than some peculiar innovation. Thus, for example, Lightfoot (1979:160)
criticizes rightfully an inappropriate application of this technique where English
compounds such as coathanger were taken as evidence of English's former
OV structure, while old forms suggesting VO were simply ignored, e.g.,
breakfast (first attested in 1413). The lesson I would draw from this case is
not that it is wrong to use relics, but that it may frequently be difficult, and that
one needs fairly compelling evidence of the 'oldness' of assumed archaic
forms before basing syntactic reconstructions on them.
Some ways to determine relics that are sometimes suggested are the
following. Safe archaisms are those which are synchronically felt to be old
fashioned and in observable history their use is seen to be decreasing (Hock
1985:55). And, "the more widespread a particular complex form turns out to
be among related languages without contact in time and space, the stronger the
argument for 'inheritance' becomes (Winter 1985:623).
Without diminishing the value for reconstruction of the other tools talked
about in this paper (i.e. directionality and implicational universais, regularity
through recurrent patterns, syntactic aspects of reconstructed morphology), I
will illustrate the argument for archaisms with Balto-Finnic data (cf. also
Section 3.2.2 above).
4.1. Balto-Finnic infinitives. Balto-Finnic has two infinitives,

originally nominalizations with case endings, from so-called locative adverbial
functions. The so-called 'first infinitive lative' *-ta-k is inherited from the
single earlier Balto-Finnic-Lapp infinitive and has the more general function.
The other, the so-called 'third infinitive illative', comes only from Proto-Balto-
Finnic times and derives from a nominalization in *-ma plus the illative case
*-sen); it has gradually wrested territory away from the first infinitive. The
third infinitive was used only when an intransitive main verb's subject or a
transitive main verb's object corresponded to the infinitive's logical subject.
Otherwise the first infinitive was used. While both originally had locative
functions, the third infinitive originally had only concrete local meaning, so
that mostly it is found with verbs of motion, though in Finnish some former
motion verbs have shifted semantically, losing their motion meanings but still
governing third infinitive in the illative case (e.g., pyrkiä meant "to invade, to
penetrate, to force one's way in"; now it means "to try, to strive"). Briefly,
the third infinitive, it is assumed, grew to help distinguish cases such as (here
illustrated with Finnish examples):
(23) eläin kelpaa syö-mä-än
animal is:good:enough eat-3rd.Inf-into
"the animal is good enough to eat (= animal eats something)"
(24) eläin kelpaa syö-dä
animal is:good:enough eat-lst.Inf
"the animal is good enough to eat (= to be eaten)"
That is, cases where the main verb's subject or object can be seen as both the
agent and the goal or patient of the infinitive came to be distinguished by the
use of different infinitives, the third when the infinitive's logical subject was
intended (e.g., (23)) and the first for its logical object (e.g., (24)).
With this background, we can turn to the comparative evidence.
Essentially, the other Finno-Ugric languages have only one infinitive,
originally a deverbal nominalization with locative case endings, like the Balto-
Finnic first infinitive lative, *-ta-k. This is the situation in Lapp, the closest
sister to Balto-Finnic, where the single infinitive, Proto-Lapp *-dek,
corresponds to Balto-Finnic *-ta-k (Korhonen 1981a:288-289).
We can safely reconstruct the two infinitives in Balto-Finnic, however, on
the basis of such examples as the following (note that several of the languages
selected here to illustrate the forms have undergone a variety of sound
changes, e.g., loss of final *-n, loss of final *-k, frequent loss of final
vowels, and loss of intervocalic *-t after a short vowel, among others):
'third infinitive illative' with verbs of motion or where the infinitive's

logical subject is represented with the main verb:
(a) Standard Finnish:
isä läht-i leikkaa-ma-an heinä-ä
father leave-Past cut-3rd.Inf-into hay-Part
"father went to cut hay"
(b) Veps:
tat tul' ot-ma-ha tiitar-t
father come:Past take-3rd.Inf-into daughter-Ace
"the father came to take (his) daughter"
84 LYLE CAMPBELL
(c) Estonian:
tule ömble-ma too poiss sua niit-ma
come sew-3rd.Inf bring boy here mow-3rd.Inf
"come sew! " "bring the boy here to mow! "
(d) VotiC:
neis-i issu-ma:
raise-Past sit-3rd.Inf
"he rose to sit/he rose up sitting"
sirs ku,tsu-tti koko suku vi:nà ju:-mà
then call-Past.Pass whole family brandy drink-3rd.Inf
"then the entire family was called to drink brandy"
(e) Livonian:
jemà tulà-b vari:tlã-m
mother come-3rd.Pres look-3rd.Inf
"mother comes to see"
(Laanest 1982:306.)
'firstinfintive' with non-motion verbs and where the infinitive's logical

object is represented with the main verb:
(a) Finnish:
mies haluaa syö-dä kala-a
man:Nom want eat-lst.Inf fish-Part.Sg
"the man wants to eat fish"
(b) Veps:
mamš rirjka-lę kana-η vei mö-da
old:man market-to hen- took to:sell-lst.Inf
"the old man took a chicken to market to sell (it)"
(c) Estonian:
aja lamba-d lauda-st välja mei-le näh-a
drive sheep-Pi stall-from so we-Gen see-lst.Inf
"drive the sheep out of the stall for us to see"
(d) Votie:
hakka ant-ę sigla: vet-tä kanta-a
old:woman give-Past sieve:Acc water-Part to:carry
"the old woman gave her a sieve to bring water"
(e) Livonian:
ko:fa paint laski:s ne lam:bS-d sudu:-dän
shepherd put:Prt allow:Past the sheep-Pl.Acc wolf-Pl.Gen
jera suö-d
up eat-lst.Inf
"the shepherd let the wolfves eat the sheep"
(Laanest 1982:306-307, Saukkonen 1984.)
These correspondences establish the validity of the reconstruction of the

two infinitives for Proto-Balto-Finic, and they bring us to a point where we
can now consider the role of relics in this case. The younger origin of the third
infinitive illative has left relics of first infinitives in circumstances otherwise
calling for the third. For example, although motion verbs require the third
infinitive, the verb "to lie down, to go to bed, to go to sleep" maintains a relic
first infinitive in frozen contexts with motion verbs, not just in Finnish but in
several of the Balto-Finnic languages, e.g.:
(a) Finnish:
meni maa-ta
went lie:down-lst.Inf
"went to lie down"
(b) Karelian:
mänöü moa-ta (same)
(c) Veps:
tul'emaga-tta (same)
(Laanest 1982:306-307; Saukkonen 1984).
By the rules, one expects Finnish men-i makaa-ma-an [go-Past lie-3rd.Inf-

Illative], which is grammatical, but odd. The fact that this relic form
corresponds in several languages gives us greater confidence in considering it
a true relic. There are a few other equivalent kinds of relic, e.g., Finnish:
(25) pan-i sauna-η lämmi-tä
put-Past sauna-AcC heat-1 st.Inf
"heat the sauna/set the sauna to heating"
By the rules, one expects: pan-i sauna-η lämpene-mä-än [put-Past sauna-Ace

heat-3rd.Inf-Illative]. (Laanest 1982:306-307.)
(26) men-nä vipeltä-ä
go-1 st.Inf wriggle
"to move with quick and short movements"
(Hakulinen & Leino 1985:11).
86 LYLE CAMPBELL
It might be argued that from such relics one would reconstruct the former
stage before the third infinitive began to encroach on the first infinitive's
territory. However, the third infinitive is well established in Proto-Balto-
Finnic by correspondences such as those considered above, and these relics
only hint at a former wider distribution of first infinitives without much detail
to go on. If archaisms and relics are typically of this sort, one would have to
be somewhat less enthusiastic about their value than, for example, Hock
(1985) is. The real value of the infinitive relics in Balto-Finnic seems to be
that of strengthening slightly the pre-Balto-Finnic single-infinitive recon
struction which was arrived at on the basis of comparative evidence from the
daughter languages anyway. The Balto-Finnic relic evidence alone would not
warrant the same pre-Balto-Finnic reconstruction; it is simply not sufficient
for such a strong inference.
4 . 2 . Relics for participial subjects. Above it was seen that

Proto-Balto-Finnic had participial constructions in which the participle's
logical subjects were originally arguments of the main verb, but were
reinterpreted in Finnish as genitive-subject arguments of the participle due to
the homophony of accusative and genitive singular case endings. Finnish
relics preserve evidence of the former state in, for example, folk poems. One
example is:
(27) kuul-tihin kala-t kute-va-n

hear-Past,Pass fish-Pl.Acc spawn-Pres.Prt-Suf
lohe-n-pursto-t loiskutta-va-n
salmon-Gen-tail-Pl.Acc splash-Pres.Prt-Suf
"the fish were heard spawning, salmon-tails splashing"
Modern Standard Finnish, instead of the plural accusative of "fish" and

"salmon-tails", would have the plural genitive, i.e.kalo-j-en and
lohenpursto-j-en. Thus this poem contains a relic of the former construction.
While it is supportive of the reconstruction already securely established on the
basis of comparative evidence from cognate languages, one wonders what a
comparativist could legitimately make of it in the absence of the testimony from
other languages and older texts? One might imagine it to be a poetic innovation
involving some kind of incipient subject-raising, or some other possibilities.
If one were to believe it to be evidence of the former state, it would still be a
rather large inferential leap to attempt to recover that state, without other
supporting evidence.
Thus, while the role of relics is to be applauded, its limitations should
also be faced squarely.
5. Reconstructed P r o t o - U r a l i c syntactic constructions.
To this point, hindrances and helps to syntactic reconstruction have been

considered and illustrated with Balto-Finnic data. Another way of assessing
the prospects for syntactic reconstruction in general is to evaluate its practical
results, i.e. the success of its application. Since reconstructions for various
aspects of Proto-Uralic grammar have been proposed from which Balto-Finnic
has innovated, it will prove a worthwhile exercise to examine the strength of
those reconstructions against the Balto-Finnic innovations. If syntactic
reconstruction can be shown to have been successful in this case, then faith in
the prospects for syntactic reconstruction in general is strengthened.
5 . 1 . P r o t o - U r a l i c word order. The reconstruction of Proto-Uralic

SOV order is secure. Most languages of the family are SOV; while Balto-
Finnic(-Lapp) has innovated to SVO order, evidence points to Balto-Finnic's
former SOV state. That is, as seen above, implicational word order universais
indicate that Balto-Finnic's prenominai relative clauses and Standard( -Marked-
Adjective comparatives would have originated only in an SOV language.
Thus, directionality and the normal application of the comparative method
suffice for a believable reconstruction in this case.
5.2. C o p u l a . Proto-Uralic is reconstructed with no copula in the

present tense. Balto-Finnic and some Lapp dialects have acquired a copula. 3
In this case, the weight of the testimony of the various other copulaless
branches argues for the postulated reconstruction. In addition, the 'negative
past' construction (restructured from a former copulaless 'perfect') constitutes,
in effect, a relic from the former copulaless times (see above). This and other
relic constructions (Korhonen 1981:302-303) can be taken as secondary
support within the copula-containing branch of the family for the copulaless
reconstruction already well established on sheer comparative evidence from
across the family.
5 . 3 . P a r t i t i v e case. Proto-Uralic did not have a partitive case as is

clearly shown by the correspondences across the family. The direction of the
3
In Lapp, the peripheral dialects, Southern and Turja Lapp, have no copula either in the
adjective predicate or in the perfect constructions. Other dialects with copulas show the
results of Balto-Finnic and Scandinavian influence. The Balto-Finnic copula itself is
frequently attributed to influence from the Germanic model. (Cf. Korhonen 198 la:304.)
88 LYLE CAMPBELL
change from locative/genitive constructions to markers of partially affected

objects corroborates this conclusion (see above). 4
5.4. Agreement. In Balto-Finnic adjectives agree in case and number

with their head nouns, e.g.:
(28) te istu-tte iso-i-ssa talo-i-ssa-nne

you sit-2nd:Pl big-Pl-in house-Pl-in-2nd:Pl
"you sit in your big houses"
Proto-Uralic is reconstructed without this agreement. In other Finno-Ugric

languages the adjective remains unchanged, e.g., Hungarian:
(29) új haz "(a) new house"

új ház-ban [new house-in] "in a new house"
új ház-ak [new house-Pi] "new houses"
The agreement found in Balto-Finnic is a rather late occurrence. It is often

asserted that this development is due to Baltic or Germanic influence, though
an independent origin within Balto-Finnic is also frequently defended. Proto-
Uralic attributive adjectives did not agree with head nouns, but they bore an
attributive suffix, the same as the genitive in shape. Most Uralic languages
today are like Hungarian, with no agreement.
The reconstruction without adjective agreement would seem secure on the
basis of this distribution throughout the family. Also, Balto-Finnic languages
contain relics that suggest agreement is recent. In Finnish, for example, there
are a few frequent adjectives which do not agree, e.g.:
(30) aika tava-lla [great way-with] "a great deal"

ensi vuon-na [next year-Ess:Sg] "(during) next year"
eri talo-i-ssa [different house-Pl-in] "in different houses"
joka talve-lla [each winter-on] "each/every winter"
4
It has frequently been thought that the Balto-Finnic partitive may be due to foreign
influence. Balto-Finnic and Baltic share in addition to the partly affected objects the
following partitive functions: (a) as the subject of existential sentences showing an
indefinite quantity; (b) as the subject of negative existential sentences; (c) as the object of
negative transitive verbs; (d) as the object of verbs of "desire" ("ask for", "long for"); (e)
for the object of nonterminating durative verbs ("look for", "wait for", "follow"); etc.
It seems clear that Balto-Finnic and Volga-Balto-Finnic have evidence of possible native
development. In any event, whether the Balto-Finnic partitive is the result of an independent
innovation or areal convergence, it clearly does not represent the Proto-Uralic pattern and
consequently the reconstruction is not affected one way or the other by what may have caused
this innovative departure from the pattern of the protolanguage.
pikku poj-i-lle [small boy-Pl-to] "to the small boys"

viime vuos -i-na [last year-Pi-Ess] "during the last years"
Some have thought that Balto-Finnic agreement is recent and probably due to
Germanic influence because, while it has case and number agreement, it lacks
agreement with possessive pronominal suffixes, e.g., kaunii-ssa talo-ssa-ni
[beautiful-in house-in-my] "in my beautiful house", but not *kaunii-ssa-ni
talo-ssa-ni. The assumption seems to be that if agreement were old it should
also show possessive pronominal agreement as well, though it is not clear why
this should follow. Standard Estonian does not have such full agreement as
Finnish; case agreement does not hold when the head word is in the essive,
terminative, abessive or comitative cases; in these instances the adjective is in
the genitive case, e.g.:
(31) ilusa maja-na [beautiful:Gen house-Ess] "as a pretty house"

ilusa maja-ni [Term] "up to the beautiful house"
ilusa maja-ta [Abess] "without the beautiful house"
ilusa maja-ga [Comit] "with the beautiful house"
Laanest 1982:304).
Lack of agreement in some of these cases may be seen as a relic of former non-
agreement times. 5 (Cf. Hakulinen 1968:444-453, Korhonen 1981a:344-346,
Laanest 1982:304-305, Ravila 1960.)
5
As far as the reconstruction of Proto-Uralic is concerned, it makes no difference
whether the development of Balto-Finnic agreement is due to foreign influence, native
factors, or a combination of both. The evidence is clear that it is a departure from the
original system of Proto-Uralic. Some evidence, however, suggests that agreement might be
older in this group than sometimes thought. For example, Finnish demonstrative pronouns
agree with nouns in case, but the relic versions of the case endings are employed on the
pronouns:
sii-nä talo-ssa [it-in house-in] "in that house"
sii-tä talo-sta [it-from house-from] "from that house"
The seeds of Balto-Finnic agreement are perhaps to be seen in the partial agreement found in
its closer relatives. Lapp adjectives in general lack agreement, with the exception of the
partial agreement of buorre "good", nubbe "second" and a few pronouns, e.g. Norway Lapp:
"good child"
buorre manna Nom.Sg.
buore maina Gen. S g.
buorren mannan Ess. Sg.
buorek ma:nak Norn. PI.
bu:rii marnai Gen.Pl. (Korhonen 1981a:344-345).
Mordvin has partial agreement, but otherwise lacks agreement.
90 LYLE CAMPBELL
5.5. Subordination. Proto-Uralic subordination did not involve

conjunctions and contained no finite verbs, but rather employed nominalized
forms of the subordinate verbs with case markings as required by the
governing main verb. It is not uncommon for the subordinate structures of
SOV languages to be more nominal-like (or participial/adjectival). Balto-
Finnic, however, has developed SVO and, with it, subordinate clauses with
conjunctions and finite verbs. The comparative evidence from the
corresponding constructions across the family strongly supports the
reconstruction, at the same time suggesting that Balto-Finnic has innovated.
Again, evidence internal to Balto-Finnic supports these conclusions. The main
conjunctions have etymologies showing their development from pronominal
stems (that is, those conjunctions which are not borrowed). For example,
from e- :
Finnish: ehkä "perhaps" (older and dialects "although")

Estonian: ehk "or"
VotiC: ehtši/ehki "or"
Finnish: eli "or"

Karelian: eli "or"
Estonian: elik "or" (archaic)
Finnish: että "that, so that" (complementizer)

Karelian: että (same)
Estonian: et (same)
Votic: etti (same)
For other examples from Finnish: from jo- ("each, some") is jos "if,
whether", jotta "so that, in order that"; from kuis  "when", kuin "as,
than"; from si-("it") is sitä "because", silloin "then", siis "thus, therefore",
sitten "(and) then"; etc. Several others are borrowed from neighboring
languages (Korhonen 1981a:346; Laanest 1982:292). That the conjunctions
are readily derived from pronominal stems or are borrowed argues that they
have not long existed in their roles as conjunctions, supporting the
conjunctionless reconstruction of Proto-Uralic.
In short, the reconstruction of Proto-Uralic syntax appears to be very
plausible, and the several rather striking Balto-Finnic innovations are easily
identified and constitute no serious difficulty for the reconstruction. Given the
success of the application of the comparative method of reconstruction in this
particular case, some optimism in our general ability to reconstruct syntax does
not seem out of order.
6. Conclusions.
There are many obstacles to successful syntactic reconstruction and their
impact should not be underestimated. Nevertheless, prospects are brighter
than many have thought them to be for successful syntactic reconstruction.
The more grammatical implicational universais we establish, the greater our
knowledge of possible directions of syntactic change, the better our ability to
reconstruct. In the implicational universais we have an analogue to the
directionality of sound change. Regularity of syntactic change can be found
when phenomena are embedded in more encompassing patterns.
Morphological reconstruction can carry us along the road towards the
protogrammar. The difficulties produced by analogical change (restructuring)
and borrowing for syntactic reconstruction are probably not different in kind
from their effects on phonological, morphological and lexical reconstruction.
Relics and archaisms can be of aid, particularly as additional testimony to be
weighed in connection with other sources of evidence.
There also appear to be limits to successful reconstruction. For example,
more abstract rules - i.e. those without direct phonological correlates and not
participating as one member of a broader 'paradigm' or pattern of similar
phenomena - will be more difficult to retrieve via comparative reconstruction.
Still, in view of the pessimism in recent literature concerning comparative
syntax, there is room for rejoicing over how much is accessible to
reconstruction.
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CASE ASSIGNMENT AND NP MOVEMENT
IN THE HISTORY OF SCANDINAVIAN
JAN TERJE FAARLUND
University of Trondheim
Traditionally, as well as in some recent work within the Government and

Binding framework (Platzack 1985a, b), the North Germanic languages have
been divided into two types: Insular Scandinavian, that is Icelandic and
Faroese; and Mainland Scandinavian, that is Norwegian, Swedish and
Danish. Insular Scandinavian has a rather elaborate case system, subjectless
sentences and oblique subjects. In Mainland Scandinavian there is an
obligatory subject in all tensed sentences (except the imperative), and the only
remnant of the case system is the distinction of two cases in personal
pronouns. This distinction also has historical relevance since older stages of
all the Scandinavian languages belonged to the first type. Attempts have been
made to ascribe several morpho-syntactic differences between these two
language types to one single parameter: the null subject parameter (Platzack
1985a).
In this paper it will be demonstrated that the different varieties of
Scandinavian, past and present, do not fall into two neat and distinct groups
with regard to syntactic properties relevant to the null subject parameter, and
that therefore this parameter is inadequate as an explanation of the relevant
facts. Furthermore, there are grammatical stages of Scandinavian with
grammars which present serious difficulties to the basic principles of the case
theory of the Government and Binding framework (Chomsky 1981, Kayne
1984:103f.).
Platzack (1985a) states the null subject parameter as in (1):
( 1) The Null Subject Parameter
COMP can be specified [+Pronoun]
The idea is that the pronominal feature can absorb the case that otherwise
would have to be assigned to the subject. Since a subject position thereby will
be left without case, it either has to be left empty, or it can be filled by an NP
which already has case. In a language which allows null subjects, such as
96 JAN TERJE FAARLUND
Icelandic, we therefore find sentences like (2) with no subject, or (3) with an
oblique subject.1
(2) Rigndi i gær?
rain:Pt yesterday
"Did it rain yesterday?"
(3) Mig vantar peninga
me:A lack:Pr money:P:A
"I lack money"
Oblique subjects are assumed to be generated within VP and have their case
assigned there prior to movement into subject position. Since the feature
PRONOUN in COMP absorbs the case that otherwise would be assigned to
the subject, we get no left-over case in (2) and no case conflict in (3).
Languages without null subjects, such as English and Mainland Scandinavian,
here represented by Norwegian, have no pronominal feature in COMP, and
therefore there has to be a phonologically expressed element in subject position
to receive the case assigned by the tensed verb. Such languages therefore do
not have subjectless sentences, compare (2) and (4), and they do not have
oblique subjects, compare (3) and (5).
(4) a. Det regna i går
it rain:Pt yesterday
"it rained yesterday"
b. *Regna i går
(5) a. Eg vantar pengar
I:N lack:Pr money
"I lack money"
b. *Meg vantar pengar
me:A lack:Pr money
These same facts can also be predicted directly by an analysis of the different
case assignment systems in the two types of languages, without recourse to the
rather arbitrary pronominal feature in COMP. Let us therefore take a look at
case assignment in Old Norse and Modern Mainland Scandinavian.
1
The following abbreviations are used for morphological categories: S - singular; Ρ
- plural; F - feminine; M - masculine; Nt- neuter; N - nominative; A - accusative; D
- dative; G - genitive; Def - definite; Pr - present; Pt - past; PP - past participle; Aux
- the passive auxiliary.
The others are self-explanatory.
CASE ASSIGNMENT AND NP MOVEMENT 97
In Old Norse there are four cases, all of which are used for NP arguments
of verbs. In the lexical entry of a verb there is a specification of the number of
arguments it takes, and the semantic roles distributed to each argument. Cases
may be assigned to NPs according to their semantic roles. The sentences in
(6) exemplify the instrumental dative, those in (7) the recipient dative, and
those in (8) the patient accusative. All the sentences provide examples of agent
nominatives.
(6) a. peim reið Goðgestr konungr
that:D:M ride:Pt Godgest:N king:N
"King G. rode (on) it"
b. Einarr kastaði steini
Einar.N throw:Pt rock:D
(7) a. hon skyldi bera ọl víkingum
she:N shall:Pt carry beer.A viking:P:D
"She was to bring beer to the Vikings"
b. Ólafr konungr pakkaði henni vel
01af:N king:N thank:Pt her:D well
(8) a. Hallfreðr setti bú saman

Hallfred:N set:Pt home:A together
"Hallfred set up a home"
b. nú tekr hann hestinn
now take:Pr he:N horse:Def:A
The genitive is used to denote a partitive meaning in a very wide sense, as in

(9), including a non-affected object, (9c).
(9) a. hann var ekki skald ok hann hafði peirrar listar eigi
he:N was not bard:N and he:N have:Pt that:S:G skill:G not
fengit
get:PP
"He was not a bard, and he had not gotten any of those skills"
b. konungr aflaði sér svá dyrgripa
king:N provide:Pt Refl:D thus treasures:P:G
"The king provided such treasures for himself"
 menn leituðu hennar
man:P:N search:P:3P her:G
"People looked for her"
With the exception of a few idiosyncratic case assignments, the accusative,

dative and genitive cases correspond fairly well to specific semantic roles. The
nominative, however, seems to represent a variety of semantic roles, cf. (9a)
and the sentences in (10).
(10) a. vín er honum bæði drykkr ok matr
wine:N is him:D both drink:N and food:N
"Wine is both drink and food for him"
b. porbjọrn átti fé lítit
Thorbjorn:N own:Pt money:A little:Nt:A
 hann var gørviligr
he:N was well-accomplished:N
d. Bjarni hét maðr
Bjarni:N be-named:Pt man:N
"There was a man by the name of Bjarni"
What these and other uses of the nominative case have in common, however,
is that it is assigned to the highest ranking NP in a semantic role hierarchy.
This hierarchy is of the familiar kind, as first proposed by Fillmore (1968).
The version I will adopt here is given in (11).
(11) Semantic Role Hierarchy:
agent > instrument > recipient > patient
There are two case assignment rules, then, in Old Norse. One rule assigns
nominative to the highest NP in the semantic role hierarchy. This case
assignment rule can be formulated as in (12) (where A1 stands for the first
argument in the hierarchy for a given predicate). The other case assignment
rule assigns case by semantic role as shown in (13).
(12) A1 - NOMINATIVE
(13) INSTRUMENT - DATIVE
RECIPIENT - DATIVE
PATIENT - ACCUSATIVE
PATIENT [+PARTIVE] - GENITIVE
I have argued elsewhere that Old Norse is non-configurational, that is, it

has a flat structure with no separate subject constituent (Faarlund 1988). One
consequence of this is that each NP is governed by the verb. Therefore no
other case assignment is needed in Old Norse. All NP arguments are assigned
case by one of the two rules (12) or (13). And there is no case assignment by
the feature TENSE.
In Mainland Scandinavian, where only two cases are distinguished, there

is a perfect correlation between position and case form, in the sense that
subjects are always in the nominative and all objects in the oblique case.
(14) a. Eg ser deg
I:N see:Pr you:S:A
"I see you"
b. Ho ventar på deg
she:N wait:Pr for you:S:A
"She is waiting for you"
This is what we find in the standard languages and most dialects of Mainland
Scandinavian, as well as in English.2 In these languages, then, there is case
assignment by structural government only, by rule (15).
( 15) SUBJECT - NOMINATIVE
OTHER - ACCUSATIVE
These differences in case assignment account for several syntactic differences
between Old Norse and Modern Scandinavian. In Modern Scandinavian,
whenever the subject is a pronoun which shows case, it is in the nominative.
The subject is also positionally defined. In other words, nominative case is
assigned to a specified structural position. Furthermore, there are passive
sentences where the subject may correspond to any kind of object in the active
counterpart.
(16) a. Dei tildelte henne ein premie
they:N award:Pt her:A a prize
"They awarded her a prize"
b. Ho vart tildelt ein premie
she:N Aux:Pt award:PP a prize
"She was awarded a prize"
 Premien vart tildelt henne
prize:Def Aux:Pt award:PP her:A
"The prize was awarded her"
And of course also in passive sentences the subject has all the syntactic and
morphological subject properties of active subjects.
In Old Norse, on the other hand, there are sentences without nominative
NPs. This occurs whenever no phonologically expressed NP bears the
2
Iwill disregard in this context the genitive in those languages and dialects where it is
used only for the possessor in NPs and never in argument positions.
highest semantic role (cf. (11)), as in (17) or (18), where the verbs may be
considered active with a non-expressed agent.
(17) a. ekki sá skipit fyrir laufinu
not see:Pt ship:Def:A for foliage:Def:D
"The ship could not be seen because of the foliage"
b. hér hefr up sọgu Heiðreks konungs
here raise:Pr up story:A Heidrek:G king:G
"Here begins the story of King Heidrek"
( 18) a. pegar er lysti, ...

then when brighten:Pt
"When it became light..."
b. snjófaði mjck á jcrð6ina
snow:Pt much on earth:Def:A
"It snowed much on the Earth"
In Old Norse, the nominative in passive sentences can only correspond to

an accusative in the active counterpart, as shown in (19) and (20).
(19) a. henni var vel pakkat
her:D was well thanked:Nt:S:N
"She received due gratitude"
b. *hon var vel ð
she:N was well thanked:F:N
(20) a. margra vikinga er getit
many:M:P:G viking:P:G is:Pr:3S mention:PP:Nt:S:N
"Many Vikings are mentioned"
b. *margir vikingar eru getnir
many:M:P:N viking:P:N are:Pr.3P mention:PP:M:P:N
Within the Government and Binding framework this is explained in terms of

the null subject parameter: if two post-verbal NPs have different cases, only
one is assigned structurally by government, the other one has to be assigned
inherently. If the NP with inherent case is moved into subject position, it
cannot be assigned nominative, because then a case conflict would arise.
Therefore only NPs with a structurally assigned accusative case can
correspond to nominative in passive sentences. But the fact that it is the
accusative, and not the dative, which is structurally assigned, remains totally
arbitrary.
A semantically based case theory like the one sketched above, however,
offers a non-arbitrary explanation of this: with the verb be the patient is
always A1, and therefore in the nominative; consider sentences with adjectival
predicates such as (10a, c). An NP with a different role with regard to an

adjectival predicate would be in the dative or the genitive; see, for example,
the dative honum "him" in (10a). Accusative is precisely the case assigned to
patients by active verbs. Hence this correlation between active accusative and
passive nominative.
Consider now the following data from a different stage of Nordic.
Certain dialects of Central and Eastern Norway and adjacent parts of Sweden
have kept the dative case in certain nominal categories.3
(21) a. hann takke foreldrom sinne

he:N thank:Pt parent:Def:P:D Refl:Poss:D
"He thanked his parents"
b. hu låvå gutta mat
she:N promise:Pt boy:Def:D food
"She promised the boy food"
 dom tala åt 'n
they speak:Pt to her:D
"They spoke to her"
I will refer to the varieties of Mainland Scandinavian with this case system as
Central Scandinavian dialects. In these dialects dative objects become
nominative in the passive.
(22) a. foreldra vart takke

parent:Def:P:N AuxiPt thank:PP
"The parents were thanked"
b. gutten vart låvå mat
boy:Def:N Aux promise:PP food
"The boy was promised food"
c. hu vart tala åt
she:N AuxiPt speak:PP to
"She was spoken to"
There are no oblique subjects or null subjects in these dialects. Sentences

corresponding to (2), (3) and (19a) are all unacceptable in any Central
Scandinavian dialect, as in any other variety of Mainland Scandinavian.
(23) a. *foreldrom vart takke

parents:Def:P:D Aux:Pt thank:PP
"The parents were thanked"
3
The examples arefromthe Central Eastern Norwegian dialect of Toten.
b. *gutta vart låvå mat

boy:Def:D Aux:Pt promise:PP food
"The boy was promised food"
c. *da vart 'n tala åt4
then Aux:Pt her:D speak:PP to
"Then she was spoken to"
In the Government and Binding framework, structural case is assigned at S-

structure and inherent case at D-structure. If dative is assigned inherently in a
postverbal position, it should be impossible to change it into nominative at a
later stage of the derivation. This problem may be solved if NP movement to
subject position is allowed to operate before case assignment. Such a solution
also allows for a unified account of the different historical stages represented
by the various contemporary Nordic languages and dialects. I will now turn to
such an account.
Modern Icelandic has oblique subjects, that is, NPs in non-nominative
case but with syntactic subject properties. There is a limited class of verbs that
select a specific non-nominative NP for subject, and these NPs exhibit the
same syntactic subject properties as do regular nominative subjects. In such
sentences, case is assigned at D-structure, prior to NP movement into subject
position. This can be demonstrated by means of subject control in embedded
sentences. In the Icelandic sentence (3) above, repeated here as (24a), the
accusative mig "me" is a syntactic subject. This is shown by the fact that it is
represented by an empty category in the embedded version in (24b).
(24) a. Mig vantar peninga

me:A lack:Pr money:P:A
"I lack money"
b. Eg vonast til að vanta ekki peninga
I:N hope:Pr:Refl to to lack:I not money:P:A
"I hope not to lack money"
It is not possible, however, to find Old Norse equivalents of (24b), and this is
one piece of evidence for the non-configurational structure of Old Norse: no
NP can be syntactically identified as a subject. It follows from this and other
4
Only the clitic pronouns, not the full forms, have separate dative forms. The subject
clitic is used in main sentences only when following the verb, therefore an example sentence
with inverted word order is used here. The clitic 'n is a homonym for masculine nominative
and feminine dative. Therefore this sentence is acceptable with the meaning "He was spoken
to".
similar evidence that Old Norse does not have NP movement, in the sense of
movement of an NP into a specified subject position or role.
Modern Faroese offers somewhat conflicting data. On one hand, it is like
Central Scandinavian dialects in that dative objects do become nominative in
the passive, as shown in (25).
(25) a. Teir fagnaðu honum væl

they:N welcome:Pt:3P him:D well
"They welcomed him heartily"
b. Hann var væl fagnaður
he:N was well welcome:PP:M:N
 *Honum var væl fagnað
him:D was well welcome:PP:Nt:N
Faroese differs from Icelandic in this respect, and the two languages can
therefore not be classed together with regard to the null subject parameter. On
the other hand, Faroese also has null subjects or oblique subjects.
(26) a. Meg droymdi dreym

me:A dream:Pt:3S dream:A
"I had a dream"
b. Mær damar mjólkina
me:D like:Pr:3S milk:Def:A
"I like the milk"
It therefore seems that Faroese is at a stage where case assignment may be

ordered before or after NP movement.
The facts presented here can be summarized as follows:
(I) Old Norse:
INHERENT CASE ASSIGNMENT:
(a) A1 — nominative
(b) instrument dative

recipient dative
patient accusative
patient [+partitive] genitive
(Π) Icelandic:
(a) A1 - nominative
(b) instrument - dative

recipient - dative
patient - accusative
patient [+partitive] - genitive
NP MOVEMENT
(  ) Faroese:
(NP MOVEMENT)
STRUCTURAL CASE ASSIGNMENT:
subject — nominative
INHERENT CASE ASSIGNMENT
instrument - dative
recipient - dative
(NP MOVEMENT)
(IV) Central Scandinavian:
NP MOVEMENT
subject - nominative
instrument - dative
recipient - dative
(V) Standard Mainland Scandinavian:

NP MOVEMENT
subject - nominative
other -accusative
Assuming that Icelandic, Faroese, Central Scandinavian and Standard

Mainland Scandinavian represent various historical stages of Nordic, in that
order, we can sum up this part of the history of Nordic syntax as follows: a
rule of NP movement was introduced, and case assignment moved closer to
the surface and became structural rather than inherent.
It is clear that the null subject parameter of the Government and Binding
framework is insufficient to account for these distinctions, since it only
distinguishes between two syntactic types. But more seriously, the situation
we find in Faroese and the Central Scandinavian dialects cannot be accounted
for at all within the case theory of Government and Binding. An NP which
has been assigned case inherently in VP cannot be moved to a position where it
has to be assigned nominative structurally without creating a case conflict and
thereby an unacceptable sentence.
A further problem is that the Central Scandinavian dialects also allow
stranding of prepositions that take the dative case, see (22c), repeated here.
(27) hu vart tala åt
she:N Aux:Pt speak:PP to
Preposition stranding is a very peculiar syntactic phenomenon, hardly found
outside Scandinavian, English and Dutch. It is assumed to be made possible
by a very restricted rule of reanalysis, whereby the preposition is incorporated
into the verb, and the NP is assigned structural case like a direct object (cf.
Maling and Zaenen 1985 with references). Therefore prepositions that can be
stranded cannot assign the dative case. This is clearly a wrong prediction for
the Central Scandinavian dialects.
To conclude, then, the positing of an arbitrary feature [+PRONOUN] in
COMP does not give us anything extra in terms of generalizations or
explanations. The differences discussed here between the various stages of
Nordic can be ascribed to differences in the case assignment system and its
ordering with respect to NP movement. This difference may of course be
expressed notationally as a feature in COMP, but then that feature has to be
taken as a symbol of the differences, not as an explanation of them.
REFERENCES
Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht:

Foris.
Faarlund, Jan Terje. 1988. "Transformational passive and the origin of NP
movement". University of Chicago Working Papers in Linguistics, vol.
4.
Fillmore, Charles N. 1968. "The case for case". Universais in Linguistic
Theory ed. by E. Bach & R.T. Harms, 1-88. New York: Holt,
Rinehart & Winston.
Kayne, Richard S. 1984. Connectedness and Binary Branching. Dordrecht:
Foris.
Maling, Joan & Anne Zaenen. 1985. "Preposition-stranding and passive".
Nordic Journal of Linguistics 8.197-209.
Platzack, Christer. 1985a. The Scandinavian Languages and the Null Subject
Parameter. (= Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax, 20).
Trondheim: University of Trondheim.
Platzack, Christer. 1985b. "Syntaktiskaförändringari svenskan under 1600-
talet". Svenskans beskrivning 15.401-415.
DOMESDA Y BOOK AND LATE OLD ENGLISH DIALECTS
JACEK FISIAK
Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań
Old English dialectology, unlike Middle English (cf. Mcintosh et al.

1986; Kristensson 1967, 1987; etc.) has not recorded significant progress
over the last decade. One of the reasons for this situation is the paucity of
evidence and its uneven distribution both in time and space, which has usually
led scholars to present Old English dialects in grammars as 'timeless'
phenomena with diachronic and diatopic variation often lumped together.
Furthermore most of the dialectal Old English manuscripts lack precise
localization which makes it impossible on this basis to attempt even a limited
presentation of the geographical distribution of dialect features.
As has been generally accepted, Old English (c. 700-1100) has come
down to us in four basic dialects, i.e. Northumbrian, Mercian, Kentish and
West Saxon. Their geographic location is, in most cases, described vaguely.
For instance, a classic example of the account of the geographical distribution
of Old English dialects repeated with minor modifications until today can be
best illustrated by the following quotation from E. Sievers' Old English
Grammar.
In the earliest OE manuscripts the existence of dialects is plainly discernible. The

chief of these are the Northumbrian, in the north; the Midland or Mercian in the
interior; the Saxon, in the south; and the Kentish, in the extreme southeast
(Sievers 1903:2).
Furthermore, certain parts of English with sizeable populations, e.g., East

Anglia or Essex, are usually left unaccounted for (notable exceptions here
Smith 1956 and Pilch 1970). However, even if endeavors were made to locate
dialects more precisely, their borders (i.e. either bundles of isoglosses or
transition zones) were determined by means of extralinguistic factors (cf.
Smith 1956:XXIX-XXX).
For the reasons mentioned above caution has been advocated in locating
dialects with any degree of exactness (cf. Luick 1914-1921:29 or Campbell
1959:10). A large number of scholars, under the circumstances, have rejected
Old English dialectology in the modern sense of the word, sometimes even
108 JACEK FISIAK
Map 1. Old English dialects. Based on Smith (1956).
declaring it impossible (Campbell 1959:10, Hogg Forthcoming; cf. also

Crowley 1980, 1986; Bähr 1985 and Toon 1987). This is particularly true of
the cases where textual evidence alone constitutes dialect data. However, a
certain number of scholars who have used other than textual evidence, viz.
onomastic evidence, have attained a fair degree of success in the mapping of
Old English dialect information - both at the beginning of our century (e.g.,
Brandi 1915) and more recently (e.g., Snyder 1969).
DOMESDA Y BOOK AND LATE OLD ENGLISH DIALECTS 109
In the opinion of the present writer the available evidence for Old English
dialects, i.e. TEXTS (literary, charters and inscriptions) and NAMES (place names
and to some extent personal names) in Old English and Latin texts or on coins,
it would seem, can provide enough information for a more detailed analysis, at
least for the end of the Old English period, than hitherto attempted.
Each type of evidence, however, presents some problems. Most Old
English manuscripts which have survived until today were copied in the Late
West Saxon standardized language between the end of the 10th century and the
12th century. Some early West Saxon manuscripts date to the late 9th and
early 10th centuries, but even then the language exhibits some traces of
incipient standardization (Kurban 1978). The remaining West Saxon evidence
is poor and belongs to the 9th century.
The non-West Saxon evidence consists of 72 texts of which only 27 are
longer than a few lines. Nine of the longer texts are charters, and three are
short poems or inscriptions (Bede's Death Song, Cædmon's Hymn and the
runic text on the Franks' Casket). Kent has no longer texts. There is no
dialectal textual witness for Northumbrian in the 9th and early 10th centuries,
for Mercian before 750, or from the mid 10th century and the end of the 11th
century, and for Kentish before 800 and after 1000.
The situation is even more critical for the end of the 11th and the
beginning of the 12th century. It is hoped, however, that the recent work of
Mcintosh and his collaborators (1986), which has laid solid foundations for
the study of copied and dialectally mixed late medieval manuscripts, will be
applied to the appropriate manuscripts of the 11th century Old English period
and the 12th-century transition period, and will yield valuable new dialect
information.
Inscriptions, both runic (approximately 65, of which only 30 are of
significance) and non-runic (158 listed by Okasha 1971, of which
approximately 40% are insignificant), are also widely distributed in time.
Runic inscriptions from the earliest period are quite frequent. Their length
varies from 41 words to two. Their distribution is space is uneven. There are,
for example, no West Saxon runic inscriptions. Seventy-two percent of all of
them are to be found in the north, as can be seen on Map 2. The non-runic
inscriptions are poorly represented in the Midlands. The East Anglian ones are
useless for dialectological purposes. Moreover, 80% of non-runic inscriptions
appear in the north (see Map 3).
Charters (i.e. royal grants, private agreements, wills, records of
proceedings of councils, etc.) are extremely numerous throughout the Old
English period. Unfortunately after 900 they tend to be written in the West
Saxon dialect everywhere in England. Charters provide important dialect
110 JACEK FISIAK
Pre-650 runic object.  -650 object with rune-like symbol.

Post-650 runic monuments. Rune-stones: ■ 1 example; 2-3 examples; 8 examples.
Runes on objects other than stone: 1 example; 2 examples.
Map 2. Runic monuments. Based on Page (1973:26f.).
evidence for Mercian and Kentish before 900. No early charters from the
north are known to have survived. There are few or no dialectally significant
charters for areas of England not represented by literary records, e.g. East
Anglia.
DOMESDAY BOOK AND LATE OLD ENGLISH DIALECTS 111
Inscriptions on stone. 1 item; 2-3 items; 4 or more items.

Inscriptions on material other than stone. A 1 item; A 2-3 items.
Map 3. Based on Okasha(1971:140f.).
It would seem thus that the textual evidence alone is insufficient to

provide dialect information or mapping in terms of isoglosses, lexical or
grammatical items, or statistical characterization of administrative units, such
as counties. The Old English dialectologist has to look for other sources of
112 JACEK FISIAK
information to supplement the textual witnesses in order to reconstruct the

distribution of at least some types of linguistic forms. This additional evidence
is provided by onomastics. It is often the only source of information for areas
unaccounted for by the textual evidence (e.g., East Anglia). The study of
place names and personal names (by nature limited to spelling, phonology and
lexical variation) can provide deeper insights into the linguistic geography of
Old English. (The use of onomastics in historical dialectology is nothing new
and has been advocated by several scholars since 1900, with all its advantages
and limitations, e.g., Ekwall 1913, 1917; Wyld 1913-1914; Brandi 1915;
Arngart 1949; Cameron 1959; and more recently, Sundby 1970; Cavers
1977; and Kristensson 1965, 1967, 1976, 1981, 1983, 1986, 1987, to
mention but a few.)
The largest number of Old English names has been recorded in one
document, viz. the Domesday Book (1086) (hereinafter: DB ), which thus
provides a rich source of data for the study of regional language variation
(within the bounds and limits of onomastic evidence). The names from before
DB are not numerous and suffer from limitations similar to those of the textual
evidence.
When supplemented by both the textual and onomastic evidence from
1000-1150, the DB material makes it possible to give aratherdetailed account
of Late Old English dialects within an optimal span of time without confusing
diatopic and diachronic differences (see Fisiak 1985a, 1985b for this and other
controversial issues in historical dialectology).
Furthermore, the evidence provided by DB can be supported by ampler
data from the second half of the 12th century and the 13th century, a time not
too distant from the end of the 11th century, when DB was compiled. The
application of RETRODICTION technique (Donahue 1968:147) can corroborate
additionally some of the direct Old English evidence and help to elucidate more
issues in Old English dialectology. (RETRODICTION, as opposed to prediction,
is based on the assumption that the known area of one period has a general
correspondence to the preceding period and that on this basis one can
hypothesize about the general geographic bounds and linguistic features of
earlier dialects.) This technique is not new and has been used by scholars such
as Brandi (1915) to determine Old English dialect boundaries on the basis of
the onomastic evidence from Taxatio ecclesiastica (1291) and Moore, Meech
& Whitehall (1935) to determine some Middle English isoglosses on the basis
of Ellis' (1889) survey of Modern English dialects. It should be remembered,
however, that this technique must be used with caution because the distribution
of forms may change in the course of time. Isoglosses may shift, disintegrate
or arise. The later history of Middle English (Wakelin 1983, Fisiak 1984 and
1985b) shows how certain features could spread or disappear entirely, and
there is every reason to assume that something similar could have taken place
in the 12th century.
It is interesting to note that only a few scholars have made even a limited
use of the DB material and that the whole document has never been subjected
to detailed scrutiny from the point of view of dialectology alone. Thus, the
phonology of names has been treated by Stolze (1902) in a superficial and -
from our present standpoint - outdated way. Ekwall (1917) analysed names
which contained the reflexes of WGmc.a before 1 followed by a consonant
and reflexes of i-mutation of WGmc.a before / followed by a consonant to
establish the distribution of these features in Old English (i.e. for the whole
period), supplementing this material with Middle English place-name evidence
down to the 15th century. Reaney (1925) investigated four features in several
counties to support his claims about the English of 12th-century London. Von
Feilitzen (1935) produced the most penetrating study yet of the DB material,
but limited to personal names. Snyder (1969) investigated the names which
appeared in the hatched area marked in Map 4 with reference to a few features.
Most scholars, however, to this day seem to have followed Zachrisson (1909,
1924), ignoring DB as reliable evidence for Old English.
Although it is basically a Norman document written in Latin (the bulk of it
by non-English scribes), DB contains a relatively large number of English
names (some of which have been written down by English scribes); and in
view of the general scarcity of Old English dialect data, it deserves serious
treatment. We hope to demonstrate below that it is an important source of
information and if handled with care, DB can reveal some new and interesting
information about Old English dialects.
But before we proceed any further a few words about the document itself
would seem to be in order.
The Domesday Book is the result of the survey of the lands of England
ordered by William the Conqueror and conducted in 1086. It contains records
of the land, ownership, area and value of the lands, etc. The inquest was
carried out for tax purposes for the Treasury.
The main manuscript {Exchequer) of the Domesday Book consists of
two volumes which are preserved in the Public Record Office in London. The
smaller manuscript {Little Domesday) covers Essex, Norfolk and Sussex.
The larger volume comprises the rest of England except Northumberland,
Cumberland, Westmoreland and Durham. There are no less than 13,400
names in DB (they have been recently collected in Domesday Gazetteer,
compiled by Darby & Versey 1975).
114 JACEK FISIAK
Map 4. Area investigated in Snyder (1969).

Opinions as to the dating of the manuscript vary from shortly after 1086
to the middle of the 12th century. Most authorities, however, are inclined to
accept the end of the 11th century.
The DB inquest was conducted by royal commissioners who went to the
circuits assigned to them and collected in each hundred the sworn verdicts of
local juries. In each hundred, half the jurors were Norman and the other half
English. The statements of jurors were taken down by the Norman clerks of
the commission and included in returns. The procedure was mainly oral,
although sufficient evidence exists that Old English documents were also
sometimes submitted to the commissions. "Most DB spellings of Old English
place and personal names are thus in the last resort based on actual spoken
forms, which in the case of the English jurors were no doubt often tinged with
local dialects" (von Feilitzen 1937:6). The occurrence of traditional Old
English forms in DB may also point to an occasional employment of native
English scribes. The original returns were subsequently sent to Winchester
where they were rearranged and copied to yield finally the two DB volumes
which have come down to us.1
Although one should not exclude the possibility of English scribes being
employed by the royal chancery and the DB commissions, the evidence
available now "leaves no doubt that the vast majority of the clerks responsible
for the compilation of the great record must have been Normans" (von
Feilitzen 1937:8). As Zachrisson (1909:60) has pointed out, "from a linguistic
point of view we have to look upon DB as an essentially Norman and French
work". This, however, should not automatically disqualify the work as a
source of linguistic information for Old English. For one thing the scarcity of
dialect material does not permit us to reject even the smallest scrap of evidence
as long as our investigation proceeds with due caution and is methodologically
sound. Caution is particularly necessary since DB forms are strongly
influenced by Norman pronunciation and spelling tradition as well as by the
Late West Saxon standard language (Ekwall 1917:8), e.g., the appearance of a
for ON ei in Bradeuuelle (DB) for Braithwell (York) or Bradebroc (DB)
for Braybrook (Northumbria) in the north of England. Zachrisson pointed to
additional deficiencies and problems connected with DB as a source of
linguistic evidence for English, such as "the fanciful and inconsistent spellings
in this record [and] also the fact that all the MSS of Domesday Book are copies
of original returns which no longer exist" (Zachrisson 1924:99). The "fanciful
spellings" are not so fanciful and inconsistent as Zachrisson thought if one
looks at medieval scribal practices in a more systematic way. We hope to
demonstrate below that their value as evidence is no worse than the spellings
of the 13th or 15th century. Despite copying (and nowadays we know far
more about the mechanism of the process than half a century ago), the mixed
material of DB contains enough dialect information worth investigating which
is not the result of Anglo-Norman influence. The non-West Saxon dialect
layer in DB was clearly recognized by von Feilitzen (1935), who voiced the
opinion that
Dictation cannot be excluded in the process of copying.

116 JACEK FISIAK
in interpreting the DB forms due allowance should however always be made for the
possible presence of non-WS features, for as we have seen the spellings of the DB
scribes were in the majority of cases ultimately based on the oral evidence of local
juries (39).
Thus it is possible that
a number of local forms were recorded relatively faithfully and the efforts of Norman
scribes represent more or less successful attempts to record the actual spoken forms
of late OE place- and personal names (40).
When investigating the phonology of English names in DB, the nature of

the document (see above) makes it necessary to determine first the extent of
Anglo-Norman influence2 before other factors are considered.
First of all, English names have been basically recorded by Norman
scribes, which entails the replacement of English scribal habits by Norman
ones, e.g., the use of «u» for OE «y», rendering /y/, «u, v» for OE «f»
representing [v], «eh» for OE «c» rendering /k/. Secondly, some of the
recorded names must have been modified phonetically because of interference
resulting from language contact, e.g., frequent substitution of Anglo-Norman
initial/t/ for OE /θ/. Thirdly, the graphic form of the word may represent a
phonological process which might have taken place in the 11th century and
was duly written down by the scribe.
Other factors which must be considered when analysing DB names are
the influence of traditional Old English spellings, which has been mentioned
above, regular scribal errors due to non-linguistic causes, and certain spelling
stereotypes which even in early medieval, relatively variegated, spelling
systems could appear and were used over a large area of the country (e.g.,
church in DB). For lack of space these issues cannot be discussed at length
here.
To illustrate the validity of DB for Old English dialectology, the
distribution of two features will be discussed in the remaining part of the
present paper:
(a) «e, u, i/y» rendering OE /y/, resulting from the i-umlaut of/u/;
(b) «a» representing the i-umlaut of OE Anglian «ealC».3
2
For details see Stolze (1902), Zachrisson (1909, 1924), von Feilitzen (1935); cf. also
Pope (1952:420-450) and Vising (1923) on Anglo-Norman.
3
At this point I prefer to remain noncommital as regards the phonetic value of the
digraph.
In my investigation of the distribution of «i/y, e, u» for OE /y/ in DB I

have used spellings in such test words as OE hyll, brycg, hrycg, hyrst
"wood", and mylen.
According to standard accounts, OE/y/changed to/e/in Kent before or
around 900 (Jordan 1968:61-66). Campbell (1959:124) includes also Surrey
in the e- area. On the basis of the Middle English place-name evidence pro
vided by Wyld (1913-1914), Luick (1914-1940:169) has extended it to parts
of Sussex, Middlesex and Suffolk, and even into Cambridgeshire. He also
dates the change of/y/ > /i/ to the 10th and 11th centuries, and assigns it to a
territory covering Northumbria, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, parts of
Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Devonshire and Dorset.
The spellings in DB suggest that in Late Old English the e- area extends
further to the west than assumed by Luick, Brunner and Wyld (see Map 5) In
stressed position «e»-forms appear in Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire,
Kent, Hertford, Bedford and northern Northamptonshire in the test words
mentioned above. In unstressed position the situation looks different, e.g.,
«e»-spellings can be found in hill as far west as Warwickshire, Oxfordshire,
Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Shropshire and Herefordshire (see Map 6).
The distribution pattern in other test words is similar. Von Feilitzen
(1935:54-56) found «e» in personal names also in Derbyshire, Leicestershire,
Berkshire, Devonshire, Somerset and Cheshire. The interpretation of this
phenomenon is not easy. Some of the earlier scholars would consider the e-
spellings in Kent and some other southeastern counties as recordings of/e/ <
OE /y/. In other areas «e» is explained by them either as an Anglo-Norman
way of rendering/y/in writing (von Feilitzen 1937:55 and Seltén 1972:116)
because of a similarity between OE /y/ and AN /e/ (Stolze 1902:17) as a result
of the lowering and unrounding effect of the neighboring consonants, e.g. /r/
(Stolze 1902:17, Schlemilch 1914:9, Edwall 1936:115ff.), or as an Anglo-
Norman spelling for «i». None of these explanations is convincing. «e» can
be found before /r/ as well as in the neighborhood of other non-lowering
consonants, e.g. /d3/, as in bridge. Furthermore, why should «e» be used for
«i» in some areas and not in other areas in the same word? Why should «e» be
considered the spelling for /y/ in areas other than Kent and the southeast? If
we look at Maps 7 to 12 we see that «e»-forms rendering OE /y:/ can be found
in western and central counties in later centuries as well. Even in modern
dialects the occurrence of /i:/ in such a word as mice (< mēs) gives further
evidence that the unrounding of /ữ(: must have operated in a larger area than
so far accepted. Thus Ellis (1889) has recorded /mi:s/ in Gloucestershire
(Cirencester), Devonshire (Iddesleigh and Totness) and in some East Midland
and southeastern counties. Orton et al. (1962-1971) have found /mi:s/ in
118 JACEK FISIAK
Map 5. [DB] hill, hurst, brìdge,rìdge,mill.
Map 6. [DB] -hill

Map 7. [ 12th century] hill.
Map 8. [ 12th century] mill.

120 JACEK FISIAK
Map 9. [13th century] bill.
Map 10. [13th century] mill.

DOMESDA Y BOOK AND LATE OLD ENGLISH DIALECTS 121
Map 11. [ 15th century] fill, filth, hill, bridge, bury, sin. Based on
Mcintosh et al. (1986).
Map 12. [15th century] Ære. Based on McIntosh et al. (1986).

122 JACEK FISIAK
Map 13. [mi:s] mice in modern dialects. Based on Orton et al. (1962-71).
Suffolk (the only form in all localities), Norfolk, Essex, Kent, Sussex,
Surrey, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire and Berkshire (see Map 13). The
retrodictive evidence afforded by Middle English names (Brandi 1915,
Reaney 1925, 1926-1927, Wyld 1913-1914, Serjeantson 1922, Bohman
1944, Ek 1972 and Seltén 1972), by Mcintosh et al. (1986), and by modern
dialect surveys supports the evidence of DB and allows us to posit the e-area
for Late Old English of the 11th century as stretching from East Anglia to
Warwickshire and Oxfordshire, with occasional forms even in Herefordshire
and Shropshire. Wyld (1914-1914) was certainly wrong to exclude Norfolk,
even in part, from this area. Apart from «e»-spellings occurring in various
documents from the 12th to the 15th centuries, late 14th and 15th-century texts
as well as modern dialect surveys provide enough evidence to include the
county in the e- area.
As regards the u- area, it is smaller in DB than Luick (1914-1940)
suggested for Old English, i.e. the West Midlands (see Maps 5-10). It grows
larger in the 12th century. Further research, however, is necessary into the
spelling conventions used in recording the material from this part of England to
provide an explanation of the phenomenon.
Map 14. The vocalism of OE wælle. Based on Kristensson (1987:243).
The second feature which I would like to discuss briefly is the reflex of
Old English Anglian i-umlaut of a before 1 as wælle "well", which in
Middle English appears as «a» in the Mercian territory. In West Saxon the
umlauted vowel was ie, represented in Middle English spelling by «e». As
demonstrated by Kristensson (1986 and 1987:106, 119-121), the a-area in the
14th century largely corresponds to the extent of the Anglo-Saxon dioceses of
Hereford and Lichfield. In the early 14th century «a» forms were predominant
in Cheshire, western Derbyshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Herefordshire
and Gloucestershire west of the Severn; «e» forms were preponderant in
Gloucestershire except west of the Severn, eastern Derbyshire,
Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Oxford
shire (see Map 14).
In DB the a-area is much smaller and includes Shropshire, Herefordshire
and western Staffordshire (one form occurs in Nottinghamshire). In other
counties the spelling is «e». Ekwall (1917:40) posited for Old English
(without specifying for which century) the occurrence of the 'unbroken' form
(i.e. spelled «a» in Middle English) for Herefordshire, Shropshire,
Staffordshire, (probably) Cheshire, southern Lancashire and (western)
Derbyshire, and the a- area was much closer to the DB evidence (see Map 15).
124 JACEK FISIAK
Map 15. [DB] a < i-imlaut of ea.
The comparison of the data from the 11th century and the 14th century
shows an expansion of Mercian forms in Late Middle English in an easterly
direction. A cursory glance at 12th and 13th-century evidence supports
Kristensson's claim about the direction of change. However, the DB «a»
area, which looks like a genuine Old English «ælC» area, is not coterminous
with the two dioceses. In Late Old English it must have been much smaller.
The present report, I hope, has demonstrated that DB is a useful source
of evidence for Old English dialectology of the 11th century, and that it is
possible to recover some facts about 11th-century English dialects in the
modern sense with the help of DB and the retrodictive evidence. More studies
of early 12th-century manuscripts should help to recover even more. I also
hope that this study - even in its present tentative state - can help to verify
some of our earlier ideas about a possible distribution of some Old English
dialectal features, their direction of expansion and chronology. I have also
raised some questions which have to remain unanswered for the time being,
since more research is still necessary both into the DB material and into Early
Middle English dialects.
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BILINGUISME ET INTERFERENCES
LE CAS DE L'ANGLAIS SUD-AFRICAIN
PASCAL GALLEZ
UOFS, Bloemfontein
En 1652, le comptoir du Cap de Bonne Espérance est créé. Ce comp

toir deviendra vite, de fait, une colonie. En 1669, il s'étend déjà au-delà de
Paarl et de Drakenstein, jusqu'au 'pays de Waveren' (premier nom du village
de Tulbagh). Dès 1703, des permis sont accordés à de nombreux fermiers,
permis les autorisant à s'enfoncer en 'terra incognita' afin de se consacrer non
plus à l'agriculture, mais à l'élevage. Ces fermiers aventureux sont, pour la
plupart, d'origine hollandaise et parlent le hollandais qui va, au fil des généra
tions, se simplifier et, dans une mesure considérable, se transformer — au
contact des langues indigènes et du malais—jusqu'à devenir l'afrikaans.
C'est alors que l'afrikaans a déjà commencé à se distinguer en tant que
dialecte distinct du hollandais, que l'armée anglaise, d'abord provisoirement,
de 1795 à 1803, puis dans une optique permanente, en 1806, occupe un
territoire qui appartient à la Hollande et, par conséquent, à la France — pays
contre lequel l'Angleterre est engagée dans une guerre qui ne se terminera
qu'en 1815.
Les autorités anglaises occuperont le fort et la ville du Cap plutôt que la
colonie et seront, par la suite, toujours à la traîne des colons quand il s'agira de
décider des frontières réelles de la colonie, quand elles n'interdiront pas,
purement et simplement, l'expansion de cette dernière. En 1824, traînées
jusqu'à la frontière naturelle que représente la rivière Orange, les autorités
anglaises refuseront protection à tous ceux qui, quoique restant loyaux à la
couronne anglaise, passeront la frontière déterminée par la rivière Orange.
Ajoutons que les troupes anglaises, fort dispersées dès qu'elles sortent de la
ville du Cap, n'auront qu'une très médiocre influence linguistique sur une
population de langue afrikaans — ce qui permettra à la langue afrikaans de
s'établir définitivement — alors qu'au contraire, la pupulation de la langue
130 PASCAL GALLEZ
afrikaans majoritaire dans ce qui est légalement la colonie du Cap, fera sentir
dès le premier instant son poids linguistique sur la population de langue
anglaise.
Selon Uriel Weinreich (1953) l'un des aspects les plus évidents
d'interférences lexicales, et c'est sans doute le premier aspect, est l'emprunt
d'un mot indigène, en conformité avec un modèle étranger. L'Angleterre n'est
pas l'Afrique australe: les deux géographies diffèrent sensiblement; la
dissimilarité qui existe entre le relief, la faune, la flore anglaise et ses
équivalents sud-africains rend la langue anglaise inopérante face à ce qui est,
pour le lecteur anglophone, inconnu. II sera donc normal qu'il emprunte, pour
nommer un animal, un arbre, un type de paysage, inconnus à lui et à sa langue,
le mot indigène qui désigne et nomme l'inconnu. C'est de là que viendront les
premiers éléments de ce qu'on peut appeler aujourd'hui l'anglais sud-africain
(en abrégé: ASA): nous trouvons les mots kopje (en ASA: koppie), springbok;
gemsbok, wildebees (en ASA: wildebeest), veld', etc., avec, comme nous
pouvons le noter, un effort occasionnel, de la part du locuteur anglophone,
pour angliciser orthographiquement (et phonétiquement), le mot afrikaans
transféré en anglais.
La situation restera ainsi, mutatis mutandis, jusqu'au moment où la
puissance coloniale reconsidère sa position quant aux frontières légales de la
colonie, et ceci pour deux raisons: les mines de diamants de Kimberley —
village qui se trouve au-delà des frontières de la colonie du Cap — et les mines
d'or du Rand (Johannesburg), camp minier qui, lui aussi, se trouve au delà des
frontières de la colonie. Ceci amènera deux guerres anglo/boers (en 1899 et en
1900/1902). Au cours de la seconde guerre, les troupes anglaises, appliquant
la statégie dite 'de la terre brûlée', vont déplacer toutes les populations de
langue afrikaans sur lesquelles ils peuvent mettre la main vers des camps de
concentration, mais quelquefois aussi vers les villes. De ce fait, le contact
linguistique entre une communauté de langue afrikaans avant tout paysanne, et
une communauté de langue anglaise purement citadine prend place, pour ne
jamais cesser. Ainsi, Bloemfontein, ville avant tout anglophone jusqu'au
début du siècle, devient une ville à majorité linguistique afrikaans (le ratio est
de 66/34 en faveur de l'afrikaans) à la fin de la guerre, et jusqu'à aujourd'hui.
C'est donc à partir du tout début du vingtième siècle qu'afrikaans et anglais
sont mis en contact régulier.
Il faut ajouter qu'à ce stade, le territoire géographique qui deviendra
l'Union Sud Africaine, puis la République d'Afrique du Sud, ne connaît
qu'une langue 'officielle': l'anglais. Les populations de langue afrikaans sont
BILINGUISME ET INTERFERENCES 131
amenées à parler anglais, en traduction directe la plupart du temps, traduction

directe qui entraînera l'apparition, chez les locuteurs de langue anglaise,
d'interférences non seulement lexicales, mais aussi sémantiques, syntaxiques
et morphologiques.
En 1925, l'afrikaans devient, lui aussi, langue nationale à part entière
(replaçant le hollandais qui n'était à peu près plus parlé par les afrikaners),
entraînant tout un chacun, volens nolens, sur la voie du bilinguisme. La
victoire électorale du Parti National, en 1948, et le retrait subséquent de
l'Union Sud Africaine du Commonwealth en 1961 vont créer une situation
isolationiste dans laquelle la population anglophone minoritaire va se trouver
confrontée à l'anglais tel qu'il est parlé par la majorité afrikaans, sans plus
posséder de réfèrent anglais.
En 1976, la RSA crée son propre système télévisuel qui est bilingue.
De ce fait, tout téléspectateur de langue anglaise est continuellement confronté à
l'afrikaans, en situation dite 'bi-culturelle'. Pour terminer la mise en place de
l'arrière-plan historique sur lequel cette étude se fonde, ajoutons qu'en 1968,
l'armée sud-africaine (SADF) telle qu'elle est connue aujourd'hui (service
militaire obligatoire, unités 'mixtes', mélangeant anglophones et afrikaners,
mais avec majorité afrikaans) est créée et que enfin, après un demi siècle de
haine farouche, résiduelle aux deux guerres anglo/boers, les deux commu
nautés afrikaans et anglaise se rapprochent, au point qu'il n'est plus excep
tionnel aujourd'hui de rencontrer des couples mariés dont chacun des parte
naires est issu d'une communauté différente.
Pour simplifier, disons donc que, dès qu'il y a contact entre
communautés linguistiques afrikaans et anglaise, le contact établi amène des
interférences dans tous les domaines. Les Afrikaners étant les seuls bilingues,
par nécessité, ils parleront un anglais 'afrikanerisé', dans chacune des situa
tions dans lesquelles ils sont amenés à parler anglais (armée, administration,
vie sociale, mariage,...) et, de ce fait, entraîneront l'apparition de Γ ASA.
Ajoutons aussi, nous tournant maintenant vers les facteurs extra-
linguistiques qui déterminent tout aussi puissamment la situation de contact à
laquelle nous nous intéressons ici, et suivant la méthode indiquée par Uriel
Weinreich (1964[1953]) à ce propos, que:
Nous nous sommes intéressés, dans le but de faire cette étude, à un
groupe dont la composition — tous âges confondus, de l'adolescence à la post
maturité — pouvait être culturellement considéré comme homogène: la plupart
des familles incluse dans le groupe-témoins étaient en relation professionnelle
avec l'université de l'OFS; les quelques personnes non-universitaires étaient,
132 PASCAL GALLEZ
pour une raison ou pour une autre, profondément impliquées dans le monde
culturel et en contact permanent avec les universitaire anglophones de
l'université.
A) Nous pouvons de ce fait assurer la facilité des locuteurs du groupe
à s'exprimer en anglais, et la facilité de ces locuteurs à séparer les deux langues
officielles.
B) La capacité des locuteurs anglophones à s'exprimer en afrikaans
varie du médiocre au très médiocre.
C) Il n'existe pas vraiment de spécialisation des deux langues en sujets
et en interlocuteurs. Dans notre groupe-témoin, la langue utilisée dans tous les
domaines est l'anglais. L'afrikaans n'est parlé que quand le locuteur d'origine
non-anglophone (c'est-à-dire, dans le cadre de cette étude, afrikaans) est
incapable de parler ou de comprendre l'anglais, parlé ou écrit.
D) L'anglais a été, ou est, appris à la maison, en situation familiale,
puis à l'école et à l'université. La situation de contact avec l'afrikaans a lieu à
l'école (l'afrikaans est une matière obligatoire pour les enfants issus d'un
milieu anglophone, tout comme l'anglais est une matière scolaire obligatoire
pour les enfants du groupe linguistique afrikaans) et dans la rue (camarades de
jeu). Il est ensuite réappris, pour les enfants de sexe masculin, au cours du
service militaire et, ensuite, généralement, très peu utilisé.
E) L'attitude du groupe anglophone à l'égard des deux langues — l'un
étant l'afrikaans et l'autre étant l'ASA — est claire. Avec un degré de variation
suffisamment bas pour qu'on puisse ne pas le prendre en considération, le
locuteur anglophone possède une grande fidélité à l'égard de l'anglais: le
mépris à l'égard de l'afrikaans est notable dans la plupart des cas. Pour
regrouper ce point E avec point H par Weinreich (point H: attitude vis-à-vis des
deux langues — de par le prestige qui leur est attribué; statut indigène ou
immigrant des langues concernés), les deux langues sont ressenties comme
étant indigènes à la République, mais le prestige de l'afrikaans peut étre
considéré comme extrémement faible.
F) La taille du groupe anglophone et du groupe afrikaans diffère de
manière considérable: le ratio est de 65/45 en faveur du groupe linguistique
afrikaans (chiffre du recensement de 1986) — si nous ne prenons pas en
compte le groupe racial dit 'métis', dont la langue maternelle est l'afrikaans (ils
sont d'ailleurs surnommés 'les afrikaners bruns'). De plus, le groupe linguis
tique anglophone ne possède pas d'homogénéité — ne serait-ce que dans ses
modèles (référents) culturels. Le groupe linguistique anglophone est composé
de nationalités diverses qui ne sont pas toutes, loin de là, anglophones. La
BILINGUISME ET INTERFÉRENCES 133
majorité de ce groupe est d'origine anglaise, mais une forte minorité de ce

groupe correspond à tous les immigrants (francophones, slavophones, urdu,
germanophones, yiddishes,...) qui ont choisi l'anglais plutôt que l'afrikaans,
étant arrivés dans la République à partir du dix-neuvième siècle, à l'époque où
l'Union faisait encore partie du Commonwealth, et pour lesquels l'ASA est
devenu la langue, jusqu'à aujourd'hui.
G) Prévalence des individus bilingues: ce point a été défini par les
points A à E.
I) Attitude envers la culture de chacune de communautés linguistiques:
ce point a été partiellement traité en E. Ce qui a été dit sur la manière dont le
groupe linguistique anglophone perçoit l'afrikaans en tant que langue reste
opérant sur le plan culturel. Le membre de la communauté linguistique
anglophone lit en anglais, écoute en anglais, voit (télévision, films) en anglais,
et rarement en afrikaans, langue qu'en général il méprise.
J) L'attitude envers le bilinguisme per se, de la part du groupe témoin,
est neutre, voire positive — pour autant que ce bilinguisme n'implique pas
l'afrikaans, dans lequel cas le groupe anglophone, dans sa grande majorité,
mais pas dans sa totalité, indiquera que l'apprentissage de l'afrikaans s'est fait
parce qu'il était obligatoire, et insistera sur les points E et I.
K) Le groupe-témoin présentait dans sa quasi totalité une intolérance
de principe quant au mélange linguistique, aux interférences, ainsi qu'à une
langue qui pouvait être jugée comme étant, du point de vue normatif,
incorrecte. Il faut cependant ajouter que cette intolérance de principe était en
pratique, dans une mesure non négligeable, battue en brêche, les locuteurs
anglophones ayant intégré dans leur langue, comme nous le verrons,
suffisamment d'interférences lexicales, sémantiques, syntaxiques et morphol
ogiques pour que la recherche à laquelle nous nous livrons ait une raison
d'être.
L) Relation entre le groupe bilingue et les deux communautés
linguistiques non bilingues: cette question ne se pose pas. Les locuteurs
anglophones qui parviennent à un stade de bilinguisme surprennent leurs
relations anglophones, sans plus.
Dans un cadre de contact maintenant situé exactement, dans lequel nous
voyons le groupe des locuteurs anglophones refusant, dans une très large
mesure, le bilinguisme anglais-afrikaans officiellement pratiqué en RSA, nous
allons cependant constater la présence de nombreuses interférences dans tous
les domaines linguistiques, créant ce que nous avons appelé dès l'abord
l'ASA.
134 PASCAL GALLEZ
Domaine lexical.
Nous devons ici établir une distinction entre les mots qui devaient
s'intégrer nécessairement à l'anglais, de par le fait qu'ils désignaient des
choses inconnues à la civilisation anglaise et à sa langue (flore, faune,
géographie, ...), mots qui ont été intégrés à l'anglais à l'instant même où les
locuteurs de langue anglaise sont arrivés au Cap, le morphème lexical ayant été
crée en afrikaans et étant accepté de manière immédiate par le locuteur anglais,
morphèmes lexicaux qui ont souvent pénétré l'anglais dit 'mondial', (ce groupe
de morphèmes lexicaux correspondra au groupe I) et les mots que nous
pourrions plus proprement considérer comme interférences qui, d'origine
afrikaans, avaient un équivalent anglais qui a virtuellement disparu, le mot
afrikaans étant utilisé à sa place (groupe Π).
Le Dictionary of South African English (Bradford 1980) contient 4000
rubriques, dont environ 2000 sont des entrées afrikaans. Nous pouvons
diviser les 2000 rubriques qui nous intéressent en deux groupes de taille
sensiblement égales, l'un correspondant au groupe I, l'autre au groupe IL Le
premier groupe correspond à des additions de vocabulaire; le deuxième,
généralement, à des remplacements de morphèmes lexicaux, qui amènent,
d'abord, une confusion du mot ancien et du mot nouveau (nice et lekker, par
exemple), lequel mot nouveau fait disparaître, en règle générale, le mot ancien
bakki ayant éliminé pick-up, par exemple).
Groupe I:
Aandbloom, nagapie, rooi ass, kafferboom, rooibos (tous ces
morphèmes nouveaux relevant du domaine de la flore). Aardvark, gemsbok,
springbok, slang, wildebees (qui relèvent du domaine de la faune). Water-
blommetje, Karbonaadjie, Biltong (qui relèvent de la cuisine). Veld; kap/kaaje;
hoek (qui relèvent du domaine géographique). Apartheid (politique), stink-
wood (flore; traduit directement de l'afrikaans stinkhout); boeretan (bronzage
boer typique); voorlaaier (type de fusil utilisé exclusivement par les Afrikaners
et, par extension, gros fusil); etc.
Nous pouvons noter que de nombreux morphèmes lexicaux indiqués
ici sont passés dans l'anglais dit 'mondial' (apartheid,veld, koppie).
Groupe II:
Nous nous trouvons ici des morphèmes lexicaux qui possèdent un

équivalent anglais connu, mais sous-utilisé en RSA, le morphème lexical
afrikaans ayant envahi la sphère lexicale anglophone.
Bakkie (pour: voiture dite 'pick-up'); stoep (pour: véranda); moffie
(pour: gay, "homosexuel"); takkie (pour: sport shoes); boeremusic (pour: folk
music); braai (pour: barbecue); boeremeisje (pour: young girl, "jeune fille";
mais elle doit être d'origine afrikaans); skattje (pour: darling, "mon lapin, mon
trésor, etc."); ou/oke/okie (pour: man. "homme"); to smaak (pour: to like,
enjoy "apprécier"); lekker (pour: nice "beau, bien"); sies ("Horreur!"); etc.
Dans ce "etc." nous pouvons compter la plus grande partie du lexique militaire.
On ne sait trop ici s'il nous faut donner des raisons linguistiques ou
extra-linguistiques à ces interférences lexicales issues de l'afrikaans. Les
systèmes lexicaux anglais eî afrikaans sont suffisamment différents l'un de
l'autre pour qu'on puisse supposer un mélange de système; il nous faut donc
considérer les facteurs extra-linguistiques comme étant essentiels, prenant les
points D et F déjà mentionnés, comme étant les plus signifiants. Un facteur
linguistique interne doit cependant être pris en considération, quand le
morphème lexical implique l'affectif. Il semble que, dans cette situation, les
morphèmes lexicaux impliqués perdent de leur force expressive et demandent
renouvellement, remplacement. Ceci explique le phénomène de changement
lexical qui intervient dans les cas suivant: nice > lekker; darling > skattie;
nonsense, balderdash > twak, etc.
Un autre facteur linguistique interne est celui de l'utilisation du lexique
afrikaans à des fins humoristiques. Le mépris que l'anglophone ressent pour
l'afrikaner lui fait utiliser son vocabulaire à des fins de plaisanterie (on trouve
beaucoup de mots afrikaans dans les blagues dites 'Van de Merwe Jokes').
Domaine semantique.
Le domaine sémantique amène, lui, moins de problèmes. Chacun des

élé-ments auxquels nous allons maintenant nous intéresser provient de
l'afrikaans, traduit en anglais. L'interférence sémantique peut donc être
considérée comme directement imposée par le locuteur afrikaans. Les
afrikaners sont les seuls en RSA à être, en tant que groupe, bilingues
afrikaans/anglais. Leur appren-tissage de l'anglais est, dans la plupart des cas,
passif (la télévision et, à l'école, le professeur d'anglais). Le résultat est un
anglais compréhensible, mais truffé d'afrikanerismes qui vont passer en
anglais, au vu du fait que, dans la plus grande partie de la république, nous
136 PASCAL GALLEZ
avons dans toutes les situations une majorité de locuteurs afrikaners. La

traduction directe amenant des changements sémantiques peut être illustrée par
les exemples suivants:
— butchery: Traduction directe de l'afrikaans slaghuis. Le mot slaghuis

correspond en afrikaans à la fois à la boucherie et à l'abattoir, à butcher et à
slaughter house. En ASA, le lexème butchery est devenu le seul mot utilisé
pour butcher.
—-to stay: Uve, "résider". Quoique Γ afrikaans fasse une différence nette entre
stay (bly) et live (woon), l'évolution du sens du morphème stay est largement
attribuée par les anglophones ASA à une interférence imposée par les locuteurs
afrikaans pariant anglais, qui n'auront pas fait la différence entre les deux
mots.
— thank you: no "non". Ce déplacement de sens vient de l'afrikaans, où le
mot dankie est toujours négatif (donnant en traduction exacte "non merci").
— terribly: very "beaucoup". Ce déplacement de sens, du négatif au positif,
vient du fait qu'en afrikaans, le morphème utilisé pour indiquer le positif est
verskriklik (terribly "affreusement"). Le morphème aura été utilisé en traduc
tion directe.
— must: équivalent ASA de should, ought to ou shall. Le must ASA ne
signale que très rarement une obligation imperative. Là encore, nous voyons
que le déplacement de sens de ce morphème est venu d'une traduction directe
de l'afrikaans, produite par les locuteurs afrikaans parlant anglais. En
afrikaans, le verbe moet, au cognitif, est équivalent à must "devoir".
— shame: expression correspondant, en ASA, à tout, sauf à la honte. Cette
interjection peut être amicale, admirative, indiquer la tristesse ou, tout
simplement, correspondre à Ah? Bon. Dans un seul cas, l'exclamation shame
est associée au how disgraceful anglais: dans le cas de la locution ag, sies tog
shame! Nous n'avons pas ici de traduction directe de l'afrikaans mais, une
fois encore, tous les locuteurs d'ASA consultés, ainsi que le Dictionary of
South African English estiment que le déplacement de sens de shame en ASA
est dû aux locuteurs afrikaners de l'anglais.
Domaine syntaxique.
Ainsi que nous pourrons le noter, nous nous trouvons ici confrontés à
un dilemme. Quelques-uns des éléments syntaxiques, que l'on pourrait croire
dans un premier temps particuliers à Γ ASA peuvent être trouvés dans d'autre
dialectes anglais ou américains. Ainsi, dans l'anglais de Malaisie, nous

pouvons noter que, tout comme en ASA, la phrase normale correpondant à
Really? Is that so? est Is it?; cette même locution semblait tout d'abord typique
de l'ASA. Plusieurs des éléments syntaxiques ici signalés peuvent donc être
retrouvés dans d'autres aires linguistiques; nous pensons pouvoir assurer que
chacun d'entre eux peut être accepté en tant qu'ASA aussi, tous étant en fait
des interférences produites par le locuteur d'origine afrikaans parlant anglais.
Corne with, Are you going/coming with? pour: Are you going with
me/him/them/... ou pour: Are you going along? Take it with pour: Take it with
you. Le with est utilisé de manière redondante, ou équivalente à along. Il
s'agit d'une traduction directe de l'adverbe afrikaans saam; along.
Have: le verbe have est utilisé de manière générale en ASA, infiniment
plus qu'en anglais, de par le fait qu'en afrikaans, on a besoin de het "have" au
passé. De ce fait, au lieu de dire I saw him, nous dirons plus naturellement en
ASA: I have seen him.
Is it? (pour: Really? or Is that so?). L'expression indique la sur-prise,
l'incrédulité ou, tout simplement, un intérêt poli. Il s'agit d'une traduc-ion
directe de la locution afrikaans: Is dit? (Is that so?).
Domaine morphologique.
La morphologie a longtemps été considérée comme le bastion le plus

solide de la langue. Selon cette idée, c'était la présence ou l'absence d'inter-
érences morphologiques dans une langue donnée qui permettait de déterminer
si cette langue était créolisée ou non. Il semble en fait que cette théorie ne
repose sur rien. La présence ou l'absence d'interférences dans le champ mor
phologique ne nous permettra pas de déterminer si l'ASA peut être considéré
comme existant, et comme un dialecte, ou une langue créole — le champ
morphologique seul ne conduit à rien, si on ne lie pas cette étude aux autres
champs étudiés.
Nous devons diviser cette étude en deux sections: nous aurions d'une
part, de manière évidente, des morphèmes afrikaans qui ont été adoptés dans la
langue parlée et écrite des locuteurs anglophones de RSA, et qui sont utilisés
par eux de manière régulière. Ces morphèmes sont, il faut le signaler, des
morphèmes non liés, non intégrés (noms, interjections, déjà partiellement
traités de ce fait dans nos rubriques consacrées à la lexicographie ASA et sa
sémantique). Ce sont des interférences lexicales, plutôt que des interférences
proprement morphologiques.
138 PASCAL GALLEZ
Les choses changent si nous nous tournons vers les morphèmes dit
'intégrés', liés. Certains morphèmes intégrés de l'afrikaans sont transférés en
ASA, où ils sont tout aussi intégrés. Nous verrons alors des structures du type
de celle que nous représentons ici: préfixe afrikaans + morphème lexical ASA
+ suffixe afrikaans/anglais; pluriel afrikaans/anglais. Exemples: le verbe ASA
donner (qui signifie en afrikaans "assommer, démolir, écraser" mais qui est
utilisé en ASA, avec un déplacement de sens, avant tout comme terme de
rugby, pour indiquer un placage particulièrement 'dur') sera utilisé par le
locuteur ASA de la manière suivante:
— présent: he donnerS him

— passé composé: he has donnerED him
— plus-que-parfait: he had GEdonnerED him.
Il en est de même avec le morphème verbal ASA to braai "griller, faire un

barbecue" et, de manière systématique, avec tout morphème ASA.
Diminutif afrikaans/anglais: Exemples: boy/tjie, shoe/ïjie, ...
Nous pouvons conclure au regard des exemples donnés ici, en rapport

avec le total lexical, sémantique, syntaxique et morphologique que fait l'anglais
dit 'de la reine' qui reste, dans notre étude, l'objet de référence, qu'il est
logique que nous parlions d'un ASA.
L'anglais est une langue dont on sait qu'elle absorbe facilement des
éléments lexicaux appartenant à d'autres langues et, de ce fait, nous ne
pouvons pas prendre en trop grande considération le champ lexical nouveau
que l'ASA nous offre pour décider si l'ASA est ou non dialectal; syntaxe et
morphologie ASA, par contre, peuvent nous aider, regroupées avec les
éléments lexicaux et sémantiques que nous avons pu noter. Nous pouvons
alors estimer que malgré des changements nets dans certains domaines—
changements que nous avons indiqués — l'ASA reste dans son ensemble
similaire à l'anglais réfèrent, dit 'de la reine'. De ce fait, suivant la
terminologie de Rossetti (1949), l'ASA pourra être qualifié de langue mélangée
et non de langue mixte. Le locuteur anglophone britannique arrivant en RSA
aura certes des difficultés d'adaptation à l'ASA, mais ces difficultés peuvent
être considérées comme minimes sauf, peut-être, au niveau lexical. Nous
pouvons de ce fait estimer que la dialectalisation de l'anglais en Afrique du Sud
peut être considérée comme existante (le locuteur anglophone ASA admet
d'ailleurs sans difficultés qu'il parle, lit et écrit un anglais qui n'est plus tout à
fait l'anglais réfèrent), mais aussi comme faible.
Quant à l'influence de l'afrikaans sur la dialectalisation minime qui fait
l'ASA, elle ne souffre aucun doute. Si l'afrikaans n'est responsable que de la
moitié des interférences lexicales en ASA, il est par contre à l'origine de toutes
les interférences syntaxiques, sémantiques et morphologiques attribuées à
l'ASA. L'évolution linguistique qui conduit de l'anglais à l'ASA est principale
ment due à l'afrikaans et à un bilinguisme qui est, avant tout, le fait des
locuteurs afrikaans. Quant au fait que, dans une situation aussi déséquilibrée
en faveur de l'afrikaans, l'anglais ne soit pas devenu une langue créole, cela
semble tenir à deux facteurs, l'un étant linguistique, l'autre, extra-linguistique:
d'abord, le fait que le statut de l'afrikaans est, au sein de la communauté
anglophone, médiocre; ensuite, le fait — linguistique — que, perdant pour des
raisons diverses son réfèrent anglais (l'interdiction imposée en 1981 par le
syndicat des acteurs anglais 'Equity' de passer les programmes impliquant ses
membres sur les chaînes de télévision sud-africaines), le locuteur anglophone a
dû découvrir un nouveau réfèrent: l'anglais américain.
Cette étude ne serait en effet pas complète si l'on ne signalait pas un
phénomène récent (apparu au cours de cette décennie) et d'importance: le
changement dans ces toutes dernières années de l'ASA en américain sud-
africain (en bref: AMS A), changement dû autant à des raisons linguistiques (le
locuteur anglophone ASA est soumis à un flot télévisuel et radiophonique
totalement américain qui fait de l'AMSA le seul réfèrent) qu'à des raisons
extra-linguistiques (le prestige de l'Amérique est, en RSA, à son zénith pour
l'instant).
Ce déplacement d'une aire linguistique (anglaise) à une autre
(américaine) se manifeste aujourd'hui tout particulièrement sur le plan phon
ologique: tout présentateur, ou disc-jockey, sur une radio ou une télévision
commerciale (par exemple: M-Net; 702; Radio Capitol) se doit d'imiter aussi
fidèlement que possible l'accent new-yorkais. Cette mode, qui avait d'abord
touché les chaînes radiophoniques ou télévisées commerciales, donne
l'impression d'être maintenant devenue aussi la politique de la SABC, dont les
présenteurs de différentes chaînes (par exemple: Radio 5; Radio Métro) se sont
mis à l'américain (cf. les cours d'américain donnés aux disc-jockeys de ces
radios aux frais de la SABC). Il est à noter que le mythe américain passe par-
dessus les barrières raciales et culturelles: Radio 5 est une chaîne radio destinée
avant tout aux blancs anglophones; Radio Oranje, aux blancs afrikaaners;
Radio Metro, aux noirs urbanisés.
140 PASCAL GALLEZ
Sur le plan lexical — ce sera la deuxième et dernière rubrique — l'im

portance de I'AMSA, quoique encore médiocre, va grandissant: nous pourrons
noter comme exemple de cette influence nouvelle les éléments suivants: Le yes
anglais avait été supplanté depuis le début du siècle par le ja afrikaans, le ja
afrikaans est depuis peu supplanté par le yeah atttribué à l'américain new-
yorkais. Le mot ASA bioscope habituellement utilisé pour cinéma est en train
d'être supplanté par le mot flick, d'origine américaine. Le mot ASA
oke/ou/okie, déjà mentionné, est en compétition sévère avec le mot d'origine
américaine dude. Les mots cherry ou meisje, habituellement utilisés en ASA
pour désigner (en milieu scolaire et estudiantin) une jeune fille, sont eux aussi
entrés en compétition avec le mot d'origine américaine bird. Le mot whisky,
anglais mondial, a été totalement supplanté par le mot scotch, utilisé aux USA.
Le mot cigarette entre en compétition depuis peu avec son équivalent américain
smoke. L'importance du déplacement de l'anglais réfèrent à l'américain
réfèrent reste cependant encore minime, mais on peut penser qu'elle devrait
s'amplifier dans les prochaines années, sans peut-être que son influence sur
l'anglais parvienne à dépasser celle de l'afrikaans dans un futur proche.
Nous pouvons en conclusion estimer que les deux changements
linguistiques auxquels nous nous sommes intéressés doivent, dans le premier
cas, beaucoup aux facteurs linguistiques et, dans le deuxième, aux facteurs dits
extra-linguistiques. Quand on voit la rapidité avec laquelle le deuxième change
ment s'accomplit, il semble évident que le facteur essentiel du changement
linguistique, de la présence de l'interférence dans une langue, n'est pas lin
guistique mais extra-linguistique: il s'agit du prestige.
RÉFÉRENCES
Branford, Jean. 1980. A Dictionary of South African English. Capetown:

Oxford Univ. Press.
Rossetti, Alexandru. 1949. "Langues mixtes et mélange des langues". Acta
Linguistica 5.73-79.
Weinreich, Uriel. 1964[1953]. Languages in Contact. The Hague: Mouton.
REANALYSING ACTUALIZATION,
AND ACTUALIZING REANALYSIS
ERICA  GARCIA
Rijksuniversiteit, Leiden
1. Actualization, reanalysis and frequency range.
In his seminal paper on syntactic change Timberlake (1977)

distinguishes between reanalysis, which affects the form of the grammar and
takes place at the (unobservable) level of hypothesis forming, and
actualization, the manifestation of the 'new' grammar at the (observable)
level of language use. Inasmuch as different analytic levels are involved, the
distinction is certainly warranted: it seems nonetheless desirable to take a
close look at the relation between the two.
It is generally agreed that change takes place as the language learner
abduces a new structural analysis from the actualization of an older grammar
(Andersen 1974:23), the reanalysis becoming manifest when it is actualized
as an output incompatible with the 'originarl' grammar (Leumann 1927:106 et
passim). But what exactly is the original actualization that provides the input
to reanalysis? Certainly not all and only the sentence types generated by the
(earlier) grammar: the relevant output which is the object of reanalysis can
obviously never be single instances of use. It is rather a whole range of
utterances (in principle open ended) covering a series of environments, both
linguistic and extralinguistic. This range is, of course, qualitatively varied,
but it is also - and this is very important - QUANTITATIVELY DIFFERENTIATED,
since the various environments occur with different relative frequency.
One of the ways in which change may (and does) take place is by
continuous shift in quantitative relations. The inventory of forms may remain
the same, as well as their uses, but there may be a shift in the relative
proportion of the various uses to which the forms are put such that, after a
certain time, we may find ourselves with a different inventory of forms on
our hands or realize that these have changed their value!
* I am indebted to R de Jonge, D, Nieuwenhuijsen and Y. Tobin for critical comments

on an earlier version of this paper.
142 ERICA . GARCIA
We would be hard put, however, to say where and when THE change or
reanalysis took place since the whole thing happens so naturally and
imperceptibly. The 'gradualness' of linguistic change may well be due to the
fact that reanalysis and actualization take place at the same time. They should
then, perhaps, be seen as two sides of the same coin rather than as distinct
stages in a diachronic process.
This interdependence of reanalysis and actualization becomes clear
when the successive spread of an innovation is followed over a series of
texts. 1 We will attempt to formulate the 'reanalysis' for one well-
documented (though barely studied) syntactic change in such fashion as to
shed light on the quantitative relations obtaining in the texts. At the same
time, we will try to show how the very quantitative properties of the
actualization played a key role in that reanalysis.
2. A case study: Old Spanish nosotros/vosotros.
The change to be discussed is the replacement of Old Spanish 1st p1. nos
and 2nd p1.vos by nosotros and vosotros respectively. These complex
words, originally phrases consisting of personal pronoun plus lexical
modifier otros "others", are now the (only) tonic forms of the plural 1st and
2nd person pronouns.
Two problems have traditionally been found worthy of discussion:
First, did the change originate in the first or second person? Lenz
(1925:228-229) argued for the first, Gili Gaya (1946) for the second; neither
took the trouble of checking in the available texts. The issue is now
definitely settled on the basis of textual counts (de Jonge 1986) in favor of
Gili Gaya's position.
Secondly, why did the change take place at all? And why did it happen
when it did? Since this second problem is closely related to the origin of the
change, we begin by presenting in Fig. 1 the Old and Early Modern Spanish
paradigms.
It should be pointed out both that - as in French - vos was commonly

used in Old Spanish as a polite form of address for the second person singular
1
Cf Timberlake (1977), Naro (1981) and Garcia (1985) for discussion of how the range
and ranking of qualitative contexts plays a role in the spread of syntactic change.
REANALYSING ACTUALIZATION 143
Early Old Spanish
Unmarked Number marked

Peripheral Duplicating Clitic Prepositional2 Central Peripheral
(Possessive) Verb-ending (Possessive)
1st mi yo me mí nos nuestro/a

2nd tu tú te tí vos vuestro/a
3rd su se sí 3
Early Modern Spanish
Unmarked Superiority marked

Peri- Duplica- Clitic Prepo- Clitic Non-clitic Peri
pheral ting Verb- sitional Plural Cerem. pheral
ending Sg.
1st mi yo me mi nos nosotros nos nuestro/a

2nd tu tú te tí (v)os4 vosotros vos vuestro/a
3rd su - se sí - - - -
Fig. 1. Early Old Spanish and Early Modern Spanish

personal pronoun paradigms.
and that - again as in French - there was no distinction between 'nominative'

and 'objective' forms of the pronoun.5
2
We omit the special forms conmigo, contigo, consigo, connusco and convusco
resulting from con + pronoun where a reflex of enclitic Lat. cum survives as go. Cf. García
(in press) for discussion of these forms.
3
Cf. García (1985) for an analysis of se, si as third person pronouns, and of él (and the
related clitic forms) as deictics.
4
In clitic use vos was further weakened to os; cf. Nieuwenhuijsen (1985), García et al.
(in preparation) for discussion of this change.
5
Old Spanish lacked a clitic/non-clitic distinction in the plural. This explains the
possibility of attaching a lexical modifier to a pronoun which is the object of the verb as in:
E commoquier que el se quiso sofrir la muerte por nos pecadores saluar, ca el auje
poder sobre los otros e non los otros sobre el, mas quiso ser obediente a Dios padre.
(CZ-P96a/(7))
"But nonetheless it was he who wished to suffer death to save us sinners, for he had
power over the others and not the others over him, but he would be obedient to God
the Father/5
We have encountered this construction only with the first person, and then only in the
(probably fixed) phrase 'to save us sinners'. In a fairly late text (Abad Don Juan, Toledo
144 ERICA C. GARCÍA
Two hypotheses have accordingly been advanced for the incorporation

of the -otros forms into the paradigm:
(a) the distinctness as to number of vosotros vis-à-vis the indeterminate vos
led to the systematic favoring of the unambiguous longer form (Lapesa
1980:397 §96.6);6
(b) the adoption of vosotros, nosotros as tonic forms resulted in the formal
differentiation of 'tonic' vs. 'clitic' pronouns in the plural, thus
remedying the functional ambiguity of OSp. nos, vos (Alvar & Pottier
1983:122 §94)7
There was a twofold change, then: a change in value for nos/vos and a
change in status (a phrase became a word) for nosotros/vosotros, which is
schematized in Fig. 2.
The wholesale recourse to vosotros/nosotros in all save clitic function
resulted, then, in a double differentiation: nosotros/vosotros monopolized
PLURAL non-clitic reference to the first and second person. It follows that if
nos/vos had a plural reference, the forms were clitics. If they were used as
non-clitic forms, their referent was singular. In short, we have substitution
resulting in double split.
A split, however, necessarily presupposes new linguistic signs whose
signifiants and signifiés recombine earlier contents and expressions in new
relations. However arbitrary the sign may be synchronically, nothing is less
arbitrary than the diachronic recombination of signifiants with signifiés.
printing of the late 15th century, Menéndez Pidal 1934) we actually find the phrase r
nosotros pecadores salvar:
Y pues Dios nuestro señor tomó muerte e pasión por nosotros pecadores salvar,
tomemos la nosotros por el ensalçamiento de su santa fe cathólica {Abad 225/6)
"And since God our Lord suffered death and pain for us sinners [to] save, let us take it
for the glory of his holy catholic faith"
The same phrase recurs in a later version (Valladolid 1562) of this text (Menéndez Pidal
1903:47/9). It is likely that the indeterminacy of the O.Sp. nos favored reanalysis of the
grouping of nos pecadores: it could be seen either as object of the infinitive salvar "save",
or as object of the preposition r "for, in order to". The E.Mo.Sp. por nosotros pecadores
salvar would thus reflect a blend of por nosotros "for us", por salvar a nosotros "to save
us" and of por nos salvar "to save us", with a proclitic pronoun.
6
The two developments (rapid increase in the singular use of vos and adoption of
vosotros as tonic second person plural pronoun) clearly coincide in time (late 14th, 15th
centuries).
7
This result cannot be invoked as a motivation for the change without incurring the
teleological circularity so often imputed to functional explanations (Lass 1980:80 et passim).
Alvar & Poitier's insight is, nonetheless, valid and significant.
Early Old Spanish
nos = "1st pl."
vos = "2nd pl." Used metaphorically to suggest superiority

of singular addressee.
otros = "others", lexical modifier.
Syntactic range of no/vos: all pronominal references save

peripheral ( 'possessive' ) ones.
Late Old Spanish
nos "1st pl." Used metaphorically to suggest superiority

of singular speaker (pluralis majestatis), since ca.
1350.
Early Modern Spanish
Singular reference Plural reference
Non-clitic Clitic Non-clitic
1st < . nos > nosotros
2nd vos (v)os4 vosotros
Fig. 2. Split in the Old Spanish plural pronouns.
Indeed, what diachronically joins form to content is the same mechanism

responsible for productive (synchronic) language USE, namely the appro
priateness of meaning for message.8
Consider the fact that the complex forms in otros could become THE
regular expression of certain grammatical categories only because they de
facto got that value in actual use by occurring very long very frequently with
only that value. This specialization, however, could never have taken place
had not the meaning of otros in the original syntagm strongly suggested the
8
This approach to language change is NOT vitiated by teleological circularity. It does
presuppose, however, that language change takes place naturally, i.e. that the connection
between successive grammars is a plausible one. The very smoothness and imperceptibility
of language change would seem to warrant such an assumption.
146 ERICA C. GARCIA
value ("non-clitic plural") of the new forms nosotros/vosotros. To make

explicit that synchronic appropriateness is to motivate the diachronic change.
It is easy to see the connection between the value of the original phrases
noso t r o s / v o sotros and the category PLURAL these forms came to express. In
nos otros/vos otros plurality was doubly expressed (by the pronoun and in
the inflected ending of the lexical modifier), while it was signalled only once
in the case of the most likely alternative, the simple forms nos/vos. Given a
choice between the two, the more explicit expression is clearly the better one:
the 'marked' category PLURAL is (economically and iconically) matched with
the most 'marked' of the available expressions - particularly in the case of
the second person where vos was (most) frequently used with singular
reference.
Nos and (v)os retained the potential for plural reference, however,
when used as clitics. We must accordingly also account for the restriction of
the complex -otros forms to non-clitic function. The relevant trait here is
salience of reference: in the Spanish grammatical tradition clitic pronouns
are referred to as 'atonic' (i.e. unstressed). The opposition, thus, is between
an unstressed, bound, dependent, backgrounded use of a form and its tonic,
free, independent, foregrounded exploitation.
Now within the entire syntactic range covered by OSp. nos and vos, not
all uses would deserve or receive attention to the same degree. Highest
attention would probably attach to the pronoun when it was in contrast with
its own absence, i.e. in nominative use duplicating the personal verb-ending.
Conversely, there is evidence (Ramsden 1961, Monedero Carrillo de
Albornoz 1983:292) that the use of pronouns as bare object of the verb rated
the least attention. Clitic vs. non-clitic use came down, then, to muted vs.
highlighted reference best (i.e. directly) conveyed by lack of stress vs. full
stress on the form.
Now the (complex) forms with -otros were referentially more salient
than the simple forms not only because of their greater phonological bulk, but
also for an important semantic reason: something that is different - as an
'other' by definition is - will already and by itself attract attention, since
more attention is naturally paid to what is new and different than to what is
familiar and old. Otros marked those plural referents that - for some reason
or other - were so relevantly different as to require attention drawn to that
difference. Referents referred to as otros were then, for that very reason,
likely to have extra attention paid to them.
As speakers resorted to the complex -otros forms when attention had to
be drawn to the otherness of the referent (cf. Menéndez Pidal 1977:251 §93j
and Lapesa 1980:259 §673), hearers could easily come to associate the
presence of otros in an utterance not only with 'otherness' and (contrastive)

differentiation of the referent, but also with the heightened attention which
that differentiation inevitably evoked (Alvar & Pottier 1983:123 §94).
Sooner or later, then, a hearer might come to use otros merely for the sake of
that effect, i.e. simply in order to heighten attention. At this point reanalysis
had taken place. Not only had the form been identified with a new value, but
the new value "tonic plural" pronoun was (biuniquely) associated with the
former syntagm. From being stressed forms de facto, nosotros/vosotros
became tonic forms juris et de jure.
Such a reanalysis was naturally possible only in those uses where
emphasis could reasonably constitute a reason for recourse to the -otros
form. The extension from contrastive differentiation to plain emphasis was
easiest in the most salient of the tonic uses, i.e. for the explicit mention of the
subject. Once the -otros forms came to stand in contrast to nothing, i.e. were
used merely to emphasize the identity of the subject, the battle was won for
all practical purposes, and the simple forms had been effectively routed from
tonic use. 9
3. The process of change.
It is one thing to establish a plausible substantive connection between

initial and final stage, and another thing to show how the gap is bridged in
and through actual use. Here we need to take into account relative frequency
of use which must be viewed from two equally relevant perspectives:
9
Note that the mention of a subject pronoun is already and by itself contrastive (cf.
Rosengren 1974:234 et passim). Since the complex pronoun was the most attention-
attracting alternative available it was, as such, the more appropriate choice for emphatic
mention of the subject. Contrastive and emphatic mention of an object has always been
possible. For this, Spanish resorts not to a clitic pronoun but to a prepositional phrase with a
(cf. Ramsden 1961) where, as after all prepositions, we only find tonic forms.
The process of selection of expression by content did not take place in a paradigmatic
void The rest of the (pro)nominal paradigm played an important role in fixing the boundary
to the gradual replacement of simple by complex forms. As shown in Rg. 1, the singular
pronouns formally distinguish between subject and (clitic) object use; furthermore, the
reflexes of Lat. ille likewise contrast clitic (le[s], lo[s], la[s]) and tonic form (él, ella, ellos,
ellas). This clearly sets off clitic from tonic functions. But the tonic reflexes of ille are used
for both nominative and prepositional functions, as is also the case with nouns. The
complex forms resemble nouns and demonstratives through the lexical otros, in their plural
morphology, and in exhibiting a gender opposition. It is therefore hardly surprising that the
extension of the new forms should have stopped short of precisely clitic use, the domain from
which nouns and demonstratives are barred
148 ERICA C GARCIA
(a) the paradigmatic, which concerns the speaker's communicative problem,

e.g., "I wish to focus my interlocutor's attention on this referent that
happens to be the agent in this event. Which of the available forms (nos
or nosotros) is more appropriate for the task?" What is relevant here is
the choice between paradigmatic alternatives and, therefore, the
percentage of one form (say, nosotros) among the total of pronominal
expressions (both nosotros and nos) referring to the agents of events;
(b) the syntagmatic, where the language learner is relevant, whose problem
is: "What is true of all (or most) of this form's uses, from which I may
abduce its value?" Here we are interested in the diversified exploitation
of a given form and, therefore, in the percentage of a given function (say
'clitic') among all the different uses of a form.
These two aspects of frequency mediate between the speaker's expressed

need and the learner's abduced grammatical value. Consider the fact that
every time a speaker had reason to emphasize the differentness of - say - a
second person plural and for that reason used the attention-attracting vosotros
in tonic function, he also automatically failed to use vos with that value. The
total number of vosotros encountered by the language learner in tonic
function would rise by one, and the total of vos would fall by one.
The effect on the value of vosotros was simple: it reacquainted the
hearer with the availability of this form for tonic function and, once more,
associated the presence of complex form to heightened attention, thus
increasing the chance that the hearer in turn would use the form in that
fashion and for that end. The effect on vos, while apparently only negative,
was actually - and precisely because of its negative nature - much more
important. By NOT occurring with the value of "salient second person
plural", such vos as WERE encountered by the language learner turned out
more and more to be either singular or non-salient. In short, vos was
increasingly edged out by the more competitive vosotros into those
unmarked categories for which it constituted an appropriate expression.
In short, every increase in the paradigmatic percentage of vosotros for
tonic function brings about, necessarily and automatically, an increase in the
syntagmatic percentage of clitic and/or singular value within vos.
Differentiation of function was, therefore, neither motivation nor goal: like
Topsy it just grew as speakers yielded to the communicative urge to
differentiate by means of otros.10 The entire process is summarized

schematically in Fig, 3.11
We have shown how, once started, the change would take place through
its own self-generated momentum. We must now show that the change
actually did take place in the fashion outlined above. For this we go to the
texts where the change is recorded.
We begin by exemplifying the initial stage, where otros simply and
only meant "others" and was freely added to vos and nos whenever the
referent was sufficiently different to make this comment appropriate. We
draw our examples from a 14th-century text where the overall percentage of
nosotros is 2%, of vosotros is 12%.
(1) Dixo el rrey de los cuervos: - Nos faremos quanto tu mandares. - Dixo
el cuervo: - Los buhos son en tal lugar, e ayuntanse de día en una cueva
del monte, e çerca de aquel lugar ay mucha leña seca; lleve cada un
cuervo quanto pudiere llevar della a la boca de la cueva do ellos son de
día. E ay çerca ay grey de ganado, e yo avere fuego e echarlo he ay
en la leña; e vos otros todos non çesedes de aventar con vuestras
alas e de soplar el fuego, fasta que se ençienda bien (CD- A 3502)
"And the king of the crows said: - We shall do whatever you
command. - And the crow said: - The owls are in such and such a
place, and they congregate by day in a cave in the hill, and close to that
place there is much dry wood; let each crow take as much of it as he
can to the mouth of the cave where they are by day. And close by there
is a herd of cattle, and I will get fire and will throw it on the wood, and
all you others do not stop from beating your wings and blowing on the
fire, till it burn well"
10
The mechanism outlined in this section is of the 'invisible hand' type advocated in
Keller (1982); cf. also Heringer (1985).
11
The different number interpretations of nos/vos, i.e.
(a) singular (tonic)
(b) (singular or plural) non tonic
are not taken into account in Fig. 3 since they follow from the value "non salient" postulated
for these forms. If the form appeared in a salient syntactic environment (i.e. in tonic use) its
inherent non-salience could only be due to the number of the referent A full account of the
split of nos/vos along the number axis obviously involved contrast with yo/tú besides
nosotros/vosotros; we will consequently concentrate on the plural reference of vos/nos.
We do not provide a comparable scheme for the split of vos into tonic vos and atonic
(clitic) os because this is a simple instance of (iconic) split along a single dimension. For
this reason, too, we use nos/nosotros as the exemplifying form in Fig. 3; it would unduly
complicate matters (especially for non-Hispanicists) to incorporate both changes involving
vos into a single figure.
Succession of syn- Diachronic evoluti on

chronic grammars
Actualization Quantitative shift Reanalysis
Early Old Spanish
(13th, early 14th c.)
nos + otros Use deserving Environment nosotros always
"1st pl. + others" most attention most congenial expresses "1st
"we others" to otros p1." and receives
nos "1st pl." attention; nos
Range Environments only expression
Old Spanish successively available for 1st
(14th, 15th c.) of compatible with p1. NOT receiving
nos otros the complex attention.
"1st pl. different" uses form owing to Language learn
nos "1st pl. (not progressive ing and use are
different" of bleaching of easier if content/
otros due to expression rela
Early Modern nos increased use tion is biunique.
Spanish (16th c.) Therefore:
nosotros nos otros: always
"salient 1st p1.' Use deserv Environment and only tonic
nos "non-salient ing least least congenial nos: always and
1st p1." attention to otros only clitic.
Fig. 3. Split and substitution of simple pronouns by

complex -otros forms for tonic (plural) reference.
(2) Desy fuese la fenbra al çarapico, que era en la mar buena pieça, e fizole
saber lo que tenia en coraçon ella e su marido de mudarse en aquel
pielago de aquellos peçes e aquel cañaveral e aquel apartimiento, en
aquel lugar tan apartado e tan seguro. E dixole: 'Sy pudieres guisar que
seas y con nos otros, con consentimiento de mi marido e con su plazer,
fazlo'. (CD-A 5899)
"Whereupon the female went to the curlew, who was out in the sea a
good distance, and let him know what she and her husband intended
with regard to moving to the marsh with the fish and the reeds and the
privacy, in that remote and safe spot. And she said to him: 'If you
could manage it so as to be there with us [two], with my husband's
permission and his pleasure, do bring it about'."
In these examples otros highlights the difference most relevant to the

speech partners, namely a contrast between the person referred to and his
interlocutor. As Lenz (1925) correctly surmised, the first and most obvious
use of nosotros is to refer to an exclusive first person plural. Similarly, the
contrast most naturally established by means of vosotros is with the speaker
himself. The examples quoted illustrate these uses.
The frequent recourse to otros dates from the late 13th and 14th
centuries, and clearly began in the 2nd rather than the1stperson. The reason,
as already mentioned, is that in the 2nd person, and only here, there arose -
at that time and not before - a specific contrast of great importance, namely
the differentiation (Gili Gaya 1946:114, Schmidely 1983:42) between a
single addressee (politely addressed as vos) and a plurality of addressees.
Since the least one can expect of a speaker is that he will make it clear whom
or how many he is addressing, we may assume that vosotros must have been
in particular demand whenever the number of the addressee had to be made
clear. The following examples from a 15th-century text make the point:
(3) [Situation: a merchant, who has bought the Friendly Knight and his
companions as slaves, is in danger of attack. The Friendly Knight gives
him advice:]
'Aqui cerca esta un castillo del enperador, e vayamos nos alla; ca yo
trayo cartas de guya, e soy bien çierto que nos acogeran allj e nos faran
mucho plazer.' 'Vayamos,' dixo el mercador, 'pero catad que non
pierda yo lo que dj por vos otros9 (CZ-P 145a/19)
"'Here close by there is a castle belonging to the Emperor, let us go
there, because I have letters of introduction with me, and I am sure that
they will receive us there and treat us very well.' 'Let us go', said the
merchant, 'but look out that I do not lose what I gave for you [p1.]'"
The merchant is speaking only to the Friendly Knight who, though his slave,
has proven his worth in battle and is consequently addressed respectfully (cf.
Catad "Look out!", a plural imperative). Had the merchant said vos, he
might have been referring to the money paid for the Friendly Knight alone.
He is concerned, however, for his entire investment, which may be in danger
if the party takes refuge in a castle held by his slaves' allies.
(4) [Situation: Zifar has become king of a realm by marriage; he discovers

that his first wife and their two sons are alive and have come to his land.
When his second wife - to whom he owes the kingdom - dies, he
proposes to recognize his first wife and his sons. If the nobles of the
realm do not agree to this, he will renounce the crown. A count speaks
for the nobility:]
'Mas tenemos por derecho e por acuerdo que resçibades vuestra muger e
vos mantengades con ella [...] Ca nos resçibimos a vuestra muger p
152 ERICA C GARCIA
señora e por reyna e al vuestro hijo mayor por heredero despues de

vuestros dias.'
Estonce dixo el conde a todos los otros: 'Vos otros tenedes lo asy por
bien?' (CZ-Ρ 72b/15)
'"But we view it as right and agree to it that you should take [back] your
wife and live with her [...] For we shall receive your wife as our lady
and our queen and your eldest son as the heir after your life.' Then the
Count said to all the others: 'Do you others agree to this?'"
As the Count switches address from a single person (Zifar, the Kng) to a
group (his fellow noblemen), he uses vosotros.
If our line of reasoning is correct, the percentage of the complex form
vosotros should be higher in those situations where a singular addressee is
also present - i.e. where, as in the examples quoted, the reference is to a
plurality in the presence of a potential singular addressee - than in those
where that is not the case. In Table 1 we present the relevant figures for two
(successive) versions of the same text, the Cavallero Zifar: Ms. P, probably
of the 15th century (Wagner 1929:x), and the Seville print of 1512 (obviously
based on Ms. P).
Text 2nd sg. present No 2nd sg. present

Total cases % -otros Total cases % -otros
CZY 9 56 137 18
CZ-S 9 67 118 47
Table 1. Use of vos/vosotros for a plural addressee
depending on presence of a 2nd sg. addressed with vos.
Differentiation as to the number of the addressee clearly was a factor

strongly favoring recourse to the complex form. This factor must moreover
have kept favoring the use of vosotros, since the polite use of vos became
more and more widespread in the 15th century.12
It is only a short and easy step from the speech situation to the discourse
that takes place in it, and it is very natural to use the form that marks contrast
12
The low totals for second person singular found in Table 1 should not be viewed as
representative of actual speech at the time. They are derived from a written literary work.
Most of the second person plural uses, furthermore, proceed from Book ΠΙ of the Cavallero
Zifar, where the King addresses his sons and gives them advice on how to conduct
themselves as rulers. In real life the proportion of conflict of number situations must have
been considerably higher than what is reflected in Table 1.
between the speech participants for contrast between a speech participant and
third persons. This extension naturally makes for more frequent recourse to
the complex forms and, consequently, for a gradually laxer interpretation of
'otherness' itself. Each of the widenings of the semantic range of 'others' -
from contrast to mere noteworthiness - resulted thus in ever more instances
qualifying for recourse to the complex form. The inflationary spiral is so
natural that it must bring about on its own both increased use and
concomitant devaluation of the complex forms (cf. García 1986 for
discussion of the principle).
We begin our demonstration that this kind of devaluation did indeed
take place by examining the process at its mid point, i.e. when simplex and
complex forms were in actual alternation (neither could be viewed as an
idiosyncratically exceptional use), and trying to establish what triggered the
use of the -otros forms when number ambiguity was not at issue. To this
end we have classified all the cases of "no second person singular present"
from Table 1, plus all cases of first person plural in CZ, for both Ρ and S,
according to the following parameters:
(i) the person referred to must be differentiated from another because:
(a) if first person: the reference is exclusive;

if second person: the speaker and addressee belong to rival armies
or factions; and/or
(b) the person referred to is contrasted with some other person;
vs.
(ii) there is no reason to differentiate for any of the reasons given above.
In Table 2 we present the relevant data.13 Everything is as it should be. The

later text - S - has a higher percentage of otros forms than does the earlier
(P). The situations marked for differentiation score higher than do the
unmarked ones, and the second person - defined in opposition to the speaker
and hence inherently contrastive (de Jonge 1986:132-133) - shows a higher
percentage of otros than the first.
But how exactly did the overall percentage come to rise? The basic
mechanism has already been outlined: namely, the gradual and progressive
13
For the simple forms nos and vos we have naturally counted only those uses that
alternate with the complex forms, i.e. "object" uses are excluded, as are all singular
references of vos. We confine ourselves to paradigmatic percentages throughout. Assuming
a stable proportion of tonic vs. clitic uses, the non-use of nosotros/vosotros in clitic function
automatically yields a rise in the percentage of clitic exploitation of nos/vos for every rise in
the percentage of -otros forms in tonic use.
Text 1st pl. 2nd pl.*

U U M
CZ-P
oS 46 62 88 24
-osotros 0 11 7 18
Total 46 73 95 42
% -oíros 0 13 7 43
CZ-S
-os 40 54 48 15
-osotros 3 17 29 26
Total 43 71 77 41
% -otros 7 24 38 63
M = Occasion for differentiation/contrast
U = No occasion for differentiation/contrast
* 2nd p1.: only cases where singular addressee is absent
Table 2. Use of simple vs. complex forms depending on situation.
relaxation of the conditions that counted as 'sufficiently other' to warrant

recourse to the complex forms. We must now produce the evidence, that is,
SHOW that from P to S the complex forms increased in number precisely
because of the qualitative relaxation, i.e. through the extension of the marked
form to situations of weaker contrast or differentiation.
To make the connection we must compare the contexts where P has the
simple forms, but S shows the complex ones, with those contexts where the
complex forms already appear in P. The former set should be weaker, less
marked than the latter. In Table 3 we give the totals for 'marked' vs.
'unmarked' situations for both conditions.
1st p1. 2nd p1.

Total % Marked Total % Marked
P =S
-osotros 10 100 24 75
P nosAros
10 70 28 25
S nosotros/
vosotros
Table 3. Percentage of 'marked' situations for
CZ- P/S correspondences.
The percentage of marked situations is clearly much higher for those

cases where the earlier text has the otros form than among those where the
complex form makes its appearance only in the later text. Illustrative
examples follow:
(5) Ρ = S vosotros
E el mayordomo dixo a los caualleros: 'Aquel mi sobrino que va alli
adelante, que lleva las mis sobreseñales, quiero que vaya en la delantera,
e todos vos otros seguitlo e guardadlo' (P 48a, S 158/2)
"And the majordomo said to the knights: 'That nephew of mine that
rides ahead, bearing my signals, I want him to be in the van, and all [the
rest of] you follow him and pay heed to that he does.'"
(6) Ρ vos, S vosotros

'Señores', dixo el Cauallero Amigo, 'comoquier que yo non sea atan
complido de razon nin de entendimiento asy commo era menester para
dezir el mandado de mi señor el enperador delante de tan grandes
señores ni tan complidos de entendimiento commo vos [otros, S] sodes
...' (P 144a, S 491/5)
"'Gentlemen', said the Friendly Knight, 'although I be not so perfect in
reasoning nor in understanding as it would behoove in order to speak
the message of my lord the emperor before such great lords and so
perfect in understanding as you[others S] are ...'"
In (5) the contrast between the leading role of Zifar and his followers'
attendant one is both considerable and very important: the speaker's and all
his friends' survival depends on the knights' indeed allowing Zifar to go
ahead and lead them in battle. In (6), on the other hand, there is no reason to
suppose that the herald actually thinks so meanly of his understanding as he
pretends to do. Though as bearer of an unwelcome message he begins by
flattering his audience, events have shown him to be both deserving of the
difficult mission entrusted to him and hardly lacking in self-confidence.
A similar comparison follows for the first person:
(7) Ρ = S nosotros
[Situation: the Friendly Knight is telling King Zifar about the battle.]
'Certas, señor,' dixo el Cavaliere Amigo, 'fallamos; ca non se vio el
rey Artur en mayor priesa e en mayor peligro con el Gato Paus que nos
vimos nosotros con aquellos malditos ca sy bien los rascavamos mejor
nos rascavan' (P 63a, S 215/8)
"'Certainly, sire,' said the Friendly Knight, 'we did find [someone to
break our pates], for King Arthur did not find himself in direr straits nor
in greater danger with Paus the Cat than we did with those accursed
fiends, for if we scratched them well even better did they scratch us
back.'"
(8) Ρ nos, S nosotros
E dixo el uno a los otros: 'Amigos, verdadero es el proberbio antigo,
quien a buen señor sirve con servicio leal, buena soldada prende e non
al. E nos [otros, S] guardemos a esta buena dueña e sirvamosla lo
mejor que podamos, ca ella nos dio muy buen galardon mas de quanto
nos meresciemos.' (P 51b, S 171/12)
"And the one said to the rest: 'Friends, true indeed is the ancient
proverb, serve a good master loyally, receive good pay full royally. So
let us [others S] look after this good lady and serve her as well as we
can, for she gave us very good reward, more than we deserved.'"
In (7), where the complex form appears already in Ms. P, we have a first
person that is not only exclusive but also contrasted with King Arthur, while
in (8), where the complex form shows up only in S, the reference is inclusive
and the contrast is much weaker - at best, with whomever the proverb is
about.
The late - and last - uses of nos and vos as tonic forms with plural
reference appear to occur predominantly (probably as archaisms) in legal
texts or with general, almost generic, non-differentiated reference. The
confinement of simple (tonic) forms to undifferentiated reference is the last
and logical step in the process whereby the complex otros forms replace
them as salient reference to a plurality. After all, a plurality presupposes
differentiation, and that is what the -otros forms had in fact been saying all
along. Examples of non-differentiated (plural) reference follow from a 15th-
century text with 79% -otros in the first, 90% in the second person:
(9) ... la grand virtud e firmeza de su lealtad, e grandeza de consejo e de
coraçon, quedara en enxemplo e fazaña para los que vinieren despues de
nos, e avran perpetua memoria de sus claros e notables fechos (Luna
205/6)
"... the great virtue and strength of his loyalty, and the greatness of his
counsel and his heart, will remain as an example and achievement for
those who should come after us, and who will have eternal memory of
his luminous and noteworthy deeds."
(10) E a todas estas [...] cosas que allí se juraban [...] leya cada capítulo por
sí un lector, e leydo preguntábales el preste, e dezíales, así a los unos
como a los otros:
— Vos juráis al consagrado cuerpo de N.S. Jesucristo e vos adorays de
conplir lo contenido en este capítulo? (Luna 267/13)
"And for all these things that were sworn on that occasion each chapter
was read for itself by a reader, and when it had been read the priest
asked them, and said to them, to the ones as well as to the others:
— Do you swear to the consecrated body of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
do you promise to keep what is said in this chapter?"
(11) Cata que dize la evangélica doctrina que no todo aquel que dize paz a
vos fabla por Espíritu Santo. (Luna 364/31)
"Consider that the evangelic doctrine states that not everyone who says
peace be with you speaks by the Holy Ghost."
In the last example it is not clear, nor does it in fact matter, what the specific
number of the referent is.
Nos and vos could survive as tonic forms, then, only with unmarked
singular reference: the pluralis majestatis, and the worn-out vos, soon to be
replaced by the greater pragmatic impact of the ceremonious third-person
Vuestra Merced
4. Summary and conclusions.
In our discussion of the shift from nos/vos to nosotros/vosotros -

actually of the double split of the formerly undifferentiated plural pronouns -
we have been involved throughout with both actualization and reanalysis
without having had to, or even being able to, distinguish between the two.
But though the end points of the process are unmistakably distinct, the
evolution in between is smooth both quantitatively and qualitatively. The
complex form becomes steadily more frequent in tonic function as it takes
ever less 'difference' to make the recourse to otros appropriate, and the
differentiating punch of otros weakens the more it is used. In this fashion
what was originally a reference to a plurality saliently different from its
interlocutor evolved into the expression of different, distinct, salient and -
finally - mere (differentiated) plurality. In short, a chicken-and-egg relation
between quality and quantity.
The customary distinction between reanalysis and actualization may
thus actually reflect a static view of language, and a Saussurean split between
synchrony and diachrony. We know that this division is fallacious, and that a
more dynamic conception of synchrony is required. We also realize that the
gap between synchrony and diachrony can only be bridged by spanning the
abyss between individual competence and langue as a social phenomenon.
This abyss, however, is constantly bridged in practice through language use.
The study of linguistic change continues to make this clear, particularly when
close attention is paid to distributional frequencies.
Starting from the only kind of motivation that can be legitimately and
non-circularly invoked - an individual speaker's communicative need - it is
possible to arrive by sheer weight of numbers at a general, community-wide
paradigmatic result. We accordingly do not give up hope: as historical
linguists we may yet come to have the cake of functional explanation without
having to eat the humble pie of teleological circularity.
TEXTS
Abad: "Leyenda del Abad don Juan de Montemayor". In:

Menéndez Pidal, Ramón. 1934. Historia y epopeya. Madrid:
Centro de estudios históricos.
CD-A: Calila e Digna, Ms. A. In:
Keller, John E. & Robert White Linker. 1967. El libro de Calila
e Digna. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Científicas.
Luna "Crónica de Don Alvaro de Luna". In:
Mata Carriazo, Juan de. 1940. Crónica de don Alvaro de Luna.
Madrid: Espasa Calpe.
P or CZ-P: Cavallero Zifar, Ms. P(15th c.). In:
Olsen, Marilyn Α. 1984. libro del Cauallero Citar. Madison,
WI: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies.
S or CZ- S: Cavallero Zifar, Seville printing (1512). In:
Wagner, Charles Ph. 1929. El libro del Cauallero Zifar. Ann
Αrbor University of Michigan Press.
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Nieuwenhuijsen, D. 1985. Estudios sobre el pronombre medieval: vos - os.
Unpublished M.A. essay, Spanish Department, Leiden University.
Ramsden, H. 1961. "The use of A + personal pronoun in Old Spanish".
BHS 38:42-54.
Rosengren, Per. 1974. Presencia y ausencia de los pronombres personales
sujetos en español moderno. (= Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 14.)
Stockholm.
Schmidely, Jack. 1983. La personne grammaticale et la langue espagnole.
Paris: Editions Hispaniques.
Mechanisms of Syntactic Change ed. by Charles Li, 141-177. Austin:
Wagner, Charles Ph. 1929. El libro del Cauallero Zifar. Ann Arbor.
University of Michigan Press.
THE RISE OF OM IN MIDDLE DUTCH
INFINITIVE CONSTRUCTIONS
MARINEL GERRITSEN
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam
Hogeschool Midden Nederland, Utrecht
0. Introduction.
Modern Dutch differs from Middle Dutch in the use of the word  in
infinitive constructions, indicated in the examples to follow by italics.
(1) Alst .j. lettel gestaen heift te verclaersene in een
If it a little stood has [in order to] to become limpid in an
jarne of in een kanne
urn or in a can ( 15th-c. Diary: 158)
"If it has stood a while in an urn or in a can in order to become limpid"
(2) Hij is naar Amerika gegaan om beroemd te worden
He is to America gone in order to famous to become
"He went to America in order to become famous"
Such infinitive constructions are seldom introduced by  in medieval Dutch

(1), but very often in Modern Dutch (2). In the course of time we see that they
are increasingly introduced by , a change that resembles the rise of for in
Middle English infinitive constructions. In this paper I shall deal with the
embedding, the transition and the causes of the rise of  in Dutch infinitive
constructions.
1. Design.
1.1. External factors. In order to gain insight into these questions I

carried out a quantitative study of non-literary prose texts written in the last
quarters (sic) of the 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th centuries in the dialect of
Bruges, a notable West Flemish town 50 miles to the north of Lille.11 have
1
Data for the 14th century are scarce. I had serious problems in acquiring texts from
the last quarter of the 14th century. During that period Flanders was politically controlled by
the Burgundians, and thus there were political reasons for writing in French.
162 MARINEL GERRITSEN
chosen to conclude my investigation at the beginning of the 17th century since

most of the change under consideration took place before that date. The last
quarter of the 13th century has been chosen as the starting point since that is
the beginning of the period in which we find suitable texts for the study of
syntactic change in the Dutch language area. The investigation has been
restricted to the dialect of Bruges since two-thirds of the oldest records suitable
for the study of syntactic change originate from Bruges. Furthermore, I
introduced the independent variable 'Style' in order to gain insight into the
stylistic embedding of the change. I distinguished the following styles: Public
Trials, Diaries, Chronicles and Statutes. In these four different styles we find
increasing attention to language. I expect that style differences in the Middle
Ages took place over a continuum from modern to archaic, and that the archaic
constructions remained longer in styles where greater attention was paid to
language than in those where this was not the case. Because of the difficulties
of data-gathering, I was not able to study all the different styles for all points
of time. Consequently, my study has the design outlined in Table 1.
Style ca. 1275-1300 ca. 1375-1400 ca. 1475-1500 ca. 1575-1600

Formal Statutes Statutes Statutes Statutes
- Chronicles Chronicles Chronicles
- Diaries Diaries
Informal - - Public Trials Public trials
Table 1. The design of the investigation of Bruges prose texts.
1.2. Internal factors. Infinitive constructions differ from other

dependent clauses in three respects:
(a) they lack tense;

(b) they have a prosubject in deep structure that is controlled by the subject
(2), direct object or indirect object (8) of the matrix clause, or that can be
interpreted freely (3, 6);
(c) the Comp-position is not always filled.
Whether or not  occurs in Modern Dutch depends on the function of

the infinitive construction. I have, therefore, reckoned with the different
functions of the infinitive construction while analysing my Middle Dutch data.
That is why - in order to gain a good understanding of the results of my study
- a brief outline of the occurrence of  in Modern Dutch is needed.
THE RISE OF OM DUTCH INFINITIVE CONSTRUCTIONS 16 3
The use of  in infinitive constructions is OBLIGATORY if they have the

function of a subject complement (3), a predicative adjunct (4), an adverbial
clause of purpose (5), a specifier of NP with the value of a relative clause (6),
or a specifier of AP indicating degree (7). The use of  is OPTIONAL in
infinitive constructions in the function of subject (8), direct object (9) (unless
the matrix verb has the meaning of "say" or "notice" in which case the use of
 is UNGRAMMATICAL(10)), specifier of NP with the value of conjunctive
clause (11) (unless the NP expresses the meaning of "communication" or
"experience" in which case the use of  is UNGRAMMATICAL (12)), or
specifier of AP not indicating degree (13). Apart from the cases already
mentioned,  is also UNGRAMMATICAL in infinitive constructions in the
function of complement of a preposition (14).
(3) De muziek is niet om aan te horen
The music is not to to listen (i.e. unbearable)
(4) Ik vind haar in die jurk om te stelen
I think her in that dress to steal (i.e. irresistible)
(5) Hij ging naar Amerika om beroemd te worden
He went to America famous to become
(6) Een boek om te lezen
A book to read
(7) Het is te mooi om waar te zijn
It is too good true to be
(8) Het past je niet (om) dat te doen
It becomes you not that to do
(9) Hij probeerde (om) bet hek te sluiten
He tried the fence to close
(10) Moeder zei vroeg thuis te zullen zijn
Mother said early home to will be
(11) De drang (om) altijd weer te liegen
The impulse always again to tell lies
(12) Zijn mededeling niet te willen komen
His communication not to want come
(13) Hij is vrij om zich aan te sluiten bij een club
He is free himself up to join with a club
(14)Zonder de deur te openen

Without the door to open
2. Results.
For my investigation of the rise of the word  in infinitive

constructions I distinguished infinitive constructions in functions in which 
is OBLIGATORY, OPTIONAL and UNGRAMMATICAL in Modern Dutch. The results
are presented in Table 2.
With  Without  % with 
13th .
Modern Dutch obligatory 
Adverbial clause of purpose 22 24 48%
Other functions 0 0 -
Modern Dutch optional  0 28 0%
14th 
Modern Dutch obligatory am
Other functions 0 0 -
Modem Dutch optional cm 1 45 2%
15th 
Modem Dutch obligatory 
Other functions 4 0 100%
Modem Dutch optional  4 63 6%
16th .
Modem Dutch obligatory 
Other functions 8 0 100%
Modem Dutch optional  9 107 8%
Table 2. Infinitive constructions with , without  and the
percentage of all those infinitive constructions that occur with 
in medieval Bruges.
It emerges from my study that  never occurs in constructions in which

it is UNGRAMMATICAL in Modem Dutch. Furthermore, it appears that there is a
small - statistically insignificant - increase in the use of  in infinitive
constructions in which it is OPTIONAL in Modem Dutch. With regard to
THE RISE OF OM DUTCH INFINITIVE CONSTRUCTIONS 165
infinitive constructions in functions in which  is OBLIGATORY in Modern

Dutch, a distinction should be made between infinitive constructions in the
function of adverbial clause of purpose (5) and infinitive constructions in other
functions (3,4,6,7).  always occurs in the latter. Although the data are
scarce, it looks as if those sentences have always been constructed with .
This is not the case, however, for infinitive constructions in the function of
adverbial clause of purpose. They show a statistically significant increase in
the use of  between the 13th and the 16th centuries (X2, 13th-15th c , p <
.003**; 13th-16th c.,p<.000**; 14th-16th c , p < .03*; 15th-16th c , p <
.03*). The greater part of the change from infinitive constructions without 
to those introduced by  has taken place in constructions in the function of
adverbial clause of purpose. The bulk of this paper, therefore, deals with the
rise of the use of the word  in infinitive constructions in that function.
3. Traditional explanations for the rise of om.
In considering the use of  in infinitive constructions in other functions

than adverbial clause of purpose, it has often been suggested that  arose by
analogy with  in adverbial clauses of purpose. A similar explanation has
also been adduced for the rise of for in Middle English infinitive construc
tions. If this were in fact the case, one would expect that the first occurrences
of  in infinitive constructions in functions other than adverbial clause of
purpose would express a purpose. However, my data do not confirm this
hypothesis. Constructions with obligatory  in functions other than
adverbial clause of purpose are without exception introduced by , but they
never express a purpose. Infinitive constructions with optional  do not
generally express more purpose than constructions in similar functions without
. There is only one exception: infinitive constructions in the function of
specifier of NP with the function of a conjunctive clause (12). Constructions
in that function with  differ from those without, as the former invariably
express purpose. The greater part of my data, however, do not indicate that
 in infinitive constructions in functions other than adverbial clause of
purpose arose on analogy with  in infinitive constructions in that function.
Two explanations are put forward for the rise of  in adverbial clauses
of purpose. In the first place, it might be motivated by the fading away of the
final meaning of te "to", the word that introduces nearly all infinitive con
structions. A similar explanation has also been adduced for the introduction
of for in Middle English infinitive constructions. That would have been
introduced in order to emphasize the idea of purpose, earlier expressed by the
to- infinitive. Because we have such scarce knowledge about the history of the
meaning of te in Dutch, this explanation cannot be tested. A second factor that
could have affected the appearance of  is the disappearance of the marking
of the gerund by the ending -e (see verclaersene in example (1)). Nearly all
Middle Bruges infinitive constructions are introduced by te, a word that
governs the dative case. Consequently, the infinitive in the infinitival
construction also has the dative ending -e: the gerund. Infinitive construc
tions, therefore, are marked by two elements: te and the gerund-ending. In
the course of time the gerund disappears (see Table 3: X2 , 13th-15th c , p <
.003**; 13th-16th c , p <.000**; 14th-16th c , p < .03*; 15th-16th c , p <
.000**) and the infinitive construction becomes marked by te only.
According to some linguists (Weijnen 1971:130) this would have effected the
rise of a new marker: . Light foot (1979:190) suggests a similar relation
between the disappearance of the gerund-ending in Old and Middle
English and the rise of for. In order to test this hypothesis I have investigated
Occurrence Non-occurrence Total of % of occurrences

of gerund- of occurrences with
ending gerund-ending counted gerund-ending
13th . 44 2 46 96%
14th . 7 2 9 78%
15th . 35 10 45 78%
16th . 44 66 110 40%
Table 3. The occurrence of the gerund-ending in infinitive
constructions functioning as adverbial clause of purpose.
the occurrence of the four variants to form infinitive constructions in the

function of adverbial clause of purpose in Middle Bruges. The different
variants are arranged in ( 15) from Old to Modern variants. Table 4 shows the
results of this investigation.
(15) a. -  + gerund-ending: te copene "in order to buy"
b. -  - gerund-ending: te copen "in order to buy"
c. +  + gerund-ending:  te copene "in order to buy"
d. +  - gerund-ending:  te copen "in order to buy"
-  - +  + 
+ ger.-end. - ger.-end. + ger.-end. - ger.-end.
Total % Total % Total % Total %
13th . 23 50 2 21 46 2
14th . 2 22 1 12 5 55 1 11
15th . 7 16 3 7 28 62 7 16
16th . 0 0 0 0 44 40 66 60
Table 4. The occurrence of gerund-ending and  in infinitive
constructions functioning as adverbial clause of purpose.
The formation of infinitive constructions in the function of adverbial

clause of purpose changes gradually in the period under investigation from the
stage reflected in (15a) via that in (15c) to the stage reflected in (15d) (see
Table 4). There is probably a relationship between the disappearance of the
gerund-ending and the rise of , since there are so few adverbial clauses of
purpose without either one (i.e. (15b)) and since a high percentage of infinitive
constructions functioning as adverbial clause of purpose have both  and the
gerund-ending (i.e. (15c)) in the period in which this change takes place.
However, we cannot conclude from Table 4 that the disappearance of the
gerund-ending has caused the rise of . Whereas 96% of 13th-century
infinitive constructions serving as adverbial clause of purpose were formed by
a gerund with an ending, already in that century 48% were introduced by .
If the disappearance of the gerund-ending were indeed to have caused the rise
of , we would expect the gerund-ending to have disappeared more or less
before  arose. Table 4 does not confirm the hypothesis that there is a
causal connection between the disappearance of the form of the gerund-ending
and the rise of . We have to take into account, though, that this relationship
should not be considered in purely syntactic/morphological terms, but also in
terms of semantics. It is possible that rather than the disappearance of the form
of the gerund - the ending itself- causing the rise of , it was instead due to
the fading away of the meaning that the gerund-ending probably expressed.
Perhaps the gerund-ending expressed a purpose, but this meaning was
disappearing and  thus arose.2 This hypothesis cannot be tested,
unfortunately, due to our scarce knowledge about the meaning of the gerund-
ending and the changes in it.
Although Table 4 does not fully corroborate the traditional hypothesis that
the disappearance of the gerund-ending caused the rise of  in adverbial
4
should like to thank Jaap van Marie, who suggested this possible explanation.
clauses of purpose, it gives a nice description of the change in formation of

infinitive constructions serving that function. With this in mind I shall deal
with the transition and embedding of the change in the hope that we will be
brought closer to an answer to the question of why  was introduced in
those sentences than traditional explanations have offered.
4. Embedding.
For reasons of clarity of presentation, all the data I have presented so far
included the four styles listed together in Table 1. The change from the old
manner of constructing adverbial purpose clauses (cf. 15a) to the new one (cf.
15d) does take place in all the styles, but faster in some than in others. My
data corroborate fully the hypothesis that syntactic change occurs more rapidly
in informal than in formal styles. The construction with both the gerund-
ending and  (cf. 15c), which forms the transition between the old and the
new variants, occurs in the 15th century in Public Trials statistically
significantly more often than in the more formal style of the Diaries (Χ 2 , ρ <
.01**, n=27) and the Statutes (Χ 2 , ρ < .003**, n=16). We find in the 16th
century that the transition construction (cf. 15c) occurs significantly more often
in Diaries than in the more formal style of Chronicles (Χ 2 , ρ < .005**, n=78).
The same holds true for the construction with  only (cf. 15d). This new
variant occurs significantly more often statistically in Public Trials than in more
formal Diaries (Χ 2 , ρ < .01**, n=70) and Statutes (Χ 2 , ρ < .003**, n=29).
The stylistic embedding of the change in infinitive constructions serving as
adverbial clause of purpose confirms the theory that syntactic change occurs
faster in informal than in formal styles. The new variants are used statistically
significantly more often in situations in which not much attention is paid to
language use. The stylistic embedding of the change indicates that we are
dealing here with a 'natural' syntactic change. It is a matter of fact that this
does not yet answer the question why  was introduced in those sentences,
but it does make plausible that language production factors are involved. My
investigation into the transition of the change shows this possibility.
5. Transition.
The adding of  to infinitive constructions functioning as adverbial

clause of purpose can be considered an elucidation which can be used for both
semantic and syntactic reasons. In connection with the SEMANTIC REASONS, it is
plausible that in a period in which final clauses are constructed by infinitive
constructions with and without , the latter expresses more purpose than
the former. It is difficult of course to determine in older texts whether some

constructions express more purpose than others, but I did not find any
evidence for this.
With regard to the SYNTACTIC FACTORS that could affect the use of , it is
plausible that  occurs more often in complex structures than in simple ones,
because the adding of  can be considered an elucidation. In order to test
this, I formulated a set of five hypotheses about the complexity of infinitive
constructions in the function of adverbial clause of purpose.
(a) Infinitive constructions become more complex as the distance increases

between the beginning of the infinitive construction and the constituent in
the matrix clause that has to be interpreted as its subject.
(b) Infinitive constructions controlled by the subject of the matrix clause are
less complex than those which are controlled by the object or the indirect
object, or which can be interpreted freely.
(c) Infinitive constructions become more complex as the number of words or

constituents they contain increases.
(d) Infinitive constructions in dependent clauses are more complex than those
in main clauses.
(e) An infinitive construction at the end of the matrix clause is less complex
than one in another position.
I expected  to occur more frequently in the more complex variants of

the infinitive constructions. Only two of the five hypotheses were confirmed
by my data as having significance: (a) the distance between the infinitive
construction and the NP in the matrix clause that has to be interpreted as its
subject (I shall call this 'Distance'); and (b) the length of the infinitive
construction (I shall call this'Length'). I shall deal first with Distance.
It emerges from my study that Distance affects the occurrence of .
The distance is statistically significantly greater in infinitive constructions with
 than in those without . Table 5 shows the results with the levels of
significance according to Analyses of variance.
() ()
+  + gerund-ending -  + gerund-ending Significance
Consti- Words Consti- Words of difference
tuents tuents bet. A and 
Mean SD Mean SD η Mean SD Mean SD n Const. Words
13th . 2.7 1.1 6.7 3.7 21 1.7 1.1 4.2 4.2 23 .006** .04*
14th . 1.2 0.4 8.4 4.6 5 2.5 0.7 13.0 2.8 2 .06 .26
15th . 2.3 1.1 5.6 2.9 22 1.7 0.5 2.6 0.9 7 .21 .02*
Table 5. The difference in distance in words and constituents between

infinitive constructions serving as adverbial clause of purpose with  and
without  with the significances according to Analyses of variance.
Sentences (16) and (17) are examples of the influence of the distance on
the occurrence of . In the sentence with  (16) we see a long distance
between the NP in the matrix clause that has to be interpreted as the subject of
the infinitive construction (word capitalized) and the beginning of the infinitive
construction (italicized). The distance is nil, however, in the sentence without
 (17).
(16) DAT SAY moet weder keren ter stede// dar tghemaect
That cloth shall again come back to the place where it made
was om zijn vonnesse te ghedoghen
was in order to his judgement to stand
"That cloth shall come back again to the place where it was made in order
to stand its judgement" (13th-c. Statute:367)
(17) dat say sal/ men gheven DEN SCERRE sine

that cloth will one give the shearer [in order to] his
langhe. & sine brede; te settene an die rame
length & his width to set on the frame
"One will give that cloth to the shearer in order to set the length and the
width on the frame" (13th-c.Statute:365)
We have in (16) an infinitive construction that is controlled by the subject

of the matrix clause and in (17) an infinitive construction that is controlled by
the indirect object of the matrix clause. It appears that the kind of control plays
a different role from what I expected in hypothesis (b) above. On the basis of
purely syntactic criteria I expected that infinitive constructions controlled by the
subject of the matrix clause would be less complex, and easier to produce and
perceive than those controlled by an NP with another function in the matrix
clause. This hypothesis was, however, far from confirmed. I now
understand why: the distance between the infinitive construction and the NP in
the matrix clause which must be interpreted as its subject interferes. Due to the
syntactic structure of Dutch, this distance is generally longer for infinitive
constructions that are controlled by the subject of the matrix clause than for
infinitive constructions that are controlled by an NP with another function, as
appears from (16) and (17). Complexity in surface structure appears to have a
greater influence on the use of  than complexity in deep structure.
A second factor affecting the occurrence of  in infinitive constructions
in the function of final adverbial is the LENGTH of the infinitive constructions.
The ones with  are significantly longer than those without . The results
are presented in Table 6 with the levels of significance according to Analyses
of variance.
(A) (B)
+  + gerund-ending -  + gerund-ending Significance
Consti- Words Consti- Words of difference
tuents tuents bet. A and 
Mean SD Mean SD η Mean SD Mean SD n Const. Words
13th . 1.0 0.2 1.5 0.7 21 0.5 0.9 1.1 1.8 23 .008** .31
14th . 1.6 0.5 3.4 2.7 5 1.5 0.7 4.0 4.2 2 .82 .81
15th . 1.7 0.7 5.2 5.4 28 0.4 0.5 1.0 1.3 7 .0003** .05*
Table 6. The difference in length in words and constituents between
infinitive constructions functioning asfinaladverbial with  and
without  with the significances according to Analyses of variance.
My study shows that the addition of  to infinitive constructions in the

function of adverbial clause of purpose has been affected by the complexity of
the construction. It occurs statistically significantly more often in infinitive
constructions that are relatively far from the NP in the matrix clause that has to
be interpreted as its subject, and it occurs more often in constructions that are
relatively long. Since there are two factors that affect the occurrence of , it
is possible in theory that they interact. We can ask whether Distance affects
the occurrence of  if we take into account that Length plays a part too (cf. I
in Table 7 below). We can also ask whether Length affects the occurrence of
 if we take into account that Distance also plays a role (cf. II in Table 7
below). In order to investigate this, I performed analyses of co-variance with
Distance as dependent variable and Length as -variable in the first of the two
questions. For the second of the two questions I performed analyses with
Length as dependent variable and Distance as -variable. The results are
shown in Table 7.
I II
Adjusted mean Significance Adjusted mean Significance
distance in words of difference length in constituents of difference
+  - + /-  +  -  +/- 
13th . 6.4 4.5 .16 1.0 0.6 .03*
14th . 8.4 12.9 .32 1.6 1.5 .86
15th . 5.7 1.8 .01** 1.8 0.3 .0003**
Table 7. The difference for the distance adjusted for length in
words (I) and in length adjusted for distance in constituents (II) between
infinitive constructions functioning as adverbial clause of
purpose with and without  with the significances according
to Analyses of -variance.
We see from Table 7 that Length adjusted for Distance of the infinitive
construction affects the occurrence of  in both the 13th and the 15th
centuries, but that the Distance adjusted for Length only plays a role in the 15th
century. The study shows that the influence of the complexity of the infinitive
construction on the use of  changes in the course of time. In the 13th
century only very long infinitive constructions are introduced by , but in
the 15th century only very short infinitive constructions with a very short
distance occur without . The transition of the change fully corroborates the
idea that the addition of  is a natural change caused by language production
factors. I have already shown that the stylistic embedding of the change also
indicated that we are dealing here with a natural change.3
6. Concluding remarks.
Both embedding and transition of the change indicate that  in infinitive

constructions in the function of adverbial clause of purpose crept into the
language quite naturally. The change took place faster in informal than in
formal styles, and it was conditioned by the complexity of the infinitive
construction in SURFACE structure.  evidently arose in order to elucidate
complex surface structures. This, however, does not yet explain why 
arose. It might be caused by the gradual disappearance of the final meaning of
3
There is a third syntactic factor that affects the occurrence of  in the 13th century:
subcategorization features of the matrix verb. Infinitive constructions in the function of
adverbial clause of purpose with  occur significantly more often with intransitive matrix
verbs than with transitive ones during the 13th century (Χ2, ρ < .002**). However, I have
no explanation for this phenomenon.
te or by the fading away of the possible final meaning of the gerund-ending.

But these hypotheses cannot be tested on the basis of the history of Dutch,
because there are no sources for the relevant periods.
I hope this article will stimulate further investigation into changes in the
formation of infinitive constructions in languages related to Dutch where there
are older records suitable for the study of syntactic change - for example,
German and English. It is only such studies that provide answers to the
question why words like  in Dutch, for in English and urn in German
arose in infinitive constructions.
REFERENCES
Gerritsen, Marinei. 1987. Syntaktische verandering in kontrolezinnen. Een
sociolinguistische studie van het Brugs van de 13e tot de 17e eeuw.
Dordrecht: Foris.
Lightfoot, David. 1979. Principles of Diachronic Syntax. Cambridge:
Weijnen, A. 1971. Schets van de geschiedenis van de Nederlandse syntaxis.
Assen: Van Gorcum.
DISCOURSE FUNCTIONS AND SYNTACTIC CHANGE
ANNA GIACALONE RAMAT

University ofPavia
0. Following Sankoff & Brown (1976) and Givón (1979), the issue of
the origins of syntactic change in discourse has attracted considerable attention.
A discourse-based analysis of diachronic processes would, in principle, allow
for the possibility that a stylistically marked rule, admitted in particular
contexts, spreads gradually, superseding a previously well established rule. In
many cases the shift from elements functioning at the discourse level to
elements functioning at the morpho-syntactic level has been considered an
instance of grammaticalization (Traugott 1982), and extensive evidence of such
grammaticalization processes has been gathered in the most diverse linguistic
traditions.
The position of the verb and the personal pronouns structurally dependent
on it in the history of Latin and the Romance languages is a very interesting
example of a change that has come about through the constant interplay of
phonological, semantic and textual factors and has involved a certain number
of reanalyses tending to eliminate markedness from some areas of grammar.
There is apparently no change in form or in function between Romance
personal oblique pronouns and their Latin antecedents, but these items, while
keeping the primary textual function (deictic and anaphoric) of pronouns, have
undergone a change affecting their autonomy as words: they have developed a
number of positional constraints and appear to have proceeded much further
along the path of grammaticalization.
1. This paper will focus on the Late Latin conditions that made the
changes observed in Romance languages possible. But before embarking on a
discussion, a methodological point needs to be stated: in cases like this no
meaningful generalization would be possible without closer inspection of the
data of the texts. Such extensive empirical research is a necessary requirement
for the formulation of a descriptively and theoretically satisfactory hypothesis.
Let us consider for a start someratherwell-known tendencies in Latin
syntax, particularly the evolution of verb position, since this is strictly linked
176 ANNA GIACALONE RAMAT
to clitic development. It is a widely accepted assumption that Latin had a basic

SOV order, i.e. the finite verb occupied the final position in declarative
sentences. Alongside this 'unmarked' order there is evidence in Latin literature
of a wide variety of other possible orders, particularly a verb-initial position,
which is, according to Marouzeau (1953:45; see also Hofmann & Szantyr
1965 §214), exceptional and confers a degree of 'expressivity'. Let us assume
that what we have sketched here corresponds to the situation of Classical Latin;
a number of scholars (Richter 1903, Linde 1923, Koll 1965, Adams 1976,
Panhuis 1984), however, have demonstrated the persistence of alternative
word orders which appear in chronologically distant authors and in different
text types. Particularly relevant to our purposes is the position of the object -
both nominal and pronominal - after the verb, because the postposition of the
object is probably the most significant condition for a language to change from
an OV to a VO type (Lehmann 1973:65; see, however, Harris 1978:8).
Despite the cautious position of Koll (1965) on the possibilities of
reconstructing the modalities of word-order change from an analysis of Latin
texts, the instances of VO order, though not statistically prevalent, are positive
evidence of a change creeping into the written language, particularly in
technical nonliterary works. A sociolinguistic approach that takes into account
the divergence between spoken and written language appears to me a more
persuasive argument than statistical evidence, which has been exploited
perhaps too much in the literature on word order (see also Adams 1976, Ramat
1984 and Molinelli 1986).
A second point relevant to our analysis is that Latin observed
Wackernagers law, whereby the second position in the sentence was weakly
accented in several Indo-European languages. Wackernagel's law is defined
positionally, not in terms of grammatical categories occurring in a certain
position. The position after the first word of the sentence, or after the first
phrase or part of it, can be filled by a number of items, including personal
pronouns, indefinite pronouns, particles, adverbs, copula, and also some
verbs, preferably mono- and disyllabic (Wackernagel 1892; see also Banti
1980, Benacchio & Renzi 1987). The proposal by Kaisse (1982) to
reformulate Wackernagel's law as a typological generalization is not discussed
here; but I am inclined (in accordance with Zwicky 1985) to believe that only
languages with a relatively free word order (such as Latin or Greek) tend to
have clitics in the second position.1
1
Th complex question of defining 'second position' cannot be treated at length here.
Wackernagel defines'second position' with regard to the first word of the sentence and not to
an entire constituent and the same point has been made for Old Indic by Banti (1980).
Klavans (1985:99), however, claims that "clitics seem to attach to entire phrases, not to
DISCOURSE FUNCTIONS AND SYNTACTIC CHANGE 177
It is worth noting, however, that no attention was given to Wackernagers

law in the studies on Latin word order considered above, although it clearly
has a number of important implications for Latin developments. The
significant point here is that, in Latin, pronominal objects need not be
contiguous to the verb they are structurally dependent on. In fact, they appear
in different positions and produce a variety of stylistic effects. In particular,
they frequently take the second position, cliticized to an initial host word. In
this connection we may note, following Klavans (1985), that the syntactic host
is separate from the phonological host of the Latin clitic pronouns.
Certainly, pragmatic reasons can also be given to account for the general
pronoun occurrence in the initial part of the sentence in that pronouns tend to
be thematic because of their anaphoric character. Besides clitics we may find
free personal pronouns (i.e. tonic pronouns, not bound to the second position)
usually emphasized or referring to new referents (Marouzeau 1953:227,
Benacchio & Renzi 1987:4).
(1) me, me adsum qui feci: in me convertite ferrum: Verg. Aen. 9.426.
(2) te, dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila coeli: Lucr. 1.6.
On the whole pronoun double positioning can be traced back to 'normal'

word-order rules valid also for nouns and to Wackernagel's law. This system,
however, broke down during the Latin period because the law was no longer
strictly observed, as noted in Marouzeau (1953:90): "il s'agit d'une
survivance plutôt que d'une loi organique".2
2. When we go back to the oldest texts in the Romance languages we

find a very different situation in basic word order that can be summarized as
follows:
words". This means that in structural terms the 'domain' of cliticization is a phrasal node,
not a lexical category (as is the case for Romance clitics!). Latin clitics indeed seem to enjoy
a sort of positional freedom that could certainly be a sign of a decline in the original
constraints, as Marouzeau (1953) puts it. They can 'penetrate' inside a phrase:
(a) di tibi omnes id quod es dignus duint : Ter. Phormio 519.
Or they can occur after a constituent composed of several words:
(b) di deaeque omnes me pessumis exemplis interficiant: Plautus, Most. 192.
Moreover, no strict rule exists to arrange the reciprocal order of particles, conjunctions and
pronouns, as is the case in older Indo-European languages.
2
As noted by Wackernagel, Latin words lack any indication of accent and therefore we
can only draw on indirect evidence to know whether a word was clitic or not. Important clues
can be derived from metrics: in Plautus and Terentius elements in second position bear no
metrical ictus (Geisler 1982:161).
(a) The verb appears in second position, which is by no means a weak

position (pace Thumeysen 1892);3 it is outside our scope to consider in detail
alternative positions such as initial position, which is common in interrogatives
and imperatives, but which can also be found in declaratives (Herman 1954).
We may, however, state briefly that old Romance languages are (T)VX, i.e.
Topic + Verb + remaining constituent, if any (Harris 1978, Vennemann 1974),
though with some idiosyncratic properties.4
(b) Wackernagers law has been lost: particles and conjunctions do not
appear in second position any more and above all oblique pronouns are now
strictly bound to their structural support - the verb - and are positioned before
or after it.
A tentative explanation of these developments should try to answer the

following questions:
- How was the verb shift to second position actuated? Is it an entirely

Romance phenomenon, or can it be traced back to Latin texts and, in the
latter case, to what kind of texts belonging to what period?
- How was Wackernagel's law lost? Is the decline of this law already
noticeable in Latin?
- Thirdly, how did the irregularity of clitic order in Romance originate as

compared to the postverbal order of nominal objects?
I should like to claim that the issues raised by these phenomena ought to
be analysed in a discourse-functional perspective, taking advantage of a model
that includes information structure and communicative organization of the
message and also allows for the possibility that the speaker expresses his
attitude to what is being talked about by resorting to different (syntactic) rules.
A similar view was adopted by Geisler (1982), who has suggested that in
3
Thurneysen (1892) has linked the origin of verb second position in Romance to the
persistence of Wackernagel's law tending to place verbal clitics, in particular the copula, in
second position in the sentence. The evidence, however, does not fully support the view of a
survival of Wackernagel's law in Romance. Going back to the oldest French texts, all verbs,
not only auxiliaries, regularly appear in second position and bear stress (Herman 1954).
Furthermore, one point to bear in mind is the primarily syntactic nature both of cliticization
and of verb movement, while Thurneysen's hypothesis is based on rhythmical grounds.
4
As recognized by Harris (1978:20) the typical SVO pattern of Romance laguages can be
considered the normal realization of TVX with topicalization of the subject in the main
sentence; the basic SVO order would then appear in the subordinate clause.
Latin the weak second position in the sentence (the 'Wackernagel position')
had the function of delimiting the sentence topic, which frequently
corresponded to the subject but could also include other noun phrases or
adverbials. In Romance languages the verb took over this function and shifted
to the second position (giving rise to the (T)VX order mentioned above), a
process whose origins can be found in Latin texts. Geisler, however,
disregards the clear changes in stress conditions between the Latin weak
second position and the second position in Romance languages occupied by a
stressed verbal element. Moreover the Latin verb, too, had its own accent.
Verbs like sum, fío that can appear in the Wackernagel position are
exceptional cases (Hofmann & Szantyr 1965:404). It is not clear then how a
stressed element like the verb could end up in second position unless the
position itself was no longer weak.
In his investigation of the communicative value of Latin word order in the
sentence, Panhuis (1982) affirms that the order of constituents in a language
with a relatively free word order such as Latin could be used to put the
message in a particular communicative perspective. He suggests also that the
'medial' position of the verb in the sentence was unmarked and served the
function of separating the thematic elements from the rhematic ones. Thus,
although within slightly different theoretical frameworks, both scholars take a
similar standpoint and recognize a function of sentence articulation for the
verb. The general argument is convincing; there is, however, no general
agreement as to the ultimate causes of the changes under examination.
In my opinion we are dealing with two more or less overlapping changes
in the history of Latin: the fall of Wackernagers law and the verb shifting
from final position backwards in the sentence. Our task should then be to
investigate what might have been the (independent) reasons which, at a certain
moment in time, favored the verb shift. The hypothesis that I would like to
support is the following: at a pragmatic level of sentence decoding, the
particular situation of clitics, depending phonologically on one host and
syntactically on another, may well have become intolerable in changing
prosodic conditions because ofrisingdecoding difficulties. This suggestion
by Jakobson (1935) has been taken up again by Benacchio & Renzi (1987:13).
Wackernagers law would be incompatible with a free intensity accent, such as
was developed in the Romance languages (but the process was already under
way in Latin). In this situation the speakers would have been oriented towards
a particular solution, namely the pragmatically conditioned choice of verb and
pronoun adjacency, with recourse to the possibility of a non-final position for
the verb that coexisted in the history of Latin with the 'normal' final position.5
In a general perspective of historical change it may be pointed out that a
convergency of differently motivated processes seems to be involved in the
evolution of clitic pronouns.6
A further point should be noted in this connection: Wackernagel elements
in Latin are of a rather heterogeneous nature. They include particles that affect
the clause as a whole and pronouns which are clause constituents. Because of
this distinct characterization at the grammatical level the different fate of
Wackernagel elements in historical evolution is not surprising. As I stated
above, they have disappeared or have been displaced to other positions in
Romance. The only exception seems to be that of oblique pronouns which for
some contexts give the impression of never having moved from Wackemagel's
position (Renzi in Benacchio & Renzi 1987). In fact, the interpretation of the
surface collocation is quite different. The frequent choice of verb and pronoun
adjacency (see the following section) caused a reanalysis of the structural and
phonological dependency of clitic pronouns (a 'rebracketing' with the verb
according to Hock 1986). The process of reanalysis was partially disguised
by the fact that pronouns remained 'around' the second position, not
occupying, however, a position of their own but more as 'satellites' of the
5
As Panhuis (1982:25) rightly points out, to speak of verb medial position is
misleading, because in sentences with a verb and three or more other constituents one cannot
distinguish between verbs in second, third and fourth position. Clearly, for Romance
developments second position is of interest; however, in Latin authors evidence of a variety
of orders is found. In one sense the statistical information supplied in works by Koll (1965)
and others is not illuminating since postposition of the Object after the Verb (VO pattern)
does not automatically mean second position of the verb.
6
In a purely syntactic approach to word order, the changes we are dealing with have been
considered part of a major typological shift that took place gradually from an XV language to
a VX language (Lehmann 1972:271-72, Vennemann 1974). This change would have been
triggered by the decline of the Latin case system and by the arising ambiguity in marking S
and O. As it was necessary to distinguish a basic SOV structure from a secondary OSV
structure, the position of the finite verb was used for that purpose (Vennemann 1974:358).
But this is not true, at least in the sense that the VO pattern in Latin was much older than
the loss of inflections (see above). Furthermore, the second position of the verb seems to
have been fixed in Romance long before the setting of a rigid SVO order, as the somewhat
parallel developments in English and French tell us (Geisler 1982:154). I do not intend to
discount the value of the typological approach in understanding the correlation between
apparently disparate changes, however, this method of explanation should be backed up by
discourse analysis if we want to have a better look at HOW the replacement of an existing
structure (or rule) by an innovating one was actuated in language.
verb. Being endowed with its own stress, the verb constituted a gravitational
center for personal pronouns, unless they bore emphatic stress (Harris 1978).7
Having outlined these developments in general terms, we conclude,
supporting the view of Green (1976:14), "that the general fact of Latin's being
an SOV language has no direct bearing whatsoever on this apparently
anomalous OV order in present-day usage". The claim by Givón (1971) that
clitic pronoun position in Romance languages preserves the SOV order of
Classical Latin does not appear to be a satisfactory explanation of our data after
recent insights into the evolution of Latin word order.
Being associated with the verb, personal oblique pronouns had the choice
of occurring before or after it, and in modern Romance languages ultimately
came to be cliticized to the left of thefiniteverb and to the right of the positive
imperative. As is well-known, there is a certain variation to the
enclitic/proclitic arrangement with non-finite forms and to the reciprocal order
in clitic clusters (Green 1976). On the whole in old Romance languages a
basic syntactic principle applied avoiding initial clitics. The conditions for
linearization have been formulated by the Tobler-Mussafia law (Mussafia
1886) and can be summarized in modern terms as a prohibition against clitics
standing after a surface clause boundary (Wanner 1981:335). According to
Herman (1954:92), this behavior was motivated by the fact that the first
position in the sentence (or better in the clause) was in any case a strong one
and could only be taken by a tonic element.8
We are now in a position to see the results of this complex process, but
we need further research and empirical evidence to reconstruct the gradual
actuation of changes. But direct evidence is not to be expected: what we
should look for is rather indirect evidence of conditions for a reanalysis of the
Latin sequences. What seems to emerge from the investigations by Koll
(1965) and Adams (1976), and particularly from the accurate research on Late
Latin and Early Romance texts by Ramsden (1963), is the growing tendency
for the pronominal objects, like the nominal objects, to follow the verb ever
more closely. According to Ramsden and also to Geisler (1982), these
developments are the forerunners of a general postverbal collocation of weak
pronouns in Proto-Romance; only later did a procliticization process take
7
Harris rightly (1978:114) draws attention to the pairs of personal pronouns deriving in
a number of instances from one Latin etymon (Lat. me > French me, moi) that were
originally opposed in terms of stress, but came to be differentiated syntactically.
8
I do not follow the tentative explanation by Renzi (in Benacchio & Renzi 1987), who
follows Thurneysen 1892. This presupposes the contemporary presence and reciprocal action
of Wackernagel's law and of Tobler-Mussafía's law: if the verb was initial, then
Wackernagel's law determined the postverbal attachment of clitics. But, as I stated above, in
a Romance phase with the verb in second position WackernagePs law was no longer in force.
place, for rhythmical reasons (Ramsden) or as a result of final syllable

reduction (Geisler). 9 But Wanner (1985) takes the opposite position and
defends "la préférence pour la linéarisation proclitique du pronom" in Late
Latin.
There is no principled reason, however, for reconstructing a unitarian
development, other than possibly a need for theoretical parsimony. To
postulate for Proto-Romance clitics the same distribution as full nominals
would have the advantage of describing the behavior of clitics by means of
syntactic rules of movement. But the solution is not economic, and empirical
evidence does not seem to support it, as Benacchio & Renzi (1987) state. As
historical linguistics teaches us, changes are not always unidirectional and
systematic; on the contrary many variation factors or blocking devices may
intervene to obscure the development. If we bear in mind these
considerations, we might be justified in thinking that a constraint requiring
exclusively the postverbal or preverbal position never existed.
3. To test this hypothesis I have examined a selection of Late Latin texts.

The sample is small and probably unrepresentative; however, the distribution
of forms does not seem accidental. My aim was to gather some concrete
evidence about the development of the Romance clitic systems. To this end the
clinching proof should derive from instances of'Romance interferences', such
as a clear tendency to place pronouns 'around the verb'. This would imply -
at least for the late texts of the fourth group - an obligatory collocation of them
in spoken Romance dialect, Less convincing proof but still significant would
be the dissolution of the Latin sentence clitic system and the disappearance of
the system of stressed free pronouns and unstressed pronouns bound to the
second position.
The Latin materials examined can be divided into four groups:
9
The long debate about the clitic pronoun position in Romance languages cannot even
be summarized adequately here: it is reported in Ramsden (1963, Ch. 1). Meyer-Lübke's
(1897) theory of pronoun enclisis on the first element of the sentence, which implies "a
static view of pronoun collocation from pre-Classical Latin to medieval Romance times"
(Ramsden 1953:17), found wide acceptance. The position of Meyer-Lübke, as well as that of
Thurneysen (1892), are outcomes of Wackernagel's article on word order in Indo-European
languages, but valid criticism has been raised against both. In particular the validity of
Wackernagel's law is highly uncertain even for Late Latin, not to mention the Romance
languages. Antinucci & Marcantonio (1980) have reconstructed the development of clitics in
Old Italian by interpreting Meyer-Lübke's theory of enclisis typologically.
DISCOURSE FUNCTIONS AND SYNTACTIC CHANGE 18 3
(a) the pre-Vulgate versions of the Bible, currently designated as Itala,

together with their Vulgate counterpart and the Greek original;10
(b) private letters of Claudius Terentianus and Rustius Barbarus (Cavenaile

1958) (2nd century);
(c) the Peregrinatio Aetheriae (Heraeus 1908);
(d) a collection of 8th-century Latin texts edited by D.S. Avalle ( 1970).
3.1. The pre-Vulgate versions of the Bible. On the whole I

confirm a clear tendency for oblique pronouns to follow the verb immediately,
as noted by Ramsden (1963); pronoun postposition appears regularly with
verba dicendi and corresponds to the Greek word order, also mainly
preserved in the Vulgate (see Koll 1965:251, who favors the hypothesis of a
Greek influence on Latin word order, while Wanner 1985 would take both
Greek and Latin pronominal syntax as a Hebraism):
(3) a. Accesserunt autem servi patris familias et dixerunt ei (Mt. 13,27 Itala)
b. Accedentes autem servi patris familias dixerunt ei (Vulgate)
c. Proselthóntes dè hoi doüữloitoữoikodespótou eipon autoi
Besides that, however, Ramsden observes that in subordinate clauses

anteposition of pronouns is more frequent than postposition. Moreover the
personal pronoun follows the subordinating conjunction or the relative
pronoun, fulfilling in this way the conditions of the Wackernagel position (see
(4) and (5) below). I would argue, however, that the principle involved here
is that verb final position was better preserved in subordinate clauses than in
main clauses (Koll 1965, etc.). Anteposition of pronouns, as well as of any
other constituent, is produced incidentally and cannot be taken as a proof of
survival of Wackernagel's law. Although there is a considerable amount of
apparently uncontrolled variation, hints of evolution are manifested:
(4) ... ne eum expellerent foras de regione (Mc. 5,10)
(5) ... quanta tibi dominus fecit (Mc. 5,19)
10
From the edition of Α. Jülicher (1938-54) I have analysed the following three
chapters: Matthew 13, Mark 5 and Luke 18, together with the corresponding passages of the
Vulgate and the Greek text.
However:
(6) ... ne in novissimo veniendo constringat me (Lc. 18.5)
3.2. Private letters of Claudius Terentianus and Rustius

Barbarus (Cavenaile 1958) (2nd century). These documents reflect
the multilingual environment of Egypt and give a fairly clear idea of the gap
between literary and spoken Latin, anticipating in some cases coming Romance
developments in morphosyntax (Durante 1981). Pronouns are mostly adjacent
to the verb; postposition, however, dominates, except in subordinate clauses,
where both orders are admitted, but the examples are few.
(7) Misi tibi, pater, per Martialem imboluclum concosutum (251, 8-9)
(8) ... et misi tibi vasum oliarium ut mittas mi oleum cotilas VI (305, 6-7)
(9) ... et rogo ut mi mittas dalabram (251,27)
(10) hunc tibi mater mea misit (251,15)
(11) Rogo te, frater, ut facias mi in meos usos pondera quan formosa et scribe
mi ut pretium aeorum quit vis, panem tibi faciam aut aes tibi mitam. Scito
enim me uxorem ducerem. Quando mox duxero continuo tibi scribam ut
venias (303.10-18).
In the alternation Rogo te ... and panem tibi faciam or continuo tibi
scrìbam the emergence of the Romance norm regulating the position of atonic
pronouns at the beginning of the sentence is perhaps visible. It seems that
initial verbs and verbs preceded by the coordinating et are regularly followed
by pronouns.
3.3. The Peregrinatio Aetberiae. Checking the careful exami
nation by Ramsden seems to confirm that in comparison with Itala and the
private letters there is a 'return' towards anteposition of oblique pronouns;
however, there is no rigid norm. Compare (12)-(15). Taking for granted the
(12) qui nos deducebant semper de castro ad castrum (7.2)
(13) quando ei dixit Deus (5,2; 4,8)
( 14) ut ostenderent nobis singula loca (3,7)
(15) Nam si vis, ecce modo pedibus duco vos ibi (15, 1)
DISCOURSE FUNCTIONS AND SYNTACTIC CHANGE 18 5
author's desire for a more literary style (Ramsden), I want to stress the non-
casual distribution of forms. As Ramsden observes, anteposition is favored in
subordinate clauses; however, separation from the verb does not occur often
because of the lack of further constituents that could intervene. The result is a
high number of cases that are compatible both with verb adjacency and with
second position. Pronouns are regularly postponed when the verb is initial or
is preceded by an adverbial clause:
(16) Recipit se episcopus et vadent se unusquisque ad ospitium suum, ut se

resumant (25,7)
(17) Rogo te, domine, ut dicas michi, quod desidero audire (20,9)
(18) et pervenientes ad monasterium quaedam susceperunt nos ibi satis

humane monachi (3,1)
Everything considered, the Peregrinatio remains the least transparent in its

motivation for pronoun positioning of the texts analysed.
3 . 4 . A collection of 8th-century Latin texts edited by D . S .

Avalle ( 1 9 7 0 ) . These texts are representative of 'intermediate registers'
between traditional Latin and the spoken language and can be viewed as
"l'anello di congiunzione, il tramite, il presupposto necessario del passaggio
dal latino al volgare" (Avalle, 1970:IX). Below are listed the pronominal
occurrences of the Sermo venembilis Coronati notarii de vita Sancii Zenonis
(= SC) with its more vulgar counterpart, the Rhythmus de vita Sancii Zenonis
(= R ) by an anonymous author who seems to consciously alternate classical
and vulgar forms (Avalle 1968).
(19) Ille vero dixit eis (SC 49)
(20) ite, inquit, ecce ego subsequor vos (SC 65-66)
(21) non ne te permittat Dominus agere adversus servum suum. Respondentes

vero dixerunt 'Rogat te imperator et te vult videre' (SC 59-60)
(22) Roga te Imperium a se te convocat (R 49)
In the more literate Senno Coronati subordinate clauses show instances

of separation of pronoun and verb and of pronoun collocation after the initial
conjunction (see (23)-(25)). Of particular interest are SC 60 and R 49 (see
(23) nisi ei ipsam, quam habes, coronam meam offeram (SC 85-86)
(24) ut ei licentia tribueretur omnia idola destruendi (SC 93-94)
(25) etsi quidem nun me non permittis animas hominum lucrari (SC 31)
(21) and (22)), where the initial verb is followed by an enclitic pronoun, while
in the subsequent sentences the pronoun, preceded by et in one case and by a
se in the other, is preverbal and proclitic: this reminds us of course of the
Tobler-Mussafia law (although the choice of the proclisis after et is less
frequent). The imperative occurrence in R 41 tends in the same direction with
a tonic subject pronoun followed by a clitic pronoun, a pattern that recurs in
(26) tu nobis indica Zenonem nomine (R 41)
the Laudes regiae of Soissons (Avalle, 1970, No. 10):
(27) tu lo iuva!...tu los juva!
and is found in Romance texts, e.g. Dante Purg. 13.17: tu ne conduci.
3 . 5 . Conclusion. To conclude this brief survey of Latin texts, I

would like to take a less pessimistic position than that of Wanner (1981:341),
who has claimed that, due to the imperfect tradition of linguistic materials, "the
Romance clitic system ... appears as a creatio ex nihilo". On the contrary, an
adequate choice of texts11 reveals a great deal about the evolution of this area
of grammar. I hope to have shown:
(a) how pronouns cluster around the verb;
(b) how the conditions for the maintenance of Wackernagel's law cannot be
proved in any case, the frequency of pronoun second position in
subordinate sentences being an accidental effect both of leftward verb
movement and of the shortness of sentences;
(c) how an emergent regularity in the positioning of pronouns after an initial

verb is manifested as early as the second century (see (7), (11), (16),
etc.).
11
Of course this is a significant point; for instance, texts from the Merovingian period
such as Gregorius of Tours, Fredegarius, the hagiographic literature (of which I have
examined a sample) are of little or no relevance to our argument because, especially in the
domain of syntax, they strictly follow traditional Latin norms (Koll 1965).
It can be further hypothesized that these pronouns were clitic, as their

rigid collocation would indeed suggest; they preserve altogether a reduced
mobility, while a precise norm regulating the way they precede or follow the
verb has not developed fully. In other words, the process of
grammaticalization is completed only in the Romance languages according to
the modalities described by the Tobler-Mussafia law. The Latin texts
examined reveal the establishment of the preconditions of this law and a
growing congruence with the Romance system (Durante 1981:37).
Before concluding this discussion I would like to take up once again the
issue of the realization of these observed historical changes. From Latin to the
Romance languages there was an increase in pronoun evolution in the
specificity of structural linear positioning accompanied by a decrease in the
possibility of stylistic variation, a development closely related to what is
commonly known as the grammaticalization process. In my view radical
changes in accentual conditions caused the second position in the sentence to
become an area of markedness. To solve this local problem a reanalysis took
place consisting, in the case of pronouns, in a readjustment of a cliticization
strategy from sentence second position to phonological attachment to a
specified lexical category, the verb. A further step in the direction of
grammaticalization occurred when clitic forms were reanalysed as an instance
of affixation. Such a movement of clitics towards affixes has been claimed for
spoken French by Harris (1976) and Lambrecht (1981) and for spoken Italian
by Berretta (1985), but it is perhaps admissible also for older stages of the
Romance languages as, for instance, the inscription of San Clemente (Rome,
11th century), one of the oldest documents of Italian, seems to confirm:
(28) falite dereto colo palo
go-him-you behind with-the pole (words in the text are not separated)
However Rivero (1986) gives a series of arguments to claim that in Old
Spanish non-tonic pronouns are lexical categories, not affix-like elements. I
have the impression that most of them do not hold for Italian and French, but
the issue needs further research. Thus these reanalyses had the ultimate effect
of eliminating markedness in word-order rules of the language: object
pronouns, whose pre-verbal position "constitutes probably the only significant
exception" (Harris 1978:119) to the expected SVO order, were analysed as
part of the verb rather than as independent words. In this way markedness
was transferred from the syntactic component to the domain of morphology.
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FRAMING THE LINGUISTIC COMMUNICATION SCENE:
ASK VS. ACSIAN AND BIDDAN
LOUIS GOOSSENS
University of Antwerp
1. Introduction.
In a paper presented at the VIth International Conference on Historical
Linguistics (Goossens 1985) I provided a comparison of the 'framing
contribution' of speak, talk, say and tell, and their Old English counterparts.
Here I want to offer, as a follow-up, a study of a fifth Basic Linguistic Action
Verb (in the sense attached to the term by Verschueren 1984) of present-day
English, viz. ask and the items that correspond to it in Old English. As for
speak, talk, say and tell, where we have only three corresponding verbs in
Old English, the relationship is asymmetrical also in the case that concerns us
here, since there appear to be two items in Old English covering the conceptual
area of ask, namely acsian and biddan.
Methodologically this contribution is partially in line with Goossens
(1985) (and hence with Goossens 1987, where a more explicit statement of
this methodology is provided), though there is added emphasis here on the
prototypical meaning of the verbs involved. For the latter dimension in the
approach adopted, see also Goossens (1989), which in some sense was
stimulated by Geeraerts (1985).
Sections 2, 3 and 4 successively deal with ask, acsian and biddan. A
conclusion is provided in Section 5.
2. ASK.
2.1. Rudzka (1982). For a detailed corpus-based analysis of the

syntactic contexts with which ask occurs and an interpretation of (especially)
its nuclear constituents in terms of roles in the linguistic communication scene,
I refer the reader to Rudzka (1982). Since I am interested in a broad
characterization of ask here, I do not try to repeat the wealth of observations
that are to be found in Rudzka's paper. Rather, I first give a specification of
the data on which it is based, because in what follows I want to quote some of
192 LOUIS GOOSSENS
Rudzka's examples. Then I will proceed with a presentation of her analysis of

the direct object contexts, since it is at the level of the direct object that the
differentiation of ask into its two main senses occurs. The discussion of a
prototype meaning for ask which follows is NOT from Rudzka, but it is based
on her analysis.
2.1.1. The corpus. Rudzka worked with a corpus of 2,157

instances with ask which were collected from three computerized corpora: the
Leuven Theatre Corpus (TC); the LOB Corpus (LC); and the Brown Corpus
(BC). To give an idea of the distribution over these three corpora, I cite
Rudzka's General Survey Table for ask (Rudzka 1982:21) as Table 1.
TC LC BC Total
ask 514 415 347 1276
ask "question" 323 225 199 747
ask "request" 26 12 19 57
ask "require" 7 3 6 16
Indeterminate
"provoke" 54 2 5 61
Total 924 657 576 2157
Table 1. Distribution of ask (three corpora).
Note that the (lexical) differentiation into ask "question", ask "request",
ask "require" and ask "provoke" is a preliminary decision for Rudzka. In
what follows it will appear that I find it methodologically more appropriate to
resort to such lexical differentiation AFTER the semantic-syntactic analysis.
Note also that examples quoted in this paper will carry a two-fold
specification: (1) a reference to the original corpora abbreviated as TC, LC
and BC ; and (2) another one to Rudzka (1982) abbreviated as R followed by
a Roman numeral and (an) Arabic numeral(s) referring to the corresponding
sections and one more Arabic numeral in parentheses (the number of the
example).
2.1.2. A 'conflated' direct object table. "The SLC [Scene of

Linguistic Communication] associated with ask includes as its main elements a
speaker, his utterance and a person to whom it is addressed" (Rudzka
1982:18).
The (active) subject typically harbors the speaker, with only occasional
deviations from this (metonymic expressions like the Government, British
FRAMING LINGUISTIC COMMUNICATION. ASK VS. ACSIAN/BJODDAN 193
Railways, Fred's voice and 'textual conveyors' like letter, telegram,

postcard). The addressee typically appears as the (active) indirect object, the
utterance is realized as a direct object. Whereas there is little variation at the
level of the subject and even less for the indirect object, it is the direct object
which exhibits the important variability which correlates with the considerable
sense variation that we find in ask. As pointed out above, I prefer to
demonstrate how the main sense differentiation for ask follows from this
variation at the level of the direct object rather than postulating this sense
differentiation beforehand. To that end I have conflated the tables on p. 32 and
on p. 47 in Rudzka's paper, making some of the categories a little more
specific but always in accordance with what the text tells us. I present these
data as Table 2.
Note that the division into an ask "question" and an ask "request"
column is viewed here as following from a further semantic characterization of
the different direct object types.
Before proceeding to further discussion I exemplify the different
categories.
(1) "Strix", asked Mr. Jackson, peering down at me, "are you in pain?"
(LC.09.036.0662) (R.III.3.1(1)) - (al).
(2) «Won't you sit down?", sheasked... (LC.21.020.0564) (R.III.3.1(4))

- (al).
(3) ... but I ask you, please don't weep for him when he's dead ...
(LC 17.056.0082) (R.III.3.2(1)) - (a2).
(4) ... A man spoke to me - asked - was I on my own - and I said ...
(TC.65.113.36) (R.III.3.K63)) - (b).
(5) She asked why she had been sent on the trip at all (LC.30.037.0378)
(R.III.3.1(20))-(c).
(6) You ask that we should pay forty thousand pounds ( TC. 41.137.41)
(R.III.3.2(41))-(d).
(7) She asked that I come and be her date (BC.29.006.0071)(R.III.3.2(42))

-(d).
(8) Ask him to wait (TC.73.118.90) (R.III.3.2(6)) - (el).
(9) Then he asked to use the phone... (BC.15.015.0380) (R.III.3.2(28))

- (e2).
194 LOUIS GOOSSENS
(10) ... he could ask to be transferred to another tank ... (TC.68.112.50)

(R.m.3.2(33)) - (c3).
(11) ... they ask for scientists to have more part in the government
(LC.64.034.0059) (R.III.3.2(34)) - (e4).
(12) ... he asked for 37 other offences to be taken into consideration
(TC78.172.76) (R.III.3.2(35)) - (e5).
(13) A man came out of a café and asked him the way to Darlington ...
(LC.35.037.0261) (R.III.3.1(106)) - (fl).
(14) Could I ask you a favour? (TC.31.151.32) (R.m.3.2(48)) - (f2).
(15) The students crowded around asking questions ... (BC.47.029.0537)
(R.III.3.1(80))-(g).
(16) You ask the most ridiculous questions (TC.82.117.2) (R.III.3.1(97))
-(g).
(17) They asked me to tea at St. Peter's Hall. (TC.47.170.17)(R.in.3.2(87))
-(h).
(18) A. How's the job going?
B. You asked me that before. (TC.20.152.18) (R.III.3.1(69)) - (h).
(19) A. Does your husband like those names?
B. I haven't asked him. (LC.18.010.0327) (R.III.3.1(112)) - (j).
(20) I was down there myself. They asked me. (TC.33.170.0.7)
(R.m.3.2(86)) - (j).
(21) In tones of polite inquiry she asked about his holiday.
(LC.31.008.0379) (R.ffl.4.2(20)) - (k1).
(22) Someone even asked me for psychedelic tea towels. (TC.42.130.30.8)
(R.III.4.3(29)) - (k3).
(23) ... a new question was introduced ... asking for particulars ofpersons
usually living in the household who were absent on census night.
(LC.01.007.0199) (R.III.4.3(52)) - (k3).
Afirstpoint to be noted about Table 2 is that it accounts for nearly 94%

of the corpus. The other 6.2% are the instances which Rudzka classifies as
ask "require" (exemplified here by (24)), ask "provoke" (e.g. (25)) or
FRAMING LINGUISTIC COMMUNICATION. ASK VS. ACSIAN/BIDDAN 195
"question" "request"
Number % Number %
a. Direct quotation
(al) Questions 439 34.40 0)
(a2) Imperatives 2 0.26
b. Semi-indirect enunciation 10 0.78
c. Indirect questions 320 25.00 (?)
d. that- cl. (+subjunctive/should) 14 1.87
e. to-infinitive 438 58.63
(el) NP+to + infinitive (410)
(e2) to + infinitive (15)
(e3) to + passive infinitive (9)
(e4) for + NP + to + infinitive (1)
(e5) for + NP + to + passive
infinitive (3)
f. NP (= content essentials)
(f1) cost, time, way, etc. 23 1.80
(£2) advice, help, favor, etc. 41 5.48
(f3) anything, what, etc. 9 1.20
g. NP (= category label)
question(s) 162 12.69
h. NP (= addressee) (!)
(type 'ask her out' -
invite - ask 22 2.94
i. this, that, it, etc. 43 3.36 11 1.47
j. Ø 226 17.71 37 4.95
k. Ø + prepositional phrases
(kl) about-phrases 51 3.99
(k2) after-phrases 2 0.15
(k3) for- phrases (!) 169 22.80
1. Unaccounted for - 4
Total 1276 747
Table 2. Direct objects with ask.
196 LOUIS GOOSSENS
'indeterminate'. Obviously, the ask "require" and the ask "provoke" cases no
longer actualize the Scene of Linguistic Communication and present deviations
from the prototype meaning if ask.
(24) This colt has done everything asked of him. (BC.09.007.0205)
(R.II.K39)).
(25) I always told you it's asking for trouble relying on that old fool
(LC. 17.048.0231) (R.II.1(43)).
Turning to Table 2 proper, observe that most of the categories

distinguished require either a "question" or a "request" interpretation. If the
direct object represents an utterance that we have to interpret as a question we
have to assign a "question" meaning. This is evidently the case when the
category label 'question' is used; but also when we have a direct enunciation
which is a question, or an indirect enunciation which is an indirect question.
The semi-indirect cases (e.g. (4)) are all 'contaminations' between a direct and
an indirect question and therefore of the same kind. Among the group without
a direct object but with a prepositional phrase, the cases with about- phrases
are also natural candidates for a "question" reading: about- phrases are the
most current way to indicate the topic with which a question is concerned.
On the "request" side the 'natural' correlates of requests are somewhat
harder to find. Imperatives (category (a2)) are of course important candidates,
but they are extremely rare; also that- clauses containing subjunctives or
should come under this heading, but again they are infrequent. If we take the
two predominant categories,to-infinitivesand for- phrases, we can still make
the claim, however, be it a less strong one, that they are 'natural' allies of
requests: to-infinitives typically signal unrealized states of affairs, for typi
cally indicates a goal.
Next, notice the areas of overlap in Table 2. NPs giving 'content
essentials' (category (f)) have to be checked for whether they concern some
piece of information which triggers the "question" reading (category (f1)) or
indicate some action to be carried out, which results in the "request" sense
(category (f2)). Categories (i) and (j) require a scanning for the broader
context: to establish the referent of the pronoun as 'information' or 'action'
asked for; or to establish the omitted direct object in a similar fashion (cf. in
this respect (19) and (20)).
Note in addition that there may also be overlap in at least two important
'discrete' categories, viz. categories (a2) (questions) and (c) (indirect
questions). Questions can indeed be used to express requests, and such
questions can obviously be turned into indirect questions. An instance from
Rudzka's corpus study is (2); this could be transformed into an 'indirect

question request' as (2').
(2') She asked him whether he wouldn 't sit down.
2.2. A prototype meaning for ASK. Let us now proceed to the

establishment of a prototype meaning for ask on the basis of the data
presented in Section 2.1. Taking into account the (comparatively) very low
frequencies of the "require" and the "provoke" readings, I disregard these as
outside the prototype. How exactly they can be treated as deviations from the
prototype that we are going to set up is not very problematic, I think, but not
directly relevant to the purpose of this paper.
The main problem then is the relation between the "question" and the
"request" senses. Do we accept the "question" sense as prototypical and the
"request" sense as a contextually determined deviation? Or do we try to
establish a prototype that encompasses the two readings which are then
ascribed to contextual variation? Looking ahead at the prototype that we are
going to need for acsian, I choose the second possibility here, though, as
pointed out, I am well aware that the first possibility presents us with a
reasonable alternative.
Without going into an elaborate justification then, the following prototype
meaning will be adopted:
ASK is a three-place predicate which frames an aspect of the Scene of
Linguistic Communication in which a Speaker addresses an Addressee
and, doing so, produces an utterance which tries to elicit either some
missing bit of information (including a pronouncement on whether a
given State of Affairs obtains or does not obtain) or some action on the
part of the Addressee, without appealing to any difference in Status
that may exist between the two.
Notice that the disjunction (the either ...or part) could be summarized as some
reaction on the part of the Addressee; such an alternative formulation becomes
necessary if we want to avoid disjunctions in the formulation of prototypes (on
this point, cf. Geeraerts 1985:203, fn. 6).
Let us see next how this compares with OE acsian.
3. ACSIAN.
3.1. Preliminaries. The obvious counterpart for ask in Old English

is acsian and its variant forms. Looking at the dictionary information offered
198 LOUIS GOOSSENS
by BTD and BTS, however, the case for a "request" meaning appears to be
very weak. As such the absolute absence of infinitival complementation after
acsian is no sufficient reason, of course, because the rise of the to-infinitive is
only in its initial stages in Old English (see Fischer 1989). There is, it is true,
the presence of ask for in the series of paraphrases in both BTD and BTS, but
it is not directly clear whether this is sufficient to assign to acsian the same
prototype meaning as to ask.
In order to find out, I include an analysis of a restricted, but
homogeneous sample of contexts in which acsian (and its variants) is used. It
consists of a random selection of 100 instances from the Toronto Concordance
to Old English; they are all from Ælfric, hence from around the turn of the
first millennium, and homiletic and hagiographic in nature.
Let us see next what this analysis teaches us about the way in which
acsian frames the Scene of Linguistic Communication.
3.2. Syntactic-semantic analysis. As can be expected there is no

diversification at the level of the subject; all the subject NPs in our hundred
percent active sample denote the speaker of the linguistic action described.
Addressee-focus is considerable, but less outspoken than for ask. Table
3 shows that the addressee is present in just over half of the instances, but
when it is, it is practically always in a nuclear function (if one takes, as I think
one should, both dative and accusative NPs to be nuclear).
Nuclear constituents
(a) accusative NP
(including five cases that could be dative/accusative) 45
(b) dative NP 6
Non-nuclear (prepositional phrases)
(c) æt + NP 3
Total 54
Table 3. Acsian: constituents framing the Addressee.
I give an example with the addressee in the accusative (26), one with a
dative (27), one with a prepositional (and hence non-nuclear) phrase (28), and
finally one where the addressee is not framed (29).
(26) pa acsode se haelend hine: Hwæt wilt pu pæt ic do

then asked the saviour him:Acc what will you that I do
"then the Saviour asked him, 'What do you want me to do?'"
(Ælfric CHom I, 10 152.20)
(27) & ascode hiom hwaes tacen paet bion mihte pe ...
and asked them:Dat whose sign that be might that:Rel...
"and asked them whose sign that might be that..." (LS 6 (Invent Cross
Mor) 37)
(28) and begunnon to axienne set oởrum wegfarendum hwaet
and began to ask from other travellers what
se man waere pe ...
the man were who ...
"and they began to ask the other travellers what kind of man this was that
... (Ælfric LS (Martin) 990)
(29) pa ongan he acsian & he cwæở, Hwaene sece you?

then began he ask and he said whom seek you?
"then he began to ask questions and he said, 'Who are you looking for?'"
(LS 30 (Pantaleon) 54)
Finally, let us see to what extent and how the message or utterance of the
linguistic action described is framed. Table 4 surveys the different
realizations, which as a rule are nuclear (categories (a)-(d)), less often non-
nuclear ((f)-(h), with category (e) somewhat difficult to assess; let us say that it
is semi-nuclear).
Before I proceed to further discussion, I exemplify the different
categories. Example (26) is an instance of (al), (27) and (28) of (b), whereas
(29) illustrates acsian without any message expressed. The sentences below
are instances of the categories indicated.
(30) sege me, ic pe axige, gif pu aefre waere on gefeohte

tell me I you:Acc/Dat ask if you ever were in fight
"Tell me, I'm asking you, if you were ever involved in a fight" (Ælfric
LS (Martin) 1083) -(a2).
(31) pa axode hine se ealdorbiscop and mid ape gehalsode
then asked him the high-priest and with oath adjured
paet he openlice saede gif he ...
that he openly told if he ...
"then the high-priest adjured him to declare publicly and under oath
whether he ..." (Ælfric CHom II, 14.1 143.167) - (c).
200 LOUIS GOOSSENS
Nuclear constituents (objects)

(a) direct enunciation
questions 15
imperative 1
(b) indirect questions 39
(c) pæt- clause (+ subjunctive) 1
(d) accusative NP (including pronouns)
referring to or condensing question 10
referring to object/entity requested 2
Semi-nuclear
(e) genitive NP 9
(f) be/bi+NP 9
(g) embe + NP 2
(h) of+ NP 1
Total 89
NB: There are three cases of overlap among these

categories: once between (a) and (0; once between (e)
and (b); once between (f) and (b).
Table 4. Acsian: constituents framing the Message.
(32) ... pæt hi hine axian woldon pæra worda digolnysse

... that they him ask wanted of-those-words mystery
"that they wanted to ask him to explain the mystery of these words"
(Ælfric HomM 5 (Ass 6) 19) - (d1).
(33) Min hlaford... asende me to pysum earde to axienne wyrhtan ...

My lord sent me to this country to ask workers...
"My lord has sent me to this country to ask for skilled workers ..."
(Ælfric LS (Thomas) 33) - (d2).
(34) nu get ge ongytan nellað pæs ic eow acsian wille

now yet you understand not-want of-that I you ask want
"at present you do not want to understand yet what I want to ask you"
(LS 6 (InventCrossMor) 94) - (e).
(35) and pa ongan ic acsian ða geornlice bi pisum mannum

and then began I ask then eagerly about these men
hu gerad hiora gegaderung wæs hæmedes ...
how disposed their gathering was of-marriage...
"and then I eagerly began to ask questions about these men, as to what
their opinion was about marriage" (LS 35 ( VitPatr) 159) - (f).
(36) and se cyningsende fela ærendrecan ... embe pe axiende

and the king sent many messengers about you asking
"and the king sent a lot of messengers asking questions about you"
(Ælfric LS (Book of Kings) 75) - (g).
Looking for rough similarities with ask, we first observe the clear
predominance of a message-constituent, which moreover as a rule comes as a
nuclear constituent. The most striking difference is the extreme rarity of
instances where acsian can be given a "request" reading. The single instance
for category (a2) (= (30)) is, of course, NOT significant, because imperatives
are also extremely rare with ask (but note that the imperative here is in fact a
performative way to ask a question). Very significant, on the other hand, is
the virtual absence of counterparts to the present-day English to- infinitive; the
only instance is (31), where the pæt- clause does not depend on axode alone,
but on the conjoined phrase axode ... and mid ade gehalsode. Note that the
two instances under (d2) correspond to for- phrases in Modern English. The
conclusion at this point can only be that this is no more than the shy
beginnings of a "request" reading.
The differences in complementation for the "question" sense, which
completely predominates, can be reduced in outline to the higher frequency of
topic-indicators with acsian (prepositional phrases: categories (f), (g) and (h);
but also non-prepositional genitives: category (e)). These are made up for in
present-day English by the category label "question(s)", and, to a lesser
extent, by the pronominal items this, that, it. In addition, there are a few
minor differences, but they are not crucial with respect to the prototype
meaning.
Let me round off this survey of the syntactic-semantic analysis of our
sample for acsian with Table 5, which notes to what extent we get a co
occurrence with Message and Addressee.
Message + addressee 45
Message only 42
Addressee only 9
Neither 4
Table 5. Acsian: co-occurrence, presence, absence of constituents
framing the Message and/or the Addressee.
Clearly the combination of Message and Addressee focus is predominant.

This should be taken into account in our formulation of a prototype meaning
202 LOUIS GOOSSENS
for acsian, though it may be added that the absence of an Addressee

constituent is less 'deviant' in Old English than in present-day English.
3 . 3 . A prototype meaning for ACSIAN. There is no doubt that

for acsian the "request" meaning represents a deviation from the prototype.
This prototype is clearly the "question" meaning, which we can formulate as
follows:
ACSIAN is a predominantly three-place predicate which frames an

aspect of the Scene of Linguistic Communication in which a Speaker
addresses an Addressee and doing so produces an Utterance which
tries to elicit some missing piece of information (including a
pronouncement on whether a given State of Affairs obtains or does not
obtain), without appealing to any difference in status that may exist
between the two.
The deviations from this prototype are somewhat different from those for
present-day English ask, which show an increased Message and Addressee
focus as compared with acsian, but they need not concern us any further here.
4. BIDDAN
4 . 1 . P r e l i m i n a r i e s . The Old English lexical item that most closely

matches ask "request" is biddan, though the equation is obviously not
complete.
Before we embark on a more detailed comparison, let me state explicitly
that it is the 'simplex' biddan, and not the complex gebiddan that we want to
be concerned with. Whereas there are a lot of verbs in Old English for which
prefixation with ge makes only an aspectual or no difference (e.g. acsian ),
this is not the case with biddan. A look at the entries for biddan and gebiddan
in BTD and BTS tells us that the sense "pray" is a lot more important for the
complex item. This was confirmed by a preliminary investigation of a mixed
Ælfric sample (80 biddan and 20 gebiddan ), which turned up 18 "pray" and 2
"worship" meanings for gebiddan. It is important therefore to note that the
following sample study is based exclusively on instances of simplex biddan
(again 100 and all from Ælfric).
4 . 2 . Syntactic-semantic analysis. Again our sample contains only

active instances of biddan. The subject NPs are all human, but they do not all
frame the prototypical speaker of the Scene of Linguistic Communication.
Indeed in the case where biddan means "pray", the subject NP frames the
'prayer' (the one who prays), who is probably best viewed as a metaphorical
extension of the speaker of the Scene of Linguistic Communication.
With respect to the other nuclear functions, biddan is either a three-place
predicate (with the Message and the Addressee as the second and third
argument), or a two-place predicate (with either the Message or, less
frequently, the Addressee as the second argument), or, occasionally, a one-
place predicate (with the Message and the Addressee both unframed): cf. the
global survey in Table 6.
Message + addressee 44
Message only 38
Addressee only 8
Neither (especially = "pray") 10
Table 6. Biddan: Co-occurrence, presence, absence of constituents
framing the Message and/or Addressee (excluding for phrases).
Let us next have a look at the specific framings for the Message and the
Addressee, including in our picture the semi-nuclear and non-nuclear framings
of those roles.
We first survey the framing of the Addressee: see Table 7.
Nuclear constituents
(a) accusative NP (including 10 cases which might also be
datives and 2 cases which might also be reflexives) 41
(b) dative NP 1
Non-nuclear constituents
(c) æt + NP 12
Total 54
Table 7. Biddan: constituents framing the Addressee.
As can be inferred from this Table, the Addressee is framed in a little more
than 50% of the cases, and as a rule comes in a nuclear function (categories (a)
and (b); for examples where it co-occurs with the Message see (39), (41) and
(43) below; in (37) the Message is not framed). A non-nuclear framing is
much less frequent; example (38) is an instance where the Message is not
included.
204 LOUIS GOOSSENS
(37) Hwæt sind pa pe us biddað? Earme menn...

What are those that us ask/beg Poor men...
"What are those people that are begging from us? Poor men ..." (Ælfric
CHom I, 18 256.1)-(a).
(38) æt hwam bidda3 hi?
To/from whom ask/beg they
"From whom are they begging?" (Ælfric CHom I, 18 256.3) - (c).
Notice that in (37) and (38), as in all the instances where biddan means
"pray", there is inequality in status between Speaker and Addressee; when the
Addressee is God (or a saint), we get as a rule the "pray" interpretation.
Notice that also in the non-"pray" uses the Speaker is often to be thought of as
inferior in status.
Next we consider the ways in which the Message is framed. Table 8
gives the different possibilities. As we can observe, it comes as a rule in a
nuclear function (even if the status of the genitive NPs as nuclear constituents
is not totally unquestionable). The only clearly non-nuclear framing is the for-
phrase, at least when it incorporates the entity or state of affairs requested.
Nuclear constituents (objects)

(a) direct enunciation
imperatives 3
(b) pæt- clause (+ subjunctive, occasionally most-,
twice indicative, once sceolde) 46
(c) accusative NP (= entity requested) 9
Semi-nuclear
(d) genitive NP (= entity requested) 16
(c) (d) accusative or genitive NP (= entity requested) 9
Non-nuclear constituents (prepositional phrases)
(e) for + NP 3
Total 86
NB: There is one case of overlap between (b) and (c) and
one between (c) and (d).
Table 8. Biddan: constituents framing the Message.
Before I offer additional discussion, I will give an example of each of the

categories adopted.
(39) Ic bidde eow, wendað min heafod adune,...

I ask you turn my head down
"I'm asking you, turn my head upside down" (Ælfric CHom I, 26
282.8) - (a).
(40) Ic bidde paet pu hate nu rihte beran to me
I ask that you order now straightaway bring to me
iohannes heafod on anum disce
John's head on a plate
"I'm asking you to give the order straightaway that John's head should
be brought to me on a plate" (Ælfric CHom I, 32 476.29 {Mark 6)) -
(b).
(41) oft ic pe baed paet ic moste to pe faran
often I you asked that I might to you travel
"I've often asked to come to you" (Ælfric CHom I, 4 74.28 - (b).
(42) ne baed se blinda naðor ne goldes ne seolfres
not asked the blind-man neither not gold:Gen not silver:Gen
ne nane woruldlice ping ac baed his gesihðe
not none worldly things:Acc but asked his eyesight:Gen/Acc
"The blind man neither asked for gold, nor silver, nor any other worldly
things, but he asked to get his eyesight back" (Ælfric CHom I, 10
158.20) - (c), (d).
(43) 5a pa he baed drihten for his ðeowan hæle
then when he asked lord for his slave's health
"when he asked/prayed/begged the Lord to cure his slave"(ÆlfricCHom
I, 8 126.32) - (e).
Clearly the pæt-clauses have by far the highest frequency. Note that as a rule
they have a subjunctive, which typically signals an unrealized state of affairs
like the to-infinitive in Modern English. A more specific feature worth
pointing out is the occurrence in the pæt-clause of forms of motan, which is
the current modal expressing permission in Old English: its use is in line with
the observation that the speaker can often be thought of as assuming a status of
inferiority vis-à-vis the addressee. Another observation concerns the
difference between genitive and accusative objects to denote the entity
requested. The genitive often expresses a partitive idea, the accusative does
not (although this is not always observed, it is certainly the case in (42) where
the two modes of expression occur side by side). Notefinallythat in the for-
phrase in (43) the NP is not the specific entity requested, but the
nominalization of the requested state of affairs.
206 LOUIS GOOSSENS
As has already been indicated, there is an opposition in the sample

between an "ask, request" sense and a "pray" sense, although it is not always
possible to distinguish between the two. In Table 9 I give the distribution of
the different senses across the sample.
"ask, beg" "ask, pray" "pray"
37 30 33
Table 9. Biddan: sense distribution.
What interests us most here is whether any specific correlations can be

established between the different contextualizations with which biddan occurs
and either the "ask, request" sense or the "pray" sense. Such specific
correlations exist for both of them.
(a) - All three imperative realizations for the message (category (a)) require
an ask- reading.
- 7 out of 10 accusative NP realizations for the message (or rather the
entity requested) do so, too; the other 3 are mixed.
- There are 10 instances where ic bidde is used performatively
(examples of this are (39) and (40)): 9 of them are ask- cases, the 10th
is a mixed one.
(b) - The 3 for- phrases all belong to biddan "pray".

- 7 out of the 10 cases where biddan is used as a one-place predicate
also give the "pray" meaning.
Note, however, that most contexts, and especially the realization of the
Message as a pæt- clause, are compatible with both. The main factor dis
tinguishing the two is related to whether the addressee is God or some saint or
not, as we have already pointed out. Typical cases of overlap are those in
which Christ is addressed with some request, but there are others besides. A
similar difference in status is also compatible with non-religious uses; hence
possible paraphrases like "ask politely" or "beg" (as in (37) and (38)).
4 . 3 . Prototype meaning. It follows from our analysis in Section

3.2 that it would be difficult to subsume most of the uses of biddan under one
prototypical meaning, especially when we take into account that it can be used
with reference to both the Scene of (Human) Linguistic Communication and
the related but distinct scene which for lack of a better term I call the Scene of
Praying.
A prototype meaning for its contribution to the Scene of Linguistic
Communication might go as follows:
BIDDAN-1 is a predicate which frames an aspect of the Scene of
Linguistic Communication in which a Speaker produces an utterance
which tries to elicit some action from the Addressee (but typically not
one concerned with providing some piece of information); the framing
of the Addressee is an optional feature, but it is important to note that
the status between Speaker and Addressee can be one of equality, or of
inferiority of the Speaker, but never one in which the Addressee is
implied to be in an inferior position.
We do not formulate a prototype meaning for BIDDAN-2 but emphasize that

there is a good deal of overlap between the two BIDDANs, which might induce
one to start looking for a prototype meaning that would cover the two. (As
pointed out, however, this would require us to collapse two distinct scenes
into one 'hyperscene') The least one can say is that Late Old English biddan
does not have a particularly clear meaning center.
4.4. A further diachronic perspective. Without going into very

much detail I would like to put our search for a prototype meaning for biddan
into a diachronic perspective. Basically I want to make two remarks.
First, that an analysis of a mixed Alfredian (and hence late 9th century)
sample consisting of 75 instances of biddan and 25 of gebiddan revealed a
rather similar situation for gebiddan as for its Late Old English counterpart.
However, this analysis shows a considerable difference for biddan: of the 75
instances, the very great majority meant "ask- request" or "beg", only a few
could be interpreted as "pray", and there were even two instances that could be
paraphrased as "demand" or "order" and one where biddan meant "ask-
question". Whatever the exact details may be, it is obvious that in earlier Old
English the simplex biddan had a clear center, viz. the prototype meaning
formulated for BIDDAN-1 in the preceding section.
Secondly, a look at the Middle English lexicon teaches us that biddan got
totally 'destabilized* and merged with what used to be Old English beodan
"order, command, offer". As a result, the advent of an item from Old
French/Anglo-Norman was welcome - preyen. Perhaps most importantly for
the general purpose of this paper, it cleared the way for broadening the
prototype meaning of asken to what we found to be that of present-day ask.
208 LOUIS GOOSSENS
5. Conclusions.
Let me formulate my conclusions in four different points.
First, whereas present-day English has one Basic Linguistic Action Verb
covering both questioning and requesting (which in one view can be collapsed
under one prototype meaning for ask), Old English appears to have two items
corresponding to it, acsian, which covers questions, and biddan, which takes
care of requests. The overlap between ask , on one hand, and acsian and
biddan, on the other, is of course not complete. One reason is that there are a
number of differences in the complementation (in a broad sense of the word);
another reason is that biddan has a specificity not shared by ask. The latter
point makes it more difficult to formulate the prototypical meaning for biddan.
Secondly, Late Old English biddan (but not its Early Old English
counterpart) has two distinguishable senses actualizing two different, even if
related, scenes. As a result it can be said to have an unstable center, which up
to a point (but certainly not fully) explains why it went out of use as a Basic
Linguistic Action Verb in later English. Acsian, on the other hand, already
shows deviations from its prototype meaning which can be regarded as the
basis for the broadened meaning which it acquires later on.
Thirdly, though there would be no point in repeating the details of the
syntactic-semantic analysis here, let me review the most striking differences in
complementation in the areas where acsian and biddan correspond to the
central meaning of ask Acsian in its (prototypical) question-meaning does
not occur with a counterpart for the category label 'question(s)' or for
pronominal references to the message in present-day English. This absence is
balanced by a higher percentage of topic expressions, including prepositionless
(semi-nuclear) genitive NPs. Note also that acsian has less outspoken
Addressee focus. For biddan wefindthat it lacks to- infinitive complemen
tation, which has pæt- clauses containing subjunctives as its counterpart.
Some of those pæt- clauses contain a form of the permissive modal motan,
which is in line with a specific lexical feature which biddan does not share
with ask or acsian, viz. the implication that the speaker assumes an inferior
status vis-à-vis the addressee. Again, this addressee is not as much in focus as
its counterpart with ask.
Fourthly, and finally, from a more theoretical viewpoint this paper may
have demonstrated that the complexity of high frequency linguistic action verbs
like the ones we have investigated here requires an approach which does
justice to this complexity. In the present investigation the combination of a
syntactic-semantic analysis in terms of scene-and-frame semantics and
elements of the prototype approach to lexical meaning (in which prototypes are
established on the basis of this syntactic-semantic analysis) may have proved

its value as a method for deepening our insight into the ways in which complex
lexical items develop.
REFERENCES
Bosworth, J. & T.N. Toller. 1898. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Oxford:

Oxford University Press. (= BTD. )
Fischer, O. 1989. "The origin and spread of the accusative and infinitive
construction in English". Folia Linguistica Historica 8:1-2.143-217.
Geeraerts, D. 1985. Review of The Scene of Linguistic Action and its
Perspectivization by SPEAK, TALK, SAY and TELL by R. Dirven, L.
Goossens, Y. Putseys & E. Vorlat (Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 1982).
Quaderni di Semantica 6.197-204.
Goossens, L. 1985. "Framing the linguistic action scene in Old and present-
day English: OE CWEpAN, SECGAN, SP(R)ECAN and present-day English
SPEAK, TALK, SAY and TELL compared". Papers from the VIthInter
national Conference on Historical Linguistics ed. by J. Fisiak, 149-170.
Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Goossens, L. 1987. "Dealing with linguistic action verbs in depth".
Linguistic Action: Some Empirical-Conceptual Studies ed. by J.
Verschueren, 95-106. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Goossens, L. 1989. "Prototypical and non-prototypical meaning: SAY
revisited". Worlds behind Words. Essays in Honour of Prof. Dr. F.G.
Droste on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday ed. by F.J. Heyvaert &
F. Steurs, 155-161. Leuven: Leuven University Press.
Healey, A. Di Paolo & R.L. Venezky, compilers. 1980. A Microfìche
Concordance to Old English. Toronto: The Dictionary of Old English
Project, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto.
Rudzka, B. 1982. The Verb ASK and the Scene of Linguistic
Communication. Unpublished paper. Catholic University of Leuven.
Toller, T.N. 1921. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Supplement. Oxford:
Oxford University Press. (= BTS. )
Verschueren, J. 1984. Basic Linguistic Action Verbs: a Questionnaire. (=
Antwerp Papers in Linguistics, 37.) Antwerp: Universitaire Instelling
Antwerpen.
LA POLYSÉMIE DE OF EN VIEIL ANGLAIS
ET LA MÉTAPHORE SPATIALISANTE
MARIE-LINE GROUSSIER
Université de Paris VII
1. Introduction.
1.1 La présente contribution est un exposé des principes dégagés et mis en

oeuvre il y a quelques années à l'occasion d'une étude exhaustive des
prépositions du vieil-anglais (Groussier 1984). Ce travail est fondé au départ
sur une double hypothèse: tout d'abord, le problème de la polysémie
prépositionnelle (et casuelle) trouve une solution dans une perspective
franchement localiste qui fait dériver les indications de relations non-spatiales
des indications spatiales selon des processus de nature métaphorique. La
deuxième hypothèse est inséparable de la première: elle consiste à poser que le
seul traitement valable de la polysémie prépositionnelle est diachronique, les
divers emplois attestés étant issus plus ou moins directement d'une
signification de base unique, plus ancienne.
1.2 Les prépositions sont des indicateurs de repérage (c'est à dire mise en
relation d'un repéré avec un repère). Elles indiquent:
— la nature du repérage. Par exemple, to indique la coïncidence visée

mais pas toujours atteinte du repéré et du repère;
— certaines caractéristiques du repéré: p.ex., dans le repérage indiqué
par to, le repéré est un objet en déplacement;
— certaines caractéristiques du repère: p.ex., dans le repérage indiqué
par to, le repère est l'arrivée du déplacement.
1.3 Le modèle qui sera adopté ici doit beaucoup à celui de la théorie de
l'énonciation d'A. Culioli. Ce modèle distingue quatre niveaux de repérage.
212 MARIE-LINE GROUSSIER
1.3.1 Au niveau NOTIONNEL indépendant des énoncés particuliers, intervient

l'organisation et le filtrage de l'univers extra-linguistique par les locuteurs.
Cette organisation aboutit à la constitution de NOTIONS, nébuleuses de sens
correspondant plus ou moins aux mots au niveau de l'expression. Les notions
sont caractérisées par l'association de propriétés primitives (p.ex., /animé/,
/discontinu/ etc.). Les propriétés primitives définissent des relations primitives
(Culioli 1971:7; 1975-76:36-40, 154-155; v. aussi Paris 1981:430). Au
nombre de ces relations sont les relations spatiales, les relations actancielles (=
relations procès-actants) et les relations inter-procès.1
1.3.2 Au niveau PRÉDICATIF (1er niveau de constitution d'énoncés

particuliers), une notion de procès est associée à des notions d'actants qu'elle
met en relation. Le schéma prédicatif, dans les langues indo-européennes
actuelles, est de la forme a R b, R étant le prédicat, a et b les arguments (Fuchs
& Leonard 1979:262).
1.3.3 Au niveau ÉNONCIATIF, des repérages par rapport à la situation

d'énonciation déterminent les termes du schéma prédicatif (Culioli 1975:10).
1.3.4 Le dernier niveau est celui de la chaîne parlée ou écrite, avec certains
repérages particuliers comme l'anaphore. (Voir la Fig.l à la page suivante.)
1
Le mot 'actant' est emprunté à Tesnière (1959) avec une acception différente, correspondant
en partie aux cas de Fillmore 1968. Les actants sont l'Agent, le Patient, le Bénéficiaire,
l'Instrument etc. (cf. Groussier 1984:48-58, Fuchs & Leonard 1979:324).
LA POLYSÉMIE DE OF EN VIEIL ANGLAIS 213
NIVEAU NOTIONNEL
Relations primitves
(repérages spatiaux, actanciels, inter-procès etc.)
↓
NIVEAU PREDICATIF
Relations prédicatives
(repérages intra-lexis entre arguments et prédicat)
↓
NIVEAU ENONCIATIF
Relations énonciatives
(repérages de détermination par rapport à la
situation d'énonciation)
↓
NIVEAU DE LA CHAINE
Relation d'ordre, contiguïté etc.
(repérages entre occurrences de mots, groupes, phrases etc.)
Figure 1: Les niveaux de repérage
2. La primanté du spatial.
2.1 La référence aux relations dans l'espace occupe, dans le langage, une
place privilégiée. Je considère que c'est par une DÉMARCHE MÉTAPHORIQUE
que la référence à divers domaines relationnels non-spatiaux emprunte les
termes de la référence aux relations spatiales. Cette démarche métaphorique
n'a, dans l'ensemble, pas été définie par les linguistes, les uns la traitant
comme si elle allait de soi (localistes), les autres comme une dangereuse
superstition (anti-localistes). Le premier à l'évoquer clairement en tant que telle
a été Whorf.2 Plus près de nous, John Anderson (1971:12-13; 1977:116)
2
Whorf (1956:145): "To fit discourse to manifold actual situations, all languages need to
express durations, intensities and tendencies. It is characteristic of SAE and perhaps of many
other language types to express them metaphorically. The metaphors are those of spatial
extension [...] an almost inexhaustible list of metaphors that we hardly recognise as such,
since they are virtually the only linguistic media available."
s'oriente prudemment dans ce sens, Lakoff & Johnson (1980)3 mentionnant

les métaphores spatiales, mais parmi d'autres, sans leur donner la place
privilégiée qui me semble leur revenir. L'ouvrage tout récent d'Annette
Herskovits place ce point au centre de son traitement des prépositions en
évitant toutefois le terme de métaphore (Herskovits 1966:72).
2.2 Les arguments en faveur de la primarité du spatial en tant que source de

métaphorisation sont d'ordres divers.
2.2.1 John Anderson a été l'un des premiers à songer à l'argument psycho-
génétique.4 Le très récent travail d'Herskovits y fait large-ment appel puisqu'il
figure jusque dans le titre de son livre, Language and Spatial Cognition. De
fait, la référence à des relations totalement étrangères à l'espace en termes de
relations spatiales peut, vraisemblablement, être considérée comme un recours
à une représentation plus facile parce que plus ANCIENNE dans l'histoire
individuelle de chaque locuteur. Piaget a en effet montré que l'accession à la
pensée logique passe par une construction de l'espace perceptif étroitement
conditionnée par l'activité sensori-motrice et il écrit: "[...] les domaines moteur
et perceptif [...] continuent, durant toute l'existence, de constituer la substruc
ture des constructions représentatives." (Piaget & Inhelder 1972[1947]:526)
2.2.2 La force de l'argument psychogénétique réside évidemment en ce qu'il

est de nature à expliquer non-seulement la primarité du spatial telle qu'elle se
manifeste dans le langage mais encore les manifestations de celle-ci hors du
langage, qui peuvent être considérées comme autant de preuves supplé
mentaires de ce rôle central de la relation de l'homme à l'espace. En fait, il
n'est pas exagéré de parler d'une OMNIPRÉSENCE DE LA SPATIALISATION
EXPLICATIVE. Whorf avait remarqué le rôle explicatif joué par les GESTES, en
particulier ceux des mains (Whorf 1956:155). Or, on peut considérer que les
GRAPHES sont au discours scientifique ce que les gestes sont à la conver
sation: des spatialisations explicatives. Enfin, depuis l'invention du premier
cadran solaire, les horloges sont toutes des machines, non seulement à mesurer
3
Lakoff & Johnson (1980:17): "Most of our fundamental concepts are organized in terms of
one or more spatialization metaphors."
4 Anderson (1977:116): "[...] the priority of the concrete uses, in the acquisition of language
by the child and as source for the renewal of the abstract [...] would tend to support the
proposal that the elements of underlying representations as well as the constraints on the
derivation associated with them [...] have a cognitive basis."
le temps, mais encore à donner une existence spatiale à ce qui est une
construction de l'esprit.
2.2.3 On se rend par ailleurs compte que la métaphore à base spatiale comme
principe d'explication de la polysémie prépositionnelle et casuelle ne peut se
concevoir en synchronie pure, quelle que soit la place qui lui est alors donnée,
puisque la métaphore y est conçue comme principe de génération de nouveaux
emplois à partir d'emplois existant antérieurement. Hors du domaine des
prépositions et des cas, c'est une banalité que de dire que l'on relève, dans
l'histoire du développement sémantique des mots, la même généralisation
métaphorique de ce qui est initialement référence au domaine spatial. Ainsi,
do, qui fonctionne en anglais contemporain comme un indicateur de
prédication, est issu d'un radical indo-européen signifiant "placer" (Klein
1966-67 à do) et c'est encore la métaphorisation à partir du spatial qui explique
le développement polysémique de verbes comme go et corne (Groussier 1978).
3. Représentation 'généalogique' de la polysémie

prépositionnelle.
3.1 Un exemple: l'arbre des emplois de of en vieil-anglais. Faute de pouvoir

donner ici le trop long catalogue des métaphores spatiales, je me contenterai de
fournir un exemple de 'généalogie d'emplois' où se manifestent certaines de
ces métaphores (cf. Fig.2 à la page suivante).
A partir d'un sens de base So "repérage du Patient d'un déplacement
par rapport au départ LOCo", des générations successives d'emplois sont
dérivées selon des processus de dérivation qui se ramènent à quelques types
bien connus. Ces types se divisent en deux groupes selon que la modification
de l'indication fournie par la préposition provient soit de l'EXTENSION d'un
emploi existant soit d'une modification de l'INTERPRÉTATION du locuteur.
216
MARIE-LINE GROUSSIER
Figure 2: Arbre des emplois de of en vieil-anglais

LA POLYSEMIE DE OF EN VIEIL ANGLAIS 217
3.1.1 La dérivation par extension est une modification EN CONTINUITÉ du

repérage indiqué qui n'entraîne pas de changement de plan de repérage.
3.1.1.1 Extension par traitement de l'implicite comme de l'explicite.
3.1.1.1.1 Le processus de déplacement qui fonde la définition du repère
comme LOCo n'est pas prédiqué en tant que tel mais implicite. C'est le cas
pour l'emploi Slc issu de S0:
(1) asceacap dust of eowrumfotum. (EC.XA4)

"secouez vos pieds pour en faire tomber la poussière."
Il en est de même pour S2'a issu de S1' et, par métaphore, de D3'b issu de
D2'b. Cas particulier très fréquent: le procès prédiqué est l'état (ici localisation)
résultant d'un déplacement, par ex. pour S1d issu de So:
(2) Warnian hi eac swyðe georne pœt hi ne leng ut of mynsîre ne beon

ponne heom heora ealdor geðafige. (WH. Xa.36-38)
"Qu'ils se gardent aussi très scrupuleusement de rester hors du
couvent plus longtemps que ne le leur a permis leur supérieur."
3.1.1.1.2 Le repère n'est pas un lieu mais en implique un pour l'emploi

S2'b issu de S1':
(3) [...] eft gewiton eald-gesiðas, [swylce geong manig of gomen-

wape... (5.853-854)
"Ils revinrent, les vieux compagnons, et aussi maint jeune homme,
de la joyeuse chevauchée ..."
3.1.1.1.3 Le repéré n'est pas un objet en déplacement mais un objet

coïncidant avec le trajet d'un déplacement, celui-ci étant généralement
imaginaire. De l'emploi S1' on passe ainsi à l'emploi S2'c:
(4) Affrica7Asia hiera landgemircuonginnaðof Alexandria,

Egypta burge...(O.i.i.9)
"Lafrontièreentre l'Afrique et l'Asie commence à partir d'Alexan
drie, la ville des Egyptiens."
3.1.1.2 Extension logique à l'intérieur d'un même plan de

repérage.
3.1.1.2.1 Passage du cas général au cas-limite. C'est ce principe

d'extension qui conduit de D3'a, indication du repérage d'une partie par
rapport au tout, à D4'b, indication d'identification (cas où la partie est égale au
tout):
(5) Ac syþþan wœs sio bysen of him ofer ealle world. (O.I.iv.24)
"Et depuis, ils furent un exemple pour le monde entier."
3.1.1.2.2 Généralisation, c'est à dire perte d'une partie des spécificités du

repérage indiqué par l'emploi initial. Ce cas est bien représenté: c'est ainsi que
D3'd vient de A2'a et que D3'a joint à D3'b donnent naissance à l'indication de
détermination qualitative D4'c, puis que D3'a, D3'b, D3'c et D3'd convergent
pour faire apparaître D4'd, enfin que D4'e dérive à la fois de D3'a et D3'd.
Les trois emplois résultants, D4'c, D4'd et D4'e, sont tous trois des indications
de qualification: le premier indique la qualification du domaine de validité d'une
lexis (schéma prédicatif) prédiquée, le deuxième, celle d'une notion d'actant, le
troisième, celle d'une notion de procès:
D4'c:
(6) wœron gebroðor of fœder 7 of meder. (O.III.xi.83)
"Ils étaient frères de père et de mère."
D4'd:
(7) [...] man of poleburdnesse [...] (TH.XIII.81)
"un homme patient"
D4'e:
(8) his sylena of pam goodum pe he from ricwn monnun onfeng...
(J3Etf.III.xix.244)
"Les dons qu'il faisait des biens qu'il recevait des hommes riches..."
Les occurrences du procès 'donner' sont ici particularisées qualitativement par
référence à ce qui est donné, 'les biens'. Dans ces deux derniers emplois, of
indique la relation entre les deux termes d'une nominalisation. Dans les trois
cas, il s'agit, pour l'emploi 'générateur', d'une perte de spécificité telle que,
raisonnablement, on doit faire l'hypothèse d'une convergence de plusieurs
emplois qui produit l'emploi dérivé.
3.1.1.2.3 Modification des propriétés associées soit au repéré seul soit au

repéré et au repère sans changement de plan de repérage. Cette évolution
conduit au passage de l'emploi D2'b, repérage du Patient d'une transformation
par rapport à l'état initial5 à l'emploi D3'x, repérage d'un discours par rapport
à son thème (topic). Par exemple:
(17) and of pis tocune specð ure helend. (TH.II.5)

"et, de cette venue, notre Sauveur parle."
3.1.2 La dérivation par modification de l'interprétation du locuteur peut se

faire soit en continuité, soit en discontinuité. Dans ce dernier cas, on dira qu'il
y a un SAUT interprétatif.
3.1.2.1 En continuité: le locuteur modifie la pondération des composants

sémantiques de la relation indiquée.
3.1.2.1.1 Déplacement du centre sémantique (composant au premier plan).

Le locuteur emploie la préposition de telle manière que ce qui n'était qu'une
implication ou une connotation devient central. C'est un tel déplacement qui
explique la grande division initiale entre l'emploi S1' et les autres emplois de
première génération: dans ces emplois, la signification centrale de of devient
l'indication de la DIFFÉRENCE entre LOCo et LOC1 respectivement, localisations
initiale et finale du Patient du déplacement. Of est donc avant tout interprété
comme un indicateur de DISSOCIATION.6 En revanche, dans l'emploi S1', la
signification centrale devient l'indication de la COINCIDENCE INITIALE entre le
Patient et LOCo, of étant donc avant tout interprété comme un indicateur
d'ASSOCIATION. Par exemple:
(18) Pœt eac pœî sweflenefyr tacnade, pa hit up of helle

geate asprong.
"Cela [i.e., l'Etna], ce feu sulfureux, le symbolisait aussi
quand il jaillit de la porte de l'enfer."
5
Ex. (16) 7 hy gewurden of englum to deoflum gewordene. (WH.VI.32)
"et d'anges qu'ils étaient ils devinrent démons."
6
D'où l'emploi avec des verbes renvoyant à des processus de séparation (S1a) ou de
disparition (S1b) etc.
Il peut arriver que la nouvelle signification centrale finisse par

constituer la totalité de la signification comme dans le passage de l'emploi S1' à
l'emploi D2'a où seule demeure l'indication de la qualification du Patient par sa
relation à LOCo. Par exemple:
(19) Severus Casere, se wœs ... of þaere byrig pe Lepti

hatte...(BEH.I.v.32)
"L'empereur S., qui était originaire de la ville nommée L."
3.1.2.1.2 Modification de l'interprétation en discontinuité. C'est le groupe,

très largement représenté, des dérivations par interprétation MÉTAPHORIQUE.
Dans le cas de of, ces transferts ont lieu lorsque deux au moins des conditions
suivantes sont remplies:
(1) Le verbe renvoie à un procès n'ayant aucun rapport avec un
déplacement.
(2) Le repère n'est pas un lieu, ou même, ne possède pas du tout la
propriété /spatialité/.
(3) Le repéré n'est pas du tout doté de la propriété /spatialité/.
Les conditions (1) et (2) sont remplies pour le passage de So à Al et D1, de
S1d à T2, de S1' à D2'b, A2'a et A2'b, de D2'a à D3'a. Les trois conditions
sont remplies à la fois pour le passage de S1' à S2'ma et de S2'b à T3' et
D3'c. Lorsque sont remplies les conditions (2) et (3) mais pas (1), il y a aussi
emploi métaphorique du verbe qui est un verbe de déplacement. C'est le cas
pour le passage de S1' à S2'mb. Il semble bien alors que la métaphore soit
parfois 'ouverte' (overt au sens de Whorf 1956).7
3.1.2.2.2 Les principales métaphores intervenant ici sont:
(1) Métaphore de la représentation du temps. Dans les langues indo-europé

ennes, il semble que, à l'exception de certains modes d'expression de la
relation d'ordre (p.ex. par œr en vieil-anglais), l'expression des repérages
temporels soit presque totalement spatialisée. Le temps est représenté comme
un espace linéaire non-orienté (une 'route') sur lequel les occurrences de
procès définissent des intervalles orientés (des trajets dont la frontière est
constituée par deux bornes (début et fin). L'emplois T3' (issu de S2'b et S2'c
reflète cette métaphore: c'est l'indication du repérage d'une occurrence de pro-
Une métaphore ouverte est perçue par les locuteurs comme une métaphore.
cès (ci-dessous l'état de royauté pour Penda) par rapport à son début traité
comme le départ d'un trajet:
(9) Penda of pœe tide [...] Mercna rice [...] fore wœs.
(BEH.II.xvi.148)
"A partir de ce moment-là, P. régna sur le royaume de Mercie."
Dans l'emploi T2 (issu de S1d), seule la propriété d'espace fermé de ce type

d'intervalle est prise en compte à l'exclusion de l'orientation: il s'agit de
l'indication de la coïncidence d'un état (la possession de certains droits) avec
un extérieur défini métaphoriquement comme un espace avec lequel le repéré
coïncide par dissociation avec l'intervalle-repère:
(10) ic habbe gegifen him saca7socne [...] inne tid, 7 ut of

tid. (ASW.81)
"I have given him sake and soke [...] in festive season and
out of it."
2) Métaphores de représentation des relations actancielles et des relations inter

procès. Ce groupe de métaphores dérive du précédent. En effet, toute occur
rence de procès (en particulier du type /action/) étant assimilée à un trajet, les
divers actants sont associés à l'une des trois localisations pertinentes sur un
trajet: LOCo ou départ, LOC1 ou arrivée, LOC 1/0 ou localisation intermé
diaire. On peut ainsi montrer que l'Accusatif est le cas du Patient parce qu'il
est d'abord le cas de l'arrivée (Groussier 1980, 1984) et, comme ici, que les
repérages par rapport à l'Agent ou à l'Instrument sont assimilés à des repérages
par rapport à LOC0. De là, respectivement, les emplois A2'a et A2'b:
(11) seo eadige Maria geeacnod wœs of pœm Halgan Gaste.
(BH.I.11)
"la bienheureuse M. fut rendue grosse par le Saint-Esprit."
(12) [...] he of pœm drycrœfte geleornode godcundne wisdom.

(0.I.v.23)
"[...] grâce à la magie, il avait appris la sagesse divine."
La cause et l'état initial sont aussi assimilés à LOCo d'où les emplois S2'mb et
P2:
(13) of ðyson eahta deofles crœftan ealle unpeawas up aspringað.

(WH.Xc.65-66)
"de ces huit ruses du démon jaillissent tous les vices."
(14) Pa aras iosep of swefene. (EC.I.24)

"Alors Joseph se leva de son sommeil."
3) Métaphore dereprésentationd'opérations de détermination. L'emploi D3'a

issu de D2'a est dû à la métaphore qui représente lerepéragede la partie ou de
l'élément par rapport au tout ou à la classe comme un repérage d'un objet
antérieurement déplacé par rapport à LOCo.
(15) Moyses pa genamode of ðam twelf mœgðumheafodmen.

(HS.XX.147)
"Alors M. nomma des chefs appartenant aux 12 tribus."
Cette métaphore se fonde sur le fait que ce repérage confère à l'élément une
qualification en le repérant par rapport à une entité dont il faut, pour cela,
d'abord le dissocier. Cette représentation métaphorique joue un grand rôle
dans les langues indo-européennes: non seulement elle est à l'origine d'emplois
de prépositions comme of le français de etc. mais encore d'emplois majeurs
du génitif. Or, ce sont précisément les prépositions of de etc. qui, historique
ment,relayèrentle génitif là où il cessa d'être employé.
3.2 Problèmes soulevés par le choix d'un sens de base unique. Les deux
questions essentielles sont: 'Pourquoi un sens de base unique?' et 'Pourquoi
celui-là et non un autre?'
3.2.1 La réponse à la première question est,finalement,banale. L'hypothèse

de l'unicité du sens d'origine paraît être la seule façon de rendre compte de
l'unicité du marqueur face à la multiplicité des sens dérivés. Or, l'histoire de
prépositions de formation récente p.ex., ymbutan ou beheonan montre qu'à
leurs débuts, celles-ci n'avaient en tout cas qu'un nombre restreint d'emplois
et, parfois, un seul.8 Si, donc, le sens de base doit être un sens DIACHRO-
NIQUEMENT PRIMAIRE, alors on est incité à privilégier l'idée d'un SENS
8
Par exemple beheonan qui n'est attesté dans le corpus Groussier (1984) qu'avec le sens de
"en deçà de".
D'ORIGINE UNIQUE donnant naissance, par différenciations successives, à des

significations de plus en plus nombreuses à mesure que l'extension du mot se
développe.
3.2.2 Je répondrai à la deuxième question en énumérant les critères de choix

du sens du base dans l'étude dont il est question ici.
3.2.2.1 Le sens de base ne peut être un dénominateur commun des sens

attestés.9 En effet, s'il en était eu, il ne pourrait en même temps prétendre être
un emploi réel, soit attesté, soit reconstruit, parce que cela impliquerait une
évolution du général au particulier alors que, au moins pour les mots ayant
atteint une grande extension, on sait que c'est l'inverse qui se produit10
3.2.2.2 Selon le principe de la primarité du spatial, le sens de base est spatial

chaque fois que cela est possible c'est à dire dans l'écrasante majorité des cas.
Les seules exceptions, en vieil-anglais, sont quatre prépostions (sur 90) dont
aucune occurrence n'apparaît jamais pour indiquer un repérage spatial. Ce
sont: œr, seule prépostion fréquente, qui n'indique que l'antériorité temporelle
(c'est à dire fondée sur la relation d'ordre, seule relation temporelle à avoir une
expression non-métaphorique) et trois prépostions très marginales: forutan,
également indicateur d'antériorité, toeacan "en plus de" et le rarissime wonþe
©excepté". Pour toutes les autres prépostitions, le choix, comme sens de base,
d'une indication de repérage spatial n'est jamais entré en conflit avec la
nécessité d'ancienneté de cet emploi, fait qui peut être compté comme un
argument de plus en faveur de l'hypothèse de la primarité du spatial.
3.2.2.3 On a par ailleurs considéré que le sens de base devait être tel qu'on
pût clairement rendre compte de ses rapports avec le sens attribué à l'entité
morphologique la plus ancienne dont est issue la préposition, c'est-à-dire, dans
le cas présent, une racine ou un radical indo-européen. Ainsi, ce rapport est
clair pour of, venant du radical *apo- "loin", c'est-à-dire "à une grande
distance de l'énonciateur pris comme LOCo" On retrouve donc l'élément de
9
Comme la 'Grundbedeutung' de Wüllner (cf. note suivante), le 'sens de base' de Hjelmslev
(1935), ou même la 'Gesamtbedeutung' de Jakobson (1936). Le terme de 'dénominateur
commun' est de Jakobson qui affirme que sa 'Gesamtbedeutung' n'en est pas un. Le parallèle
qu'il
10
établit avec le phonème semble pourtant l'en rapprocher.
Le XIXe siècle a souvent privilégié les hypothèses dans ce sens. Cf., p.ex., Wüllner
(1831) à propos des cas (cité par Hjelmslev 1935:36 et sqq.)
localisation d'un objet en déplacement par rapport à LOCo qui constitue le sens
de base.
3.2.2.4 Dans la majorité des cas, le sens de base a pu être choisi parmi les
sens attestés. Parfois, il correspond à un emploi rare comme pour ymb ('les
Patients de deux déplacements semi-circulaires symétriques et convergents sont
repérés par rapport au centre des trajectoires"),11 parfois, c'est un emploi très
représenté comme pour oþ.12 Dans deux cas (œt et geond), on a été amené à
faire l'hypothèse d'un sens de base éteint à l'époque historique. Cette solution
a été adoptée parce qu'aucun des emplois attestés ne paraissait propre à con
stituer le chaînon intermédiaire entre l'étymologie et les emplois spatiaux
attestés.13
4. Conclusion.
4.1 Divergence et convergence.
Comme on pouvait s'y attendre, l'établissement des généalogies

d'emplois a montré que l'évolution d'une préposition de grande extension se
fait selon L'ALTERNANCE BIEN CONNUE DE LA DIVERGENCE ET DE LA CONVERGENCE.
L'évolution est, d'abord, divergente lorsqu'un même emploi (par ex., l'emploi
de base) donne naissance à plusieurs emplois dérivés, ensuite, convergente
lorsqu'un emploi dérivé donné se révèle susceptible d'être issu à la fois de
deux ou trois emplois antérieurs. Plus l'indication donnée est générale, plus
cettefiliationmultiple devient possible.
11
Une seule occurrence dans tout le corpus: BEH.V.xiii.436.
12
Cette indication est: "Le Patient d'un déplacement est repéré par rapport à LOC1 définie
spécifiquement comme 2ème borne du trajet." (Groussier 1984:959)
13
Pour œt c'était l'opposition irréductible des deux groupes d'indications spatiales attestées
qui posait un problème, celles-ci se divisant en repérages par rapport à LOC1 et repérages par
rapport à LOCo. L'étymologie (i.-e. *ad-) a alors fourni les éléments permettant de faire
l'hypothèse d'un sens de base propre à avoir produit les deux types d'indication, à savoir:
"Repérage d'un objet en déplacement par rapport à une arrivée visée mais non-atteinte"
(Groussier 1984:930). Le sens de base de geond, lui, a été reconstruit d'une part à partir de
l'étymologie (i.-e. *eno-/*ono-), d'autre part en s'appuyant sur le fait que ce sens existe pour
begeondan, dérivé de geond. C'est: "Le repéré coïncide avec un lieu éloigné de l'énociateur par
rapport au repère" (Groussier 1984:601). L'existence antérieure d'une telle signification pour
la préposition simple geond gagne en vraisemblance quand on se rappelle le principe dégagé
par Kurytowicz (1966[1949]: 169) de remplacement des formes primaires par des formations
secondaires, précisément dans leurs significations primaires.
4.2 Généalogies d'emplois et datation.
Le terme 'génération d'emplois' que j'ai employé (et qui justifie la

numérotation) ne doit pas faire illusion: une génération d'emplois ne peut être
l'ensemble des emplois apparus à la même date mais seulement l'ensemble des
emplois AYANT LE MEME DEGRÉ DE DÉRIVATION par rapport à l'emploi de base.
Ceci pour deux raisons: (1) Dans le cas qui nous occupe, l'évolution des
prépositions d'une langue comme le vieil-anglais est en grande partie
préhistorique: les principales prépositions ont donc déjà de nombreux emplois
dérivés dès les premiers textes. Le moment d'apparition d'un emploi ne peut
donc être qu'un MOMENT RELATIF et non une date. (2) Certains em-plois vont
disparaître très vite, d'autres se perpétuer très longtemps, une coupe synchro-
nique fera donc apparaître la coexistence à un moment donné d'emplois de
diverses générations.
4.3 Le rôle central joué par la primarité du spatial.
Celle-ci apparaît bien comme une primarité chronologique aussi bien

que logique. L'hypothèse se vérifie en ce sens que (1) chaque fois qu'une
préposition a des emplois spatiaux, ceux-ci apparaissent toujours dans les
textes les plus anciens alors que certains emplois dérivés se manifestent
tardivement; (2) on peut alors parler d"âge' d'une préposition: plus une
préposition est 'vieille', plus elle a d'emplois dérivés non-spatiaux. Parmi les
prépositions de grande extension donc 'vieilles' à un moment donné, on
distingue deux types:
— premier type: les prépostions n'ayant conservé ni leur emploi de

base ni aucun de leurs emplois spatiaux, p.ex., mid au XIIe siècle.
— deuxième type: les prépositions ayant conservé un ou plusieurs em
plois d'indicateur de relations spatiales bien vivants: p.ex., to, in
ou on.
Il semblerait alors que les prépostions du premier type résistent moins

bien à la concurrence (mid va disparaître au cours du moyen-anglais) parce que
la perte des emplois spatiaux entraîne celle, dans la compétence collective des
locuteurs, du facteur de préservation de l'identité de la préposition le plus
propre à combattre les effets de l'amoindrissement de la spécificité dans les

emplois dérivés.
BIBLIOGRAPHIE
A) Textes en vieil-anglais cités
ASW = Anglo-Saxon Writs. Ed. by F. E. Harmer. Manchester: Manchester

Univ. Press, 1952.
B = Beowulf with the Finnsburg Fragment. Ed. by C. L. Wrenn. London: G.
Harrap, 1953.
BEH = The Old-English Version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History etc. Ed. by
Th. Miller, 95-96. London: E.E.T.S., 1890.
BH = The Blickling Homilies. Ed. by Richard Morris. (E.E.T.S., Original
Series, 58-63). London, 1874-1880. (Reprinted as one volume, London:
Oxford Univ. Press. 1967.)
CP = King Alfred's West-Saxon Version of Gregory's Pastoral Care. Ed. by
Henry Sweet, (= E.E.T.S., 45, 50). London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1871-72.
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Chronicles Parallel, ed. by J. Earle & C. Plummer. Oxford: Oxford Univ.
Press, 1892-99.
EC = Version Corpus (west-saxon, fin l0ème s.) de l'Evangile selon
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Mercian Versions, ed. by Walter W. Skeat, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.
Press, 1871-87.
EL = Glose de Lindisfarne (northumbrien, début Xème s.) de l'Evangile selon
Matthieu. Ibid.
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the Anglo-Saxon Church, London: printed for the Ælfric Society, 2 vols.
1844. (Repr., New York & London: Johnson, 1971.)
HS = Homilies of Æfric, A Supplementary Collection, ed. by J. C. Pope, 2
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Series, 6.) London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1980.
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College, Cambridge B. 1452. E.E.T.S., 53, 1873.
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Anderson, John M. 1971. The Grammar of Case. (= Cambridge Studies in

Linguistics, 4.) Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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relations. London: Croom Helm.
Culioli, Antoine. 1971. "A propos d'opérations intervenant dans le traitement
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ANNEXE
Descriptions etou exemples d'emplois de of non fournis dans l'article
So: Pa eode Petrus of pam scype. (EC.XIV.29)

"Alors, Pierre quitta le bateau."
Sla: Repérage du Patient 1 d'un processus de séparation par rapport au Patient
2 avec lequel cesse la coïncidence.
Me pyncep unscyldiglicre pœt him man heafod of aceorfe buton oðrum
witum. (BH.XV. 189)
"Il me paraît moins criminel de leur couper la tête sans autres supplices."
Slb: ...ðœtte œlc mon adryge of oðerra monna mode Bone
wenan...(CP.LlXA5l)
"que chaque homme assèche dans l'esprit des autres l'idée ..."
Slc: Cf. exemple (1) dans le texte.
LA POLYSEMIE DE OF EN VIEIL ANGLAIS 229
Sld: Cf. exemple (2) dans le texte.

Al: Repérage de la relation Patient-processus de privation (sans déplacement
effectif) par rapport au Bénéficiaire détrimentaire.
genumen biðofiuih ric godes. (EL.XXIA3)
"le royaume de Dieu vous sera ôté."
D1: Repérage d'une occurrence d'un processus quelconque par rapport à
l'état initial du Patient.
Nu us is tima [...] ðœt we onwœcnen of slœpe. (CP.LXIII459)
"1 est maintenant temps pour nous de nous réveiller de notre sommeil."
S1': Cf., note 6.
T2: Cf. exemple (10) dans le texte.
P2: Cf. exemple (14) dans le texte.
D2: Repérage d'un état négatif par rapport à ce dont l'absence le définit
comme tel.
Clene ben of synne. (TH.V.24)
"Ils sont exempts de péché"
S2'a: Repérage de la relation Patient-processus de déplacement implicite par
rapport à LOCo interprété positivement.
God sylf spœc [...] of Sinai munte. (WH.Xc.20-21)
"Dieu lui-même parla, du haut du mont Sinai."
S2'b: Cf. exemple (3) dans le texte.
S2'c: Cf. exemple (4) dans le texte.
S2'ma: Répérage d'un animé par rapport à un parent (père ou mère) représenté
comme LOCo.
of heom twœm is eall manncynn cumen. (WH.VI.52)
"De ces deux-là est issue l'humanité entière."
S2'mb: Repérage d'une occurrence de procès par rapport à une Cause
représentée comme LOCo; cf. ex. (13) dans le texte.
D2'a: Cf. exemple (19) dans le texte.
D2'b: Cf. exemple (16) dans le texte.
A2'a: Cf. exemple (11) dans le texte.
A2'b: Cf. exemple (12) dans le texte.
T3': Cf. exemple (9) dans le texte.
D3'a: Cf. exemple (15) dans le texte.
D3'b: Repérage d'un objet par rapport à la matière dont il est constitué.
cynehelm of pornum. (EC.XXWll.29)
"une couronne d'épines."
D3'c: Cf. exemple (17) dans le texte.

D3'd: Repérage du résultat d'un processus par rapport à un déclencheur
quelconque.
Ælc bletsung is of Gode. (HC. VI. 100)
"Toute bénédiction vient de Dieu."
D4'a: 7 œtan ofðamforbodenan wœstme. (WH. VI.47-48)
"et ils mangèrent du fruit défendu"
D4'b: Cf. exemple (5) dans le texte.
D4'c: Cf. exemple (6) dans le texte.
D4'd: Cf. exemple (7) dans le texte.
D4'e: Cf. exemple (8) dans le texte.
LE CADRE DES CHANGEMENTS PHONÉTIQUES
DANS LES LANGUES ROMANES
MOT ET 'SYNTAGME PHONÉTIQUE*1
CATHERINE HOLM
Copenhague
Autonomie phonétique du mot et phonétique syntaxique.
Il est notoire que l'autonomie phonétique du mot est moins marquée

dans les langues romanes que dans les langues germaniques — où, du moins,
dans celles des langues germaniques dont la structure phonétique n'a pas subi
l'influence des langues romanes. Les cas de sandhi sont beaucoup plus
nombreux dans les langues romanes (ainsi que dans les langues, comme
l'anglais ou les dialectes alémaniques, qui semblent avoir été influencées par
les habitudes phonétiques des langues romanes). Derrière ces cas de sandhi se
cache un phénomène de plus grande envergure: on retrouve les mêmes
assimilations en position interne qu'aux frontières du mot. Tant que les
facteurs morphologiques n'exercent pas d'action perturbatrice sur les données
phonétiques, les assimilations se déroulent dans une unité qui va d'une pause à
une autre. On pourrait désigner ce phénomène par le terme de 'phonétique
syntaxique' — peut-être par extension, ce terme n'ayant jamais été défini
explicitement à notre connaissance — et l'unité qui fonctionne comme cadre
des assimilations, le 'syntagme phonétique'. Nous nous proposons, dans ce
qui suit, d'établir un contraste typologique (Ternes 1985:554) entre, d'un côté
un type comme les langues romanes, où les changements phonétiques n'ont
pas été bloqués par lesfrontièresd'unités significatives — avec d'importantes
exceptions auxquelles nous reviendrons — et, d'un autre côté, un type dont les
changements ne peuvent être décrits que dans le cadre du mot2 — ou du
1
Je tiens à remercier Madame Henriette Walter et Monsieur Elmar Ternes qui ont bien voulu
lire une première version de cet exposé, ainsi que Monsieur J0rgen Schmitt Jensen pour des
éclaircissements de certains points touchant les dialectes italiens.
2
Il s'agit ici du mot traditionnel, unité non définissable, mais que l'on doit reconnaître étant
donné qu'elle fonctionne comme cadre des changements phonétiques dans bien des langues. Il
232 CATHERINE HOLM
morphème intraverbal, tant que les usagers sont conscients d'une unité
significative.3 On a donc d'un côté un type de langue où les 'pauses virtuel
les', entités psychologiques, n'ont pas eu de conséquences phoniques, et, de
l'autre, un type où les usagers traitent le mot comme une entité isolée. Il en
résulte synchroniquement que la démarcation du mot est très faible dans le
premier type, alors que les signes démarcatifs abondent dans le second.
Tout essai de classification typologique est, on le sait, problématique et
celle que nous proposons ici peut paraître d'une simplicité naïve. Nous
essayerons toutefois de démontrer pourquoi les faits, simples au départ, ont
tendance à être obscurcis pour diverses raisons, et comment on peut rendre
compte des exceptions. D'autre part, en interprétant les faits à la lumière de
cette classification, il est possible d'élucider certains des problèmes que pose la
phonétique historique des langues romanes. C'est ainsi par ex. que Lausberg
résout de façon convaincante la question de savoir pourquoi s final de mot latin
passe à j en roman oriental (cf. plus bas, Les consonnes finales du latin
vulgaire).
Le mot: cadre traditionnellement choisi.
Il est exceptionnel que la phonétique syntaxique d'une langue donnée

ait été décrite de manière aussi systématique que dans la description qu'a
donnée Moulton (1986) des dialectes alémaniques (elle est également relevée
très clairement dans Herman 1965 et dans Herslund 1986:506). Ceci est dû
est vrai que l'on peut, dans ce type de langue, observer certaines assimilations aux frontières
de mot dans le cadre souvent plus large de l'unité accentuelle, cf. danois ha[ŋ] gâr à côté de
ha[n] går, "il marche" (Basbøll 1986:23). Mais ces assimiliations sont facultatives et le
resteront sans doute tant que les unités en question ne sont pas ressenties par les usagers
comme un seul mot. Quoi qu'en dise Basb0ll, le syntagme phonétique n'est pas le 'maximal
domain' des assimilations en danois: il n'y a jamais assimilation du n dans deux unités
accentuelles Jan gârå, "Jan marche", même sous 'low formality conditions'.
3
Dans ce type de langues, les changements sont souvent bloqués entre les préfixes et les
morphèmes lexicaux et entre les membres de composés. D'après Andersen (1986:606), c'est
la syllabe et non le mot qui a été le cadre du dévoisement des consonnes finales en allemand.
Les autres évolutions s'étant produites dans le cadre d'unités significatives, cette exception est
surprenante. En fait, les morphèmes de cette langue sont, en grande majorité, monosyl
labiques, ce qui explique pourquoi le cadre du dévoisement semble être la syllabe. Si c'était
effectivement le cas, comment rendre compte de formes comme Hal[p]insel et A[p]art? Ce
sont les frontières de morphèmes qui déterminent le [p] et le [k] de o[p]liegen et de
we[k]reisen9 le [b] et le [g] de Kuh\b]lume et de be[g]reifen. Comme le morphème coïncide
avec la syllabe dans la majorité des cas, le [k] d'une forme monomorphémique comme
Wa[k]ner doit être mise au compte d'une extension analogique.
MOT ET 'SYNTAGME PHONÉTIQUE' 233
moins à la nature des langues décrites qu'à un parti pris méthodologique, bien
des linguistes ayant le sentiment que le mot est le cadre normal des
changements phonétiques. Pour décrire la structure phonologique de l'italien
par ex., on relève souvent que les nasales et les liquides sont les seules
consonnes à apparaître à la finale de mot. Cette description est évidemment
correcte, mais elle a l'inconvénient de ne pas rendre compte d'un fait plus
important: lorsque les groupes nasale ou liquide + consonne apparaissent aux
frontières de mot, comme dans il bagno par ex., ils n'ont pas de valeur
démarcative, étant donné que ces groupes peuvent apparaître en position
interne de mot, comme dans alba. Il serait donc plus suggestif de décrire les
faits en partant du syntagme phonétique et de relever qu'un groupe hétérogène
comme 1 + C ne connaît pas de restriction dans le cadre de cette unité. Sa
distribution rappelle celle des géminées qui apparaissent, elles aussi, tant aux
frontières de mot ('renforce-ment syntaxique') qu'en position interne.
Comparaison d'évolutions romanes et germaniques.
Pour illustrer notre propos, nous comparerons quelques cas bien

connus d'assimilations, identiques dans les langues romanes et dans les
langues germaniques, mais qui se sont déroulées, les unes dans le cadre du
syntagme phonétique, les autres, dans le cadre du mot:
On trouve, à différentes époques, des affaiblissements consonan-tiques
en position intervocalique dans les langues romanes, affaiblissements qui n'ont
pas été bloqués par les frontières de mot (peu importe pour l'instant la
réalisation phonétique de ces affaiblissements). On les observe tant dans la
pénisule ibérique que dans de nombreuses régions de l'Italie centro-méri-
dionale (Sardaigne, Corse, Ombrie, Latium, etc.), sans mentionner la 'gorgia
toscana'. On retrouve un affaiblissement des occlusives intervocaliques en
vieux-haut-allemand et, à date plus récente, en danois (en position postvoca-
lique également). Toutefois, dans ces langues, l'affaiblissement a été bloqué
aux frontières de mot.4 On a donc d'un côté, pour l'italien standard il pelo, [su
bilu]: pause ou C + [pilu] en sarde (Rohlfs 1972:247) et, d'un autre côté,
danois ska[b]e en face du suédois ska[p]a "créer", mais danois pause, C ou V
+ [p]ind "baguette".
4
Selon la loi dite "Notkers Anlautgesetz", les obstruentes initiales de mot en vieux-haut-
allemand étaient sujettes à des alternances contextuelles. Il faut toutefois noter que Notker
pratiquait un dialecte alémanique sans aucun doute influencé par les parlers romans
avoisinants.
234 CATHERINE HOLM
Les groupes consonantiques peuvent avoir été modifiés, par

assimilation ou par réduction, tant dans les langues romanes que dans les
langues germaniques. En italien, la majorité de ces groupes ont été assimilés
sans égard aux frontières de mot; on trouve tant sissignore < sic senior que
dissi < dixi. En ancien français, on a réduction des groupes consonantiques
par la chute de la première (ou des premières) consonne d'un groupe, sans
égard aux frontières de mot: cf., par ex., lat. est + C > [è], est, tout comme
mast(i)care > mâcher, et, plus tard, [a] + C < [an] < annum, comme [plãtə]
< [plãntə], plante, avec, à l'origine, maintien de la consonne à la finale du
syntagme phonétique, cf. encore aujourd'hui [siz] + V, [si] + C, [sis] à la
pause, six. Les grammairiens du moyen français sont formels quant au cadre
de cette réduction: elle se déroulait d'une pause à une autre (Thurot 1881 §3).
En provençal, les groupes consonantiques secondaires n'ont pas été réduits. H
est caractéristique qu'ils se maintiennent tant aux frontières de mot qu'en
position interne, cf. set mans < septem manos et setmana < *settimana <
septimana (Lausberg 1967:74). À ces phénomènes, on peut comparer la
simplification des géminées de la majorité des langues germaniques, qui a été
bloquée aux frontières de mot.
Le français classique: type idéal de langue non-démarcative.
Nous avons reconnu ci-dessus que tout essai de classification typo

logique était problématique: quels que soient les critères de classification, il est
rare qu'une langue se conforme parfaitement au modèle proposé. Il est donc
d'autant plus remarquable de relever que le français classique représente un
type idéal de langue où la démarcation est inexistante. On connaît la rareté des
signes démarcatifs en français moderne. Cependant, les descriptions phonolo
giques relèvent deux restrictions importantes: [é] + C et [ò] n'apparaissent pas
à la finale de mot. Ceci n'est toutefois pas tout à fait exact, puisqu'on trouve,
dans le syntagme phonétique, des variantes comme [méz] dans mais alors,
mes amis, [trò] dans trop tôt. Tout porte à croire qu'il en était de même pour
des formes plus lourdes à une époque antérieure (ceci sera développé dans une
publication ultérieure). D'une manière générale, le français classique ne connaît
aucune restriction: il n'y a pas d'accent de mot (Thurot 1881:732), l'ensemble
des phonèmes vocaliques et consonantiques (qui apparaissent à la chute du
schwa postconsonantique) se trouvent dans toutes les positions, et les variantes
ou les produits de neutralisation ne sont pas déterminés par les frontières de

mot.
Dérèglement: analogies morphologiques et emprunts.
Dans la plupart des langues romanes, le tableau est toutefois moins

clair. L'influence de la graphie qui, pour des raisons évidentes, se fait plus
sentir aujourd'hui qu'autrefois a invalidé les données d'origine. D'autre part,
les analogies morphologiques ont également brouillé le tableau. Un phéno
mène comme la réduction des groupes consonantiques en français s'était
déroulée à l'origine dans tout le syntagme phonétique (Thurot 1881:7). Cette
modalité de la phonétique syntaxique avait provoqué d'innombrables
alternances morphologiques (cf. [si], [siz], [sis], six) et on a tendance à
généraliser une des formes.5 Il est légitime de vouloir décrire
systématiquement le cadre de ce qu'il reste des alternances (cf. l'unité dite
'phrase phonologique'), mais le processus de généralisation ne présente
aucune régularité (variations indivi-duelles, de registre, etc.).6 Il est important
de se rappeler qu'on a ici affaire à un phénomène qui ne provient pas d'une
évolution phonétique régulière. Tout essai de systématisation est, de ce fait,
voué à l'échec. Ceci vaut aussi pour le renforcement syntaxique italien.
A leur début, les assimilations des langues romanes se font d'une pause
à une autre et non dans une unité plus petite. Ceci est confirmé: par la
description d'Oftedal (1985:109) du voisement des consonnes intervocaliques
en espagnol insulaire, développement sans aucun doute assez récent qui va
d'une pause à une autre; par la description que donnent les grammairiens du
moyen français du cadre de la réduction consonantique et des liaisons (cf. ci-
dessus); enfin, par le fait que le syntagme phonétique est encore aujourd'hui le
cadre des enchaînements, communs à toutes les langues romanes. Dans ce
dernier cas, il ne peut pas être question de généralisations analogiques, ce
phénomène n'entraînant pas d'alternances morphologiques.
5
En raison de la réduction consonantique (et vocalique, cf. [ut] pour août et les élisions), le
syntagme phonétique de l'ancien français présentait la structure ...CVCV(C). À la chute du
schwa postconsonantique apparaissent de nouveaux groupes consonantiques en toutes
positions. Ce facteur a contribué de façon décisive à la généralisation de formes prévocaliques
comme [i] + C (pronom pers.), [fis] + C (fils) < ancien fr. [i] + C, [fi] + C, les groupes
consonantiques étant de nouveau tolérés.
6
Dans un même registre, un même locuteur pourra, pour est allé par ex., prononcer [étalé]
ou [èalé].
236 CATHERINE HOLM
Les emprunts.
Le facteur qui perturbe le plus profondément le contraste typologique
que nous proposons ici est l'influence de langues démarcatrices sur la structure
phonétique de langues non démarcatrices (et vice versa). À la période pré
littéraire, sur le territoire du roman occidental, le cadre des changements phoné
tiques a été non le syntagme phonétique, mais le mot. Il nous semble évident
que l'on a ici affaire à une influence germanique. On sait que les Longobards
n'ont pas eu d'influence décisive en Italie centro-méridionale et les habitudes
articulatoires de ces régions en sont sorties indemnes.
Explication traditionnelle du maintien des consonnes initiales en

roman occidental.
Du Ve au VIIe siècle env., les affaiblissements des consonnes intervo-

caliques sont bloqués aux frontières de mot en roman occidental. Comme ce
phénomène semble normal à la plupart des linguistes, il est rare que l'on se soit
étonné du contraste qu'il représente avec les données en italien centro-
méridional et en espagnol moderne. Les linguistes que ce contraste a frappés7
supposent un affaiblissement de l'initiale de mot à l'ouest comme à l'est. Puis
ils constatent qu'alors que les affaiblissements de l'est n'ont pas eu de
conséquences phonologiques ([X] dans [Xasa] par ex. ne serait qu'une vari
ante de /k/), ils en ont eu à l'ouest où les consonnes affaiblies sont voisées. On
aurait donc eu, à l'initiale de mot, des alternances phonologiques comme, pour
lat. femina par ex., *la vernina: *las feminas. Pour rétablir l'identité
phonologique du mot à l'initiale, les locuteurs auraient restitué *lafemina à *la
vernina par analogie avec *las feminas. Cet argument se heurte au fait que
dans bien des dialectes italiens (cf. Rohlfs 1972:247 et Ternes 1977:34 et
suiv.), les affaiblissements aboutissent, comme en roman occidental, à des
alternances phonologiques, cf. pour lat. panem, pause ou C + /pane/ : V +
/bane/ en logudorien. Ceci vaut aussi en espagnol insulaire (Oftedal 1985,
chap.8), ainsi que pour le renforcement syntaxique italien (Ternes 1977:42) et
pour la 'gorgia toscana' (Walter 1966). On s'attendrait dans tous ces cas à une
restitution qui, cependant, n'a pas lieu. D'autre part, les extensions
analogiques n'ont pas le caractère d'une loi phonétique. On devrait donc
7
Cf. Lausberg (1967:93 et suiv.) et Weinrich (1968, chap.III) qui s'inspire d Martinet (1955,
chap.IX). Notre aperçu, nécessairement très bref, rend mal compte de l'argumentation de
Weinrich.
trouver à l'ouest quelques formes alternantes conservées aux moins dans les
premiers textes et dans les groupements de haute fréquence; il n'y en a pas. Le
témoignage de graphies des Ve et VIe siècles montre que /b/ affaibli à
l'intervocalique, était maintenu sans exception en Gaule à l'initiale de mot
(Herman 1965:64).
Autonomie phonétique du mot en roman occidental prélittéraire.
Nous mettons donc le maintien des consonnes initiales de mot en

roman occidental prélittéraire au compte d'un traitement du mot comme une
entité isolée. Ceci nous semble d'autant plus légitime que les autres change
ments phonétiques de cette époque ont lieu dans le cadre du mot. Par quelle
autre explication peut-on rendre compte de la désonorisation des obstruentes
finales de mot à l'ouest après l'apocope, cf. gallo-roman *[grant] < grandem,
*[vif] < vivimi, qui a lieu même dans des groupements syntaxiques très serrés
comme * [grant ómnə] < grandem hominem par ex.? On doit comparer à ce
dévoisement ancien français [viv] + V < *[vif] (Thurot 1881:135), cf. encore
aujourd'hui neu[v] hommes/heures.
Illustrations des traitements divergents à l'est et à l'ouest.
En dehors des cas exposés plus haut où les mêmes sons ont subi des
traitements divergents dans les deux zones du territoire roman, on peut relever
les phénomènes suivants:
À l'est, les consonnes initiales de mot reçoivent le même traitement que
les consonnes intérieures. En revanche, à l'ouest, on trouve des indices d'un
renforcement des consonnes initiales. Il ne s'agit pas seulement du renforce
ment du r initial en espagnol qui est attesté un peu partout à l'ouest (Thurot
1881:269, et Martinet 1955:281), mais des autres consonnes également.
D'une manière générale, les consonnes initiales ont tendance à se com-porter
comme les géminées. En portugais par ex., /- et n- et -//- et -nn- > l et n, alors
que -/- et -AI- disparaissent. Les fricatives intervocaliques de l'ancien français
se voisent en position interne et finale de mot dans le syntagme phonétique, cf.
[plyz] + V < gallo-roman *[plus], [viv] + V < *[vif] < vivum (cf. la
prononciation homme d'esprit nai[v], inventi[v] et résolu attestée en moyen
français, Thurot 1881:135), et [pózé] < pausare. Par contre, les consonnes
initiales reçoivent le même traitement que les géminées correspondantes, cf. la
soie < seta, comme passer < passare. Le [s] non voisé de la soie en français
238 CATHERINE HOLM
mododerne est donc un indice d'un renforcement des consonnes initiales à

époque ancienne. Le renforcement est attesté par les graphies de l'ancien
français quitto pour qui lo, appresent, affaire, etc.
La voyelle prosthétique qui, à l'origine du moins, soutenait le groupe
latin s + C a fonctionné comme voyelle d'appui en italien. Par contre, elle est
devenue un élément stable, non soumis à la phonétique syntaxique dans la
majeure partie de la Romania occidentale.
Dans certains dialectes de l'Italie centro-meridionale, un t transitoire est
apparu entre l/n et s tant à l'intérieur des mots qu'aux frontières, cf. toscan
[pentso] pour penso et [in tsale] en face de [di sale] (Rohlfs 1972:281, 444;
Bourcieux 1967:486). À l'ouest, il n'y a pas de trace, à l'initiale, des con
sonnes transitoires que l'on trouve en position interne de mot.
En raison des assimilations des groupes consonantiques, ceux-ci ne
délimitent pas le mot en italien centro-méridional. À l'ouest, en revanche, on
ne trouve pas de groupes consonantiques à l'initiale de mot, le groupe
occlusive + liquide excepté, alors qu'ils sont nombreux dans les autres
positions.
Le sarde a conservé -s final latin. D est caractéristique que quand il
forme groupe avec une consonne suivante, il ne se maintient tel quel que dans
les cas où le groupe en question existait à l'intérieur du mot. Sinon, il est
assimilé ou il passse à r, cf. [sòs panèzè] < ipsos panes, cf. latin asper, mais
[sar manòzò] < ipsas manos (Contini 1986 §3): s + m n'existait pas en latin en
position interne, alors qu'on avait -rm-, cf. arma. À l'ouest, l'-s n'est pas
assimilé. Un groupe comme -s + m- constitue une démarcation.
Les consonnes finales du latin vulgaire dans les deux zones.
D'une manière générale, la non-assimilation des consonnes finales du

latin vulgaire en roman occidental doit être interprétée comme un effet de
l'autono-mie phonétique du mot à l'époque sur ce territoire. En effet, en Italie,
les consonnes ne tombent pas à proprement parler, mais sont maintenues sous
une autre forme (assimilation à la consonne suivante ou s > i ). Le déve
loppement -s > 7 semble, à première vue, avoir lieu dans le cadre du mot.
Mais Lausberg (1967:83), se basant sur le développement sarde, y voit un
développement de phonétique syntaxique: -s préconsonantique aurait eu la
variante (*z) > 7 lorsque le groupe s + C n'apparaissait pas à l'intérieur du mot
— c'est à dire dans tous les cas où la consonne quit suit le s est voisée — pour
être généralisé par la suite. Il est probable que le même développement s'est
produit en roumain. On pourrait peut-être, dans cette langue aussi, supposer
une assimilation des consonnes finales de mot à la consonne suivante. Si l'on
n'en a pas de trace, cela pourrait être que les géminées qui en découlent se sont
simplifiées dans cette position comme ailleurs.
Contraste typologique entre roman occidental et roman oriental.
Pour distinguer entre Romania occidentale et orientale, on a coutume de

partir du sort du s final et du traitement des consonnes intervocaliques. Mais
nous désirons souligner que ces traits ne sont qu'une modalité d'un
phénomène de portée plus générale et qu'il s'agit, ici encore, d'une différence
typologique: les changements phonétiques se déroulent à l'est dans le cadre du
syntagme phonétique, trait qui semble continuer une vieille tendance latine.
Cet état de choses est contrarié à l'ouest, où c'est le mot qui, pour une période
d'un ou deux siècles, fonctionne comme cadre de ces changements.
L'anéantissement des signes démarcatifs dans la zone ouest.
Le développement ultérieur des langues occidentales accuse une

tendance frap-pante à se débarrasser des signes démarcatifs qui s'étaient
formés à la période prélittéraire. Nous comparerons.ici brièvement la structure
du mot en gallo-romasn à celle du français classique et jetterons un coup d'œil
sur le développement intermédiaire. Gallo-roman / h , k w , g w , t / e t dz/ ainsi
que les six consonnes palatalisées (t, d, s, r, l , n) présentaient des
distributions lacunaires: h n'apparaissait qu'à l'initiale de mot; kw, gw, et les
affriquées manquaient à l'intervocalique et à la finale; les consonnes
palatalisées manquaient à l'initiale. Les autres phonèmes étaient réalisés, en
diverses positions, par des variantes ou des produits de neutralisation
perceptiblement différents dans les diverses positions du mot; cf., par ex., A /
: /d/ [T-,8 D-, - 3 - , - e , -Ct]; /m/ [M-, -m-, -n]. Il n'y avait qu'une
seule V/diphtongue par mot et qu'une seule V pleine en syllabe ouverte,
toujours placée à l'initiale. Ces restrictions sont autant d'indices démarcatifs.
Le français classique ne connaît aucune de ces restrictions: quatre des
consonnes palatalisées, qui manquaient à l'initiale de mot, avaient dégagé un i
Les majuscules indiquent les consonnes renforcées.

240 CATHERINE HOLM
et se confondaient avec leurs partenaires non-palatalisés. D'autre part, cette

évolution a aussi eu pour conséquence qu'on pouvait, dès lors, avoir deux
V/diphtongues par mot, cf. [maizūn kw et gw > k et g. h
tombe en moyen français. Les consonnes intervocaliques affaiblies
qu'on ne trouvait pas à l'initiale, disparaissent. Il est caracté
ristique que [-V-], qui figurait à l'initiale, reste stable. À la réduction des
groupes consonantiques, les occlusives apparaissent à l'intervocalique; à la
chute du schwa en moyen français, occlusives voisées et chuintantes
apparaissent à la finale du mot. On a donc par ex. [d-, -d-<-Cd-, -d<-də] et
(cf. dent, soudain, aide; jour, manger, âge); n
et / palatalisés manquaient à l'initiale. X > ;, que l'on trouve dans hier, nj, qui
apparaît à l'initiale, et ŋ sont neutralisés de bonne heure dans de nombreux
idiolectes (Nyrop 1967[1904]:334). Les nouveaux groupes consonantiques
qui apparaissent à la chute du schwa ne délimitent pas le mot, étant donné
qu'ils apparaissent en toutes positions, cf. [fnètr] fenêtre, ainsi qu -/+ n-, -t +
r- aux frontières. On trouve tant tr- que rt- (cf. [rtrèt], retraité), tant -rt que -tr
([fnètr]), alors que le gallo-roman n'avait que tr- et -rt.
L'évolution des autres langues et dialectes occidentaux présente une
tendance analogue. Nous nous contenterons ici de relever comment certaines
langues de l'ouest se sont débarrassées de la restriction phonotactique que
représentait la dentale intervocalique affaiblie que l'on ne trouvait qu'en
position interne de mot: [51 rhéto-romane s'est durcie en [d]; en Italie du nord,
elle tombe ou se durcit; dans la péninsule ibérique, elle n'a pas totalement
disparu, mais l'affaiblissement a atteint aujourd'hui les occlusives voisées dans
le cadre du syntagme phonétique, de sorte que [5] n'a plus de valeur
démarcative. C'est dans cet ordre d'idées qu'il faut interpréter la désonorisation
des sibilantes en espagnol du XVIe siècle.9 Lausberg (1967:407) rend compte
de -n/rdz- > -n/rts- en ancien espagnol et portugais en invoquant une "struk-
turelle Phonemkombinationsanalogie": en effet, dz n'apparaît pas à l'initiale.
La restitution de bien des voyelles finales, labiles en ancien espagnol (cf.
puent, diz, faz > puente, dice, hace), fait disparaître la démarcation que
provoquaient, à l'époque, les groupes consonantiques aux frontières de mot
(cf. plus haut).
9
L'influence du basque a joué un rôle certain (Martinet 1955 chap.2), mais elle a été, si l'on
peut dire, bienvenue.
MOT ET 'SYNTAGME PHONETIQUE' 241
Exceptions.
Selon le raisonnement de cet exposé, l'évolution phonétique de l'italien
centro-méridional devrait, en principe, n'avoir jamais eu lieu dans le cadre du
mot (il est difficile de se prononcer au sujet du roumain qui a été soumis à des
influences extérieures massives). Il y a des exceptions:
(a) Les nombreux cas de métaphonie, dont on peut cependant rendre
compte en supposant que ce phénomène avait (et a peut-être toujours) lieu dans
le cadre du syntagme phonétique et n'a laissé de traces solides que dans les cas
où il pouvait avoir des conséquences morphologiques régulières, comme le
renforcement de l'opposition de nombre ou de genre, cf. dialecte de Rieti [nir-
u] < nígr-u : [néer-a] < nígr-a (Tuttle 1985:35). Il semble donc qu'il s'agisse
plutôt d'une assimilation de morphème à morphème que d'une assimilation
dans le cadre du mot.
(b) Le maintien de l'accent de mot qui est responsable de certaines
restrictions phonotactiques, comme celles des 7 / diphtongues.10 Quelles que
soient les conséquences que peut avoir l'accent de mot, il faut noter qu'il n'est
pas démarcatif en italien (ni d'ailleurs dans les autres langues romanes) et
surtout, qu'en opposition à l'accent des langues germaniques, il ne bloque
jamais les enchaînements (Holm 1986:26), ni les assimilations.
(c) Le dévoisement des consonnes finales de mots dans certains
dialectes de l'italien centro-méridional (Rohlfs 1972:488-490). Il faudrait
examiner si ce phénomène a réellement lieu dans le cadre du mot, ou s'il ne
s'agit pas plutôt de la finale absolue. S'il s'agit de la finale de mot, on a sans
doute affaire à une influence moyenâgeuse d'un dialecte de l'ouest
Cependant, dans bien des cas, les exceptions sont plus apparentes que
réelles et sont le fait d'une erreur méthodologique, les chercheurs ayant
tendance à décrire le mot dans sa forme isolée. Ce procédé est presque général
et nous relevons ici un exemple moins connu: la chute des voyelles fermées
entre obstruentes en français québécois est décrite dans le cadre du mot, cf.,
par ex., [ts0s] pour tisseuse (Gendron 1966:251). Nous avons cependant
relevé dans ce dialecte la prononiciation [il è dzœr é dmi] pour il est dix heures
et demi en débit normal.
10
Herslund (1986:510) relève qu'en portugais /z/ tombe à la finale du mot (en l'occurrence,
des articles) devant consonne de mot suivant, alors qu'il reste stable en position interne (dans
les préfixes). Il pourrait s'agir ici d'une différence d'accentuation entre les articles, qui sont
inaccentués, et les préfixes, qui reçoivent un accent secondaire.
242 CATHERINE HOLM
Le contraste typologique que nous avons établi ici entre les langues
romanes, type non-démarcatif, et le type démarcatif comme les langues
germaniques ne peut guère être un effet du hasard. La persistance avec laquelle
les usagers du français se sont débarassés des signes démarcatifs du gallo-
roman le montre bien. Cela vaudrait sans doute la peine de chercher à savoir si
cette divergence se reflète sur d'autres niveaux. Il se pourrait, en effet, que la
syntaxe du mot et/ou de la phrase dans une langue donnée ait des répercussions
sur la manière dont le mot est traité phonétiquement et vice versa.
RÉFÉRENCES
Andersen, Henning. 1986. "Appendix: Guidelines for sandhi surveys".

Sandhi Phenomena in the Languages of Europe ed. by Henning Andersen,
605-609. Berlin-New York-Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter.
Basb0ll, Hans. 1986. "A Note on Ternes' Paper". Sandhi Phenomena in the
Languages of Europe ed. by Henning Andersen, 23-25. Berlin-New York-
Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter.
Bourciez, Edouard. 1967. Eléments de linguistique romane. 5e éd. Paris:
Klincksieck.
Contini, Michel. 1986. "Les phénomènes de sandhi dans le domaine sarde".
Sandhi Phenomena in the Languages of Europe ed. by Henning Andersen,
519-550. Berlin-New York-Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter.
Gendron, Jean-Denis. 1966. Tendances phonétiques du français parlé au
Canada. Paris: Klincksieck; Québec: Les Presses de l'Université de Laval.
Herman, József. 1965. "Aspects de la différenciation territoriale du latin sous
l'empire". Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 60:1:53-70.
Herslund, Michael. 1986. "Portuguese Sandhi Phenomena". Sandhi Phenom-
ena in the Languages of Europe ed. by Henning Andersen, 505-518. Berlin-
Holm, Catherine. 1986. "Quatre fonctions de l'accent avec illustrations
empruntées au danois". La linguistique 22:2.21-41.
Lausberg, Heinrich. 1967-1969. Romanische Sprachwissenschaft. 2 vols.
Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co.
Martinet, André. 1955. Economie de changements phonétiques. Berne: A.
Francke. (3e éd., 1970.)
Moulton, William G. 1986. "Sandhi in Swiss German Dialects". Sandhi
Phenomena in the Languages of Europe ed. by Henning Andersen, 385-392.
Berlin-New York-Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter.
Nyrop, Kristoffer. 1904. Grammaire historique de la langue française. Voli.
Copenhague: Gyldendal. (Reimprimé, 1967.)
Oftedal, Magne. 1985. Lenition in Celtic and in Insular Spanish. Oslo.

Bergen-Stavanger-Troms0: Universitetsforlaget.
Rohlfs, Gerhard. 1949. Historische Grammatik der italienischen Sprache.
Vol.1. Bern & München: Francke. (Ré-imprimé, 1972.)
Ternes, Elmar. 1977. "Konsonantische Anlautveränderungen in den keltischen
und romanischen Sprachen". Romanistisches Jahrbuch 28.19-53.
. 1985. "Typologie des langues romanes du point de vue phonétique et
phonologique". Actes de XVIIème Congrès International de Linguistique et
Philologie Romane, vol.II, 541-554. Aix-en-Provence: Univ. de Provence.
Thurot, Charles. 1881. De la prononicatìon française depuis le commencement
du XVIe siècle. Vols.II/III Paris. (Réimprimé, Genève: Slatkine, 1966.)
Tuttle, Edward F. 1985. "Editor's Note: Morphologization as redundancy in
central Italian dialects". Romance Philology 39.35-43.
Walter, Henriette. 1966. La "gorgia toscana". Thèse de Doctorat de IIIème
Cycle, Sorbonne, Paris (non publiée).
Weinrich, Harald. 1958. Phonologische Studien zur romanischen Sprachge-
schichte. Münster: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung
LE ROLE DU SYSTEME DANS L'EVOLUTION
D'UN VERBE EN GREC ANCIEN*
BERNARD JACQUINOD
Université de Saint-Étienne
La conjugaison du verbe "dire" en grec ancien est tout à

fait singulière. Par définition, un verbe inégulier ne respecte pas intégralement
le système vivant et productif de la conjugaison à l'époque donnée. Mais son
évolution se fait nécessairement par une adaptation à ce système ou à un
modèle existant. Or notre verbe semble échapper complètement à cette règle; en
effet, fhmi est en grec classique (Ve-IVe s. avant J.C.) un verbe dont la con
jugaison est isolée en ce sens qu'à aucun autre indicatif présent en -mi en de
hors de lui ne correspond un participe présent en -skont- (thème
[phaskont-]) ni un infinitif présent en -ske.n [phaske:nl), alors
que ces dernières formes sont des créations récentes, inconnues de la langue
archaïque. Homère (VIIIe?-VHe? s. avant J.C.) les ignore complètement (il a,
au présent, des formes nominales sur le thème [pha-]), tandis que
Démosthène (IVe s. avant J.C.) ne connaît plus qu'elles.
Tableau 1
Le tableau 1 montre que les formes nominales se sont entièrement renouvelées
entre Homère et Démosthène. Ce que je voudrais expliquer, c'est pourquoi ce
* On trouvera un exposé plus complet, mais conçu pour des spécialistes de grec ancien dans
Jacquinod (1978). Nous n'entrons pas ici dans le détail des faits et la bibliographie est
volontairement sommaire.
246 BERNARD JACQUINOD
verbe a évolué en créant des formes qui le rendaient morphologiquement de

plus en plus irrégulier. Mon hypothèse est que la structure aspectuelle a été
déterminante et l'a emporté sur la tendance à l'alignement morphologique.
Pour aller vite dans un problème terriblement difficile, je m'en tiens aux
positions de Ruipérez (1954) sur l'aspect du verbe en grec ancien. Mis à part
le futur qui est la formation la plus nettement temporelle, le système aspectuel
du verbe s'organise sur 3 thèmes de parfait s'oppose l'ensemble formé par le
thème : authème dit de présent et le thème dit d'aoriste; en l'absence de forme
de parfait pour notre verbe, seul cet ensemble nous intéresse. Le thème de
présent est duratif en face de celui d'aoriste qui est non duratif. Cette opposi
tion fonctionne très bien dans les formes nominales (participe et infinitif). Les
faits sont plus complexes dans les formes personnelles. L'opposition duratif/
non duratif fonctionne pour les temps passés de l'indicatif. Ces formes ont en
commun une marque (obligatoire dans la prose classique, facultative en poésie)
appelée augment, qui est une voyelle [e] ajoutée devant le thème du verbe. Les
désinences appartiennent à la série dite secondaire, avec création d'une série
propre pour une partie des aoristes (type en -0). Ces marques du passé sur un
thème de présent produisent un imparfait. L'imparfait est par définition une
forme bâtie sur un thème de présent et pourvue de désinences secondaires (-n à
la le sg) et éventuellement d'un augment; par exemple "je fuyais"
[é - pheugo - n]
[augment-thème-dés.sec.]
ou "je plaçais" sont bâtis sur les thèmes de présent
[pheugo-] et [tithε:-]. L'aoriste est, lui, toujours bâti sur un thème particu
lier, en l'occurrence [é-phugo-n] et [é-thε:k-a]. Aux temps passés de l'indi
catif, la langue oppose donc un imparfait duratif à un aoriste non duratif. Mais
au temps présent, il n'existe pas de forme sur thème d'aoriste; il n'y a qu'un
présent, qui est formé sur le même thème que l'imparfait Le présent reçoit des
désinences dites primaires, par exemple à la le sg. soit -mi soit o long ouvert.
D'où, par exemple:
ÉVOLUTION DUNE CONJUGAISON GRECQUE 247
Tableau 2
Revenons à Ce verbe est bâti sur une racine alternante, qui

dans les dialectes que nous considérons ici, est de la forme [phε:] / [pha]. A
l'époque archaïque, chez Homère par exemple, ce verbe n'a qu'un thème de
présent, c'est-à-dire qu'il a, à l'indicatif, un présent et un imparfait (le sg.
mais pas d'aoriste. Cet imparfait devrait avoir, d'après le
système, une valeur durative, mais, en l'absence d'un aoriste, cette valeur ne
peut exister; elle est neutralisée. Cette neutralisation est si manifeste dans les
textes que, depuis l'Antiquité, on a souvent cru que cet imparfait était un
aoriste; cette vue, pourtant contraire à la définition morphologique de
l'imparfait, a été adoptée par des philologues éminents, d'Hérodien (IIe s.) à
Wackernagel (XXe s.). C'était mal poser le problème. Fournier, qui reconnaît
que,fhn est un imparfait, admet qu'il joue le rôle d'un aoriste (1946:21), mais
ne donne pas d'explication satisfaisante. Rappelons encore un fait. Il a existé
en indo-européen un suffixe verbal -sko- qui donnait des thèmes de présent.
En outre, il s'est développé en ionien un itératif-intensif à l'aide de ce suffixe et
des désinences secondaires, formation qui fournit des doublets à l'imparfait;
ces formations, en principe, sont dépourvues d'augment (par ex.
Sur notre racine, il existe chez Homère (et en attique classique)
une forme [éphaskonl, seule forme de ce groupe d'itératifs en -skon
à être pourvue d'un augment, mais qui a en commun avec eux de toujours
avoir des désinences secondaires et donc de ne pas fournir de présent de
l'indicatif.
Nous avons désormais tous les éléments pour proposer une solution.
L'époque classique montre que le thème - [phasko-], sans fournir de
présent de l'indicatif,1 devient pourtant le thème de présent sur lequel on bâtit

le participe et l'infinitif. Cela suppose que la forme , qui est
probablement archaïque, ne s'est pas limitée à fournir un itératif, mais est
devenue un véritable imparfait, ce que manifeste la présence de l'augment en
ionien et l'existence de cette forme en dehors de l'ionien.2
Mais alors, on peut se demander pourquoi ce verbe, qui avait un
imparfait à qui il manquait un aoriste, s'est d'abord doté d'un
second imparfait (plus tard seulement d'un aoriste en -a). A mon avis, à
l'époque archaïque, c'est la structure aspectuelle qui a été le moteur du
changement. morphologiquement un imparfait, voyait sa va
leur durative neutralisée du fait de l'absence d'un aoriste; par conséquent, pour
la fonction, il jouait le rôle d'un aoriste non duratif et donc, fonctionnellement,
ce qui manquait, c'était un temps qui exprime positivement la durée: c'est la
forme en -sko- qui a été appelée à jouer ce rôle et à fournir le vrai imparfait du
point de vue de l'aspect
Cette hypothèse explique aussi que le thème - ne fournisse
pratiquement jamais un présent de l'indicatif, alors qu'on l'attendrait. La
valeur durative du thème de présent était neutralisée à ce temps (il n'y a pas de
présent de l'indicatif sur le thème de l'aoriste, cf. le tableau 2 supra): il était
sans intérêt de remplacer l'ancienne forme fhmi [phε:mi] par une nouvelle
forme typiquement durative dans un temps qui annulait immédiatement cette
valeur. Au contraire, dans les formes nominales, où l'opposition aspectuelle
présent / aoriste jouait à plein, on voit chez Démosthène les formes duratives en
-sko- éliminer complètement les anciennes formes bâties sur le thème [pha].
L'évolution de ce verbe est donc cohérente et compréhensible si l'on admet
qu'elle résulte à la fois du caractère particulier de ce verbe et de l'organisation
aspectuelle du verbe en grec ancien.
On doit alors se demander pourquoi ce phénomène semble si limité,
alors que d'autres racines fournissaient un présent, mais pas d'aoriste. La rai
son en est le recours au supplétisme pour compléter les paradigmes verbaux.
Le verbe "être" (racine LE. *es) est un cas intéressant en ce sens qu'il amorce
1
Il n'y aurait qu'une forme sûre de présent de l'indicatif sur ce thème (Isée 6,16 — Fournier
1946:37), alors que ce verbe est un des plus fréquents dans les textes grecs — le 6e d'après le
Vocabulaire de base du grec de G. Cauquil & J.Y. Guillaumin (Besançon: ARELAB, 1985)—
plus de 400 formes d'indicatif présent chez Démosthène.
2
Cette formulation me paraît préférable à celle qui voit deux formes génétiquement
différentes, selon qu'il y a ou non l'augment (voir Giacalone Ramat 1967:122).
ÉVOLUTION D'UNE CONJUGAISON GRECQUE 249
la même tentative que notre verbe et que celle-ci avorte. La racine *es ne fournit
pas d'aoriste en indo-européen; les langues ont fait appel au supplétisme (d'où
fr. estlfut, angl. is/was, all. ist/war, etc.). Comme pour le verbe fhmi [phε:mi],
l'imparfait du verbe "être" (qui est radical) ne peut exprimer positivement la
durée, faute d'une forme d'indicatif passé non durative (aoriste). Pour la
même raison, une forme à suffixe
a fourni un indicatif passé duratif3 dans la langue archaïque (Homère). Cette
forme n'est pas attestée dans la prose attique de l'époque classique et, en outre,
la forme apparaît en général sans augment, ce qui indique qu'elle ne s'est pas
vraiment intégrée, en tant qu'imparfait, à la conjugaison. Pourquoi ce qui s'est
passé pour notre verbe "dire" ne s'est-il pas produit pour le verbe "être"? C'est
manifestement parce que la langue grecque a, par un fait de supplétisme,
associé à la conjugaison du verbe "être" des formes d'un verbe bâti sur la
racine I.E. *gen "engendrer, devenir". Pour des raisons qui tiennent elles
aussi à l'organisation aspectuelle du grec ancien, l'aoriste de cette racine, dont
le sémantème était transformatif, était apte à fournir un aoriste à la racine *es,
dont le sémantème était, lui, non-transformatif. Selon Ruipérez, l'aoriste se
réalise comme finitif dans les sémantèmes transformatifs et comme initif dans
les sémantèmes non-transformatifs. Or il y a coïncidence entre la valeur
finitive de la notion d'engendrer ("arriver à la fin de l'engendrement") et la
valeur initive de la notion d'être ("commencer à être"). Dans ces conditions,
l'imparfait radical du verbe "être", qui était l'imparfait morphologiquement
attendu, retrouvait sa place dans le système et la forme faisait double
emploi avec lui; devenue inutile, la forme était vouée à disparaître en
tant qu'imparfait
Il resterait à se demander pourquoi notre verbe n'a pas eu recours au
supplétisme. Cela demanderait un exposé trop long et nous devons renvoyer
au travail de Fournier (1946). Disons seulement ceci: la racine *wekw "parler"
fournissait un aoriste, mais plusieurs présents étaient candidats pour compléter
le paradigme. φhmi, qui signifiait à l'origine "proclamer, affirmer", à partir du
sens de "briller", fut sur les rangs, mais il a cédé la place à (racine *leg),
qui, à partir de l'idée d'énumérer, passait au sens de dire. Notre verbe a dès
lors dû se doter d'un paradigme plus complet fondé sur sa seule racine.
3
Sur la valeur durative d'skon voir Chantraine (1963:320-321) et Giacalone Ramat
(1967:119). Sur l'histoire de cette formation dans les diverses langues indo-européennes, on
consultera Keller (1985).
L'étude de l'histoire archaïque de fhmi rejoint une des préoccupations de

la Morphologie Naturelle. Pour Dressier (1985:41),
un des buts stratégiques de la Morphologie Naturelle à l'étape actuelle de
son développement doit être d'affronter les phénomènes morphologiques
les'moins naturels', qui semblent offrir de scandaleux contre-exemples à
toute théorie du naturel morphologique qui est extrêmement peu ou très
peu naturelle ...
Notre présentation a combiné la méthode structuraliste et la perspective

diachronique et Dressier reconnaît que, pour le supplétisme, l'explication
génétique "est absolument nécessaire dans le cadre de la Morphologie
Naturelle" (1985:48). Mais il ne voit dans le supplétisme verbal des langues
indo-européennes qu'un archaïsme qui se maintient parce que les langues
flexionnelles sont moins réfractaires à ce type d'opacité morphotactique. Or il
apparaît que, dans les verbes "être" et "dire" étudiés ici, le supplétisme, tel
qu'il se présente à l'époque classique, est une innovation du grec, et non un
fait de l'indo-européen commun.
Du point de vue de la Morphologie Naturelle, le supplétisme dans le
verbe "être" est un cas de "suppléance forte", puisqu'il associe deux racines
entièrement différentes (*es et *gen). Ce supplétisme relève d'un type de
raison qui n'apparaît pas dans l'article de Dressier consacré à ce sujet (il
n'utilise pas les exemples grecs, pourtant plus probants que les exemples
latins) et qui est le système aspectuel du verbe grec qui oppose fortement le
thème de présent et le thème d'aoriste. Cette opposition aspectuelle est
évidemment fort différente de celles du slave, mais elle fut assez puissante pour
non seulement conserver des faits de supplétisme indo-européen, mais encore
en faire naître de nouveaux. Et cette opposition aspectuelle a été assez vivace
pour s'introduire en grec moderne dans le futur: à la différence du grec ancien,
le grec moderne a deux futurs, un futur continu sur le thème de présent et un
futur momentané sur le thème d'aoriste.
Nous avons souligné le caractère insolite de fhmi en attique classique; ce
verbe présente deux formes pour le thème de présent alors qu'habituellement,
en indo-européen ancien, le supplétisme existe entre les thèmes verbaux (et non
à l'intérieur de thèmes verbaux). Du point de vue de Dressier, nous aurions
affaire à une "suppléance faible", car, d'un côté, aucune règle ne permet de
passer d'un thème [phε:] / [pha] pour l'indicatif à un thème [phasko-] pour
le participe et l'infinitif, mais, d'un autre côté, l'identité de racine est évidente
et le suffixe -sko- de présent est bien connu. Aussi, le présent de cette
ÉVOLUTION D'UNE CONJUGAISON GRECQUE 251
conjugaison en grec classique me semble-t-il mieux placé sur l'échelle de la

diagrammaticité que sur l'échelle de la transparence morphotactique (Dressier
1985:41-42). Il m'a paru intéressant de faire connaître aux spécialistes de la
naturalité et de l'iconicité mon explication de ce cas très surprenant, et je leur
laisse le soin de décider s'il relève d'une certaine manière de l'iconicité
diagrammatique par isomorphisme (Haiman 1980), dans la mesure où en grec
archaïque un thème mieux marqué comme duratif a tendu à s'installer dans les
formes de présents où la valeur durative n'était pas neutralisée, laissant la
forme radicale dans les formes où cette valeur était neutralisée. Ce système n'a
pas triomphé complètement, car le grec classique, sous la pression de
l'analogie, s'est doté d'un thème d'aoriste morphologiquement non duratif
(ligne 3 du tableau 1) et la somme de ces deux tentatives successives
d'aménagement a produit une conjugaison tellement irrégulière qu'elle n'a pas
survécu en grec moderne.
RÉFÉRENCES BIBLIOGRAPHIQUES
Chantraine, Pierre. 1963. Grammaire homérique. Tome II: Syntaxe. Paris:
Klincksieck.
Dressier, Wolfgang U. 1985. "Sur le statut de la suppléance dans la Morpho
logie Naturelle". Langages 78.41-56.
Fournier, Henri. 1946. Les verbes 'dire' en grec ancien: Exemple de conju
gaison supplétive. Paris. Klincksieck.
Giacalone Ramat, Anna. 1967. "La funzione del suffisso -sk- nel sistema
verbale greco". AGI 52.105-123.
Haiman, John. 1980. "The iconicity of grammar: isomorphism and moti
vation". Language 56.515-540.
Jacquinod, Bernard. 1978. "L'évolution de fhmi en grec ancien". Mémoire
1.45-52. Saint-Etienne: Publications de l'Univ. de Saint-Etienne.
Keller, Madeleine. 1985. "Latin escit, escunt a-t-il des correspondants?" Revue
de philologie 59:1.34-38.
Ruipérez, Martin Sanchez. 1954. Estructura del sistema de aspectos y tiempos
del verbo griego antiguo. Salamanca: Univ. de Salamanca. (Trad, française
de M. Plenat & P. Serça, Structures du système des aspects et des temps du
verbe en grec ancien. Besançon: Univ. de Besançon; Paris: Les Belles
Lettres, 1982.)
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE ABLAUT NOUNS IN
ENGLISH - AND WHY DID IT NOT HAPPEN IN GERMAN?
DIETER KASTOVSKY
Institut fürAnglistik und Amerikanistik
Universitat Wien
In the Germanic languages, ablaut or gradation, i.e. the vocalic alternation

present in, for instance, (1) is usually associated primarily with the signaling
(1) a. English sing sang sung
ride - rode ridden
shear shore - shorn
break broke - broken
b. German singen sang gesungen

reiteri - ritt geritten
scheren schor - geschoren
brechen brach - gebrochen
c. Old singan - sang sungon - gesungen

English rìdan rad ridon - geriden
scieran scær scæron - gescoren
brecan - bræc bræcon - gebrocen
d. Old High singan - sang sangum - gisungan
German rìtan reit ritum - giritan
scëran scar scãrum - giscoran
brëchan - brach - bnaāchum - gibrochan
of the categories Preterite and 2nd Participle within the class of strong verbs.
It is generally assumed that this is a characteristic feature of the Germanic
languages and that it resulted from a gradual functionalization of a previously
non-functional, and to a certain extent purely phonologically conditioned
morphophonemic alternation originating from the variable stress of the Indo-
European parent language.1
1
This functionalization, however, was only partly successful, since it was impaired by
over- and underdifferentiation. Thus, the vocalic alternation of 1st, 3rd sg. vs. 2nd sg., 1st -
3rd pl. pret. (e.g. rad : ridon ) in classes I-V is non-functional, whereas in classes I, II, partly
254 DIETER KASTOVSKY
But ablaut alternations are not restricted to verb inflection; they also occur
in various deverbal word-formation patterns, cf. the Old English examples in
(2):
(2) a. Deverbal nouns:

singan: sang (m.) "song, singing"
ridan: rad (f.) "riding", gerid (n.) "riding", ridda "rider", for-
ridel (m.) "fore-rider"
scieran: scear (m., n.) "ploughshare", scearu (f.) "shearing"
brecan: bræc (f.) "breaking", gebrecness (f.) "breach", brecpa
(m.) "broken condition", broc (n.) "fragment, breach",
(ge-)bryce (m.) "breach, breaking"
leogan: lyge "lie", lygen "lie", lygness "lie"
fricgan: friht "divination", frig(e)ness "question", fregen "ques
tion", gefræge "hearsay"
bindan: bend "bond", bund "bundle", gebundenness "obligation"
b. Deverbal adjectives:
brecan: bryce "fragile"
fricgan: gefræge "well-known, celebrated"
leogan: lyge "lying"
onion: ond-fencge "receptive"
findan: eap-fynde "easy to find"
c. Deverbal causatives:
sitian "to sit": settan "to place"
drinkan "to drink": drencan "to give a drink"
cwelan "to die": cwellan "to kill"
nsan "to rise": næran "to raise"
Similar examples can also be found in Old High German and other Germanic
languages.
This phenomenon is, in fact, so pervasive in the Germanic languages that
Robert Hinderling (1967) in his study of the strong deverbal abstract nouns in
Germanic places the strong verb at the center of the Germanic word-formation
system.2 Moreover, ablaut is only one type of morphophonemic alternation
characterizing both inflection and derivation. Umlaut phenomena at various
stages in the development of the Germanic languages, West Germanic
consonant lengthening and the palatalization of velar stops have added
III (type bindan ) the pret. pl. and the 2nd part., and in classes V, VI and VII the infinitive
and the 2nd part, have the same vowel.
2
"So muß die germanische Wortbildungslehre ihren Ausgangspunkt beim starken
Zeitwort nehmen" (Hinderling 1967:2).
ABLAUT NOUNS IN ENGLISH AND GERMAN 255
numerous further, non-functional alternations to the inflectional and

derivational system, some of which were also subsequently functionalized.
Therefore, it is hardly an exaggeration to claim that on account of this
pervasiveness of morphophonemic rules, the 'strong', i.e. non-linear
modification of stems is a characteristic feature not only of Germanic verbal
inflection but also of Germanic word formation, as has been suggested by
Hinderling. 3 The Old English examples quoted above corroborate this
assessment, and they can easily be matched by similar examples from Old
Norse or Old High German and, for that matter, Modern High German, which
has preserved this characteristic feature to quite a remarkable extent, cf. (3).
(3) a. Deverbal nouns:

binden: Band (m., n.), Bund (m., n.), Binde (f.), Gebinde
(n.), Bündel (n.), Bandel (n.)
singen: Sang (m.), Gesang (m.)
scheren: Schur (f.), Schere (f.)
brechen: Bruch (f.)
helfen: Hilfe (f.), Gehilfe (m.)
trinken: Trank (m.), Trunk (m.), Getrank (n.)
schreiben: Schrieb (m.), Schrift (f.), Schreibe (f.)
b. Deverbal adjectives:
beissen: bissig
fließen: flüssig
streiten: strittig
gestehen: gestandig
Ziehen: (frei)zügig
(sich) erbieten: erbötig
saufen: süffig
c. Deverbal causatives:
trinken: tranken
versinken: versenken
sitzen: setzen
saugen: saugen
liegen: legen
This does not mean that all the alternations involved are still productive in
Modern High German. Thus umlaut, although it has become functionalized in
inflectional patterns, cf. Mutter : Mütter, is not really fully predictable in
3"
Die Unerläßlichkeit morphophonemischer Regeln macht außerdem deutlich,daßdie
'starke', nichtlineare Veranderung der Wortstamme nicht nur einen Grundzug der germ.
Verbalflexion, sondem auch der germ. Wortbildung ausmacht" (Hinderling 1967:2).
derivation, cf. rot : roten vs. blau : blauen/bläuenvs. faul : faulen. And
ablaut as a derivational principle was probably dead already in Old High
German, if not earlier. Nevertheless, any synchronic description of Modern
High German will have to account for these alternations, i.e. both for what
Grimm (1878:1, 4ff.) had called "innere Ableitung" (cf., for instance, also
Fleischer 1976:72ff., 204ff.) and for the alternations due to umlaut because
they permeate the German lexicon and are, therefore, part of its
morphophonemic system.
While the same also holds for Old English, as the examples in (2)
indicate, it is already no longer true for Middle English and even less so for
Modern English. Already in Middle English the overwhelming majority of
ablaut nouns and ablaut adjectives had disappeared from the lexicon, so that in
Modern English only sporadic traces of this once widespread pattern can be
found, such as song, drove, writ. It is therefore not surprising that Old
English grammars contain references to this type of formation, cf. Pilch
(1970:109ff., 117ff., 130ff.), while Middle English grammars do not, cf.
Fisiak (1965, 1968), where we find a fairly extensive description of Middle
English word formation but no reference whatsoever to ablaut nouns. It is true
that a greater number of these formations have survived in dialects, but in most
cases the relationship between verb and noun isratherobscured, while it is still
quite transparent in Modern High German.
It is of course not possible in this connection to trace the fate of all the
ablaut formations recorded in Old English, although this in itself might be an
interesting task. Suffice it to say that of the roughly 270 suffixless simple Old
English ablaut nouns documented in my dissertation (Kastovsky 1968:100ff.)
that are not derived from the infinitive stem, at best some 10% to 15% have
survived into Modern English. Ablaut adjectives are even rarer, and the
umlaut alternations have also been analogically leveled in the majority of
instances. The succinct answer to thefirstpart of the question raised in the
title of this paper is therefore simply: The ablaut nouns disappeared in the
course of the Middle English period, more precisely in Early Middle English,
being either replaced by derivatives based on the infinitive stem or lost
completely together with the verbal base.
The remainder of this paper will be devoted tofindingan answer to the
second part of its title which, I think, is much more interesting. Why, in fact,
should this type of word formation and the morphophonemic alternations
characterizing it disappear almost completely from English but remain a
conspicuous feature of German, when Old English in this respect was so
similar to Old High German and Modern High German. Also, German and
the Nordic languages demonstrate that these formations were really well-
entrenched in the lexicon, so that their loss in English seems rather surprising.
The following considerations are based on one crucial assumption: the
centrality of verbal ablaut in the lexical system of the older Germanic
languages. As long as this is fairly systematic and transparent, the ablaut
nouns can easily be related to the verbal bases and will therefore survive. The
greater the disruption of the ablaut patterns in the verb, the looser the
connection between noun and verb will become, and the greater the tendency
will be to idiomatize the noun or lose it altogether, and replace it by a
corresponding 'regular' formation without vowel alternation. Now, it seems
to me that in the English language three independent, but interacting factors
have 'conspired' to bring about the demise not only of the ablaut formations,
but also of the whole set of morphophonemic alternations characterizing the
Old English inflectional and derivational system. These three factors are: (a)
phonological change; (b) morphological leveling in conjunction with inter-
dialectal borrowing; and (c) a general typological reorientation of inflection
and word formation where changes in the inflectional system had far-reaching
consequences for word formation. Thefirsttwo factors are well-known and
have at least occasionally been mentioned in the classical handbooks. The
third factor, however, has to my knowledge not been considered so far in this
connection. It involves a shift from stem inflection and stem derivation to
word inflection and word derivation with a tendency away from stem
variability and towards an invariable base form. This made ablaut nouns
typologically unsuitable and therefore particularly vulnerable to lexical loss.
And while thefirsttwo factors were also operative in German, although less
radically so, the typological change mentioned above did not take place, as we
shall see. Consequently, ablaut derivatives were also not eliminated, although
their morphophonemic transparency had been reduced considerably in the
course of time as well.
I shall now briefly take up these three factors in turn and investigate their
impact on the development of ablaut verbs and their derivatives in both English
and German.
The history of verbal ablaut in the Germanic languages is characterized by
an earlier stage of systematization and functionalization followed by a later
stage of progressive disruption mainly due to phonological changes which,
however, progressed at different rates in the individual Germanic languages.
In both Old High German and Old English, the original system has become
somewhat fractionized, i.e. the major classes have been split up into
subclasses due to certain sound changes. The Old English system, moreover,
already deviates more from the original Proto-Germanic system than the Old
High German system, although the basic ablaut system is still synchronically
reconstructible, as has been demonstrated by Lass & Anderson (1975). The
somewhat greater opacity of the Old English system is due to sound changes
such as Anglo-Frisian brightening, breaking, palatalization of velars,
"Verdumpfung" and monophthongizations, which did not affect Old High
German, or did not affect it to the same extent.
The Germanic ablaut system is based on an Indo-European e/o ablaut,
manifest in strong verb classes I-V, and an Indo-European a/o ablaut,
manifest in strong verb class VI. Class VI can be related to thefirsttype of
ablaut on the basis of the laryngeal theory. To this has to be added strong verb
class VII in the Northwest Germanic languages which seems to go back to
originally reduplicating verbs. The ablaut pattern of classes I-VI in Proto-
Germanic was as follows:
(4) I e+i a+i i i
n e+u a+u u u
m e+RC a+RC u+RC u+RC
IV e+R a+R ē+R u+R
V e+C a+C ē+C e+C
VI a+C ō+C ō+C a+C
(C = consonant, R = liquid or nasal)
This fairly regular picture is already somewhat distorted in Old High

German where, due to the i/e, u/o splits and the monophthongization of /ei/
before /x/, a number of subclasses have to be distinguished. Moreover, class
VII, the originally reduplicating verbs, has to be added.
(5) Ia rĩtan wit ritum giritan
Ib zĩhan zēb zigum gizigan
Ila liogan loug lugum gilogan
lib biotan bōt butum gibotan
ma rinnan ran runnum girunnan
mb wërfan warf wurfum giworfan
IV stëlan stal stālum gistolan
V gëban gab gābum gigëban
Via faian fuor fuorum gifaran
Vlb beffen huob buobum gibaban
Vila haltan hialt hialtum gihaltan
vnb lazan liaz liazum gilazan
VEc skeidan skiad skiadum giskeidan
vnd huían liof liofum giloufan
VIIe mofan riof riofum gimofan

VIIf stõzan stioz stiofum gistōan
Old English basically shows a similar picture, but class III is even more
heterogeneous due to breaking. Nevertheless, the ablaut patterns still strike
one as fairly systematic.
(6) I ndan rād rìdon geríden

II bēōdan bead budon geboden
IIIa rínnan rann ninnon gerunnen
IIIb helpan healp hulpon geholpen
IIIc weorpan wearp wurpon gewoipen
IIId berstan bærst buTSton geborsten
IVa stelan stasi station gestolen
IVb nirnan nōm nõmon genumen
V metan mæt mascón gemeten
VIa faran fōr fõron gefaren
VIb hebban hōf hōfon gehafen
VIIa healdan hēōld hēōldon gehealden
VIIb blāwan blēōw blēōwon geblãwen
VIIc hleapan blēōp hlēōpon gehlēāpen
VIId bannan heônn beonnon gebannen
VIIe blōtan blëôt blêõton geblōten
VIIf batan bet beton gebãten
VIIg lætan let lêton gelæten
The Middle High German patterns manifest little change; the only major
simplification is the merger of the preterites of class VII in <ie>.
(7) Ia rîten reit ritten gerìtten

Ib zîhen zêh zigen gezigen
IIa biegen bouc bugen gebogen
IIb bieten bot buten geboten
IIIa rìnnan rann runnen gerrunnen
IIIb werfen warf wurfen geworfen
IV stelen stal stâlen gestolen
V geben gap gâben gegeben
VI faren fuor fuoren gefaren
VII X ie ie X
(a,ou,ei,ù )
The subsequent development towards Modern High German is also fairly

straightforward. On one hand, the different stem nuclei in the preterite were
analogically leveled either in favor of the singular or the plural form, cf. bieten
- bot vs. reiten - ritt. On the other hand, lengthening in open syllables and
certain monophthongization and diphthongization processes modified the
quantity and quality of the vocalic nuclei. Nevertheless, the Modern High
German ablaut verbs still reflect the original pattern to a considerable extent,
cf. (8).
(8) Ia schreiben schrieb geschrìeben

Ib reiten ritt geritten
II biegen bog gebogen
IIIa rinnen rann geronnen
IIIb binden band gebunden
IIIc werfen warf geworfen
IV stehlen staili gestohlen
V geben gab gegeben
VI fahren fuhr gefahren
VIIa halten hielt gehalten
VIIb scheiden schied geschieden
VIIc laufen lief gelaufen
VIId stoßen stieß gestoßen
As a consequence, the correlation between verbal and nominal ablaut is still

fairly transparent, despite cases such as
(9) Ziehen - zog: Zug

giessen - goB: Guß
triigen - trog: Trug
where the nominal vowel has no direct counterpart in the verbal system. But
even in these instances the alternation is not felt as irregular, because
alternations of this kind are typical of the system as a whole.
When we now turn to the development in English, we are confronted
with a rather different situation. Already for Middle English no such simple
paradigm can be established as was possible for Middle High German. First
of all, the monophthongization of the Old English diphthongs ēō , ēā and le
further distorted the ablaut patterns. Secondly, the Late Old English
lengthening and shortening of vowels before certain complementary consonant
clusters impaired the ablaut correlations still more, in particular in class m , cf.
(10) bind- bound vs. ran - run
and produced extensive allomorphy which in turn led to large-scale but

unsystematic analogical leveling. Thirdly, Middle English lengthening in open
syllables caused further opacity in these patterns. And, fourthly, there was a
growing tendency to level the vowel differences in the preterite, which started
in the North and gradually spread to the South. This not only resulted in
morphological differences between the dialects; the disruption of the ablaut
patterns was also increased by unsystematic leveling within one and the same
dialect, i.e. sometimes the preterite singular prevailed (sing-sang), sometimes
the plural (fling-flung) and sometimes neither (tear-tore-torn). Given that
Standard English evolved in an area where dialect mixture was the rule, viz.
London, it is not surprising that the Old English ablaut system should have
broken down more or less completely by the end of the Middle English period
in the evolving standard language. Thus, although the traditional handbooks
of Middle English still try to classify the Middle English verbs in terms of the
Old English ablaut series, Jacek Fisiak is probablyrightwhen he argues that
because of the phonetic and phonemic changes which took place in Late Old
English and Early Middle English, and the levelling tendencies operating
throughout the Middle English period, it is most convenient to group Middle
English strong verbs in three major thematic classes on the basis of the number of
vowel alternants, and next to subdivide these into subclasses according to the shape
of the alternants (Fisiak 1968:106).
In other words, the historical ablaut series no longer provide a basis for the
description of Middle English verb morphology. It is therefore not surprising
that more and more verbs went over to the weak - or as it should be called
now - regular verb inflection. Their number is actually far greater than in
German, where a similar shift is observable. This also means, of course, that
the relationship between ablaut nouns and ablaut verbs must have become
more and more erratic. But this phonological-morphological development is
hardly sufficient to explain why English should have lost the overwhelming
majority of the ablaut nouns. After all, they were part of the English lexicon,
were established lexical items and could have remained so. Why should they
be lost as a category? This now brings me to the third factor involved, the
typological aspect of this development.
First of all, ablaut nouns originally were part of a productive word-
formation system, the majority of them representing action nouns, but agent
nouns and other semantic types (instrumental, locative, result nouns) also
being fairly common. As has been pointed out repeatedly (cf. Motsch 1979,
1987; Kastovsky 1982, 1986), word formation serves two complementary
functions, that of creating new lexical items serving as labels for some
'nameworthy' segment of extralinguistic reality and that of recategorization or
transposition of certain types of syntactic phrases. Deverbal nouns of the type
at issue here, and in particular action nouns, typically serve the function of
recategorization, although the naming function is never completely excluded.

Optimal recategorization, however, presupposes optimal transparency with
regard to the base that is recategorized. Now as long as the category to be
transposed, in this case the verb, exhibits stem variability, in particular if this
is more or less systematic, the noun resulting from the recategorization may
also exhibit morphophonemic alternation, especially if this follows the
alternation pattern of the verb. The crucial property of word formation -
morphosemantic transparency or motivation - is not affected. But if these
alternations become erratic, then morphosemantic transparency is jeopardized
because the deverbal nouns are liable to formal isolation. Analogical re
formation with the effect of reestablishing transparency will be the result. This
will be even more likely if it coincides with a more general trend in the
development of the language in question, which was the case in English.
In order to see this, a brief look at the typological status of Old English
inflection and derivation is necessary. As I have pointed out in a recent paper
(Kastovsky 1987), the Old English morphological system is typologically
heterogeneous. The basic inflectional type is stem inflection, i.e. the
inflectional endings are added to a bound stem that does not have word status
without them. This holds for verbs and part of the nouns. Some part of the
nouns, e.g. strong masculines and neuters, and the adjectives, on the other
hand, are characterized by word inflection, i.e. the inflectional endings are
added to an unmarked base form representing the lexical item that occurs as a
word without any inflectional ending. This is the nominative-accusative
singular form, and it is this principle that is generalized in Middle English for
the whole inflectional system, verbs included. With the verbs in Old English,
however, there is a residual system that, at least originally, can be
characterized as root inflection, viz. the strong verbs, where the root vowel
alternation has morphological significance. It is even likely that the infinitive
stem, which in Old English is already interpreted as a kind of base form in
analogy with the weak verbs, did not originally have this privileged position
but was an inflectional form like any other. This would in fact go well with
the analysis of ablaut in Lass & Anderson (1975), who start from an
unspecified vowel and derive all ablaut series by phonological rules. Be that
as it may, this remnant of root inflection together with the new
morphophonemic alternations due to umlaut, etc., are the reason for the
assumption that Old English is basically characterized by stem variability. This
carries over to word formation. The dominant type is stem formation, in
particular with deverbal derivatives. But with certain denominai and
deadjectival derivations we alreadyfindword derivation, i.e. derivation from a
free base, the type that becomes characteristic of Modern English. And the
ablaut nouns might be interpreted as representing an old stratum of root

derivatives, matching the type of root inflection characterizing the strong
verbs.
As has already been mentioned, the subsequent development, viz. the
progressive loss of inflectional endings also in the verbal paradigm,
established an unmarked base form in all word classes as the starting point of
inflection. This was automatically accompanied by the replacement of stem
variability by stem invariability as the dominant inflectional type. And again
this was carried over to word formation. The dominant type of English word
formation is word-based, and without alternations. The alternations that occur
today, e.g. edify - edification, sane - sanity, produce - production, are
characteristic of the non-Germanic vocabulary, i.e. are a later development.
And it is this typological reorientation, which did not affect the German
language, where verbal inflection and deverbal derivation are still stem- and
not word-based, that was probably the additional, but crucial final nail in the
coffin in which the Old English ablaut nouns are now buried. In the emerging
Middle English system there was no longer any room for root derivation of
this kind. The infinitive had become established as an unmarked base form
which served as a starting point for both inflection and derivation, and both
operated basically without morphophonemic alternations. At the same time,
the ablaut alternations had become more or less completely irregular. Many
verbs were lost or became regular, and the ablaut nouns were replaced by non-
alternating re-formations to safeguard morphosemantic transparency. None of
this happened in German, where this typological reorientation only affected
nouns and adjectives, but not verbs. At the same time, ablaut verbs remained
remarkably systematic and therefore morphophonemically transparent.
Moreover, stem variability in verb, noun and even adjective inflection is still a
prominent morphological feature. Ablaut nouns, therefore, are in no way
typological misfits and have thus survived in German while they were lost in
English.
REFERENCES
Fisiak, Jacek. 1965. Morphemic Structure of Chaucer's English. (= Alabama

Linguistic and Philological Series, 10.) Birmingham: University of
Alabama Press.
Fisiak, Jacek. 1968. A Short Grammar of Middle English. Warsaw:
Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
Fleischer, Wolfgang. 1976. Wortbildung der deutschen Gegenwartssprache,
4th rev. ed. Leipzig: UEB Bibliographisches Institut.
Grimm, Jakob. 1878. Deutsche Grammatik, 2.T. Neuer vermehrter

Abdruck. Besorgt durch W. Scherer. Gütersloh.
Hinderiing, Robert. 1967. Studien zu den starken Verbalabstrakta des
Germanischen. (= Quellen und Forschungen zur Sprach- und
Kulturgeschichte der germanischen Völker, Neue Folge, 24.) Berlin: de
Gruyter.
Kastovsky, Dieter. 1968. Old English Deverbal Substantives Derived by
Means of a Zero Morpheme. University of Tübingen Ph.D. dissertation.
Esslingen: Bruno Langer.
Kastovsky, Dieter. 1982. "Word-formation: a functional view". Folia
Linguistica 16.181-198.
Kastovsky, Dieter. 1986. "Diachronic word-formation in a functional
perspective". Linguistics across Historical and Geographical Boundaries
ed. by Dieter Kastovsky & Aleksander Szwedek, 409-421. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter.
Kastovsky, Dieter. Forthcoming. "The typological status of Old English
word-formation". Paper read at the 5th ICHEL, Cambridge, 1987.
Lass, Roger & John Anderson. 1975. Old English Phonology. (=
Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, 14.) Cambridge: Cambridge Univer
sity Press.
Motsch, Wolfgang. 1979. "Zum Status von Wortbildungsregularitáten".
DRLAV-Paper 20.1-40.
Motsch, Wolfgang. 1987. "On inactivity, productivity and analogy in
derivational processes". Paper submitted to the Round Table Meeting
The Contribution of Word Structure Theories to the Study of Word
Formation, XIVth International Congress of Linguistics, Berlin, August
10-15, 1987.
Pilch, Herbert. 1970. Altenglische Grammatik. (= Commentationes
Societatis Linguisticae Europaeae, I, 1.) Munich: MaxHueber.
SOURCES NÉGLIGÉES DANS L'HISTOIRE
DU VOCABULAIRE
LES DICTIONNAIRES BILINGUES
DU XVIe SIÈCLE*
DOUGLAS A. KIBBEE
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Dans l'histoire du vocabulaire, nous disposons de trois sortes d'oeuvres de

référence: les dictionnaires étymologiques, les dictionnaires décrivant la langue
d'une certaine époque, et plus récemment, les fonds informatisés. Pour
l'histoire du français, le premier genre est représenté par le Gamillscheg, le
Franzôsisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch; le deuxième par le Godefroy, le
Tobler-Lommatzsch, le Huguet; le troisième par les fonds pour l'histoire du
vocabulaire du CNRS. Dans la préparation de tels ouvrages, les auteurs ont
dépouillé de nombreux textes littéraires et non-littéraires, mais une sorte de
texte n'est que très rarement consulté: les dictionnaires bilingues des époques
passées. C'est une lacune importante, une lacune qui laisse échapper plusieurs
aspects très intéressants de l'histoire du vocabulaire. Je voudrais d'abord
présenter un résumé de ces aspects négligés et ensuite montrer comment l'étude
des dictionnaires bilingues du seizième siècle nous permet d'illuminer ces
recoins obscurs. Enfin, je vais suggérer un nouveau type d'ouvrage de
référence qui promet de combler ces lacunes.
Dans un dictionnaire étymologique, on trace l'histoire d'un mot à partir de
sa source, c'est-à-dire, à partir d'une forme dans une autre langue jusqu'à sa
première attestation dans une deuxième langue. Les meilleurs dictionnaires
considèrent également la première attestation d'un certain sens. Mais souvent,
si le mot ne fait plus partie du vocabulaire actif de la langue, le dictionnaire
étymologique l'omet. Plus important encore, les collocations ordinaires du
mot manquent dans les dictionnaires étymologiques. Dans un dictionnaire
limité à une certaine époque du passé, on ne considère normalement que les
mots ou les sens qui diffèrent de l'emploi moderne. Dans un dictionnaire
* L'auteur tient à remercier Jean-Philippe Mathy et Alain Fresco de leurs suggestions.

266 DOUGLAS A. KIBBEE
étymologique, on perd donc de vue les mots qui n'ont pas survécu à l'époque
moderne, et on a très peu de renseignements sur les collocations usuelles du
mot à une époque déterminée. Dans un dictionnaire d'une époque précise, on
ne voit pas les rapports entre les mots ou les sens qui ont survécu (et ne sont
donc pas répertoriés) et les mots et les sens désuets: l'évolution en est perdue,
ainsi que les oppositions ressenties par ceux qui parlaient la langue à l'époque
en question. Ce qui est impossible, dans ces deux grands ouvrages de réfé
rence dont nous disposons, c'est de voir la langue à certaines étapes dans toute
sa complexité. Or, voilà exactement ce que nous fournissent les dictionnaires
bilingues composés au cours des siècles. Reste la troisième source pour
l'histoire du vocabulaire, les fonds informatisés tels ceux de M. Quemada,
source remarquable mais qui, encore une fois, laisse de côté ces dictionnaires
bilingues, et omet ainsi les renseignements morphologiques, syntaxiques et
surtout sémantiques fournis par les dictionnaires bilingues.
Dans l'histoire du français, ces dictionnaires bilingues publiés hors de
France constituent un trésor inexploité pour combler les lacunes des diction
naires étymologiques et historiques. Le seul dictionnaire étymologique ou
historique du français à citer ces dictionnaires est le Französisches etymolo-
gisches Wörterbuchde von Wartburg. Chez von Wartburg, on cite Lesclarcis-
sement de la langue francoyse (1530) de John Palsgrave; n'y figure aucun des
dictionnaires bilingues ou plurilingues publiés en Angleterre entre Palsgrave et
Cotgrave (1611). Or, entre ces deux dates les lexicographes anglais (et les
refugiés français en Angleterre) n'ont pas cessé de travailler. Au contraire, les
huit ouvrages suivants en sont témoins: Estienne/Veron (1552), de Sainliens
(1570, 1580, 1593), Baret (1573, 1580), Higgins (1572, 1585).
Des renseignements sur l'histoire du français abondent dans ces diction
naires, renseignements concernant sa morphologie aussi bien que sa séman
tique. Je vais montrer certains exemples de ces renseignements, en vue de créer
une nouvelle sorte de dictionnaire historique.
Pour déterminer l'utilité d'un de ces dictionnaires bilingues dans l'histoire
de la langue française, j'ai étudié les mots qui se rapportent à la religion dans le
dernier dictionnaire de Claude de Sainliens, publié en 1593. La religion sem
blait un champ sémantique prometteur à l'époque des Guerres de Religion dans
un dictionnaire composé par un réfugié protestant; les résultats ne m'ont pas
déçu. En effet, on trouve dans cet ouvrage une bonne indication des lacunes
notées ci-dessus. Les dictionnaires étymologiques omettent régulièrement les
mots qui n'ont pas survécu. Ainsi, nous ne trouvons dans aucun des diction
naires étymologiques le mot gobe-quinault, depuis longtemps disparu de la
LES DICTIONNAIRES BILINGUES DU XVIe SIECLE 267
langue française, mais qui figure dans le dictionnaire de 1593. Par contre, ce
mot se trouve dans le Huguet, mais avec les équivalents: 'bélître', 'gour-
mand', 'affamé'. Ceci n'est pas du tout le sens que lui donne de Sainliens:
"The priest swallowing his god made of wafer." Robert Estienne, dans son
dictionnaire français-latin de 1549 inclut ce mot, mais il ne fournit pas
d'équivalent latin. Serait-ce un cas de censure, ou d'auto-censure?
Bien d'autres mots dans ce champ sémantique révèlent des changements de
signification similaire. L'attitude des Protestants vis-à-vis de la communion
dans le culte catholique se manifeste aussi dans l'emploi du mot jean-le-blanc
(normalement un oiseau rapace) pour désigner l'hostie:
Ian le blanc, or l'oiseau Saint-Martin, a ravening birde or a kinde of Hauke

killing hennes in the countrey houses: the Protestants doe call the God of
the Papiste made of paste, Ian le blanc.
De même, le mot réveille-matin, une nouvelle invention allemande à cette
époque, prend un sens particulier chez le Sainliens, où il semble dénoter un
livre décrivant les événements de la Saint-Barthélemy:
Le réveille matin des Francoys, the booke shewing the falshood of the
authors of the massaker or slaughter traitrously committed on the persons of
the most noble & faitful christians of Fraunce, Anno 1572.
Le réveille-matin, dans ce sens-là, désigne plutôt un appel à la guerre.
Dans d'autres cas, le changement est moins spectaculaire. Le mot agios se
retrouve dans notre langue d'aujourd'hui et possède selon le TLF deux sens:
1) colifichets, affiquets, parure; 2) discours, façons, prétentions, manières.
On y trouve une citation du XVe siècle, où Greban semble employer le mot
dans le sens "manières cérémonieuses d'agir": "Faut-il faire tant d'agios?"
demande un personnage. Dans le Huguet, la définition est "cérémonies,
pratiques extérieures du culte". Mais il faut préciser: extérieures à quel culte?
Toutes les citations révèlent qu'au seizième siècle ce mot a toujours désigné les
cérémonies du culte catholique, et de Sainliens fournit les précisions
nécessaires:
Agyos, or agios, blessings and crossings which the papisticall priests doe
use in their holy water, to make a mearlew muse.
Parfois, les changements ne sont pas tant dans le sens que dans la
connotation. Un mot assez neutre à l'époque où il n'y avait qu'une Église
prend un sens plutôt négatif (au moins dans le vocabulaire des Protestants)
après la Réforme. Ainsi 'pontifical', adjectif signifiant 'relatif aux pontifes
romains' 'relatif au souverain pontife', ou bien substantif désignant lerituelde
l'ordination des évêques, devient, chez les Protestants, un mot négatif, comme
nous le voyons dans le Dictionary French and English:
pontifical, costlie, pontificali, sumptuous

pontificallement, sumptuously
Cette nuance négative, dont la première attestation signalée dans nos diction
naires modernes (dans l'article "pontifier") date de Cotgrave 1611, est déjà
évidente ici en 1593. On trouve la définition identique dans le Treasurie of the
French Tong de 1580, 30 ans avant Cotgrave.
Un autre exemple du même genre est le définition de 'porteur de rogatons'
dans les dictionnaires du XVIe siècle. Dans le dictionnaire français-latin de
1549, Robert Estienne note simplement: "porteur de lettres de remission, ou
pardon" et c'est exactement le ton neutre pris par Huguet: "porteur de requêtes,
de reliques et d'indulgences." Mais dans de Sainliens, l'auteur protestant
remarque l'abus pratiqué par ces porteurs: "Rogatons, un porteur de rogatons,
a bearer of the Popes bulles, or relickes of martyrs to bee worshipped, and so
to get money". La même façon de profiter des os des martyrs se révèle dans
les articles sur reliquaire, défini dans le Huguet comme "lieu où sont des objets
sacrés". Mais le culte des saints n'est pas très développé chez les Protestants,
comme nous l'indique la définition de de Sainliens: "Reliquaire, a place where
the relickes of Saints be kept, as the Papists doe use". D'ailleurs, John
Higgins, dans son remaniement du Nomenclator de Hadrianus Junius, le
définit non pas comme un objet, mais comme une personne, et une personne
très malhonnête: "Reliquaire. A bearer about of relicks: a iuggler: a deceiver:
a counsener of plaine countrie folkes, as begging friers did with guilefull
words, pretending devotion".
Pour beaucoup d'autres mots, bien qu'il n'y ait pas de sens négatif donné
au mots concernant l'église catholique, il est clair que ces mots appartiennent à
un culte, le culte catholique, et non pas au culte protestant, distinction qui est
devenue très importante au XVIe siècle. Puisque cette distinction est moins
importante dans la France du XXe siècle, nos dictionnaires modernes omettent
souvent ce qualificatif, ce qui nous donne un portrait faux de ce que ces mots
signifiaient aux époques passées. Par exemple, tous les mots concernant les
vêtements écclésiatiques témoignent de cette lacune:
Chasuble, a Massing Priests vestement

Corporali, the fine linnen whereupon the Romish Priest putteth his
sacrament. (Fr mod: corporal)
Une estole, a Stole as Priests have about their neckes in the Romish
Church.
Vestiaire, the versterie, where the papisticall Priests doe laye up all their
church appareil.
De même pour les mots désignant certaines pratiques de l'église catholique:
Indulgences, as gaigner les indulgences, such pardons as the Pope giveth.

La Neufaine, a vowe among the Papistes during nine dayes ceremonies.
Ondoyer un enfant nouveau né, a manner of speech among the papists, when
the Midwife christeneth a childe new borne, when hee is in danger of
death.
Ceux qui portent la poille, when the Papists doe carrie their with foure
staves a cloth or like fine cloth square, to shadow such as be under it, a
Canapie.
Les recommendances, praises for the dead: also praiers to God at a mans
buriall, in the Romish church.
Il pisse pour les tres-passex, Rabelais, doubtfully spoken, for it may be
taken as it is pronounced, he pisseth for the dead, alluding to the custom
of the papists, sprinkling the graves of the dead with holy water to clense
their soules...
Ainsi que ceux qui désignent certains officiers du pape:
Inquisiteur de la foy, an officer among the Papists, that inquireth of ones

beliefs.
Penencier, ou penitencier, he that appoynteth a punishment for offences
committed towards God appointed by the Pope in churches in Rome, as in
Santa Maria Maiore and others.
Dans tous ces cas, un mot qui se rapportait antérieurement à un aspect de la

seule église, est marqué, dès le début de la Réforme, pour l'église catholique,
et prend ainsi une nuance politique dans la lutte parfois sanglante entre les
Catholiques et les Protestants.
Il reste le cas des deux mules, les deux appartenant au pape. Mule a deux
sens en français moderne: (1) "l'animal, hybride femelle de l'âne et de la
jument ( ou bien du cheval et de l'ânesse); (2) "pantoufle de femme à talon
assez haute ou à semelle compensé, et sans quartier". Comme extension de
cette deuxième définition, nous trouvons "la mule du pape" une pantoufle
blanche brodée d'une croix. Or au quatorzième siècle ainsi qu'au seizième
siècle, nous trouvons une troisième définition: "engelure au talon". Les trois
définitions se retrouvent dans une seule locution, selon l'explication que nous
fournit Claude de Sainliens: "Il va sur mule aussi bien que le pape, he rideth
upon a mule as the Pope: this is spoken in mockerie by those who have
kibes". La traduction littérale se rapporte à l'animal, mais la moquerie de la
deuxième explication repose sur un jeu de mots entre la deuxième définition
("pantoufle") et la troisième ("engelure"), ce qui démontre assez nettement le
rapport historique entre ces deux sens. Et la moquerie repose également sur la
méfiance envers le pape partagée par tous les Protestants. Dans les diction
naires étymologiques et les dictionnaires de la langue au moyen âge on trouve
toutes les trois définitions. Chez Huguet, on ne trouve que 'engelure', puis
que les autres sens ont survécu. On ne trouve dans aucun de ces dictionnaires
la locution citée, ni aucune référence à une nuance religieuse (ou moqueuse).
C'est une autre perle qui a glissé entre les doigts des lexicographes, et qui
restera inconnue jusqu'à ce que nous dépouillions ces ouvrages d'une façon
systématique.
Reste à déterminer la meilleure façon d'étudier ces textes, et les autres
textes plus connus, pour nous donner une meilleure idée de l'histoire de la
sémantique. Ce que j'ai essayé de démontrer ici, ce n'est pas seulement les cas
individuels où un certain mot ou une certaine locution manque dans une source
ou l'autre dont nous disposons aujourd'hui. Il est plus important de considérer
comment ces oeuvres de référence nous fournissent un portrait inexact du
vocabulaire de n'importe quelle époque. Mais ce qui importe le plus est de
considérer les possibilités de rectifier ces problèmes offerts par la nouvelle
technologie.
J'ai présenté des cas où le mot, ou un sens d'un mot, ou une nuance
négative ou politique d'un mot manque dans un de nos dictionnaires de
référence. Une telle lacune est sérieuse, mais les problèmes des dictionnaires
étymologiques ou historiques ne seraient pas corrigés par le simple dépouille
ment de tous les dictionnaires bilingues cités ci-dessus. Dans les dictionnaires
étymologiques nous ne trouvons que la citation de la première attestation de
chaque sens qui a survécu jusqu'à l'ère moderne. Cette citation ne comportera
qu'une de plusieurs collocations possibles, collocations qui ont peut-être
changé au cours des siècles, sans que le sens représenté ne change. La nuance
positive ou négative du mot a peut-être changé sans changer le sens. Les
rapports existant à un moment assez précis entre ce mot et les autres mots dans
le même champ sémantique se perdent également. Même dans un dictionnaire
qui ne traite qu'une époque, tels nos dictionnaires du vieux français ou du
français du seizième siècle, le vocabulaire est trop étendu pour fournir une idée
exacte du vocabulaire disponible aux auteurs. Dans les dictionnaires de

l'ancien français, le vocabulaire disponible à l'écrivain du XIVe siècle, est-il
pareil à celui qui était à la disposition du clerc du neuvième? Pas du tout, pas
plus que le vocabulaire du XIVe est celui d'aujourd'hui. Même dans le
Huguet, où la période de temps est moins longue, on trouvera une différence
énorme entre le vocabulaire des premiers textes dépouillés et celui des derniers.
Nous possédons actuellement les moyens de remplacer ces portraits
inexacts de l'histoire de la sémantique et les lexicographes des dictionnaires
bilingues sont les photographes qui vont corriger ces fausses images. Leur
dictionnaires sont comme des instantanés du vocabulaire, pris au moins tous
les dix ans depuis la fin du moyen âge. Le recueil de mots équivalents dans la
deuxième langue est le cliché négatif de la première langue. Ensemble ils nous
permettent de voir les rapports sémantiques avec une clarté jusqu'ici inégalée.
Mais comment garder ces caractéristiques et en même temps tous les
aspects positifs des dictionnaires déjà élaborés au cours du siècle passé? Ici,
l'ordinateur, le lecteur optique, et le CD-ROM promettent une solution qui
combine la facilité et la rapidité (en tout cas, par rapport au temps et au travail
nécessaires pour élaborer les dictionnaires étymologiques et historiques
mentionnés ci-dessus). On finirait par exemple avec un article tel que:
PATENOSTRE
1480 Caxton Wautier lo paternostrier
Vend a le dedicasse
Paternosters de cristal,
Par dousaines en gros
Dambre, de voire, et de cornes.
Walter the paternoster maker

Solde at the dedicacion
Bedes of cristall,
By doseyns in grete,
Of Ambre, of glas, and of homes.
1530 Palsgrave [paternostre] bede of stone or wode

[paternostre] a payre of beedes
1573 Baret A payre of Baríes
1580 De Sainliens beades, the lordes prayer
1585 Junius Beades to praye upon, called in poperie the rosarie or
pater noster
Et, dans le sens inverse des séries d'équivalents tels que:

slapsawce: lecheplat,friand,friole,frigalet,lecheur de plat, gourmand
greedigut: glouton, bauffrer, gourmand, glout, goulu, grand mascheur ou mangeur.
suckspigget: yvrogne, subiect au vin, grand buveur, bon biberon
C'est une sorte de dictionnaire analogique des années 1580.

Comment produire un tel dictionnaire? Aujourd'hui nous avons les moyens
technologiques pour le faire. D'abord il faut informatiser le contenu des
dictionnaires bilingues, ce qui peut aller assez vite avec un lecteur optique.
Ensuite il faut passer ces dictionnaires par un programme de concordance,
pour alphabétiser les articles, et pour trouver les emplois des mots cachés dans
des expressions à l'intérieur des articles. Ensuite il faut marquer par la date de
composition tous les articles qu'on va garder dans le dictionnaire final pour
faciliter le triage chronologique après qu'on aura rassemblé plusieurs
dictionnaires. Après avoir réuni l'ensemble des dictionnaires bilingues, et
après avoir organisé les articles, il faut trouver des moyens d'accès plus
souples que le dictionnaire imprimé. Je suggère l'emploi des disques ROM, ce
qui nous permettrait de réorganiser le contenu selon notre volonté. Si nous
voulions imprimer tous les mots se terminant en -eresse entre 1560 et 1585, on
n'aurait qu'à le demander à l'ordinateur. Le résultat sera un dictionnaire qui
nous montre quels mots étaient assez importants à une date très précise pour
être inclus dans un dictionnaire; quels étaient les rapports entre un mot et
d'autres à une époque précise; quelles étaient toutes les formes d'un mot à
l'époque visée. Nous avons la technologie et les textes pour le faire; c'est à
nous de le réaliser.
RÉFÉRENCES
A. Sources primaires, présentées en ordre chronologique
Estienne, Robert & Jean.Veron. 1552. Dictionariolum puerorum tribus linguis
latina anglica & gallica conscriptum. London: Wolf.
[de Sainliens, Claude?]. 1570/71. Dictionarie French and English. London: H.
Bynneman for L. Harrison.
Higgins, John. 1572. Huloet's Dictionary, corrected and amended [...].
London: Thomas Marshe.
Baret, John. 1573/74. Alvearie or Triple Dictionary in Englishe, Latin and
French. London: Henry Denham.
de Sainliens, Claude. 1580. A Treasurie of the French Tong. London: Bynne-

man.
Baret, John, 1580. Alvearie or quadruple dictionary, containing foure sundrie
tongues. London: Henry Denham.
Higgins, John / Hadrianus Junius. 1585. The Nomenclator or Remembrancer
of Adrianus Junius...Written by the Said Adrianus Junius in Latine, Greek,
French and other forrein tongues, and now in English by John Higgins.
London: Newberie & Denham.
de Sainliens, Claude. 1593. A Dictionary French and English. London:
Thomas Woodcock.
B. Sources modernes, présentées en ordre alphabétique
Gamillscheg, Ernst. 1966-69. Etymologisches Wõrterbuch der französischen
Sprache. Heidelberg: C. Winter.
Godefroy, Frédéric Eugène. 1881-1902. Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue
française. Paris: F. Vieweg.
Huguet, Edmond. 1925-67. Dictionnaire de la langue française du seizième
siècle. Paris: H. Champion.
Imbs, Paul. 1971- . Trésor de la langue française: Dictionnaire de la langue du
XIXe et du XXe siècles. Paris: Editions du CNRS.
Tobler, Adolf & Erhard Lommatzsch. 1925- . Alfranzôsisches Wõrterbuch.
Berlin: Weidmann.
Wartburg, Walther von. 1928- . Französisches etymologisches Wõrterbuch.
Bonn: Klopp.
SHALL OR WILL ?
CHOICE OF THE VARIANT FORM IN EARLY MODERN
ENGLISH, BRITISH AND AMERICAN
MERJA KYTÖ
University of Helsinki
1. Introduction.
The well-known rivalry between shall and will offers an attractive topic
to a student of diachrony working with the variational approach and within the
framework of sociohistorical linguistics. In this paper I shall look into a
number of linguistic and extra-linguistic factors that influenced the use of shall
and will during the 16th and 17th centuries, a period of drastic change in the
development of the two verbs. Before presenting my main findings, which
will be based on a study of 1935 attested instances (in declarative sentences), I
shall briefly discuss my corpus of texts and the criteria applied when
classifying the data.
2. Texts.
Data drawn from a variety of texts selected to represent different modes

and levels of spoken and written expression yield empirical evidence which
gives us grounds to make claims about the factors accounting for variation in
the choice of the form and for the changes that take place in the structure of the
variant fields in the course of time (Romaine 1982; Kytö & Rissanen
1983:470-475; Rissanen 1986). A meaningfully balanced and structured
corpus of texts, no matter how deficient because of the scarcity of certain types
of texts, will be of great help when the extra-linguistic factors influencing the
development are being investigated. The data sampled for this study derive
from the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts: Diachronic and Dialectal, a two-
million-word computer corpus being compiled at present under the supervision
of Professor Matti Rissanen in the Department of English of the University of
Helsinki (Ihalainen, Kytö & Rissanen 1987: 21-25).
The British English material selected for the purposes of this study from
among the good half a million words of Early Modem British English included
276 MERJA KYTÕ
in the Helsinki Corpus forms a sub-corpus of, all in all, nearly 250,000
words. 1 Texts in the sub-corpus, in order to offer a solid basis for
comparisons through the different stages of English, represent text types
(history writing, travel narratives,fiction,correspondence and sermons) which
offer material from successive periods of time or are of interest in that
counterparts can be found in the early American English part of the Corpus
(diary writing, trials). The extra-linguistic factors taken into consideration in
this study are date, text type, relationship to spoken language and style (with
reference to the formal/informal axis). The British English texts consulted are
listed in the Appendix.2
The American English texts, 150,000 words in total sampled from the
writings left by the early New England colonists, form a supplement to the
Helsinki Corpus. The selection, while faithful to the special characteristics
relevant to the study of arisingregional variety, remains reduced in quantity
and restricted in diversity, as only certain types of text remain from the harsh
conditions of settlement (Kytõ & Rissanen 1983:476-485). Distinguishing
between text types and time divisions will help us organize the data for
statistical purposes. There is, again owing to the history of settlement, a
discrepancy between the sub-periods distinguished for the British and
American varieties. The two centuries of British English are divided into three
periods covering a span of 70 years each (henceforth referred to as BrA, BrB
and BrC periods). Thefinaltwo periods run, by and large, parallel to the two
50-year periods in the New England texts (AmB and AmC periods). The date
of the first permanent settlement in the Plymouth Colony marks the starting
point of the period. The 1670s, on the other hand, are taken to set the early
settler generation apart fromlaterAmerican-born generations. Juxtaposing the
different periods for comparison is justified in that the language of the first
settler generation clearly reflected that of the Jacobines rather than that of their
successors. The time gap must, of course, be kept in mind when looking into
1
The Early Modern British English texts included in the Helsinki Corpus have been
selected mainly by Miss Terttu Nevalainen and Mrs. Helena Raumolin-Brunberg; the
selection of early American English texts is, by and large, based on Kytõ & Rissanen (1983).
2
Detailed bibliographical information on the sources will be included in a manual which
will accompany the Helsinki Corpus. The words given in the Appendix were counted with
the Word Count (WC) program (Holder 1982:30); the examples were obtained, partly, with
the Linus mainframe package compiled by Dr. Kimmo Koskenniemi at the University of
Helsinki and, partly, with the WordCruncher program devised for microcomputer use
(WordCruncher 1987). I am grateful to Mr. Visa Rauste, Mr. Hannu Hartikka and Mr. Olli-
Matti Penttinen for kindly advising me how to work with the programs and how to operate
the machines.
SHALL OR WILL ? 277
the figures obtained. The New England texts studied are listed in the
Appendix.
3. Method.
Shall and will originally had independent meanings, shall referring to

'Obligation' and will to 'Volition'.3 They appeared as full verbs and could
be used as auxiliaries to denote a more or less obligationally or volitionally
colored or utterly "pure" or non-colored notion of futurity. Shall appeared
earlier than will as an auxiliary of the future (Molloy 1897:64) and was the
future auxiliary when will was still mainly being used as a full verb
expressing volitional overtones. Both shall and will could appear in all
persons. In the late Middle English period will developed into a real auxiliary
of the future, and for a time shall and will existed side by side freely in all
persons as markers of the future.
A great change took place in the course of the 17th century. In declarative
sentences will displaced shall in the cases of "pure" future in the second and
third person, and shall, conversely, ousted will from the first person in cases
of future reference. The well-known exceptions to this rule were Scottish,
Irish and other extra-British varieties, in which will became the form preferred
in all persons. In American English this tendency has been attributed to Irish
and Scottish immigrants who flooded into the country in the 19th century
(Moody 1974:70 and passim ). In 1653 John Wallis was the first to state clear
rules in his Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae, and his words were widely
acclaimed by subsequent grammarians until the further elaborations of Dr.
Johnson in 1755:
Q. What is the difference between the Auxiliaries, shall, and will?
A. Shall, in the first Persons barely foretells, in the second and third Persons it
promises or threatens. Will in the first Persons promises or threatens, in the
second and third persons it barely foretells. (A. Lane, A Key to the Art of Letters,
London, 1700, p. 45, cited by Tieken-Boon van Ostade 1985:126).
Working with historical data requires particular alertness when assigning

meanings to previously semantically independent, but now more or less
grammaticalized items. Encouraged by my previous work on the early
development of can, may, could and might (Kytö 1987), I shall largely
follow the guidelines presented by Coates (1983). Modais will be regarded as
3
Owing to the limits set to this paper, discussion of the previous scholarship on shall
and will will be kept to a minimum. For a helpful introduction to both diachronic and
synchronic studies on the topic, see Wekker (1976:23-26, 31-33); see, also, Weida (1975).
278 MERJA KYTÖ
of inherently fuzzy and polysemic nature. The pigeon-holing of examples,

necessary for statistical purposes, will be based on context-sensitive and
pragmatically motivated readings. Blanket terms 'Epistemic', 'Root' and
'Indeterminate' (between 'Epistemic' and 'Root') will be used when
classifying the data according to the basic modal notions. Examples with
'Root' shall will be, further, defined as cases of 'Obligation' or 'Intention'.
With cases of 'Root' will I found it increasingly difficult to distinguish, right
away and reliably, between 'Willingness' (taken as a state of mind of the
subject), 'Intention' (taken as a single dynamic event in future) and
'Indeterminate' cases, which allow both readings. I will resort to the more
flexible blanket term 'Volition', which at this stage of analysis is taken to cover
a gamut of finer shades of meaning. Examples (1), (2) and (3) are given to
illustrate the main categories distinguished.
(1) 'Epistemic'
I hope you will honer poor salem and vs with your presence when our
howes is but habitable, for handsom it will not be this year (AmB/Private
Letters)
(2) 'Volition' ('Willingness')
I have muche difficultye to keepe John Galloppe heere by reason his wife
will not come. I mervayle at the womans weaknesse, that she will live
miserably with her children there, when she might live comfortably heere
with her husband. (AmB/Official Letters)
(3) 'Indeterminate' ('Volition'/ 'Epistemic')
L. C. J. Did you lie with them?
Dunne. No, my Lord, I did not.
L. C. J. Well, I see thou wilt answer nothing ingenuously, therefore I
will trouble my self no more with thee: Go on with your Evidence,
Gentlemen. (BrC/Trials)
4. Data.
4.1. Overall view. The distribution of the instances attested in the

three main categories distinguished is given in Table 1.
The figures show that shall and will appear in 'Epistemic' use in the
majority of cases (the number of 'Indeterminate' cases is very small and
further discussion of the category will be omitted). The distributions of the
forms in diachrony will be looked into after distinguishing, further, between
cases of 'Obligation' and 'Intention' with shall and sorting out the data
SHALL OR WILL ? 279
Epistemic Root Indeter Total

minate
shall BrE 320 155 2 477

% 67.1 32.5 0.4 100.0
AmE 186 71 4 261

% 71.3 27.2 JL5 100.0
Total 506 226 6 738

will BrE 475 206 27 708
% 67.1 29.1 3.8 100.0
AmE 393 87 9 489

% 80.4 17.8 1.8 100.0
Total 868 293 36 1197
Table 1. 'Epistemic', 'Root' and 'Indeterminate'

shall vs. will in declarative sentences.
according to the first, second and third person uses. The categories where the
two forms meet can be seen in Table 2.
Epistemic Root
Prediction Volition Obligation
Person I II III I II III I II III
shall + + + + - - + + +
will + + + + + + — __ —
Table 2. Shall vs. will and modal sub-categories.
Shall expectedly, is used to express 'Volition' (in cases of 'Intention')

with first person subjects only. Shall, contrary to modern usage, appears in
epistemic meaning with both second and third person subjects. Cases of
'Obligation' (with shall only) and cases of 'Volition' with second and third
person subjects (with will only) can thus be omitted from the discussion on
variation in the Early Modern English use of the forms.
280 MERJA KYTÕ
4.2. Epistemic meaning. The overall figures obtained for

'Epistemic' uses (see Table 3) show that will gains ground steadily from the
1500s on. The corresponding figures obtained for British and American
varieties do not differ much, which would indicate that the material sampled
gives grounds for further comparisons.
shall will Total

Epistemic
BrA 1500-1570 135 (58.2%) 97(41.8%) 232
BrB 1570-1640 116(38.8%) 183 (61.2%) 299
BrC 1640-1710 69(26.1%) 195 (73.9%) 264
Total 320 (40.3%) 475 (59.7%) 795
AmB 1620-1670 110(41.0%) 158 (59.0%) 268
AmC 1670-1720 76 (24.4%) 235 (75.6%) 311
Total 186(32.1%) 393 (67.9%) 579
Table 3. 'Epistemic' shall vs. will.
It should be pointed out that the eight cases with contracted forms such as
those given in example (4) are, to be on the safe side, excluded from these
figures.4
(4) I this Deponent saw the Deputy comming up the Streete towards M r
Usher's, vpon which I saide looke yonder comes the Deputy hee'le
end the buisness presently, come quoth M r Saffine to M r Hodges goe with
mee to the Deputy & wee'le aske him whether it bee soe or noe
(AmCXDepositions)
The breakdown figures obtained for the first, second and third person
uses point to the BrB period from 1570 to 1640 as the onset period for the
influx of willy most clearly shown with the third person subject. The
corresponding figures obtained for American English go along with this
tendency, and will becomes firmly established in both second and third person
uses from the 1640s on (see Table 4).
4
Contractions 11 and 'd are generally held to derive from will and would rather than
from shall and should (e.g., Quirk et al 1985:228), but doubts have been raised on the
status of these forms on the basis of Modern English usage (cf. I'd like to/I should/would
like tn).
SHALL OR WILL ? 281
shall will Total
Epistemic - First Person
BrA 1500-1570 27 (58.7%) 19(41.3%) 46

BrB 1570-1640 21 (52.5%) 19 (47.5%) 40
BrC 1640-1710 42 (80.8%) 10(19.2%) 52
AmB 1620-1670 31 (77.5%) 9 (22.5%) 40

AmC 1670-1720 35 (85.4%) 6 (14.6%) 41
Epistemic - Second Person
BrA 1500-1570 24(61.5%) 15 (38.5%) 39

BrB 1570-1640 27 (57.4%) 20 (42.6%) 47
BrC 1640-1710 3 (15.8%) 16 (84.2%) 19
AmB 1620-1670 17 (63.0%) 10 (37.0%) 27

AmC 1670-1720 11(20.0%) 44 (80.0%) 55
Epistemic - Third Person
BrA 1500-1570 84(57.1%) 63(42.9%) 147

BrB 1570-1640 68(32.1%) 144(67.9%) 212
BrC 1640-1710 24 (12.4%) 169 (87.6%) 193
AmB 1620-1670 62 (30.8%) 139 (69.2%) 201

AmC 1670-1720 30(14.0%) 185(86.0%) 215
BrA 1500-1570 84(57.1%) 63(42.9%) 147
BrB 1570-1640 68(32.1%) 144(67.9%) 212
BrC 1640-1710 24(12.4%) 169(87.6%) 193
AmB 1620-1670 62 (30.8%) 139 (69.2%) 201
AmC 1670-1720 30 (14.0%) 185 (86.0%) 215
Table 4 . 'Epistemic' shall vs. will in the first,
second and third person .
This makes sense as volitional overtones understandably remain less
accentuated when stated about the more distant third person than when the first
or second person is the source of the modal color (volitional second person
uses can, in fact, be expected with any frequency only in interrogative
sentences). 'Epistemic' first person shall starts gaining ground later on
from the 1640s on. Again, I/we will is more aptly felt to refer to the subject's
will than would be the case with the more remote third person. In Early
American English, I/we shall, on the contrary, was already established when
the first generation of permanent settlers arrived in the New England colonies.
One must, again, keep in mind that the first period of American English
reflects later usage in that it includes a span of 30 years from the BrC period.
282 MERJA KYTÕ
Also, for the sake of the prestige held by the mother country, immigrants were
probably keener to stick to what was increasingly considered as correct usage.
In early American English the figures for the second and third persons hold
close to those obtained with British English texts. The use of will is by no
means excluded from the first person and both forms may occur in related
contexts, as in example (5):
(5) Ka. Where shall we lye the next night.

Jo . In our own house that will be the best, and therefore we must
furnish it before, and lay in some Ale, that we may be able to invite all the
wedding people to drink with us, and then we shall have good handsel
indeed, and we will also have a good Gammon of Bacon, and that will
make the drink go down merrily. (BrC/Fiction)
The breakdown figures obtained for the first and second person subject
with different text types and sub-periods remain too scattered to draw
conclusions. With the third person instances attested in private and official
letters it is possible to see that colloquial registers favor the rise of will: while
shall was still the form preferred in formal style (official letters) in the BrA
period, will was already used in half the instances attested in more informal
contexts (private letters; see Table 5).
British English fiction offers further evidence pointing to colloquial
registers as an environment favoring the use of will (with the exception of
odd instances, most examples are cases of 'imagined speech' (as in example
(5), above) with colloquial everyday language put into the mouth of a speaker,
see Table 6).
4 . 3 . Root meaning. As mentioned above, the study of variation

between the two forms used to express 'Root' meaning is restricted to the first
person uses referring to 'Volition'('Intention' or 'Willingness'). The rise of
Root' will in the BrB period is dramatic, followed by a drop in the BrC period
(see Table 7).
The eleven cases of contracted forms, if taken to represent will, would
further accentuate the figures. Shall never disappears this dramatically from
the corresponding AmB period texts. The BrB period seems to represent a
kind of upheaval stage, followed by a pendulum swing to the opposite
direction. In American English, besides the discrepancy between the sub-
periods, it could be suggested that the distinction between 'Epistemic' and
SHALL OR WILL ? 28 3
shall will Total

Epistemic - Third Person - Private Letters
BrA 1500-1570 18 (47.4%) 20 (52.6%) 38
AmA
BrB 1570-1640 18 (26.9%) 49(73.1%) 67
AmB 1620-1670 8 (15.7%) 43 (84.3%) 51
BrC 1640-1710 7 (12.3%) 50 (87.7%) 57
AmC 1670-1720 5 (7.2%) 64 (92.8%) 69
BrE Total 43 (26.5%) 119(73.5%) 162
AmE Total 13(10.8%) 107 (89.2%) 120
Epistemic - Third Person - Official Letters
BrA 1500-1570 18 (81.8%) 4(18.2%) 22
AmA
BrB 1570-1640 10 (43.5%) 13 (56.5%) 23
AmB 1620-1670 7(31.8%) 15 (68.2%) 22
BrC 1640-1710 5 (15.6%) 27 (84.4%) 32
AmC 1670-1720 16 (20.3%) 63 (79.7%) 79
BrE Total 33 (42.9%) 44(57.1%) 77
AmE Total 23 (22.8%) 78 (77.2%) 101
Table 5. The third person 'Epistemic' shall vs. will in correspondence.
shall will Total

Epistemic - Third Person - Fiction
BrA 1500-1570 11(42.3%) 15 (57.7%) 26
BrB 1570-1640 2 (8.0%) 23 (92.0%) 25
BrC 1640-1710 2 (5.3%) 36 (94.7%) 38
Total 15 (16.9%) 74(83.1%) 89
Table 6. The third person 'Epistemic' shall vs. will in fiction.
284 MERJA KYTÕ
shall will Total

Root Volition (Intention/Willingness) - First Person
BrA 1500-1570 26(44.8%) 32(55.2%) 58
AmA -
BrB 1570-1640 1(1.4%) 73(98.6%) 74
AmB 1620-1670 11 (57.9%) 8 (42.1%) 19
BrC 1640-1710 18(29.5%) 43(70.5%) 61
AmC 1670-1720 35 (39.3%) 54 (60.7%) 89
BrE Total 45 (23.3%) 148 (76.7%) 193
AmE Total 46 (42.6%) 62 (57.4%) 108
Table 7. First person 'Root' shall vs. will.
'Root' meanings became neutralized when the speakers clung to shall, again,
according to what was thought to be good usage on the basis of 'Epistemic'
uses of I/we shall.
The breakdown figures obtained for speech-based and non-speech-based
texts show, further, that I/we will was already established in British English
from the 1500s on in speech-based contexts (trials, sermons) and in cases of
'imagined speech' (most cases, again, from fiction), while shall was the form
used in non-speech-based texts (see Table 8). While both forms can still be
attested in parallel contexts, as in examples (6a) and (6b), will is the form
used in spoken language in the vast majority of cases, see example (7):
(6) a. I shall now say no more then b. I will say noe more the lorde
that no man can have a more dericke you for the best {idem )
real heart toward any then hath
to Thee and Thine
BrC/Private Letters)
(7) one may the 24 mary waren being in afeet and grevosly aflectted then was
in atranc for sum tim we hard her say who ar ye what is your name and
agin she said what toth aker Doktr toothekers wiffe wee often herd her say
I wont i wonte i will not touch that book
(AmC/Depositions)
SHALL OR WILL ? 285
shall will Total

Volition - Speech-Based Imagined Speech - First Person
BrA 1500-1570 11 (28.2%) 28 (71.8%) 39
BrB 1570-1640 - 49(100.0%) 49
BrC 1640-1710 8(21.6%) 29(78.4%) 37
Total 19(15.2%) 106(84.8%) 125
AmB 1620-1670 4 (44.4%) 5 (55.6%) 9
AmC 1670-1720 4(13.8%) 25(86.2%) 29
Total 8(21.1%) 30(78.9%) 38
Volition - Non-Speech-Based - First Person
BrA 1500-1570 15(78.9%) 4(21.1%) 19
BrB 1570-1640 1(4.0%) 24(96.0%) 25
BrC 1640-1710 10(41.7%) 14(58.3%) 24
Total 26(38.2%) 42(61.8%) 68
AmB 1620-1670 7 (70.0%) 3 (30.0%) 10
AmC 1670-1720 31(51.7%) 29(48.3%) 60
Total 38(54.3%) 32(45.7%) 70
Table 8. First person shall vs. will of 'Volition'
in speech-based and non-speech-based texts.
5. Final remarks.
In this study evidence was found pointing to the rise of will in both
'Epistemic' and 'Root' ('Volition') uses in the British and American varieties
of Early Modern English. The grammatical person of the subject was seen to
influence the structure of the variant fields. Similarly, among the extra-
linguistic factors studied, text type, relationship to spoken language and level
of formality of the text could be seen to influence the process of change.
Further studies of the corpus material and a closer look at other linguistic
factors thought to build up co-occurrence patterns with 'Epistemic' or 'Root'
uses (questions, if-clauses, passive vs. active voice, progressive form,
perfective form, stative vs. agentive main verb, etc.) should reveal further
aspects of the motivation behind the rise of will and the mechanisms of
linguistic change in progress.
286 MERJA KYTÖ
REFERENCES
Coates, Jennifer. 1983. The Semantics of the Modal Auxiliaries London &
Canberra: Croom Helm.
Holder, Wayne. 1982. The WORD Plus, Version 1.2 Manual. San Diego:
Oasis Systems.
Ihalainen, Ossi, Merja Kytõ & Matti Rissanen. 1987. "The Helsinki Corpus
of English Texts: Diachronic and Dialectal. Report on work in
progress". Corpus Linguistics and Beyond ed. by Willem Meijs, 21-32.
Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Kytö, Merja. 1987. "Can (could) vs. may (might) in Old and Middle
English. Testing a diachronic corpus". Neophilologica Fennica ed. by
Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, 205-240. (= Mémoires de la Société Néo-
philologique de Helsinki, 45.) Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.
Kytõ, Merja & Matti Rissanen. 1983. "The syntactic study of early American
English: the variationist at the mercy of his corpus?" Neuphilologische
Mitteilungen 84.470-490.
Molloy, Gerald. 1897. The Irish Difficulty, Shall and Will. London,
Glasgow & Dublin: Blackie & Son.
Moody, Patricia A. 1974. "Shall and will: the grammatical tradition and
dialectology". American Speech 49.67-78.
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech & Jan Svartvik. 1985.
A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London & New
York: Longman.
Rissanen, Matti. 1986. "Variation and the study of English historical syntax".
Diversity and Diachrony ed. by David Sankoff, 97-109. Amsterdam &
Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Romaine, Suzanne. 1982. Socio-Historical Linguistics; Its Status and
Methodology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. 1985. "I Will Be Drowned and No Man
Shall Save Me: the conventional rules for shall and will in eighteenth-
century English grammars". English Studies 66.123-142.
Weida, Gudrun. 1975. DerGebraucb von Shall/Should und Will/Would in
Englischer Prosa am Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts. Augsburg: Blasaditsch
GmbH.
Wekker, H. Chr. 1976. The Expression of Future Time in Contemporary
British English. Amsterdam, New York & Oxford: North-Holland.
WordCruncher. Text Indexing & Retrieval Software. 1987. Provo: Brigham
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SHALL OR WILL ? 287
APPENDIX
The BritishEnglishTexts studied:
Text type Period Author/Text Words

History BrA Sir Thomas More; Robert Fabyan 14,000
BrB John Stow; Sir John Hayward 10,100
BrC Guilbert Burnet; John Milton 11,700
Subtotal - 35,800
Travel BrA John Leland; Richard Torkington 14,300
BrB John Taylor, Robert Coverte 14,900
BrC Celia Fiennes; John Fryer 10,500
Subtotal - 39,700
Fiction BrA The 100 Merry Tales; Thomas Harman 11,700
BrB Robert Armin; Thomas Deloney 12,500
BrC Penny Merriments; Mrs. Behn 8,700
Subtotal - 32,900
Diaries BrA Henry Machyn; King Edward the Sixth 10,500
BrB Lady Margaret Hoby; Richard Madox 12,400
BrC Samuel Pepys; John Evelyn 10,600
Subtotal - 33,500
Private BrA Various writers 6,000
Letters BrB idem 6,000
BrC idem 6,000
Subtotal - 18,000
Official BrA Various writers 3,000
Letters BrB idem 3,000
BrC idem 3,000
Subtotal - 9,000
Subtotal - Non-speech-based 168,900
Sermons BrA John Fisher; Hugh Latimer 9,900
BrB Richard Hooker; Henry Smith 10,400
BrC John Tillotson; Jeremy Taylor 12,800
Subtotal-33,100
Trials BrA Sir Edward Throckmorton 12,500
BrB Earl of Essex; Sir Walter Raleigh 14,800
BrC Titus Oates; Lady Alice Lisle 13,800
Subtotal-41,100
Subtotal - Speech-based 74,200
Total - Non-speech-based & speech-based 243.100
NB: BrA = 1500-1570 BrB = 1570-1640 BrC = 1640-1710
288 MERJA KYT6
The Arnerican English Texts studied:
Text~ Period Authorrrext Words

History ArnB William Bradford 6,000
Travel ArnC Sarah Kemble Knight 6,000
Diaries ArnC Samuel Sewall 6,000
Apology ArnB Robert Keayne 6,000
Narrative Arne Mary Rowlandson; Increase Mather;
Cotton Mather 18,000
Essays ArnC Cotton Mather 6,000
Appeals & ArnC Various writers
Answers (educated and uneducated) 12,000
Private ArnB Various writers 10,400
Letters ArnC idem 10,800
Subtotal - 21,200
Official ArnB Various writers 6,100
Letters ArnC idem 13,600
Subtotal- 19,700
Subtotal - Non-soeech-based 100,900
Sermons ArnB John Cotton 10,000
Depositions ArnB Witchcraft Annals 6,200
ArnC Suffolk County Court; Salem Trials 18,000
Subtotal - 24,200
Meeting ArnB Boston First Church Meetings 5,000
Records ArnC Salem Trials 10,000
Subtotal - 15,000
Subtotal - S~h-based 49,200
Total - Non-sQ!:!ech-based & sQeeeh-based 150,100
NB: AmB = 1620-1670 ArnC = 1670-1720
LE DÉVELOPPEMENT DE CE QUE EN FRANÇAIS
ET L'ÉVOLUTION DU RELATIF-
INTERROGATIF-EXCLAMATIF
JEAN-MARCEL LÉARD
Université de Sherbrooke
1. Généralités: l'explication en diachronie.
1.1 Il existe bien des choses que l'on peut attribuer au hasard, dont on dit
qu'il les fait bien: nous sommes deux à parler de ce que dans ce congrès; nous
ne parlons pas tout à fait du même ce que et on vous a gardé le meilleur vin
pour la fin. J'espère que le mien n'en paraîtra pas trop plat Mais il faut aussi
savoir s'arrêter, et au bon endroit, pour tirer une ligne de partage entre ce qui
est aléatoire et ce qui a une cause: nous parlons dans la même salle et
successivement. Un hasard pas trop complice nous aurait mis à parler dans
des salles différentes, peut-être en même temps. Trop complice, il nous aurait
fait parler dans la même salle et en même temps ... Ce que vous auriez ri!
1.2 Tout cela pour dire qu'il est bon de chercher une explication à l'ordon
nance de certains faits, en particulier en linguistique historique, mais qu'il faut
aussi savoir se limiter. Ce n'est pas nécessairement notre fort, et nous voulons
tout expliquer. Je fais sans doute partie des naïfs, puisque je voudrais expli
quer le développement d'une forme aussi bizarre et polyvalente que ce que par
un principe unique. Dans le domaine de la morpho-syntaxe, le recours à une
cau-salité physique est exclu (heureux les phonéticiens!) et les causes sociolo
giques ou externes peu convaincantes: elles peuvent surtout expliquer l'exten
sion. J'aurai donc une explication inhérente au système, ou interne, et je vais
jouer ma naïveté jusqu'au bout: je fais comme si la cause était unique et
comme si le relevé ou le classement des données était effectué. Si je n'adoptais
pas ces principes, vous penseriez que je vais chercher mes idées chez les autres
(Wunderli 1987; Price 1986). En réalité, ils ont profondément raison et je
propose mon hypothèse avec l'espoir qu'elle peut en susciter d'autres,
290 JEAN-MARCEL LÉARD
concurrentes, et qu'elle fournira les nécessaires principes de classification, en

même temps qu'une justification aux relevés: seuls les emplois relatifs ont été
abondamment étudiés.
1.3 Par rapport à une étude récente publiée sur ce que (Léard 1986), cette
communication va tenter de résoudre quelques problèmes historiques et
théoriques. En rédigeant ma première étude, j'avais le sentiment d'un
développement continu de ce que, dont je voyais partout l'expansion au
détriment de que, quoi, comme, combien. Or, il est probable que l'évolution
n'a pas été aussi ordonnée: il y a d'abord eu une période d'extension de ce que
dans les emplois relatifs, interrogatifs et quantitatifs. Cela a coïncidé avec une
stabilité dans le système de la subordination complétive et circonstancielle.
Cette extension maximale dans le système s'est réduite au XVe siècle, et ce que
devient plus local. L'évolution n'est donc pas en droite ligne. Me voilà à nou
veau dans les plates-bandes de quelqu'un (Walter 1987). D'un autre côté, la
coupure entre les emplois quantitatifs et les emplois relatifs de que/ce que,
formes de QUOI et COMBIEN me semble moins nette, ce qui pose des problèmes
d'ordre synchronique et diachronique.
2.0 Les emplois de ce que.
2.1 L'ancien français.

Décrivons simplement et clairement la situation de l'ancien français et
du moyen français. Le système du relatif-interrogatif est constitué de formes
simples jusqu'à la fin du XIIe siècle: pas de ce que, de qu'est-ce que, de qui
que, de lequel que, de qui c'est que. Au contraire, l'emploi de ce que à la place
de que dans les subordonnées complétives sujet ou objet (1), dans les
complétives indirectes (2), dans les subordonnées circonstancielles (3), est
fréquent Cette situation dure jusqu'au début du XVe siècle sans repli notable.
(la) Ço sent Rollant que la mort le tresprent (Roland, 2355)

(1b) Ge li dis ce qu'il s'en alast (Béroul, 435)
(lc) Et ce que trouver ne puis mire [...]
C'est ce dont je plus me merveil (Mir. de N.D., IV, 127, No 25,78)
(2) Si ay grant pitié de ce qu'il convient que je t'ocie (Bérinus, 297)
(3) Après ce que mestres Gautiers Map ot mis en escrit... (La mort le roi
Artu, 1, 1)
LE DÉVELOPPEMENT DE CE QUE EN FRANÇAIS 291
On pourrait même parler de gain, puisque dans les comparatives (4a, 4b) que
ce que apparaît au XIVe siècle. Brunot (1966 I, 478) donne deux exemples,
que nous nous garderons bien comme lui d'assimiler: le premier a disparu
avec les emplois complétifs de ce que, le second au contraire me semble
maintenu dans des emplois quantitatifs, sur lesquels nous reviendrons.
(4a) Il n'estoit rien au monde dont le Roy eust plus grand paour que ce qu'i
uy eschappast quelque mot (Commynes 1, 322, M.)"que le fait que"
(4b) J'ay plus chier, a brief parler
Pourrir en ceste maladie
Et mourir que ce que je die (Mir. de N.D IV, 306, No 27, 1907)
"que je ne le dis"
2.2 L'évolution.
Ces exemples ne sont donnés qu'à titre indicatif, mais ils couvrent bien
l'entier des emplois de ce que en ancien français dans la subordination non
relative et non interrogative. Il est frappant de noter que l'extension de ce que
est moindre en français moderne. Au XVe siècle, puis au XVIe, apparaît un
repli, noté en touches discrètes par les grammaires: d'abord pour les com
plétives du type ce dist il que (Martin &Wilmet 1980:224-225), puis pour les
circonstancielles, car dès ce que disparaît au XVIe siècle (Gougenheim
1951:175) et enfin pour avec ce que et sans ce que au XVIIe siècle (Haase
1969:377).
L'explication de ce déclin, s'il y en a une, n'est pas vraiment mon
projet. Ce n'est sûrement pas un refus de la combinaison ce + que. Dès le
XIIIe siècle, elle est en nette expansion dans l'autre partie du système de la
subordination. On la trouve dans trois types de relatives (5): relatives indéfinies
marquant l'identité qualitative ou quantitative, relatives sans antécédent,
relatives à antécédent phrastique; dans les interrogatives indirectes (6), et
accessoirement dans les comparatives de quantité (7). Ces emplois se sont
maintenus, à l'exception de (7), dont nous donnons un exemple daté.
(5a) Je mange ce que tu manges

(5b) Je mange ce que tu m'as donné
(5c) Il a plu, ce que les gens attendaient depuis longtemps
(6) Je demande ce que tu fais
(7) J'estime que nos ames sont desnouées à vingt ans, ce qu'elles
doivent estre (Montaigne, apud Huguet II,138)
292 JEAN-MARCEL LEARD
"autant que"
Par ailleurs, les combinaisons vont parfois se maintenir hors des circon
stancielles avec des valeurs différentes, relatives et/ou quantitatives: sans ce
que, avec ce que, par ce que. C'est donc le déplacement des valeurs de ce qu'il
convient d'expliquer.
2.3 Le statut de ce.

Ce étant souvent facultatif en ancien français, il n'a pas le statut
grammatical qu'il a de nos jours. D'un autre côté, c'est, jusqu'au XVe siècle,
un élément qui a un statut lexical, soit déictique (anaphorique ou cataphorique:
"ceci à savoir que"), soit comme substitut d'un nom ("chose que, le fait que").
Ce sont les valeurs appelées aphoriques par Wunderli (1978:221, 238), où ce
est encore perçu comme un élément nominal ou une proforme nominale. Les
paraphrases proposées ici sont lourdes, mais rarement impossibles en ancien
français, et souvent encore existantes en français moderne. La perte du statut
prédicatif ou autonome de ce va changer les données du problème: ni
déictique, ni représentant nominal, ni prédicatif, ce va se loger dans certaines
autres parties du système, conserver quelques anciennes positions, mais aussi
en perdre. Par l'examen de ces nouvelles combinaisons, nous allons pouvoir
avancer une hypothèse sur le statut morpho-syntaxique de ce, réduit à /s/ en
réalité, et obligatoire ou interdit, sauf dans des emplois exclamatifs où il peut
encore être faculatif {(Ce) que c'est beau!).
Une explication de l'indice morphologique /s/ a été proposée par
Guillaume (1978:164-167) et reprise par Wunderli (1978:237-238). J'adopte
sans peine la première formulation de Guillaume: ce comble l'incomplétude de
par, associé au nominalisateur de proposition que. Cette incomplétude est pour
moi syntaxique (3.1), et je refuse les glissements successifs de Guillaume: ce
apparaît avec par, car il introduit une cause réelle, mais non avec pour, qui
donne une cause prospective. Ce n'est déjà plus l'incomplétude de par, et
l'explication devrait valoir pour les autres circonstancielles (or on a vu que) et
pour les complétives indirectes (or on a à ce que, de ce que). Guillaume ne
parle pas de ces autres prépositions, mais applique son hypothèse du ce
déterminant nominal à des relatives de statut adjectival et à des exclamatives,
prenant pour acquis que le que y est nominalisateur. Qr cela est peu évident, et
il s'agit plutôt d'un quantificateur ((Ce) qu'elle est jolie!), comme le suggère
Guillaume lui-même plus loin (1978:214).
Même si de bons esprits acceptent l'hypothèse du ce déterminant

propositionnel, j'hésite à l'accepter pour deux autres raisons:
(a) L'hypothèse est trop forte en ce qu'elle ne peut expliquer l'absence
de ce dans tout le champ où elle s'applique, c'est-à-dire dans des subordonnées
circonstancielles, des complétives indirectes, des relatives. On trouve des
exemples, en (8) et en (9), de la distribution complémentaire à expliquer:
(8a) J'aimerai qui tu voudras que j'aime

"les gens que"
(8b) J'aimerai ce que tu voudras que j'aime
"les choses que"
(9a) Il a beaucoup plu, ce que les gens ont regretté
"chose que"
(9b) Il a beaucoup plu, d'où les gens ont conclu à une malédiction
"chose à partir de laquelle"
(9c) Il a beaucoup plu, ce dont les gens se sont plaints
"chose dont"
Il resterait de toute façon à expliquer en quoi une phrase relative, en principe

adjectivale, aurait besoin d'un déterminant. Ce, déterminant-article, devrait
avoir ce statut avec des complétives de statut substantival seulement,
introduites par que.
(b) L'hypothèse est trop faible en ce qu'elle néglige beaucoup d'em
plois: les emplois interrogatifs, les emplois comparatifs notés en (7), mais
aussi en (4b). Il faut aussi l'élargir pour qu'elle puisse s'appliquer aux
exclamatives, où ce que se développe au XIXe siècle, en particulier pour
concurrencer comme et aussi que. Or rien ne prouve la nouveauté totale du ce
que quantitatif, même s'il y a un hiatus au XVIIIe siècle. Ce que comparatif de
quantité est encore signalé chez Corneille (attestation dans le Grand Larousse
de la langue française) et les relatives indéfinies, que je sépare des relatives
définies sans antécédent, sont des relatives à valeur quantitative. Je n'ai
évidemment pas le temps d'argumenter,1 mais je crois que ce que et que ont
toujours appartenu, ainsi que comme, au système de la quantité, et j'en donne
1
L'influence des formes interrogatives sur les formes exclamatives n'est pas un facteur
négligeable, mais il ne peut être exagéré: les formes de l'exclamation directe {ce que c'est
beau!) peuvent-elles être influencées par celles de l'interrogation indirecte? C'est loin d'être un
évidence. Une fois ce que installé, il a pu, au 20e siècle, être remplacé par qu'est-ce que, sous
l'influence de l'interrogation cette fois.
trois séries d'exemples: comparatifs (10), prépositionnels (11), et relatifs à

valeur quantitative indéfinie (12). Les exemples (4b) et (7) attestent de
l'ancienneté de ces valeurs quantitatives, mais pour (11), je n'ai pas encore de
date à proposer.
(10a) Rouge que sang (apud Huguet VI, 272)

"comme"
(10b) Il gagne plus que ce qu'il dit
"la quantité que"
(10c) Il ne mérite pas plus que ce qu'il a eu
(11) Avec ce que tu manges
"la même quantité/la même qualité"
Vu ce que tu manges
Pour ce que ça rapporte (d'argent/comme argent)
"la quantité d'argent que"
(12a) J'irai où tu iras
"partout où"
(12b) Je ferai ce que tu feras
"les mêmes choses, la même quantité"
"comme, la même qualité"
(12c) Je répéterai ce que tu diras
(12d) Combien as-tu pris? — Ce que j'ai trouvé
3.0 Vers une explication.
3.1 Examinons d'abord ce que avec préposition dans les complétives et les
circonstancielles. C'est peut-être par l'examen du cas le plus banal que la
solution générale peut être entrevue: ce s'est maintenu dans la subordination
complétive et circonstancielle en suivant un critère fort mécanique: les
prépositions les moins prédicatives (sans emploi autonome possible) ont
conservé ce: il s'agit de par, en, de, à. Il y a une seule exception avec dès,
dont le statut prépositionnel est douteux (dès avant ton rétour). L'indice /s/ est
donc là pour régler un problème de prédicativité ou d'autonomie: l'importance
de l'alternance /±prédicatif/ en morphologie synchronique ou en diachronie
n'est plus à montrer, lefrançaisayant partout dédoublé le système latin.
3.2 Mais comment appliquer ce principe ailleurs, et montrer que c'est encore
un problème de prédicativité qui est en cause dans les autres emplois de ce quel
Rien évidemment ne saute aux yeux. C'est qu'il ne suffit pas toujours d'établir
deux groupes de monèmes en se basant sur les propriétés syntaxiques. Il faut
parfois considérer la prédicativité comme un investissement sémantique
particulier, la spécialisation syntaxique est associée à une spécialisation séman
tique de chaque paradigme. Si l'on examine les exemples (13), (14) et (15),
on voit vite que la syntaxe n'est pas seule en cause, mais qu'il y a une
spécialisation des formes. Dès qu'il y a interrogation, à distribution égale, la
forme prédicative est acceptable: les formes prédicatives se sont réservé les
emplois interrogatifs (nous les notons en majuscules).
(13a) Je pense à ce que tu penses

Je pense à ce que tu m'as dit
(13b) (Je te demande) à quoi tu penses (*ce que)
(14a) C'est fou ce qu'il y a du monde ici
(14b) Je sais combien il y a de monde (*ce que)
(14c) Combien as-tu dépensé? / Je sais combien tu as dépensé
(14d) J'ai dépensé ce que j'avais (*combien)
(15a) J'ai vu avec combien de tact tu l'as éconduit
(15b) Avec ce que tu as de tact, tu t'en tireras
comme
(15c) Que d'hommes sont morts pour rien!
(15d) *Que d'hommes sont morts pour rien? (—> combien)
Or il est facile de voir d'où résultent ces cas extrêmes en synchronie: toute
l'histoire du relatif-indéfini-quantitatif, qui met en cause QUOI et COMBIEN et
leur correspondant non prédicatif que est un resserrement des emplois des
formes prédicatives dans l'interrogation. Ce qui au départ (XIe siècle) n'était
régi que par des lois syntaxiques doit aussi obéir à des lois sémantiques sim
ples: interrogatif ou non. Je n'entre pas le détail, mais je donne pour mémoire
les éléments suivants:
— que a fortement reculé dans l'interrogation directe et indirecte (il est

replacé par ce que, qu'est-ce que). Non prédicatif, ses positions dans
le relatif ou l'exclamatif paraissent au contraire stables;
— dont, devenu non prédicatif, a perdu ses emplois interrogatifs;
— où interrogatif est stable et prédicatif. Comme relatif, il est fortement
concurrencé par que;
— quoi, prédicatif a perdu ses emplois relatifs, au profit de lequel. Or

lequel ne concurrence pas que, adéquat. Préposition ou pause
expliquent lequel;
— comme a perdu ses emplois interrogatifs, et ne concurrence pas
COMBIEN, COMMENT. Il est en concurrence avec que, ce que dans
l'exclamation.
Une fois acceptée la spécialisation sémantique des formes, il reste à en

prévoir les conséquences, c'est-à-dire le coût morphologique: deux lois devant
être appliquées, il peut y avoir convergence entre la valeur de la forme et la
distribution, ou divergence. Ainsi une forme interrogative en position post-
verbale ou post-prépositionnelle est acceptable sans difficulté: il y a
convergence en (16a) et (16b).
(16a) Tu fais QUOI

(16b) Je te demande à QUOI tu penses
Lorsqu'il n'y a pas convergence, ce apparaît pour donner à une forme non
prédicative un statut neutre sur le plan de la prédicativité, et il est donc accouplé
seulement aux formes non prédicatives. Cependant, il faut noter l'exception
constituée par qui, ambigu. Ce ôte à qui son statut prédicatif, et partant, sa
valeur animée.
3.3 Les contraintes syntaxiques.

Il y a trois raisons distributionnelles pour justifier l'apparition d'une
forme non attendue, et je hiérarchise:
— la présence de la prépostion qui exclut la forme non prédicative que;

— la position préverbale ou postverbale;
— la pause, au début d'une proposition ouverte par un relatif.
Appliquons ces règles de spécialisation sémantique et ces règles

syntaxiques, pour vérifier si leur rencontre valide nos hypothèses.
(a) Après préposition en (17a) et (17b), on trouve dans l'interrogation
la forme prédicative attendue (QUOI ou COMBIEN). Avec la relative sans
antécédent, ou l'indéfinie, on trouve que, renforcé par ce en (18a) et (18b).
Même situation dans l'exclamation en (18c) et (18d), où ce accompagne que
derrière préposition.
(17a) A quoi penses-tu?

(17b) Combien d'efforts faut-il pour réussir?
(18a) Je pense à ce que tu penses
(18b) Je pense à ce que tu m'as dit
(18c) Que d'efforts il faut pour réussir!
(18d) Quand je pense à ce qu'il faut d'efforts pour réussir!
(b) Derrière le verbe, une forme non prédicative du relatif-exclamatif

est exclue. Cela entraîne la présence de QUOI (19a), dans l'interrogation, mais
le refus de que remplacé par ce que (19b, 19c) dans la relative et l'exclamative.
(19a) On fait quoi ce soir?

(19b) On fait ce que tu veux
(19c) C'est fou ce qu'il faut d'efforts!
ce que les gens racontent de bêtises!
Devant le verbe, la forme prédicative est en principe cliticisée. On a encore
parfois Que fais-tu? Cependant, en position pré et post-verbale, caractéristique
de l'interrogation indirecte, que est exclu et ce que apparaît.
(19d) Je te demande ce que tu fais là
(c) Sans doute plus délicate est l'apparition de ce avec certaines

relatives à antécédent propositionnel, et ici une loi rythmique a pu jouer, en
début de proposition, pour le relatif comme pour le pronom personnel. Ce
raisonnement par analogie est peu convaincant s'il ne trouve des appuis
internes. J'en vois trois:
— les formes prédicatives n'exigent pas ce, ou même le refusent (20a, 20b);
(20a) A quoi il a répondu que...

"chose à laquelle, ce à quoi"
(20b) D'où il ressort que
— lequel, relatif, ne s'est maintenu que dans certaines positions: là où la

forme prédicative était exigée par la syntaxe, après préposition {sur lequel),
ou lorsqu'une forme non prédicative, après pause, faisait difficulté. On op
posera (21a) et (21b);
(21a) Le chat, lequel était méfiant

(21b) *Le chat lequel est là.

— la phonologie n'invite pas à traiter de la même manière ce que, ce qui qui
donnent /skə/, /ski/ et ce sur quoi, ce à quoi. Difficile de toute façon de faire
de ce un déterminant: nous en ferions un vrai nom (chose, fait), suivi d'une
relative. On constate en effet l'émergence possible du nom avec la pause.
(22a) J'ai vu Pierre, individu qui séduit

(22b) *Le garçon individu qui parle
4.0 Conclusion.
4.1 H resterait à faire beaucoup d'analyses secondaires: l'extension de ce que

exclamatif se fait parfois aux dépens de comme (derrière le verbe) mais pas
toujours (derrière la préposition, on a seulement ce que). Combien a gardé
quelques emplois exclamatifs: il remplace que denière la préposition quand un
nom suit, au lieu de ce que attendu. En effet ce que ne peut quantifier un nom
(*Ce que d'hommes sont venus!). Mais mieux vaut revenir à la question de
base: l'émergence d'un nouveau ce, indice morphologique de prédicativité
moyenne.
Il est difficile de contester, au vu des contraintes distributionnelles, que
l'extension de ce dans le courant du moyen français soit liée à un problème de
prédicativité, concept important s'il en est en diachronie du français. Le
concept de prédicativité éclaire non seulement ce, mais aussi le recul de que
interrogatif, remplacé par ce que ou qu'est-ce que; le recul de QUOI relatif,
remplacé par lequel; la spécialisation de dont, relatif et non prédicatif.
Il n'est pas facile de trouver la cause de tous ces bouleversements, mais
la spécialisation des formes prédicatives dans l'interrogation nous paraît être
l'élément moteur, l'ensemble des bouleversements étant des effets. Cette
hiérarchisation est fondamentale en diachronie.
L'autre aspect est qu'un développement local, et sémantique en
l'occurrence, porte en lui des germes de mutations morphologiques et
syntaxiques. Ces développements peuvent aller loin et l'extension des formes
complexes — qu'est-ce que surtout — est avancée désormais. Peut-être un
moyen pour réunifier un système autrefois simple morphologiquement, et qui
s'était diversifié à outrance?
4.2 Notre interprétation historique suppose que ce que soit parfois un

quantificateur: il élimine les autres quantificateurs du nom et les intensifica-
teurs des autres catégories. Comme si, c'est un quantificateur déplacé. Toutes
les études fouillées adoptent cette position (Milner 1978; Moignet 1981:183,
203; Henry 1977; Gérard 1980), et ce que est en rapport direct et précis avec
COMBIEN et comme. Le recours au contexte pour expliquer la valeur
quantitative est inutile dans ce cas.
Dans les autres emplois, assertifs, l'interprétation quantitative de ce que
peut être débattue. Eclairons le débat, au moins pour les relatives, ce qui sera
utile pour les comparatives. Certains emplois de ce que sont des emplois de
relatifs sans antécédent: il n'y a pas de SN dans la proposition, et ces emplois
correspondent à un mouvement d'identification retrouvé avec celui que, ceux
que ("chose(s) que" pour ce que, "objet(s) que, personne(s) que" pour celui
que, ceux que). Si le SN apparaît, il sera apposition.
(23a) J'ai pris ce que tu m'as amené hier

(23b) Avec ce que tu m'as amené, on va faire un bon repas
Avec ce que tu m'as amené, des pommes mûres, on va.(≠24a)
Mais ce que a une autre valeur, quantitative, et la paraphrase est "la

quantité que". Elle apparaît déjà dans les relatives indéfinies. La syntaxe est
différente: on a un SN, nombrable ou non, qui n'a pas d'article, comme dans
les exclamatives: ce que le quantifie à distance (24a). On peut aussi avoir un
adjectif ou un verbe qui ne sont plus intensifiables, situation des exclamatives à
nouveau (24b).
(24a) J'ai pris ce que tu m'as amené de/comme pommes (*des)

Avec ce que tu m'as amené de/comme farine, ça va (*de la)
(24b) Pour ce qu'il marche,... (*il marche beaucoup/peu)
Pour ce que c'est beau,... (*très beau)
Avec de au moins, on est sûr de l'interprétation quantitative. Il reste deux

arguments indirects: sans n'est pas compatible avec l'interprétation quantitative
puisqu'il a une valeur négative (24c); celui que élimine l'interprétation
quantitative ou partitive de ce que ("la partie/la quantité") et la présence du SN
quantifié (24d). On a même ces valeurs avec ce qui (24e). Ce est donc loin de
celui sur tous le plans (24d). Les verbes exigent aussi une quantification du
SN (sous-catégorisation) donnée par ce que: donner peulbeaucoup.
(24c) *Sans ce que tu m'as donné d'argent...

Avec ce que tu m'as donné d'argent, je peux m'acheter ça.
Sans ce que tu m'as donné, j'aurais manqué d'argent [relative, comme
en (23b)]
(24d) Avec ce que tu vois de l'arbre, tu imagines le reste.
Avec celui que tu vois, imagine les autres arbres.
*Avec celui que tu vois d'/comme/de l'arbre ...
(24e) Avec ce qui traîne de feuilles, on imagine le désordre.
Avec ce qui est arrivé de personnes, on peut commencer.
Cette valeur quantitative apparaît aussi dans les interrogatives devant le verbe
par cliticisation de COMBIEN sans doute.
(24f) Je voudrais savoir ce que je dois amener comme argent.

combien d'argent que dois amener.
4.3 Le grand absent des études est le ce que comparatif, oublié malgré son
ancienneté. Muller (1983:282-293) détient sans doute la clef du problème. La
comparaison phrastique, opposée à la comparaison nominale, contient dans la
seconde proposition un élément vide (quantification ou adverbe). Si l'on
admet pour ce que l'interprétation "la manière que/de la manière que" (=
comme, comment) ou l'interprétation "la quantité que/qui" (= comme, com
bien), on retrouve la quantité ou la manière évoquée de façon neutre. Cela
n'est pas possible dans les comparatives d'égalité, où le comparatif est plus
explicite (comme, autant que, ainsi que) et interdit le rappel de la quantité.
(25a) J'ai plus d'argent que tu n'en as (en = d'argent; SN non quantifié)
(25b) J'ai plus d'argent que je ne le dis (le = [que je dis] que je n'ai d'argent;
SN non quantifié)
(25c) Il agit autrement qu'on ne l'avait prévu (le = [qu'on avait prévu] qu'il
agirait; SP vide: *adroitement)
(25d) Il agit différemment de ce qui était prévu (ce qui: = de la manière qui;
qualification vide: *bien, *bonne manière)
(25e) Il dépense plus que ce que je croyais (ce que = la quantité que;
quantification vide, *grande quantité, *beaucoup)
Dans tous ces contextes, comme dans les emplois du type Avec ce que tu m'as
donné/Pour ce que tu rapportes, la sous-catégorisation exige une quantifi
cation, que la comparaison, ou ce que, permet de combler. Serait-ce un relatif?
Le sens ne l'indique pas et le ce que relatif semble se comporter diffé-remment

avec la préposition.
(26a) Il pense à autre chose qu'à ce qui était prévu / ce que je croyais.
(26b) Il pense à plus de choses que (ce qui était) prévu (?à)
(26c) Il travaille pour un montant moindre que (ce que j'avais) prévu (*pour).
Bref, l'histoire de ce que, quantificateur indéfini et comparatif, ne semble pas

finie.
RÉFÉRENCES
Brunot, Ferdinand. 1986. Histoire de la langue française. Vol.I. Paris:

Armand Colin.
Gérard, Josselyne. 1980. L'exclamation en français: La syntaxe des phrases et
des expressions exclamatives. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
Gougenheim, Georges. 1951. Grammaire de la langue française du XVIe
siècle. Lyon & Paris: IAC.
Guillaume, Gustave. 1978. Leçons de linguistique de Gustave Guillaume
1948-1949. Publiées par Roch Valin. (Série C: Grammaire particulière du
français et grammaire générale.) Québec: Presses de l'Univ. Laval; Paris:
Klincksieck.
Haase, Adolphe. 1969. Syntaxe française duXVIIe siècle. Paris: Delagrave.
Henry, Albert. 1977. Etudes de syntaxe expressive: Ancien français et français
moderne. 2e éd. revue et augmentée. Bruxelles: Editions de l'Univ. de
Bruxelles. [V.chap.VIII pour ce que.]
Léard, Jean-Marcel. 1986. "Le statut de ce que dans le système morphologique
du français: Une solution unitaire appuyée sur la diachronie". Modèles
Linguistiques 8:2.7-45.
Martin, Robert & Marc Wilmet. 1980. Syntaxe du moyen français. Bordeaux:
Sobodi.
Milner, Jean-Claude. 1978. De la syntaxe à l'interprétation: Quantités, insultes,
exclamations. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
Moignet, Gérard. 1981. Systématique de la langue française. Paris: Klinck
sieck.
Muller, Claude, 1983. "Les comparatives du français et la négation". Lin-
guisticaeInvestigationes7:2.271-316.
Price, Glanville. 1986. "Aspects de l'histoire de la négation en français"
Morphosyntaxe des langues romanes: Actes du XVIIe Congrès international
de linguistique et philologie romane, vol.IV, 567-576. Aix-en-Provence:

Univ. de Provence.
Walter, Henriette. 1987. "Évolution droite ou sinueuse: les palatales du fran
çais". Dans le présent volume.
Wunderli, Peter. 1978. "'Ce neutre' en moyen français: Étude de syntaxo-
sémantique phrastique et transphrastique". Sémantique lexicale et sémantique
grammaticale en moyenfrançais:Actes du colloque publiés par Marc Wilmet,
185-253. Bruxelles: Univ. Libre de Bruxelles.
. 1987. "L'explication de 'se' omnipersonnel dans les langues
romanes". Présentation faite à la 8e Conférence Internationale de Linguis
tique Historique, Lille, 31 août - 4 septembre, 1987.
L'ENFER DE BRUMES ET MARAIS DANS LA
TRADITION GERMANO-CELTIQUE
UN PROBLEME MYTHOLOGIQUE ET
LINGUISTIQUE INDO-EUROPÉEN
H. LE BOURDELLES
Université de Lille III
La présente communication envisage un problème mythologique sur la

tradition de l'enfer chez les Germains et les Celtes. Nous aborderons ensuite
un problème linguistique correspondant, plus particulièrement étymologique.
Cette démarche ne doit pas étonner, car l'expérience montre que l'analyse
sémantique doit précéder l'analyse morphologique, à laquelle on restreint
souvent la recherche étymologique. Démarche analytique inverse par rapport
au processus naturel qui transforme en représentations les formules figées et
mythisées du langage.
La tradition indo-européenne.
Remontons au plus loin dans le temps. L'enfer, dans la tradition indo-

européenne, est le séjour des pères, le royaume de Yama où l'on descend par le
chemin profond, selon la terminologie védique, situé sous terre, d'où son nom
latin de Inferi. Cette tradition ne refuse pas l'idée d'une vie dans l'au-delà,
mais la présente avec des caractéristiques d'opacité pour nos sens et notre
intelligence, qui ont suscité un système de langage mythique, source de
représentations. Conformément à la démarche annoncée, regardons d'abord
ces représentations. Rappelons, à titre de comparaison, celles du domaine
gréco-latin, qui sont riches et anciennes.
Le chant 6 de l'Enéide de Virgile fournit aisément les matériaux
nécessaires. Le royaume des ombres, sauf en de rares occasions comme
Homère en montrait dans son évocation des morts, et comme Virgile en montre
dans sa descente aux enfers, est dissimulé, obscur. Virgile, pour décrire le
chemin des enfers, accumule les mots de nuit (268), de brouillard (caligo,
304 H.LE BOURDELLES
266), de plaines brumeuses (887). Il associe à cette obscurité des eaux

marécageuses et brumeuses, le Cocyte, l'Achéron, le Styx (132-295-323). Le
fondement de ces représentations est assurément la représentation centrale de
l'homme défunt comme une ombre (umbra, skia), qui peut apparaître aux yeux
des vivants comme à travers le brouillard, bien que ces apparitions soient
surtout le fait des scènes qui se forment dans les rêves (Enéide 5,894).
Nous tenons là des éléments de la tradition indo-européenne,1 même si
la tradition védique, peu explicite sur la "ténèbre inférieure" (Veda X,152:
adharam tamas), ne permet la comparaison que d'une manière un peu vague.
La tradition celtique.
La tradition celtique sur l'enfer est très difficile à saisir, car elle n'est
connue qu'au Moyen-Age, puisque les textes antiques sur la religion gauloise
donnent peu d'informations, encore qu'ils affirment nettement la croyance des
Gaulois en l'immortalité de l'âme.
Comme on peut s'y attendre, les témoignages médiévaux sont peu
cohérents. Les témoignages irlandais parlentfréquemmentdes tumuli ou sīdh,
qui étaient à la fois séjour des morts, des fées, et des anciens dieux, et
s'ouvrait le premier Novembre. Mais, comme le fait remarquer sagement J. de
Vries,2 il s'agit là d'une déformation des croyances primitives, et, dans le
paganisme ancien, les dieux étaient probablement placés à divers niveaux de la
Nature, tandis que le $Tdh était en relation avec le royaume des morts.3 Par
ailleurs ce royaume était censé se situer au delà de l'Océan.4 D'autre part, on
trouve parfois la description d'un séjour des morts comme d'un séjour de
brume, - ceo- .5
1
À titre d'opposition, notons que la notion de feu vengeur céleste est apparue bien avant l'ère
chrétienne en Orient: zoroastnsme, prophétisme biblique. Elle aboutit dans le judaïsme à la
notion de la punition des méchants par le feu de l'enfer, qui s'oppose à la récompense des
justes dans le lieu du rafraîchissement. Le christianisme l'a héritée, et nous verrons que
l'interprétation de la tradition celtique doit tenir compte de ce fait.
2
J. de Vries, Religion des Celtes, trad. de l'allemand (Paris: Payot, 1975), p.264.
3
On postulait peut-être aussi un séjour des bienheureux, comme les Champs-Elysées des
Grecs et des Romains — cf. J. de Vries, op.cit. p.265.
4
Cf. Aventures de Connla le Beau, analysées par Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville, Cycle
mythologique irlandais, p. 16.
5
Cf. le récit d'un revenant émergeant du brouillard au-dessus d'un lac, analysé par d'Arbois de
Jubainville, op.cit., p.356.
L'ENFER DANS LA TRADITION GERMANO-CELTIQUE 305
Cette tradition celtique se maintint dans le christianisme celtique, mais

altérée. Le célèbre voyage dans l'au-delà de St. Brendan,6 montre le héros
traversant le brouillard (latin caligo,ch.13), pour atteindre le séjour des morts,
où Judas connaît un enfer alternativement glacé et brûlant (ch.97), et dans ces
derniers traits se reconnaît aisément l'influence judéo-chrétienne.7
Cet enfer de brume et ténèbre peut être comparé à l'intérieur du monde
celtique, si l'on se reporte à l'analyse que fit Vendryès8 de la terminologie
galloise pour l'enfer. On trouve chez les poètes gallois à partir du XIIe siècle
le mot gwern "marais", au sens de "enfer", qualifié souvent de oerwern "froid
marécage". Le point commun de ces mythes celtiques est assurément une
représentation de l'enfer comme séjour souterrain, dissimulé derrière un
brouillard s'étendant sur des eaux.
La tradition germanique.
La tradition germanique est bien connue grâce à l'Edda de Snorri

Sturluson, qui résuma la mythologie scandinave au XIIIe siècle, dans un
monde nordique proche encore du paganisme. Les nombreux savants qui,
depuis Jacob. Grimm, ont rédigé des synthèses de la mythologie germanique à
partir de Snorri, admettent que cet auteur n'a pas trop christianisé sa
présentation9. L'enfer de Snorri n'est pas un enfer de punition, comme celui
de Bède, auteur anglais du Ville siècle (H.E. 5,12) où alternent selon la
tradition judéo-chrétienne le feu et la glace.10 Tous les morts, sauf les héros
des combats qui vont au Walhalla avec les dieux, descendent dans Hel (34-49)
par un chemin souterrain dirigé vers le Nord (49), probablement parce que le
Nord évoque le froid et le brouillard. Cet enfer parcouru par le fleuve Gjal
6
Vie latine dans Ch. Plummer, Vitae sanctorum Hiberniae, 1910. Cette vie a suscité de
nombreuses Navigations de St. Brendan, dont une latine éd. par Jubinal en 1836, une
irlandaise éd. par Plummer, une anglo-normande du 12e siècle, rééditée au 1984 dans la
coll.10/18.
7
Cette alternance de feu et glace s'inspire d'un passage de Job (24,10) dans la traduction de la
Vulgate, que l'on retrouve chez Bède.
8
Joseph Vendryès, "L'enfer glacé", Revue Celtique 46.134-142 (1929).
9
Nous utilisons l'édition de l'Edda par Holtsmark et Helgason, collection "Nordisk Filo
logi", 1976. Rappelons que l'ouvrage fondamental sur les mythes germaniques reste la
Deutsche Mythologie de Jacob Grimm (4e éd., 1875).
10
Bède, comme la Vita de Brendan, voit l'enfer de punition selon Job 24,19 dans la
traduction de la Vulgate.
306 H. LE BOURDELLES
(49) est surnommé Niflheim (34) ou Niflhel (42), surnoms qui disent assez
que c'est une demeure de brouillard
La concordance pour l'essentiel avec la tradition classique est
troublante, et l'on peut même se demander s'il n'y a pas eu là influence de la
littérature gréco-latine. Nous ne le croyons pas, car ces brumes et ces eaux se
retrouvent en différents points de la tradition germanique ancienne. En
particulier, dans l'épopée de Beowulf, poème anglais qui date peut-être du 8e
siècle, et quelles que soient par ailleurs les influences chrétiennes sur ce
poème, nous rencontrons un paysage de marais (1357) habité par deux
monstres symboles de mort, et un autre paysage semblable avec un monstre
"dans des marais embrumés ('mistige moras'), dans la nuit perpétuelle" (161).
Misons sur l'authenticité germanique de ces détails, et de leur concordance
avec les éléments de l'Edda, puisque, aussi bien, l'auteur du poème anglais se
réfère explicitement à la tradition scandinave.
Communauté germano-celtique.
Les similitudes de ces traditions germaniques et celtiques ne pourraient

devoir leur origine qu'à l'appartenance commune au monde indo-européen.
Cependant il faut remarquer une particularitérituellegermanique et celtique liée
au marais brumeux, image de la mort. On connaît depuis longtemps les
victimes humaines retrouvées momifiées dans la tourbe de marais à Tollund, à
Grauballe, et ailleurs. Une macabre découverte analogue vient d'être faite à
Lindow, en Grande-Bretagne, et les organisateurs de l'exposition archéolo
gique du British Museum en janvier 1987 attribuent l'homme de Lindow à la
période celtique. À la différence d'autres rituels celtiques de sacrifices humains
connus par des écrivains latins d'époque classique,11 nous voyons là un usage
commun aux Celtes et aux Germains, et qui semble en rapport avec la
représentation de la mort liée aux eaux brumeuses,12 au sein d'une
communauté culturelle assez étroite.
11
Ces derniers sont rappelés par R. Lantier, "Keltische Mythologie", dans Wòrterbuch der
Mythologie (Stuttgart, 1973). Signalons dans la même collection une Deutsche Mythologie
par E. Neumann et H. Voigt, avec une bibliographie récente.
12
Sur ces brumes, cf. J. Grimm, op.cit., p.259 et p.270.
L'ENFER DANS LA TRADITION GERMANO-CELTIQUE 307
Communauté de vocabulaire: la racine *kel.
Tout ce que nous avons indiqué fait attendre quelque relation de

vocabulaire à propos de l'enfer entre le monde celtique et le monde
germanique. Cette rela-ion existe bien autour de la racine *kel "cacher", bien
attestée par lat. cēlāre/occulere "cacher", irl. celim "cacher", all. helan >
hehlen "cacher", huljan (got.) > hüllen "couvrir", grec kaluptv "couvrir,
cacher", racine qui paraît avoir connu une extension plutôt occidentale.13
On a depuis longtemps rattaché le nom germanique de l'enfer à cette
racine, *kolya > got. halja, vx-norr. hel, anglais hell, all. hella > hölle. Mais il
s'en faut que la sémantique de cette relation ait été clairement expliquée. Jacob
Grimm, suivi par des savants plus récents, pensait que la notion de "recouvrir"
apportait cette solution sémantique, et il rattachait à ce mot le mot germanique
signifiant "antre, caverne", qui apparaît en allemand comme höhle.14 Mais
comment entendre cette relation? Un enfer recouvrant les morts comme une
caverne recouvre ses habitants ou ses visiteurs? Ce n'est pas absurde, mais ce
n'est pas convaincant.
Pour aller plus loin, il faut, sans oublier nos analyses sur l'opacité et
les brumes de l'enfer, remarquer deux formules de langage, une norroise,
l'autre irlandaise. La poésie norroise employait une périphrase pour l'idée de
mort: fara til heljar, qu'on pourrait traduire en allemand par: zur Höllefahren
"aller dans l'enfer",15 ce qui, en apparence, ne nous apprend rien de neuf.
Mais si nous nous demandons quel est le but de ce voyage, nous pouvons faire
appel à une formule irlandaise qui contient un mot issu de la racine *kel, mais
non mythisé. En irlandais cel signifie "disparition, absence, mort", de sorte
que l'on disait en moyen-irlandais luid ar cel: "il alla à la disparition, à la mort",
et dans la langue moderne dul ar ceal.16 Si l'on pouvait prouver que ces
locutions sont anciennes, et remontent à une époque primitive, la cause serait
entendue, et le problème résolu. Bien évidemment nous ne le pouvons pas. Il
n'en reste pas moins un argument pour l'hypothèse que nous formulons ainsi:
une locution "aller vers la disparition et l'opacité de la mort" a pu se combiner
13
Julius Pokorny, Indogermanisches Wörterbuch (Bern: Francke, 1959) distingue une racine
avec k palatal signifiant "cacher", et une autre k vélaire signifiant "tache". Nous éviterons
d'entrer dans ce problème.
14
J. Grimm, op.cz7,.p.259, proteste contre le rapprochement avec hallus, mot gotique
signifiant "rocher", parfois repris depuis comme si le mot désignait la pierre du tombeau.
15
J. Grimm, op.cit., p.669.
16
Locutions citées par Pokorny, op.cit., et Dinneen, Irish-English Dictionary.
308 H. LE BOURDELLES
avec un mot tiré de la racine *kel. Le mort est caché aux vivants par sa
disparition, que symbolisent les nuées de l'enfer, mais il n'est que caché, il
continue d'être.
Si cette hypothèse trouve confirmation, on verra là un cas remarquable
de langage mythisé, à partir d'une locution figée. Mais en attendant cette
confirmation, il nous semble possible déjà de dire que dans le domaine
germano-celtique l'expression linguistique de la mort s'est cristallisée autour de
la racine *kel avec des conséquences diverses: divinisation de Hel devenue
déesse du panthéon germanique, représentations de l'occultation de la mort par
les brumes des enfers. Peut-être faudrait il étendre le domaine linguistique
considéré, si l'on considère que le mot latin caligō, dérivé probable de la racine
*kel,17 qui signifie "ténèbres, brouillard", est le mot utilisé pour désigner les
brumes des enfers (Aen.6,266).18
ANNEXE
LES RIVIERES HELINA
Nous renvoyons à notre article de la Revue du Nord (66, 1984) sur

l'hydronyme Helina, lié à la présence des Francs, pour signaler un dérivé de la
racine *kel qui évoque les eaux marécageuses et brumeuses. La rivière Elnon,
qui coule dans la ville abbatiale d'Elnon, aujourd'hui St-Amand, montre un cas
de flexion faible, alors que la même rivière a été évoquée par Sidoine
Apollinaire sous le nom de Helena.
17
Mais Pokomy rattache ce mot latin à la racine *kel à k vélaire, qui signifierait "tache".
18
Dans la théogonie présentée par Hygin au début de ses Fabulae, l'Obscurité primordiale—
Caligo — engendre la Nuit et le Jour. La Nuit à son tour engendre la Mort
THE STRUCTURE AND DEVELOPMENT
OF POSSESSIVE NOUN PHRASES IN HITTITE
SILVIA LURAGHI
Istituto Universitario di Lingue Moderne, Milan
0. Introduction.
In this paper I concentrate on two types of possessive NP found in Hittite
at different stages in the written documentation.1 The first type, which
contains a genitive modifier referring to the possessor, a head noun referring to
the possessum and a possessive clitic attached to the head noun, is typical of
Old Hittite;2 the second type, which in its turn consists of two nouns referring
to the possessor and to the possessum respectively and agreeing
morphologically with each other, became widespread from Middle Hittite
onwards. Examples of the two types occur in the following sentences:
(1) [DU(MU)].É.GAL LUGAL-as SAL.LUGAL-ass= a issaz=
palace servant king-Gen queen-Gen and mouth:Abl
<s>mit lālan AN.BAR-as dāi
their:N/A:Sg:N tongue: Acc:Sg iron-Gen take away:3Sg:Ind:P/F
"the Palace servant takes away the iron tongue from the mouth(s) of the
king and the queen" (StBoT 8 I 18'-19')
(2) n= at= mu= kan UKÙ-az KAxU-az sarā

and it LDat Ptc man-Abl mouth-Abl upwards
uizzi= pat
come:3Sg:Ind:P/F Foc
"and it (sc. these words) comes out of my mouth of man" (KUB VI 45 I
30-31)
1
Hittite was spoken in Anatolia in the course of the second millenium B.C. The
written sources allow for a chronological subdivision of the Hittite language into three
different periods: Old Hittite (1570 B.C-1450 B.C.), Middle Hittite (1450 B.C-1380 B.C.),
Late Hittite (1380 B.C-1220 B.C.). See Neu & Rüster (1975:VII-VHI).
2
See Friedrich (1960:65).
310 SILVIA LURAGHI
Sentence (1) contains the first construction, which I shall henceforth refer
to as compound modifier (construction); the second type, henceforth referred
to as case attraction, is found in (2).
Both types of NP contain a head noun and a modifier. Possible problems
with the description of their structure are: (a) what kind of relation holds
between the noun in the genitive and the possessive clitic within compound
modifiers; and (b) which constituent is to be regarded as the head of the NPs
which display case attraction.
Furthermore, since the two types of NP apparently belong to different
historical periods, it is interesting to consider the question whether case
attraction has in fact replaced the compound modifier construction; in other
words, if it is possible to trace one or more function(s) that either expression
could fulfill, as opposed to NPs with plain genitival modifiers which also
express possession, both in Old and in Later Hittite.
In what follows I analyse the passages in which the two types of
possessive expression occur in order to individuate their function. Next, I
discuss current views concerning the structure of the NPs examined, as well as
my own position. I also survey a number of diachronic developments which
relate in some way to one or both types of NP.
The paper is divided into two parts, each one devoted to one of the
constructions dealt with. Even if diachronic considerations concern both types
of construction, they are mostly confined to the second section.
1. Compound modifiers.
1.1. Possessive expressions of Old Hittite. In this section I

examine in detail the possessive expressions found in example (1) and discuss
the use of modifying constituents in other types of possessive NP also attested
in Old Hittite.
Compound modifier NPs consist of a head noun which refers to the
possessum and two modifying elements coreferent with each other: a noun in
the genitive and a possessive clitic which both refer to the possessor.
Possessive clitics are fully inflected adjectives; they display morphological
agreement in case, number and gender with the head noun they modify.3
Examples of compound modifier NPs, besides the one in sentence (1), are:
3
Possessive clitics have different forms in singular and plural for nominative, accusative,
nominative/accusative neuter, genitive, dative/locative and directive (not all fonns are attested
for all persons). See Friedrich (1960:65) and Neu (1974). The forms of the ablative and
instrumental are homophones of those of the nominative/accusative singular neuter.
POSSESSIVE NOUN PHRASES IN HITTITE 311
GlŠ
(3) harpa= ma I-anta LUGAL-as GIR= si
heap:N/A:Sg:N Ptc one king-Gen foot his:D/L:Sg
kitta
lie:3Sg:Ind:P/F
"a heap (of wood) lies near the king's foot" (StBoT 8 IV 28)
(4) [laba]rnas LUGAL-as NINDA= san adue[ni

L.:Gen king-Gen bread:Sg his:Acc:Sg:C eat: lPl:Ind:P/F
wata]r= set= a akueni
water:N/A:Sg:N his:N/A:Sg:N Ptc drink: lPl:Ind:P/F
"we shall eat the bread of the Labarna, the king; we shall drink his water"
(StBoT 25.140 5'6')
Nouns in the genitive as modifiers are frequently used to express

possession. They do not necessarily require the co-occurrence of a possessive
clitic. Accented possessive pronouns are not available in Old Hittite; genitive
forms of accented personal pronouns are infrequent and appear to be mostly
limited to syntactic environments which are not accessible to possessive
clitics. 4 They never occur within compound modifiers, which are mostly
limited to the expression of third person possessors.
Three alternatives are available for the expression of third person
possessors:
(a) Compound modifier (possessive clitic and noun in the genitive):

NA4
(5) labarnas É [-ir= set] ... pēruni
L.:Gen house-N/A:Sg:N his:N/A:Sg:N stone:D/L
uetan
build:Part:N/A:Sg:N
appaliyallas= a É-ir set karaitti
opponent:Gen Ptc house-N/A:Sg:N his:N/A:Sg:N tide:D/L
piran u[etan]
before build:Part:N/A:Sg:N
Ablative and instrumental of nouns have only one form which functions for both numbers (it
is "number indifferent" in the words of Neu 1979).
4
An example is:
utne- te[t tuel]
land:N/A:Sg:N your:N/A:Sg:N thou:Gen
"Thy land belongs toThee"(StBoT 25.122 III 2')
in which the form tuel functions as predicate in a nominal sentence. Besides, accented forms
of personal pronouns and possessive clitics are in complementary distribution when they
modify adverbs of a certain class called static place words; see Boley (1985). I have found
only one case in which the genitive of an accented pronoun is used in a possessive NP in an
Old Hittite text.
312 SILVIA LURAGHI
"the house of the Labarna ... is built on stone. The house of the op
ponent, instead, is built in the path of the tide" {StBoT 25.140 Vo 13',
16'-18')
(b) Plain possessive:
(6) parna= ssa paisi
house:Dir his:Dir go:2Sg:Ind:P/F
"you will go to his house" (KUB XXII 1 28')
(c) Plain genitive:
(7) t[a] D[ (UMUMEŠ-an)] parna paimi
and child-Gen:Pl house:Dir go:lSg:Ind:P/F
"and I will go to the house of the children" ( StBoT 8 II 16-17)
In Old Hittite originals,firstand second person possessors are expressed

only through the use of plain possessive clitics. However, in late copies of
Old Hittite texts, two examples of compound modifiers for first person
possessors also occur. Apparently, for possessors other than third person,
constructions (a) and (b) below were available in Old Hittite.5
(a) Compound modifier:
(8) LUGAL-as assu= met
king-Gen good:N/A:Sg:N my:N/A:Sg:N
"the goods of mine, the king" {KUB XXXI 64+, II 6')
(9) LUGAL-was aras= mis
king-Gen friend:Nom:Sg:C my:Nom:Sg:C
"the friend of mine, the king" {KUB XXIX 1I35)
(b) Plain possessive:
(10)attas= mas
father.Gen my:Gen
"of my father" {StBoT 18 Ro 10)
(11) neku<s>= summus
sister:Acc:Pl:C our:Acc:Pl:C
"our sisters (acc)" (StBot 17 Ro 19)
5
On the use of the genitive in Old Hittite, see the comprehensive study in Yoshida
(1987).
(12)utne= te[t]
land:N/A:Sg:N thy:N/A:Sg:N
"thy land" (StBoT 25.122 III 2)
1.2. Typological parallels to Old Hittite possessive construc

tions with compound modifiers. Possessive clitics are found in many
non-Indo-European languages, for instance in Semitic and Finno-Ugric
languages. 6 In no languages that I know of, however, do possessive clitics
display adjectival morphology as they do in Hittite. Most frequently, one has
to do with invariable pronominal suffixes. Moreover, possessive suffixes are
often obligatory in possessive NPs, and occur for all persons. As an example,
compare the Hungarian expression:7
(13) az (én) kabat-om

the (me) coat-lSg
"my coat"
In (13) a first person possessor is expressed through an OBLIQUE FORM of

the accented pronoun and a possessive suffix, attached to the head noun.
While the accented form én is optional, the NP would not be correct without
the possessive suffix -om. Possessive suffixes have forms which vary in
person and number in accordance with the possessor; they do not agree with
the head noun to which they are suffixed.
A slightly different pattern is found in Accadian.8 Accadian has several
types of possessive construction which range from the use of plain genitive
modifiers to the status constmctus type. It is possible to have NPs in which
possessive suffixes occur together with a noun which refers to the possessor;
the latter is always in the nominative. Consequently, it cannot by itself be
taken as an attribute; therefore, the use of a possessive suffix is obligatory to
indicate the possessive meaning of the NP:
(14) šarrum quazzu

king:Nom hand:His (qat "hand", plus-su "his")
"the hand of the king"
1.3. Nouns in the g e n i t i v e as appositions to p o s s e s s i v e

adjectives in Indo-European languages. According to Otten-Souõek
(1969:61), within compound modifiers possessive clitics would be
6
On different patterns for expressing possession, see Seiler (1981).
7
The example is taken from Limburg (1985).
8
See von Soden (1969) and Ultan (1978:17-18).
314 SILVIA LURAGHI
'pleonastically' added to genitival NPs.9 More recently Starke (1977:157) has

remarked that "das Genitivattribut wird ... erläuternd zum Possessivpronomen
gesetzt und nicht umgekehrt ...." Functional considerations uphold Starke's
position, according to which nouns in the genitive are appositions to
possessive clitics in compound modifiers. I think that this is best seen in the
two examples that contain first person possessors. NPs functioning as
appositions to clitics are perfectly acceptable in Old Hittite and are not confined
to possessive clitics. The possible occurrence of nouns in the genitive as
appositions to possessive adjectives is a phenomenon known from the classical
languages; examples are available in traditional grammars. So for instance
Kühner-Gehrt remarked that in Greek, "Wenn zu dem Possessivpronomen
eine Apposition tritt, so steht dieselbe im Genetive, weil diese Pronomina den
Genetiv der Personalpronomina vertreten" (1904:282).10
1.4. Third person subject and non-subject possessors:

means of discriminating. The function of an apposition is to clarify the
reference of its head constituent. In the case of third person possessors, the
apposition in the genitive disambiguates the reference of the possessive clitic.
Third person possessive clitics of Old Hittite are anaphoric particles.
Syntactically, it is not specified which constituent, inside or outside the
boundaries of the sentences in which they occur, governs the anaphora. In
other words, Hittite has no distinction between third person subject and non-
subject possessors which could parallel the distinction between suus and eius
in Latin.
In the case of third person subject possessors, a reflexive particle11 can be
added at the beginning of a sentence, as in:
9
10
Apposition is defined as follows: "... a) each of the apposites can be separately
omitted without affecting the acceptability of the sentence, b) each fulfils the same syntactic
function in the resultant sentences, ... " (Quirk et al., 1972:621). Apposed constituents are
related to each other by (partial or total) coreference; see Quirk et al. (1972:621-626).
Apposed nouns agree in case with each other, as a consequence of condition (b) in Quirk et
al. Therefore, if the word which functions as head with respect to an apposition is itself an
attribute of another head constituent, the apposition must have the same function as its head
on the NP level. This explains why possessive pronouns functioning as attributes can take
nouns in the genitive as appositions.
11
On the use of the reflexive particle -za, see Hoffner (1973). Note that the scope of
the particle -za in (13) is not the possessive -smi, but the whole VP kartismi piran mēmir.
(15)nu= zza DUMU.NITAMEŠ karti= smi piran

and Refl boy:Pl heart:D/L:Sg their:D/L:Sg before
mēmir
say:3Pl:Ind:Pr
"and the boys said out of their own hearts" ( StBoT 17 Ro 13-14)
Ambiguity, however, appears to be tolerable in numerous cases, as

shown in the next example:
(16) [ (DUMUMEŠ.É.G)]AL pēda<n>= smet
palace servant:Pl place:N/A:Sg:N their:N/A:Sg:N
harkanzi
hold:3Pl:Ind:P/F
"the palace servants stay in their place" (StBoT 25.2514)
Since genitival appositions can be added to possessives only in the case of

third person non-subject possessors, they can occasionally fulfill a function
similar to that of the reflexive particle in disambiguating the reference of the
anaphora. However, appositions in the genitive do not appear to have been
used productively for this purpose.
1.5. Problems of clitic placement and word order. Hittite is

particularly rich in clitics of different types (connectives, pronouns, deictic
particles, etc.). Most of them have as their scope the whole sentence in which
they occur (connectives) or the VP (pronouns) and must obligatorily be placed
in Wackernagel's position, that is, they cliticize to the first accented word in a
sentence, no matter what this word is.12
Possessive clitics have an (unspecified) NP as their scope. They differ
from most other clitics in that they are always attached to the word they modify
which in its turn can occur in any position in the sentence.13
One may note further that, being placed as enclitics on their head nouns,
possessives are the only adjectives which, in the function of attribute, follow
their head rather than preceding it. According to the parameters elaborated in
Greenberg (1963), Hittite is a consistent SOV language in which attributes
regularly precede their head nouns.14
12
On the rules of clitic placement in Hittite, see Hoffner (1973) and Luraghi (1989a).
Besides possessives, also the particle -pat, a focalizer, has an unspecified NP as its scope and
does not fit into the initial chain of clitics in Wackernagel's position.
13
Cf. Boley (1985).
14
See Laroche (1982). Adjectives in the function attribute always precede head
constituents; adjectives following nouns function as predicate adjuncts. On Hittite word
order, see Luraghi (1989b).
316 SILVIA LURAGHI
1.6. A side effect of compound modifiers: co-indexing. On

the basis of the discussion in the preceding pages, the structure of possessive
NPs with compound modifiers can be represented as follows:
The compound modifier is rendered discontinuous by a rule of clitic

placement. Disregarding the latter, the effect of the juxtaposition of the noun
in the genitive and the possessive clitic is that of co-indexing the modifier with
the head, or, expressed differently, the possessor noun with the possessum
noun.
Co-indexing must have become partly a function of the construction as a
whole. In fact, compound modifiers are found in a number of passages from
the Hittite Laws, in which they appear to be introduced only for the purpose of
co-indexing. See for instance:
(17)takku LÚ.ULÙLU-as ELLAM-as KAxKAK= set

if man-Gen free-Gen nose his:N/A:Sg:N
kuiski wāki
someone:Nom:Sg bite:3Sg:Ind:P/F
"if someone bites the nose of a free man" (HG I §13=A124)
In (17), the noun in the genitive LÚ.ULÙLU-as ELLAM-as can hardly be

considered an apposition to the possessive -set, since it carries new
information, and there is no antecedent, besides the noun in the genitive itself,
to govern the anaphora.
1.7. Alienable vs. inalienable possession. Possessive

expressions with compound modifiers do not appear to be limited to any
particular class of nouns. Unfortunately, the data do not offer a wide variety
of examples, but this is likely to be a default of the written sources.
In fact, the adjunction of a genitival apposition to a possessive clitic is
not, given its clarifying function, likely to be constrained by the type of
referent of the possessum.
In the Hittite Laws, however, the expression of possessors through
compound modifiers appears to be connected with inalienably possessed
entities, mostly body parts. I have already mentioned in Section 1.6 that
compound modifiers appear to be used for purposes other than that of
disambiguating the reference of the possessive. The fact that these two
peculiarities of possessive NPs with compound modifier occur together in the
Laws might not be an accident. Limitation of compound modifiers to
inalienable possession might have to do with co-indexing of the possessor
noun with the possessum noun, a point on which I will elaborate further in the
next section after examining the phenomenon of case attraction.15
2. Case attraction.
2.1. Development and scope of case attraction. Starting with

the Middle Hittite period, the phenomenon which I have called case attraction
became rather widespread in possessive NPs.16 The noun which refers to the
possessor is put in the same case as the noun which refers to the possessum.
Examples are frequent especially for the accusative (see (22) below); the
ablative is also well attested (as in (2) and (19)). It is rather unclear in which
instances one should speak of case attraction in passages in which two datives
occur together. The following is a sure example:17
15
Possible examples of alienably possessed entities are NINDA "bread", in (4) and aras
in (9). Of course, it is never a priori possible to know what referents a specific language
will conceptualize as inalienably possessable; see below footnote 20. However, nouns such
as those just mentioned do not seem to refer to inalienably possessed entities in Hittite since
they do not occur in the case attraction construction; see below, Section 2.
16
See Friedrich (1926:43-45, 178) and Friedrich (1930:24, 142-143).
17
In a sentence with two constituents in the dative/locative, one may always take the
two as having different functions. So in (18) ANA DUTUŠI might express beneficiary and
ŠU-i might express location. However, the existence of a duplicate with a status
constructus would seem to suggest that the two nouns do in fact belong to the same NP; see
Friedrich (1926:44-45). Starke (1977) adduces a number of case attraction constructions from
Old Hittite.
318 SILVIA LURAGHI
(18) nu= kan ANA D[ (UTUŠI SU)]-i anda

and Ptc His-Majesty:D/L hand-D/L inside
miya[ (huwan) t]ahhut
flourish:2Sg:Imper
"flourish inside the hand of his Majesty (= in the protection of...)" (KUB
XXI 1 IV 45-46)
No such instances of case attraction are found for the nominative.18

The common opinion of the internal structure of possessive NPs with
case attraction views them as a construction in which a noun whose referent is
known to speakers as a typical part of a whole is apposed to the noun which
refers to the whole itself. In other words, the possessum noun is considered a
modifier (in the function apposition) with respect to the possessor noun, which
is taken as the head of the NP.19
2.2. The data. Before discussing the structural description of case

attraction NPs, I examine some further examples.
D
(19)nu= kan= GAL-in arunan Ku[ma]rbiyaza
and Ptc beg-Acc:Sg:C sea:Acc:Sg:C K.:Abl
É-irza ... uwat[er n= an I]NA É-5U
house-Abl bring:3Pl:Ind:Pr and he:Acc his-house-D/L
arha pēhuter
Prev bring:3Pl:Ind:Pr
"and they brought the big sea out of Kumarbis' house, and carried him
back to his (own) house" (StBoT 14, p. 38, 11.16-19
18
Examples such as
kus wa memiyas kuis UL
this:Nom:Pl:C Ptc thing:Nom:Pl:C which:Nom:Sg:C not
iyawas
do:VbN:Nom:Sg:C
"which of these things must not be done" (KBo V 9 III 2-3)
listed by Friedrich (1960:124) and Hahn (1953) under the heading "partitive apposition"
together with case attraction NPs are in fact completely different syntactically; see below,
footnote 19.
19
The case attraction construction is usually referred to as partitive apposition; see
Friedrich (1960:123-124), Hahn (1953) and Hahn (1954), and more recently Starke
(1977:175-177) with a more explicit structural description. I think that a distinction should
be made between true partitive or distributive appositions, such as the one in the example
quoted in footnote 16, and case attraction, in possessive NPs, which corresponds to the
'construction of the part and the whole' (skēma kath'hólon kaì méros ). Both constructions
are found also in other Indo-European languages and have frequently been confused by
scholars. For Greek, the necessity of distinguishing between the two phenomena has been
stressed in Kühner-Gerth (1898:286) and, more recently, in Jaquinod (1988).
(20) anthusas KAxU-az

man:Gen mouth-Abl
"from (a) mouth of man" (KUB VI 46 I 31-32)
(21)ammēdaz §U-az
I:Abl hand-Abl
"with my hand" (KBo III 4 IV 45)
(22)takku LÚ.ULÙLU-an ELLAM KAxKAK= set kuisky
if man-Ace free nose his someone:Nom:Sg
wāki
bite:3Sg:Ind:P/F
"if someone bites a free man on his nose" (HG I §13=B I 33)
(23) tuedas assiyantas pēdas
thou:IVL:Pl love:Part:D/L:Pl place:D/L:Pl
"in your favorite sites" (KUB XXXVI90 16)
In (19) we find one of the few examples in which the possessed entity is
not a body part. In many languages which have different morphological
means of expression for alienable and inalienable possession, the word for
"house" is likely to refer to an entity which is inalienably possessed.20
Example (20) is from a duplicate of the text from which I have taken
example (2). The alternative possible occurrence of genitival NPs and case
attraction NPs in texts for which we can compare duplicates from the same
period is rather frequent and constitutes good evidence for the fact that, at least
synchronically, the two types of possessive expression were felt as equivalent.
Sentence (22) is interesting from a diachronic point of view. It contains
one of the numerous examples in which a possessive NP with a compound
modifier, found in the Old Hittite version, is substituted by a case attraction
construction in a later copy. Sentence (22), in particular, corresponds to (17)
quoted above in the duplicate B (Middle Hittite) of the Laws.21
Note that (23) differs from all the other examples quoted so far of case
attraction, in that it also contains the possessive clitic -set Possessive clitics
apparently do not belong in the case attraction construction; the occurrence of
20
The distinction between alienably and inalienably possessed entities varies among
languages; see Seiler (1981).
21
This as well as other changes from the oldest to the more recent copies of the Hittite
Laws has been noted in Carruba, Souček & Sternemann (1965).
320 SILVIA LURAGHI
-set here, as in many other passages from the duplicate B of the Laws, is
likely to be due to partial preservation of the older patterns.22
Examples (21) and (23) contain personal pronouns in the function
possessor. Apparently, forms of personal pronouns such as those in (21) and
(23) were created especially to fit into the case attraction construction. This is
particularly evident for tuedas in sentence (23), a plural form of the second
person singular pronoun. The use of personal pronouns with case attraction
constitutes a first step toward the creation of fully inflected possessive
adjectives. I will discuss this point more in detail in Section 2.4.
2.3. Co-indexing and classes of possessa. By expressing both

the possessor and the possessum with the same case marker, case attraction
leads to the same result as compound modifiers, in that it co-indexes the
possessor noun with the possessum noun. Co-indexing is more
straightforward than case attraction, since it is achieved simply through
morphological agreement between two nouns.
It is interesting to note that, on one hand, case attraction is used only for
inalienable possession and, on the other, co-indexing is apparently the main
purpose for which it is used. It becomes apparent, thus, that case attraction
was a device for expressing inalienable possession. It is possible that the link
between co-indexing and inalienable possession was felt already in Old Hittite,
and that the function of compound modifiers at a certain stage of the language
had been that of expressing possessors of inalienably possessed entities. If
this hypothesis is right, then the possessive clitics in passages such as (17)
must have been reinterpreted as phonological supports which fulfilled the
function of co-indexing modifiers with their heads. This would explain why
compound modifiers occur also in cases in which the genitive apparently
cannot be considered an apposition, and the possessive clitic does in fact seem
to be a pleonastic addition.23
2.4. The fate of clitic possessives and word order. Clitic

possessives appear to be less and less frequent after the Old Hittite period.
They tend to disappear from genitival NPs, in which the noun in the genitive
alone constitutes the modifier (see example (20) above). For pronominal
possessors, one mostly finds the form of the genitive of accented pronouns.24
22
In some cases, possessive clitics are in fact replaced by third person pronouns in the
later copy of the Laws.
23
This would be an example of grammaticalization in the sense of Lehmann (1982).
24
Otherwise, pronouns can undergo case attraction, as is shown in (22) and

(24). Case attraction in the case of personal pronouns should be viewed as a
process of adjectivization, as is best demonstrated by the form tuedas in
sentence (24). The creation of possessive adjectives out of pronominal stems
is attested also in other ancient Indo-European languages. In the Middle Hittite
period, adjectival forms derived from personal pronouns came into use,
apparently substituting for clitic possessive adjectives, which were becoming
less used than in Old Hittite.25
Note that the replacement of possessive clitics by both types of
pronominal form (genitive and 'quasi-adjective' as in sentence (21)) conforms
to the rules of word order in Hittite, since accented pronominal forms in the
function attribute precede their head nouns. As I have mentioned in Section
1.5, possessive clitics were abnormal attributes in this respect.
As a second peculiarity in the position of clitic possessives, I have
mentioned in Section 1.5 the fact that, unlike other clitics, they could be
attached to constituents occurring in any position in a sentence, instead of
being in Wackernagel's position. These 'irregularities' of clitics concerning
their position might have been a reason why compound modifiers did not
become widely used for distinguishing between third person subject and non-
subject possessors. The reflexive particle -za, which in Old Hittite was
occasionally used to indicate third person subject possessors, in its turn
appears to be obligatory in this function in Middle and Late Hittite. It is used
for all persons, frequently in cases in which no pronominal possessors occur:
(24)nu= za= kan IGIHIA-wa kuwattan ANA KUR

and Refl Ptc eye-N/A:Pl:N which:D/L:Sg land:D/L:Sg
LÚ.KÚR andan nãiskinun nu= mu= kan IGIHI A-wa
enemy into turn:lSg:Ind:Pr and I:Dat Ptc eye-N/A:Pl:N
LÚ.KÚR EGIR-pa UL kuiski nāi
enemy back not anybody:Nom:Sg turn:3Sg:Pr
"toward whatever enemy land I directed my eyes (with -za : subject
possessor), no enemy was able to turn my eyes (without -za : non-subject
possessor) back" (StBoT 24 I 67-69).26
2.5. The structure of case attraction NPs. I would like to

conclude this section by explaining my choice of the label 'case attraction' for
25
Accadian possessive suffixes are always used, but this is likely to be a writing
convention connected with the use of ideograms.
26
For this translation, see Hoffner (1973:522). A different interpretation is given in
Often (1981:8).
322 SILVIA LURAGHI
the phenomenon found in the NPs examined and by giving my own views on
their internal structure.
As I have mentioned above, Section 2.1, expressions such as
UKÙ-az KAxU -az are considered NPs in which the second noun is apposed
to thefirst,as in the following schema:
This conception also explains the name of partitive apposition, commonly

used to refer to the same phenomenon which I have called case attraction. The
name case attraction itself, used for instance in Melchert (1977), in its turn
suggests that the construction is used instead of another, and that thefirstnoun
(the possessor noun) is not in the genitive, but rather in the same case as the
possessum noun, because of the influence of the latter.
I believe that, as in possessive NPs in which the possessor is expressed
through a genitive, also in the case of agreement with the possessum it is still
the possessor noun which must be taken as the modifier. The structure of case
attraction NPs should be represented, in my opinion, as:
Arguments in favor of considering the possessum noun the head of the

construction are:
- possible synchronic interchangeability of case attraction NPs with
genitival NPs;
- evolution of pronominal forms into adjectival forms;
- the case marker of the possessor noun is determined automatically by the

case marker of the possessum noun.
3. Conclusions.
In the preceding section I have shown that possession could be expressed

in Hittite through NPs with compound modifiers and through case attraction. I
have analysed and compared with each other the two possibilities. Since
compound modifiers apparently constitute an older pattern than case attraction,
I have compared the two patterns with each other in light of a number of other
syntactic changes undergone by Hittite.
I have argued that:
(a) compound modifiers were constituted by a third person possessive clitic

pronoun and a noun in the genitive that functioned as apposition of the
possessive;
(b) compound modifiers also had as a side effect co-indexing of the modifier
with its head noun;
(c) as possessive clitic pronouns became less frequent, genitival appositions

lost their function, so that compound modifiers were reinterpreted as
being basically a device of co-indexing modifiers with their head nouns;
(d) compound modifiers did not develop into indicators of third person non-
subject possessors; instead, the use of a reflexive particle was extended
to all instances of subject possessors;
(e) co-indexing was used for the expression of inalienable possession in

Middle Hittite. Compound modifiers were replaced by case atttraction,
through which co-indexing was achieved more straightforwardly, and
which did not require possessive clitics which had become obsolete;
(0 case attraction consisted in agreement of modifying nouns and pronouns

with their head nouns and was a substitute for plain genitival possessive
NPs;
(g) by case attraction personal pronouns developed accented adjectival forms

which were on their way to becoming substitutes for possessive clitics
and which conformed to the rules of word order in Hittite.
324 SILVIA LURAGHI
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE GLOSSES
Abl = ablative N = neuter gender

Acc = accusative N/A - nominative/accusative
C = common gender (non-neuter) Nom = nominative
D/L = dative/locative P/F = present/future
Dat = dative Part = participle
Dir = directive Pl = plural
Foc = focalizer Pr = preterite
Gen = genitive Prev = preverb
Imper = imperative Ptc - particle
Ind = indicative Refl = reflexive particle
M/P = mediopassive Sg = singular
VbN = verbal noun
REFERENCES
Boley,J. 1985. "Notes on Hittite place word syntax". Hetitica 6.5-43.

Carruba, O., V. Souček & R. Sternemann. 1965. "Kleine Bemerkungen zur
jüngsten Fassung der hethitischen Gesetze". ArOr 33.1-18.
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THE GHOST OF THE AGENT IN ROMANCE
MARIA MANOLIU-MANEA
University of California, Davis
0. There is enough evidence to support the hypothesis that in Latin,

agentivity controls the choice of gender, case and voice. Since the very defini
tion of grammatical categories such as gender has to be refined for diachronic
purposes, in this paper I shall examine only a few changes in the governing
properties of agentivity in connection with noun agreement strategies and the
semantic interpretation of reflexives.
1. Latin animacy: 'active' vs. 'living'.
1.1. The distribution of nouns into various genders points to the fact
that in Latin the feature [± Animate] was viewed as 'dynamic', as the capacity
of active participation in the event, very close to the idea of agentivity, rather
than as 'living': cf. ignis (m.) "fire", ventus (m.) "wind" (associated with
the idea of strength, active forces), terra (f.) "earth", arbor (f.) "tree"
(associated with the idea of fertility, productivity), etc. The fact that neuter
nouns always syncretize the subject case (nominative) with the direct object
case (accusative) can be accounted for only if the neuter is considered a
distributional class of nouns reflecting a feature which deals with the capacity
of being or not being actively and effectively involved in an event. [-Active]
seems to have been assigned as a CORE feature in neuter nouns (e.g., saxum
"stone", templum "temple"), but SITUATIONALLY (pragmatically) in non-
neuters. This is shown by the identity of neuter morphemes with accusative
morphemes in feminine or masculine nouns: templuM"temple", feminaM
(f.acc.) "woman" or servuM (m.acc.) "servant". The class of non-neuters is
divided into masculine and feminine distributional classes and seems to
correspond only prototypically to active forces (active in the sense that they are
capable of affecting human life), such as wind, fire, trees, earth, or men and
women (see Meillet's hypothesis 1921:251). Feminine and masculine
morphemes were assigned to adjectives, determiners, or pronouns according
to the interplay of semantic and pragmatic variables: cf. femina bona (f.)
"woman good" (in which the semantic core feature 'female' governs the choice
328 MARIA MANOLIU-MANEA
of gender in the adjective) and cives bona (f.) "citizen good", in which the
pragmatic variable 'talking about a female' governs the gender of the adjective.
1.2. In addition to its role in controlling the syncretism between
nominative and accusative, agentivity governs case assignment in other ways.
For example, non-agentive topical NPs take a dative marker when referring to
a possessor, in combination with the verb "to be" (e.g., mihi libram est [lit.
me:dat book is], i.e. "I have the/this book") or an accusative marker when
referring to persons as the location of feelings with certain impersonal verbs
(e.g., me pudet stultitiae meae [lit. me:acc there:is:shame-sg-3rd stupidity-gen
mine-gen], i.e. "I am ashamed of my stupidity").
1.3. Agentivity also governs the selection of voice, as a pragmatic

variable. For example, the middle-passive (the form in -r ) is chosen when
the agent is demoted from the core structure of the sentence (see Meillet &
Vendryès 1960:314 or more recently, Touratier 1984).
1.4. The feature [±Human], as a subspecies of animacy (see Comrie

1981), governs the choice of various quantifiers (e.g. [+Human]: quisquís
"whosoever", quisquam "anyone at all", quis "who?", nemo "nobody"; and
[-Human] (things): quidquid "whatsoever", quidquam "anything at all",
quid "what?", nihil "nothing").
Given the behavior of the feature [Active] in the Romance languages, it is
very likely that at a certain stage dynamicity ceased to be considered as an
inherent property of certain referents and thus became a contextually assigned
feature. Such a hypothesis can account for the role now played by dynamicity
in the choice of the pragmatically motivated categories of case and voice, and
the loss of its capacity to govern gender, which is supposedly linked to noun-
stem features. But in order to explain the difference between Latin and
Romance in this area, it is necessary to review current approaches to gender,
since not all agreement strategies accounting for the choice of gender in
adjectives or pronouns can be explained in terms of noun-stem features
belonging to the inherent semantic microstructure.
2. A functionalist definition of Romance gender.
Various descriptions of grammatical categories, either structural or

transformational, have pointed to the fact that gender is dependent on noun
stems in one way or another. The main concern of such descriptions has been
to search for criteria which could define the gender of nouns and to consider
THE GHOST OF THE AGENT IN ROMANCE 329
the gender of adjectives (or pronouns) as a redundant (if not meaningless)

morpheme rather than to focus on the factors which govern the choice of
gender in those places in which gender morphemes are interchangeable,
namely after stems indifferent to gender (i.e. in certain categories of noun, in
adjectives, noun determiners or pronouns). Consequently, neither structural
nor transformational models could delimit what is to be called gender and
various governing strategies involving features of noun stems. Moreover,
they could not account for various agreement strategies such as:
(a) contradictory gender assignment: e.g., Rom. sentinela s-a însurat [lit.
sentry-the:f. got married] "the sentry got married" (the verb a se însura is
used only with male subjects) and fata s-a maritai "(my) daughter got
married" (with the verb a se marita the subject must refer to a female);
(b) double-feature agreement: e.g., Fr. mon docteur est furieuse [lit. my:m.
doctor is furious-f.] "my doctor (who is a female) is furious";
(c) proximity agreement: e.g., Sp. el que de lejos me parecía ser un castillo
era una montaña [lit. what:m. from afar seemed to me to be a:m. castle
was a:f. mountain] (el, masculine, agrees with the predicate of the
relative clause, i.e. castillo, instead of agreeing with its own predicate,
una montaña, which belongs to the class demanding feminine
morphemes).
Given the limitations of the previous approaches, I have chosen to define

gender as a function of various variables which may govern the following
domains:
v1:semantic inherent features (non-contextual features of noun stems or
adjectives/pronouns reflecting various interpretations of referential
properties);
v2: pragmatic (situationally assigned) features;
v3: socially motivated features;
v4: syntactic functions;
v5: discourse strategies.
The formal representation of the relations between these variables is beyond

the goals of this paper.
A variable such as v1 may motivate only partially (or prototypically) a
distributional class of nouns: cf. Fr. la maison "the:f. house", which belongs
to the same distributional class as la femme "the:f. woman". Morphological
noun classes may be also semantically motivated by v1 (cf. a language such as

Ute in Givón 1984:59). Socially motivated features such as 'prestigious
professions' (v3) may favor the impact of a pragmatic variable (see the double-
feature agreement in French, which may be roughly represented as follows:
Predeterminer [v1: m.]; N [v1 prototypically male; v2: female]; V "is"; Adj
[v2: f.]). Since the head noun is not always predictable in syntactic terms, a
variable such as v5 governing the domain of discourse strategies may account
for a proximity agreement as in Sp. el que de lejos me parecía un castillo era
una montaña "what:m. from afar seemed to me a:m. castle was a:f.
mountain". This type of agreement may be explained by a discourse strategy
such as this: in an equative structure in which the referent of the argument (x)
is the same but predicates expressed by nouns change, the closest predicative
noun may govern the gender of the introductory pronoun, although the former
is not the subject of the latter.
The semantic features of the adjective (see v1) may also allow the
pragmatic and social variables to interact (see Dorel & Sezer 1981): e.g., mon
docteur est furieuse "my:m. doctor (female) is furious:f.", but less likely
??mon docteur est belle "my:m. doctor (female) is pretty:f.". The syntactic
function of the adjective (v4) is also responsible for the acceptability of double-
feature agreement: cf. mon docteur est furieuse (predicate noun) but not *mon
docteur furieuse "my:m. doctor (female) furious: f." (attribute).
3. What happened to the neuter gender?
The label 'animate' used without discrimination in connection with both

Latin and Romance genders has led to misunderstandings and contradictory
statements, especially in analyses of Romance neuters. We shall briefly
examine some cases in which 'dynamicity' has lost its governing properties,
i.e. in the area of neuter nouns and pronouns.
3.1. Romanian neuter. In Romanian there is a distributional class of

nouns which requires a masculine adjective in the singular and a feminine
adjective in the plural: e.g., tablou frumos "painting beautiful:m.:sg.", but
tablouri frumoase "paintings beautiful:f.pl.".
This class has often been called 'neuter gender' or 'ambigen' (bi-gender).
Even when not banishing the neuter from the category of gender (as Hall 1965
and Agard 1961 do), the conclusions of previous works on the Romanian
neuter are often contradictory, claiming either that it has nothing to do with the
Latin neuter (Rosetti 1986:603) or that it is an archaism (Malkiel 1985). It has
never been pointed out that, in fact, the Romanian neuter is no longer
concerned with the degree of participation in the event, with 'non-dynamicity'

as in the case of its Latin counterpart, but rather with the feature [-Living], as
the regrouping of 'animate' Latin nouns into the Romanian distributional class
of neuters shows: cf. Lat. ventas (m.) "wind" vs. Rom. vînt (n.); Lat. focus
(m.) "fire" vs. Rom. foc (n.), etc. The difference between the neuter and
non-neuter distributional classes is also manifest in the choice of predicative
adjectives with coordinated subjects: cf. bàiatulşifetiţa sunt cuminţi "boy-
the:m.sg. and girl-the:f.sg. are well-behaved-m.pl.", but pereteleşipoarta sunt
proaspàt vopsite "wall-the:m.sg. and gate-the:f.sg. are (recently) painted-
f.pl.". But the inclusion of collective animates (such as popor "people", stol
"flock") in the neuter distributional class can be accounted for by postulating a
secondary semantic reorganization according to 'the possibility vs.
impossibility of talking about gender distinctions', instead of [±Living].
3.2. Spanish neuter pronouns. Spanish has four neuter pronouns:

ello "it" (vs. él "he" and ella "she"), esto "this: 1st pers." (vs. este "this:m."
and esta "this:f."), eso "this:2nd pers." (vs. ese "this:m." and esa "this:f."),
and aquello "that" (vs. aquel "that:m." and aquella "that:f.").
As anaphoras, neuter pronouns serve to pronominalize a sentence: e.g.,
Roman, antés, me quería mucho, ... y esto es un secreto grande (C. Laforet,
Nada ) "Roman used to love me very much,... and this is a great secret"; que
la nube nos estropearía la tarde, ...ya no pudiamos dudarlo (Galdós) "that the
cloud would spoil the evening for us,... that we could no longer doubt". The
only nouns to which they may refer are the result of a nominalization by the
addition of the neuter article lo, such as in lo bueno "what is good", which is
in opposition to la bondad "goodness", due to the indeterminate value
assigned to the feature [±Count] (see Ojeda 1987); see, for example: aspiro a
que se piense aquí en lo religioso y se medite en ello (Unamuno) "I want
people here to think about what is religious and to meditate upon it".
As deictics (referential use), neuter demonstratives refer to objects when
their class is presented as unknown: e.g., Tomo esto "I'll take this
(unspecified class)" as opposed to (Qué libro quiere tomar? -) Este "Which
book do you want to take? This one:m.sg." (since libro is masculine). Cf.
also Qué es esto? "What's this?" and *?Qué es este? "What is this:m.?" (since
if one does not know the class, it is impossible to assign a masculine gender to
the demonstrative in question).
According to the hypothesis outlined in Section 2, the gender of Spanish
neuter pronouns can be accounted for by assigning zero values to every
variable responsible for the choice of gender.
4. Dynamicity and humanness.
In Romance animacy still plays an important role in the choice of subjects,

as a reflection of the intersection between the features [±Human] and
[±Dynamic], rather than as a true agent (seen as a compound of features such
as volition, intention, animacy, self-energy source and efficiency). As I hope
to have shown elsewhere (see Manoliu 1987), the features [±Human] and
[±Dynamic] are much more likely than 'agentivity' to characterize a subject
(see Tables 1 and 2):
Language Human Dynamic Agent Human Dynamic Agent

Italian 81.75 66.50 48.00 91.56 72.08 54.55
Romanian 79.75 73.00 44.00 84.69 76.53 44.89
Spanish 78.75 66.75 42.75 87.34 70.80 48.42
Table 1. Subjects. Table 2. Topical subjects.
As one can see from Table 2, if topical subjects are considered, the
percentages of Human and Active are even higher.
Langage Human
Italian 74.26
Romanian 88.37
Spanish 81.19
Table 3. Topical fronted objects: human.
The above figures point to the following quantitative tendencies: (a) if an

NP is topical and marked [+Human], then it is very likely that this NP is going
to be the subject; and (b) if an NP is characterized by the feature [+Human],
then it is highly likely also to be the topic, either as a subject or as an object.
These quantitative tendencies may explain some controversial phenomena,
apparently unrelated.
4 . 1 . Case marking: the personal gender. The high probability

of human subjects and a relatively freer word order allowing postverbal
subjects and preverbal objects in Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian has led to
a much discussed phenomenon, sometimes labeled 'personal gender'. In the
majority of cases, its main characteristics belong to the area of case marking:
4 . 1 . 1 . Prepositional markers. In, for example, Spanish,

Portuguese, Catalan, various Italian dialects and Romanian, the direct object is
marked by a preposition, precisely when it is specific and characterized by the
feature [+Human], such as Sp. busco al medicc/a un medico de Nueva York
"I am looking for the doctor/for a doctor from New York"; Rom. ham vzut
pe Ion [lit. him-have-I seen prep. John] "I saw John".
4.1.2. Clitic pronouns. In Romanian, where the order VS is almost

as frequent as the order SV, and the 3rd person dative pronoun often replaces
the possessive adjective, both the indirect and the direct objects when specific
and human are copied onto the verb as clitics, even if the objects are in
postverbal position: Rom. 1-am vzut pe Ion [lit. him have-I seen prep.
John] "I saw John"; i-am datMarieio carte [lit. to:her-have:I given Mary-
gen.-the-gen. a book] "I gave Mary a book".
4.1.3. Specialized forms of pronouns referring to persons.

For example, in Romanian, the pronoun dînsul m. - cf. Lat. IPSE - refers
only to persons; in opposition to the standard forms of the personal pronouns
(3rd person), i.e. el (Lat. ILLE); cf. also It. essi, esse "they". Indefinite and
relative-interrogative pronouns are also sensitive to the difference between
[+Human] and [-Human] (usuallly referring to things): e.g., Fr. qui "who"
vs. quoi "what", Sp. quién vs. que, Rom. cine vs. ce.
4.2. Romance reflexives: anticausatives v s . passives.

Features related to animacy, viewed as dynamicity, also govern voice choices.
In spite of the fact that recent approaches consider passives as means of
'demoting the agent' from the core structure of the sentence (see Desclés et al
1984, Touratier 1984, Postal 1986), in Romance, as in any other type of
language in which passive readings can be assigned to more than one
construction, animacy has to be brought into the picture in order to account for
some of the most common differences between the reflexive passives and the
plain passives. Let us examine, for example, the role played by the features
[±Human] and [±Dynamic] in defining a few constraints imposed on the
passive readings of reflexive constructions which have not yet been accounted
for in a satisfactory way.
4 . 2 . 1 . It has often been emphasized that reflexive constructions in

which the subject (especially if inanimate) follows the verb are more likely to
receive a passive interpretation than those in which the subject precedes the
verb: cf. Rom. seara, palatul reînvie, se aprind candelabrele, se ridicà
storurile, se deschid uşile ... [lit. refl. tum:on-pl. chandeliers-the, open-pl.

doors-the ...] "in the evening, the palace comes to life, one turns on the
chandeliers,raisesthe blinds, opens the doors ...", and seara, palatuleînvie,
candelabrele se aprind, storurile se ridicà, porţile se deschid ... "in the
evening, the palace comes to life, the chandeliers light up, the blinds rise, the
doors open ..." (for similar phenomena in Italian and Spanish, see García
1975, Costa 1976).
The explanation is to be found in the same quantitative tendencies
characterizing the Romance subject, which favor the interpretation of a
postverbal nontopical NP (especially when inanimate) as inactive, i.e. as an
'undergoer' rather than as a 'doer'. As Table 4 shows, a non-human
postposed subject refers to a dynamic participant in only 0.25% of the cases.
Feature Italian Romanian Spanish

-Topic 9.75 15.25 7.75
+Dynamic 3.50 10.00 3.50
+Human 2.75 9.75 3.00
-Human 0.75 0.25 0.50
Table 4. Postverbal nontopical subjects (% calculated in relation to
a total of 400 subjects per language).
When the subject is fronted, the passive reading is blocked and various
dynamic readings are actualized, according to the aspectual-semantic features
of the verb and its capacity for assigning the contextual feature [+Dynamic] to
the subject NP. For example, with the reflexive of ACHIEVEMENT (in Dowty's
1979 terms), the anticausative reading is actualized: e.g., Rom. porţile se
deschid [lit. doors-the refl, open] "the doors open", maşinile s-au oprit "cars
stopped", creanga s-a rupt "the branch broke". As Gougenheim (1929:160)
pointed out, in a construction such as la porte s'ouvre "the door opens", the
subject "n'est pas absolument passif; même lorsque le sujet est un nom de
chose on lui suppose quelque activité".
With verbs of ACCOMPLISHMENT, the anticausative reading is the result of
the fact that the object is viewed as having a certain property which facilitates
the activity: e.g., Rom. vinul se bea, berea nu [lit. wine-the refl, drink, beer-
the, not] "the wine, they drink it, the beer, not" (which, in fact may be
paraphrased as "if the object has the property of being wine, the activity of
drinking is performed, if it is beer, the activity does not take place") (see
Siewierska 1984:170).
In the case of verbs of ACCOMPLISHMENT which express the fact that the
object is the result of the activity in question, the passive reading is favored,
since the resulting object cannot be viewed as having any active involvement in
the process: see Sp. esta novela se escribió en 1938 "this story was written in
1938"; Rom. piramidele s-au construit cu mulţi ani în urmà "the pyramids
were built many years ago", etc.
4.2.2. The passive reading is usually blocked when the direct object in
the active construction is characterized by the feature [±Living]: cf. Fr. les
prisonniers vont se pendre à cinq heures du matin, which can have two
readings, (a) "the prisoners will hang themselves at 5 o'clock in the morning"
and (b) "they will hang one another", but less likely (c) "they will be hanged-
passive", while in les jambons se pendent dans le grenier the subject always
keeps its passive reading, i.e. "hams are to be hung in the attic". The
constraint under discussion rests on the same prototypical interpretations of
preverbal animate subjects as doers if the verb does not take the 'plain' passive
form.
5. Conclusions.
5.1. It seems that the concept of agent, as a complex symbol, is less

appropriate for diachronic explanations than an analytical approach taking into
account semantic components such as [±Dynamic], [±Efficient], [±Human],
and [±Living]. For example, major changes in the categories of gender and
voice in Romance languages may be accounted for by considering the status of
a feature such as [±Dynamic] (if not [±Effective]), which ceased to be treated
as an inherent feature of noun stems and became a pragmatically assigned
feature.
5.2. Animacy and neuter gender are not always related in the same way.
In Latin, for example, traces of a stage in which animacy was interpreted as
[±Effective] (in the sense that the participant could affect human life) often
account for the distribution of nouns into non-neuters and neuters. In
Romanian, the distributional class of neuter nouns is linked to the
'impossibility of talking about gender distinctions' rather than to [-Living] or
[-Dynamic]. In Spanish, the neuter is associated with a zero value for the
variables responsible for the choice of gender in personal and demonstrative
pronouns.
5.3. The importance of a pragmatic feature such as [±Dynamic] for

Romance syntax is reflected in the quantitative tendencies characterizing the
assignment of the feature in question to subjects and topics, with relevant
consequences for the constraints governing the choice of voice (anticausative
reflexive, reflexive passive or plain passive).
5.4. The fortune of [±Human] as a governing stem feature in the choice

of subjects, voices and case markers seems to be related to topicality, and,
implicitly, to the place which is given to human beings in the speaker's
reconstruction of the events we are talking about.
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Meillet, Antoine. 1921-1937. Linguistique historique et linguistique générale,
2 vols. Paris: Champion.
Meillet, Antoine & Joseph Vendryès. 1960. Traité de grammaire comparée
des langues classiques, 3rd ed. rev. & compi. by J. Vendryès. Paris:
Champion.
Ojeda, Almerindo. 1987. The Spanish Neuter. A Study in the Semantics of
Individuation. Unpublished manuscript.
Posner, Rebecca. 1985. "Non-agreement on Romance disagreements". JL
2.437-451.
Postal, Paul M. 1968. Studies of Passive Clauses. Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press.
Rosetti, Alexandru. 1986. Istorialimbiiromâne de la orìginipînàînsecolul al
XVn-lea. Bucharest: Editura Ştiinţificà.
Siewierska, Anna. 1984. The Passive: A Comparative Linguistics Analysis.
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Touratier, Christian. 1984. "Il y a un passif en latin; mais de quoi s'agit-il?".
Le Passif ed. by Daniel Bresson, 75ff. Publications de l'Université de
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Papers in Linguistics 13(4).773-794.
NON-ADJACENCY IN GEMINATE STRUCTURE:
AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
JEAN-PIERRE Y. MONTREUEL
The University of Texas at Austin
In this paper I examine the interrelations of three different constructs in

theoretical phonology:
- assimilation as feature- or node-spreading;
- the non-linear representation of Modern French schwa;
- constraints on geminate structure.
Next, I present a set of data showing that the current versions of these
three constructs are not strictly compatible.1 Specifically, the data will illustrate
processes of total assimilation between non-adjacent segments.
Finally, I discuss, within a theory of nodology, the historical changes
responsible for the emergence of these assimilation phenomena.
1. Assimilation as spreading.
The representation of phonological features which I assume is given in

Fig. 1. It is essentially a hierarchical structure composed of phonetic features
and phonological nodes. Various hierarchical models have been proposed by
Clements (1985), Sagey (1986) and Archangeli & Pulleyblank (1986), among
others.
Given this model, assimilation can be viewed as the result of either
feature-spreading or node-spreading. Consider a simple case of single-feature
spreading, that of voice assimilation in Modern French, as given in Fig. 2.
The feature /vce/ of the second obstruent links up to the laryngeal node of
the first obstruent, where delinking occurs. Compared to the use of the
alpha device or to feature manipulation in linear phonology, this view of
1
The central part of this paper was presented at the LSRL 17 convention. Most of the
examples used in that early version have remained unchanged.
340 JEAN-PIERRE Y. MONTREUIL
Fig. 1.
assimilation as spreading-cum-delinking has the advantage of constraining the

phonology by allowing only phonetically plausible processes to be
represented. It also makes the strong claim that only features that are in the
trigger can be acquired by the target, and that, in the unmarked state of affairs,
either single features or single nodes will travel.
Now consider a rule of total assimilation, that of coronal continuant
assimilation, as given in Fig. 3.
Clements (1985) argues that all processes of total assimilation involve
spreading of the root-node. But we can conceive of the assimilatory process
as a spreading of the /hi/ feature, followed by the application of the shared
feature convention (Steriade 1982), which in effect zips the structure all the
way up.
NON-ADJACENCY IN FRENCH GEMINATES 341
Paraphrase: Obstruents assimilate in voice regressively to other ob

struents.
Examples: lesbian/şb/ "lesbian"; absent / b s / "absent".
Fig. 2. Voice assimilation in Modern French.
Paraphrase: Coronals assimilate regressively to high coronals.

Examples: bus jaune /žž/ "yellow bus"
l'ex-shah / š š / "the ex-shah"
gaz chaud /šš/ "hot gas"
Fig. 3. Coronal continuant assimilation in Modern French.
2. The representation of schwa in Modern French.
The current interpretation of schwa in non-linear phonology is that it is a

null vowel. Anderson (1982), Withgott (1982) and Borowsky (1986)
demonstrate that most of the problems posed by the behavior of schwa
disappear if schwa functions as a vowel not associated to a matrix. In the
framework we adopt here, similar to the one developed in Levin (1985),
syllabicity is not encoded at the skeletal level. Rather, nuclei are built over x-
structure by feature-reading syllabification rules. Thus, it is reasonable to
assume that, in order to be syllabified properly, schwa must be linked to
segmental information containing at least the features/-cons, -hi/.
3. Constraints on adjacency.
The representation shown in Fig. 3, the result of an assimilation process,

is similar to that of a geminate. Lexical geminates, such as exist in Italian or
such as existed in older stages of French, precisely consist of one Root-node
linked up to two timing units. We define as 'true' geminates structures of the
type given in Fig. 4 and as 'false' geminates structures of the type given in
Fig. 5. We recall that the obligatory contour principle (McCarthy 1986) rules
out false geminates inside the morpheme.
Fig.4. 'True' geminates. Fig. 5. 'False' geminates.
Lexical geminates, however, are subject to the strongest constraints on

adjacency. Research has demonstrated that such structures as given in Fig. 4
cannot be split by epenthesis, and that one of the segments of such a structure
cannot be affected by a rule unless the other segment also is; see Schein &
Steriade (1986) and references therein.
Both voice-assimilation and coronal continuant assimilation in French
apply across schwa, as (1) and (2) demonstrate.
( 1 ) Voice assimilation across schwa:

médecin /ds/ "doctor"
jupe bleue /pb/ "blue skirt"
lève-toi! /vt/ "get up!"
(2) Coronal continuant assimilation across schwa:
ça se chante /šš/ "it's for singing"
grosse joue /žž/ "big cheek"
grosse chaleur /šš/ "the heat"
A problematic situation thus develops, because consonants typically do

not spread over vowels. In (2), for instance, if total assimilation results from
spreading of the root-node and if schwa does project to the segmental plane,
then we are in the presence of an incontrovertible case of line-crossing
violation of the type shown in Fig. 6.
This violation occurs only if schwa is present at the time assimilation

applies. Under this assumption, it is easy to see that subsequent deletion of
schwa would violate the OCP. Even if schwa is not deleted by rule, but rather
erased by convention, the line-crossing violation remains.
If, however, schwa is not present when assimilation applies, then the
situation is trivial, because adjacency obtains. The derivation of médecin
"doctor" is the usual two-step affair, as shown in Fig. 7.
UR medǔsĕ médecin
Schwa-del. medsĕ
Vce.-assim. medsĕ
Fig. 7.
In order to show that this is not the case, and that the problem is not
trivial, I now discuss empirical evidence which demonstrates that schwa must
be present, in some fonn or other, at the time assimilation occurs. I analyse
cases where the spreading rules not only respond to the presence of schwa, but
in fact are crucially conditioned by it.
4. R- assimilation in Low Norman.
In the Northern Cotentin dialects of Low Nonnan,lr!, a velar continuant,

assimilates progressively to a preceding consonant (Lepelley 1974), but only
through schwa, as shown in (3); no such assimilation occurs in the absence of
schwa (4).
(3) Irl assimilation in Northern Cotentinois:

Nonnan French
p cop 'pais couperais "would cut"

t acat'tais achetcrais "would buy"
k pequ'quai pechcrai "will fish"
b succoum b'bais succombcrais "would succumb"
d attcnd'dais attcndrais "would wait"
f gaffai gaffcrai "will poke"
v arriv'vount arrivcront "will arrive"
s s'sa scra "will be"
Z bouolang'gic boulangcric "bakery"
1 MJ'lai OF baillcrai "will give"
r dorrai dorcrai "will gild"
j quil'laec cuillcric "spoonful"
m aim'mais aimcrais "would love"
n machoun'nic ma{XJnncric "masonry"
(4) patric '" [patti:] "fatherland"

cffraycr '" [etTeje] "to scare"
This process occurs only word-internally, and at a morpheme boundary.

It is not imperative, however, that this infonnation be part of the rule. The
historical development of schwa, a sequence of foot-conditioned processes,
explains why schwa is prone to occur in morpheme-final position. As we
have seen earlier, other assimilations through schwa apply inside morphemes.
It is also interesting to note in this regard the relevance of another process
of Ir/-assimilation. Most commonly in the Val de Saire area (Eastern
Cotentinois), there is regressive assimilation of./r/ inside the morpheme. This

rule, too, applies only through schwa; see the examples in (5).
(5) Regressive / r /-assimilation in Eastern Cotentinois:
mer'chin [messe] Fr. médecin "doctor"

her'chon [hesso] Fr. hérisson "hedgehog"
verto [vetto] Fr. vérité "truth"
varto [vatto] OF guéreter "plough"
The progressive assimilation of schwa shown in (3) finds an interesting

parallel in Island Norman. In Jersey and Guernesey, where /r/ is apical,
assimilation occurs only after coronals and, again, only through schwa.
Compare (6), examples (a), (b) and (c).
(6) a. acat'tais Fr. achèterais "would buy"

b. cop'rais Fr. couperais "would cut"
c. pendrais Fr. pendrais "would hang"
Do these processes invalidate constraints on adjacency in geminate

structures? I would like to argue now that they do not, simply because schwa
does not project to the segmental plane. I contend that schwa must be
conceived of as a null segment, an x without a matrix; thus, at no point in the
derivation can a structure like Fig. 6 actually occur.
5. Schwa as a null segment.
In work in preparation, I develop a picture of the phonology of French

based on the principles of metrical theory in which I argue that schwa is not, as
it might be tempting to conceive of it, the maximally underspecified vowel of
French. If it were, it would link up to a root-node, the way /e/ and /t/ do (/e/
being the maximally underspecified vowel and /t/ the maximally underspecified
consonant). Rather, schwa behaves as having no association to the melody
plane. It is assigned N by a rule which addresses null segments, shown in
Fig. 8 and which obeys the filter shown in Fig. 9.
No rule ever deletes such an x-slot, but a set of rules (two lexical, one
post-lexical) specify it for features in certain environments. In the same work,
I try to show that all aspects of the idiosyncratic behavior of schwa can be
explained in terms of its rather unusual lexical representation. This
interpretation of schwa results in a contrast, already exploited in Borowsky
(1986), between null x's and x's which link down to an empty matrix, as
shown in Fig. 10.
In all the cases of assimilation through schwa that we have discussed so

far, schwa is never in a position to be specified. If it is a null segment, then
line-crossing violations cannot occur. There is no violation of the geminate
integrity constraint because the schwa that lingers inside the geminate structure
is not inserted or deleted by rule. There is no violation of the OCP or
antigemination because spreading does occur. All the rules do to the con
straints on geminate structures is make it clear that strict skeletal adjacency is
not a requirement.
The Norman facts remain to be explained and invite an examination of the
historical changes that created assimilation through schwa, which I will
characterize as root-delinking and SL-delinking.
6. Root-delinking.
Historical segment deletion often corresponds in the framework we have

adopted here to delinking of the root node. When the root-node delinks and
nothing else happens, the skeleton slot finds no phonetic realization. If
spreading from an adjacent root-node occurs, then compensatory lengthening
takes place. Compare the representations of final schwa in Fig. 11 : simple
deletion in Standard French vs. delinking-cum-spreading in Low Norman,
where, as in many other dialects of French, schwa-deletion created length

distinctions.
When matrixless skeletal slots are in a position to be pronounced, and

again in the case of schwa this is determined by metrical considerations of foot
formation, they are assigned a neutral matrix which often but not always
contains the feature specifications predicted by the output of default rules, as
outlined for instance by underspecification theory (Archangeli 1984). This
weakening of a full segment into a null segment has come to be instrumental in
defining one of the most common shapes of the foot in Modern French, as
given in Fig. 12.
In this perspective we can have a three-way contrast between full
segments, null segments and non-existing segments. I have argued elsewhere,
for instance, that the shape of the definite article in Southern French, Standard
French and Northern French must be indicated as in Fig. 13 (Montreuil 1986).
7. SL-delinking.
A number of phonetic processes are best represented as resulting from

delinking of the SL-node. The truncated structure that remains corresponds
phonetically to an aspirate or a glottal stop, depending on the degree of glottal
constriction. This representation, shown in Fig. 14, accounts well for the
fact that the degree of nasality associated with these segments can still vary, as
it frequently does, e.g., in Hispanic dialects.
(null segment) (full segment) (asyllabic)

Fig. 13. Underlying representation of
the masculine singular definite article.
Intervocalic /r/ in Northern Cotentin exhibited a considerable degree of

lenition. In weak position /r/ can surface as [r], [h], [j] or it can fail to surface
altogether. Compare dialects A and B in (7).
(7) Standard French curé :
Dialect A: [čyhe] Dialect B: [čye]

Fig. 14. SL-delinking.
In dialect A delinking of the SL-node is accompanied by the spread of the

SL features of the following vowel (since /r/ functions here as an onset); see
Fig. 15. The phonetic result is a voiceless copy vowel which corresponds to
the definition of /h/ in English (Ladefoged 1982). In dialect B delinking is not
followed by spreading, thus no phonetic interpretation is possible.
Fig. 15. Aspiration as SL-delinking-cum-spreading.
We have noted that in the Jersey dialect total assimilation occurs only in
the presence of coronal stops. The limited scope of this assimilation must be
related to the fact that intervocalic /r/-lenition in Jersey did not result in SL-
delinking. What we find is a variant of the assibilation process that affected
large areas of dialectal France in the 16th century, leaving such traces in the
Standard French vocabulary as chaise "chair", bésides "spectacles" (instead
of the expected chaire, béricles); see Spence (1957) and references therein.
In Jersey this sibilant took the form of an interdental voiced slit fricative
[5], as can be seen in the examples given in (8).
(8) couotuth'thie [kutyðði:] Fr. coûturerie "sewing shop"

couotuthièthe [kutyðjE:ð] Fr. coûturière "seamstress"
séthée [seðe:] Fr. soirée "evening"
heuthe [0:ð] Fr. heure "hour"
Geminate blockage prevents apical /r/, derived from /rr/, from undergoing
assibilation, as shown in (9).
(9) [ãtere] *[ãteðe] Fr. enterrer "to bury"
[kwo:r] *[kwo:ð] OF courre "to run"
[ġєr] *[ġєð] Fr. guerre "war"
When schwa comes to be specified, then obviously assibilation rather

than assimilation takes place, as shown in (10). Schwa specification works
exactly as in French. Thus, in (10), example (b), schwa is specified because
of the cluster that precedes it; in (10), example (d), because of the liquid-glide
sequence that follows it.
(10) a. couot'ta Fr. coûtera "will cost"
b. portetha *port'ta Fr. portera "will carry"
c. acatouns Fr. achetons "buy"
acat'ouns Fr. achèterons "will buy"
d. acatéthiouns *acat'tiouns Fr. achéterions "would buy"
Fig. 16./r/-assimilation in Island Norman.

We thus represent the Jersey assimilation rule as in Fig. 16, but note
again that it is in fact the end result of a process which started with the
traveling of the continuancy feature, followed by the application of the shared
feature convention.
An investigation of Jerriais consonant clusters reveals the presence of a
filter on sequences of obstruents. This filter, loosely formalized in Fig. 17,
rules out sequences of segments which agree in place but disagree in manner
and vice versa. In other words, geminates are well-formed, and so are
sequences of two obstruents which differ from each other in both manner and
place.
Fig. 17.
But, as far as assimilation is concerned, if the rule is written accurately,

this filter can only find its place in the grammar as a redundancy statement.
REFERENCES
Anderson, Stephen. 1982. "The analysis of French schwa". Language

58.534-573.
Archangeli, Diane. 1984. Underspecification in Yawelmani Phonology and
Morphology. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. MIT, Cambridge.
Archangeli, Diane & Douglas Pulleyblank. 1986. The Content and Structure
of Phonological Representations. Manuscript.
Borowsky, Tony. 1986. "Empty and unspecified segments". Paper
presented at the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, 1983.
Clements, George N. 1985. "The geometry of phonological features".
Phonology Yearbook 2.225-252.
Hualde, José. Forthcoming. "Delinking processes in Romance." Linguistic
Symposium on the Romance Languages 17. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Ladefoged, Peter. 1982. A Course in Phonetics, 2nd ed. New York:
Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich.
Lepelley, René. 1974. "Le parler normand du Val de S aire". Cahiers des
Annales de Normandie 7.
Levin, Juliette. 1985. A Metrical Theory of Syllabicity. Unpublished Ph.D.

dissertation. MIT, Cambridge.
McCarthy, John. 1986. "OCP effects: gemination and antigemination."
Linguistic Inquiry 17.207-263.
Montreuil, Jean-Pierre. 1986. "Null segments in Romance". Studies in
Romance Linguistics. Publications in the Language Sciences 24.265-
281. Dordrecht: Foris.
Montreuil, Jean-Pierre. 1987. "On assimilation through schwa". Linguistic
Symposium on the Romance Languages 17. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Sagey, Elizabeth. 1986. The Representation of Features and Relations in
Non-Linear Phonology. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. MIT,
Cambridge.
Schein, Barry & Donca Steriade. 1986. "On geminates". Linguistic Inquiry
17:4.691-744.
Spence, N.C.W. 1957. "L'assibilation de 17r/intervocalique dans les parlers
jersiais. Revue de Linguistique Romane 21.270-288.
Steriade, Donca. 1982. Greek Prosodies and the Nature of Syllabification.
Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. MIT, Cambridge.
Withgott, Margaret. 1982. Segmental Evidence for Phonological
Constituents. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of Texas at
Austin.
MODES OF INFERENCE AND THE GRADUAL/RAPID
ISSUE: SUGGESTIONS FROM THE ENGLISH MODAL
STEPHEN J. NAGLE
University of South Carolina-Coastal
1. Abduction, deduction and induction.
Andersen (1973) has drawn linguists' attention to the central role of

abductive inference in fostering linguistic innovations. Drawing upon the
work of C.S. Peirce, Andersen argues that Peirce's 'abduction' is the primary
inferential strategy in language acquisition, and thus is a principal motivator of
language change. Andersen (1973:774-775) presents syllogism (1) as an
example of abduction, as compared with (2) and (3), illustrating respectively
deduction and induction:
(1) ABDUCTION
Socrates is mortal
All men are mortal
Socrates is a man
(2) DEDUCTION (3) INDUCTION
All men are mortal Socrates is a man
Socrates is a man Socrates is mortal
Socrates is mortal All men are mortal
In Andersen's theoretical framework, after language learners have
abduced a grammatical rule from surface data, they then test it both deductively
with output which may be accepted or rejected by other speakers and
inductively by checking the utterances of others against this abduced rule.
After deductive or inductive tests appear to repudiate the abduced rule, the
speaker may either reject the first analysis or add additional rules to the
grammar to produce the output expected by the models, while retaining the
original analysis. Once a significant number of speakers share the new
analysis, these 'adaptive rules' may ultimately become restricted or lost in the
grammar, allowing an innovation to become the rule, not the exception.
Essentially, then, both the nature of rule formulation (and modification) and
354 STEPHEN J. NAGLE
the conservatism of social responses to innovations restrict instantaneous or

veryrapidsurface change across a speech community.
Andersen has noted that abduction and induction may be easily confused,
and Peirce might well have been surprised that his somewhat speculative
discussions of abduction would have elevated it to such a prominent place in
linguistic theory (especially since his principal interest was in the metacognitive
foundations of scientific inquiry). Peirce (1940:151-152) has noted that
abduction is simply "the operation of adopting an explanatory hypothesis" of
the form (4):
(4) The surprising fact, C, is observed;

But if A were true, C would be a matter of course;
Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true.
As Peirce and Andersen note, novel, if not necessarily true, ideas result
more from abduction than from induction or deduction. Yet many
psycholinguists hold induction to be the principal language acquisition
strategy, since the child for the most part is led to the formulation of rules
whose output will directly replicate the model input; that is, the child derives
predominantly 'true' conclusions from surface data. Grammatical innovations,
however, are diachronically 'false'. They represent new knowledge, which
shows up in deductively produced surface innovations. Thus, while one may
question Andersen's view of the importance of abduction in the acquisition of
the already existing, 'true', grammar, it clearly motivates grammatical change.
In a non-technical sense, abduction is induction gone wrong: true premises
may lead to a generalization that is false. However, when an innovation
occurs in the grammar of many speakers, there must be something to cause
this duplication of 'falsehood'. And if it constitutes a major modification in the
grammar which nonetheless spreads quickly, there may be more at work than
the simple abductions all children make, a minute number of which ever result
in language change.
Peirce (1940:152) has recognized that not all abductions are equal (though
again, he was not dealing with language), postulating a fourth type of
inference, 'abductory induction', which basically is an induction which "in
volves a certain element of guess work". For him these inferences are the
most forceful of any involving abduction; applied to language change we
might speculate that they yield the innovations that are most warranted by
surface data, occur simultaneously in the developing grammars of numerous
language learners, and result in relatively rapid surface changes. However,
since this type of inductively-driven inference still involves a hypothesis
(which at least in language acquisition/change is a false one), it could more
MODES OF INTERFERENCE AND THE ENGLISH MODAL 355
properly be called 'abductory induction'. Admittedly, we are muddying the

waters here somewhat, yet it is sensible to expect that the conditions leading to
an abduction might affect the rate of its adoption and the speed at which its
surface consequences spread.
In this modified synthesis of the work of Peirce and Andersen, the role of
deduction remains limited to producing the output of an abductive innovation.
Though there may be phonological universais dependent on the physical
properties of both sounds themselves and the human perceptual system which
could serve as true premisses for the learner's inferential decisions, it is still
the case that innovations are diachronically false. This is also the case in
syntax, even if we feel reasonably confident in proposing and isolating
universais in the mind of the language learner. The surface grammars of the
world's languages at least point toward homogeneity in fundamental initial
structure constituents, and government-binding theory has in recent years
invigorated universal grammar and comparative syntax through its elucidation
of parametric differences between the syntactic components of various
languages (e.g., Rizzi 1982) and between stages of an individual language
(e.g., Roberts 1985). However, even if cognitive constraints on the form of
grammar play some role in the acquisition of syntax, innovations in the
underlying grammar are still 'false' conclusions which cannot result from
deduction.
2. The synchronic and diachronic English modal.
The English modal auxiliaries (can, could, shall, should, will, would,
may, might, must and [?]ought)are well known for numerous morphological
and syntactic traits which they do not share with other verbs. To review, they
are not inflected for person or number (5), do not have gerunds or participles
(6), do not take direct object complements or followingto-infinitives (7), and
do not allow preceding periphrastic do in negatives or affirmatives (8).
Further, they invert with their subjects (9), form their negatives with
postposed not (10), and appear in what Palmer (1965) and others have called
'Code'structures (11):
(5) *She cans go tonight.
She wants to go tonight.
(6) *Her canning go made me envious.
Her wanting to go made me envious.
(7) *She can it tonight.

*She can to go tonight.
(8) *She does can go tonight.
She does want to go tonight.
(9) Can she go tonight?
*Goes she tonight?
(10) She cannot go tonight.
*She goes not tonight.
(11) She can go and so can he.
*She wants to go and so wants he.
Many generative syntacticians have taken these properties to indicate that the
modais are initial structure auxiliaries, appearing as members of Modal within
an autonomous AUX (or, more recently in some versions of government-
binding theory, INFL).
In Old English the modais were not radically different from other verbs:
as preterite-present verbs they were inflected, though not as much as other
verbs, for person and number; there is evidence of participles and gerunds for
at least some of them; they took direct objects; they and all verbs inverted in
negatives and questions. Because of this many observers have viewed them as
unremarkable in Old English (e.g., Lightfoot 1974). Actually, they were
somewhat remarkable for their morphology, their inconsistency regarding non-
finite forms, and their numerical prominence among the preterite-present verbs
(6 of 12).
In Middle English the modais gradually lost the ability to take direct
objects and failed to adopt theto-infinitivewith contiguous verbs as this struc
ture gradually spread in Middle English. Further changes included the almost
complete loss of the non-modal preterite-presents (or their shift to another
paradigm) and the split of the preterites of the modais from the presents to
form essentially 'new' modais with present sense (e.g., should, the former
preterite of shall). Lightfoot (1974, 1979) has proposed that these changes
were unrelated and that the Middle English modais were full verbs. Aitchison
(1980) sees these changes as composing thefirstof three stages of interrelated
change. Steele et al. (1981) have proposed that the changes indicate that
modais were reanalysed as members of an initial structure category AUX as
early as Late Old English, and Disterheft (1987) has argued for an abductively-
based gradual reanalysis of the modais beginning in Old English.
In Early Modern English, change in the modais accelerated, and the

modais ultimately in this period lost all (remaining) non-finite forms, no longer
could occur in perfective constructions (e.g., *have could), and in most
dialects became limited to one per clause, where previously they could co-
occur. Also in Early Modern English, the earlier placement of not after the
verb became limited only to auxiliaries, and inversion in questions and
negatives was restricted to subjects and auxiliaries, not verbs. By the early
17th century periphrastic do structures had begun to spread quickly, with do
+ not replacing V + not in negatives and do + subject replacing V + subject
in questions.
Lightfoot has argued that these changes resulted from a 16th-century
initial structure reanalysis of the modais from VP to AUX, a change which
resulted from the modais' lack of transparency as verbs by Late Middle
English. The spirit if not the letter of this proposal has persisted. Steele
et al. 's proposal was essentially a revision of Lightfoot's work, and Roberts
(1985) has presented a recent, amended version which basically retains
Lightfoot's chronology of both surface and underlying developments, while
proposing that the change entailed a parametric shift in English from
morphological to syntactic agreement. Both Steele et al. and Roberts argue
that the loss of the morphological subjunctive played a significant role in
causing the reanalysis of the modais (though Steele et al. argue for a much
earlier time frame), and Roberts proposes that this loss along with the general
loss of morphological agreement led not only to the reanalysis of the modais in
Early Modern English, but to obligatory do periphrasis as well.
One aspect of Lightfoot's account which has received much attention and
much criticism (e.g., Bennett 1981, Romaine 1981) is his proposal that in
contrast with his 'independent' Middle English developments, the 16th-century
reanalysis illustrates the abrupt nature of base restructuring and the immediacy
of its results, reflecting the workings of a Transparency Principle. Critics have
pointed out that there is no evidence to support the immediacy hypothesis,
though Early Modern English does show evidence of fairly rapid surface
change both in the new restriction in most dialects to one modal per clause and
in the revision of negation and inversion patterns (accompanied by theriseof
obligatory do).
Looking solely at surface developments we see two periods of change,
one gradual and the other rather rapid (with some dispute as to the chronology
of individual surface changes). The question then is why one period was so
gradual and the other much more rapid. Could this have resulted from a
single, early, underlying change, or were the surface developments the product
of two distinct grammatical changes? The sections following support the latter
contention.
2.1. Abductive-deductive emergence of a Middle English
verb class "Modal". In Late Old English and more prominently in Early
Middle English the modais developed a variety of new senses, especially as
auxiliaries, and their use as auxiliaries expanded as the morphological
subjunctive waned. This could be just coincidental, but given the frequently
modal sense of the subjunctive, the standard explanation that the gradual
auxiliarization of the modais was compensatory appears to be warranted. The
process began with shall/should (see, e.g., Goossens 1987), which in Late
Old English already had no infinitive, gerund or participle, and must, which
also lacked a gerund and participles. Warner (1983) argues for a class 'Modal'
by 1400 with shall and will as 'central' members. In addition to their early
defective morphology, they were also the first to shed direct objects, allowing
them only archaically by late Middle English. Both the morphological
developments, in which shall and must were advanced, and the emergence of
new epistemic readings in Middle English (Shepherd 1982) may be seen as
consequences of an abduction in Late Old English or Early Middle English
which marked the preterite-present paradigm:
(12) Modal sense is conveyed only weakly by morphology;
But if the preterite-presents were the language's modal operators, this
would explain it;
Thus, there is reason to believe that this is the case.
Other deductive consequences would include an increase in frequency of

modal periphrasis, as well as the departure of non-modals from the paradigm
by (13):
(13) Preterite-presents are modais;
Verbs x, y, and z are not modais;
Verbs x, y and z are not preterite-presents.
Given the persistence of the subjunctive in Middle English, the process would
be gradual, but as the subjunctive continued to weaken more speakers would
be led to the same abduction. Yet the modais remained verbs. Even though
some modais were advanced in the process of becoming auxiliaries, several
members of the paradigm, especially can, had a full range of non-finite forms
in both Old English and Middle English and also prominently allowed
complementation. In fact, the use of can as an auxiliary did not generalize
until well into Middle English. The Oxford English Dictionary cites (14) and
(15) as the first examples of can as an auxiliary meaning "know how to" and
later "be able to":
(14) Suilc & mare panne we cunnen sæien. (all54 O.E. Chron. (Laud Ms.)
an. 1137)
"Such and more than we can say."
(15) So yung pat sho ne coupe Gon on fote. (al300 Havelok 111)
"So young that she could not go on foot."
Even if we accept this development as a late consequence of an early reanalysis

of the modais, the persistence of direct objects for many modais until Early
Modern English argues against an early restructuring. Even with adaptive
rules in the grammar, why should categorically-discrete auxiliaries persist in
complementation for four hundred years?
The modais' involvement with to complementation also suggests that
they remained verbs in Middle English, where they flirted with not only non
contiguous, but immediately following to- infinitives (though the latter was rare
except for will):
(16) To stint wald he, if he moght, pe foly pat his breper thoght. (13.. Curs.
M. 4123 [Visser])
"He would stint, if he could, the folly that his brother thought".
(17) Neiper he schal mowe to studie, to preche, to speke myche, neither to
singe.1 (1443 Pecock, Reule Christen Relig. (EETS) 270 [Visser])
"He shall be able neither to study, to preach, to speak much, nor to sing."
Though the modais remained verbs in Middle English, they were,

viewing the class as a whole, primarily surface auxiliaries by Early Modern
English; and as Goossens (1984) points out, many of them had all but ceased
to be independent predicates.
2.2. The next step: inductory abduction, reanalysis, rapid

change. Though we may challenge some areas of Lightfoot's chronology
and explanation of Middle English developments, his argument that the opacity
of the modais as verbs by Late Middle English led learners to reanalyse them
as underlying auxiliaries, and not verbs, is persuasive. In current English,
their syntax and morphology clearly distinguish them from verbs, and rapid
syntactic developments in the 16th and 17th centuries point toward a
1
Schal Mowe = shall may, a double modal.
restructuring. Whether this change supports a Transparency Principle

operating on an otherwise highly resistant grammar, however, is debatable and
open to the sorts of criticism offered by Romaine (1981) and Disterheft
(1987). Looking at change in the modais purely from the standpoint of human
inference, we need no recourse to speculation on abstract principles of an
autonomous grammar. Simply put, the numerous exceptional features of the
modais by Late Middle English constituted inductive pressure for speakers to
reanalyse them as underlying auxiliaries, a case of inductory abduction. If the
modais were verbs in the underlying grammar of learners' models, the
abduced innovation was of course 'false', yet warranted by a body of
inductive evidence. This same inductive evidence forced large numbers of
speakers to the same abduction and fueled the rapid spread of the deductive
surface results.
3. Conclusions.
Since the decline in the subjunctive that started the process of change in
the modal was itself gradual, the surface auxiliarization of the modal verbs also
proceeded gradually as did their loss of complementation. The subjective held
on tenuously, but as it became increasingly moribund, modal periphrasis, at
first only a possibility, became a clear, unambiguous alternative.
In contrast, the reanalysis with its rapid results was all but ùnavoidable
after the Middle English changes; learners were impelled to make the modais
in the underlying grammar what they appeared to be in the language of their
models: auxiliaries. The alternatives were to retain the modais as an
unwieldy, maverick class of verbs whose morphology, syntax and semantics
clearly distinguished them from all other verbs or, more unlikely, to proceed in
the other direction and expand complementation, revive non-finite forms, etc.
The broad picture of change in the modal is one of surface drift, which,
as Disterheft (1987) notes, is the appearance and diffusion of the deductive
consequences of abductive innovations; and the story is not finished. Certain
verbs do not operate strictly as modais or verbs, and this may lead to further
developments. Ought requires to with following infinitives in the affirmative
but not always in the negative; and in some dialects it allows do periphrasis
and another preceding auxiliary, should. Need and dare display both modal
and verbal morphology and syntax:
(18) Dare he go? Does he dare to go?
*Dares he go? Does he dare go?
Yet, what we see in the modal is not some "mystical process" (Sapir
1921:154), but a sequence of interrelated developments in the underlying
grammar, whose surface results appear as "drift". The speed of this surface
drift, gradual for the Middle English changes and rapid for Early Modern
English, can be directly attributed both to the nature and severity of change in
the underlying grammar and to the degree of inductive weight behind the
learner's inferential decisions.
REFERENCES
Aitchison,J. 1980. Review of Lightfoot (1979). Linguistics 18.137-146.

Andersen, H. 1973. "Abductive and deductive change". Language 49.765-
794.
Bennett, P.A. 1981. "Is syntactic change gradual?". Glossa 15:1.115-134.
Disterheft, D. 1987. "Abduction, teleology and the transparency principle."
Paper presented at the Eighth Lnternational Congress on Historical
Linguistics, University of Lille.
Goossens, L. 1984. "The interplay of syntax and semantics in the
development of the English modais". English Historical Linguistics:
Studies in Development ed. by N.F. Blake & C. Jones, 149-159. (=
CECTAL Conference Papers Series, 3.) Sheffield: University of
Sheffield.
Goossens, L. 1987. "The auxiliarization of the English modais: a functional
grammar view". Historical Development of Auxiliaries ed. by M. Harris
& P. Ramat, 111-145. (= Trends in Linguistics, Studies & Monographs,
35) Berlin: de Gruyter.
Lightfoot, D.E. 1974. "The diachronic analysis of the English modais".
Historical Linguistics L: Proceedings of the First International Congress
on Historical Linguistics ed. by J. Anderson & C. Jones, 219-249.
Lightfoot, D.E. 1979. Principles of Diachronic Syntax. Cambridge:
Murray, J.A.H., H. Bradley, W.A. Craigie & C.T. Onions, eds. 1933. The
Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Palmer, F.R. 1965. A Linguistic Study of the English Verb. London:
Longman.
Peirce, C.S. 1940. The Philosophy of Peirce: Selected Writings ed. by J.
Buchler. London: Routledge & Kegan, Ltd.
Rizzi, L. 1982. "Violations of the WH-island constraint and the subjacency
condition". Issues in Italian Syntax by L. Rizzi, 40-76.
Roberts, LG. 1985. "Agreement parameters and the development of English
modal auxiliaries". Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 3.21-58.
Romaine, S. 1981. "The transparency principle: what it is and why it

doesn't work". Lingua 55.277-300.
Sapir, E. 1921. Language. New York: Harcourt.
Shepherd, S.C. 1982. "From deontic to epistemic: an analysis of modais in
the history of English, creoles, and language acquisition". Papers from
the Fifth International Conference on Historical Linguistics ed. by A.
Ahlqvist, 316-324. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Steele, S.M. et al 1981. An Enclyclopedia of AUX: A Study of Cross-
Linguistic Equivalence. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Warner, A. 1983. Complementation in Middle English and the Methodology
of Historical Syntax. University Park: Pennsylvania State University
Press.
Visser, F. Th. 1963-73. An Historical Syntax of the English Language.
Leiden: E.J. Brill.
A CASE OF PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN ALLOMORPHY:
THE INSTRUMENT NOUN SUFFIX *-TLOM
AND ITS VARIANTS
BIRGIT ANETTE OLSEN
University of Copenhagen
0. It is immediately observable that a series of Indo-European nominal

suffixes, namely *-trom /*-tlom /*-Throm /*-Thlom and *-trah 2 /*-tlah 2 /
*-Tnrah2/*-Tnlah2 , have a clear semantic affinity. Thus, *-trom and
*-tlom are used, apparently indiscriminately, in barytone formations
(generally clearly derived from verbal roots) to indicate "das Mittel oder
Werkzeug zum Vollzug einer Handlung oder den Ort, wo sie vollzogen wird"
(Wackernagel-Debrunner 1954:707), e.g., Gk. árotron "plough"
< *h2árə 3-trom/ Lat. pōculum "cup" < *póh 3 (į-tlom. 1 Derivatives in
*-T h rom/*-T h lom have exactly the same functions, e.g., Lat. cribrum
"sieve" < *kréh1(į)-Throm /Lat. pāulum "feed" < *páh2(i)-Thlom. The
feminines, on the other hand, are generally, but not always, oxytone and
function sometimes as verbal abstracts, e.g., Goth, hleipra "tent"
< *ќleį-trah2, Lat. subucula "underwear" < *-(h)ou-tlah2, Gk. klēthrā
"alder" < *klah-T h rah 2 , Lat. subula "awl" < *siuh-T h lah 2 . In some
examples such as Gk. téretron, OIr. tarathar vs. Lat. terebra "drill", neutral
and feminine inflection are found side by side in the same lexeme, and
similarly the suffix initial consonant sometimes seems to hesitate between *-t-
and *-Th- (thus téretron < *-t-, terebra < *-Th-). Traditionally the aspirate
(here *-Th-) is reconstructed as *dh, but as we shall see later an unvoiced
aspirate *th should probably be preferred.
1. It would be desirable if this multitude of synonymous suffixes could

be interpreted as originating from a simpler system which may, theoretically,
still be observed if the relevant linguistic material is thoroughly analysed. First
1
The structure and the morphophonemic variation of roots ending in a long diphthong
(type CeH-į) is analysed by Rasmussen (1978). Obviously the root-final *-į- did not
interfere with the aspirating effect of the laryngeal - cf., for instance, Lat. pābulum.
Probably it disappeared at an earlier stage, though this cannot strictly be proved.
364 BIRGIT ANETTE OLSEN
of all, it should be specified exactly what we wish to examine, and, as far as I

can see, the following problems are of relevance:
(a) Why is the liquid involved sometimes *-r- (as in Gk. árotron ), some
times *-l- (as in Lat. pōculum ), when no semantic difference may be
observed?
(b) Why is the dental sometimes a simple unvoiced *-t- (as in Gk. árotron),
sometimes an aspirate (as in Lat. pābulum )?
(c) What are the original relations between neuters such as Lat. pābulum and
feminines as, e.g., Lat. subula?
(d) What are the original relations between full grade and zero grade
formations (e.g., Skt. hótram vs. Gk. khútlon)?
2. It is essential that the basic examination be restricted to examples that

have a genuine common background dating from the Indo-European
protolanguage, i.e. only material known from at least two branches of Indo-
European can be accepted. Further, it must obviously be made clear which
relevant phonetic restrictions are characteristic of the separate Indo-European
languages, and, finally, any secondary analogical leveling must be taken into
account (e.g., the Balto-Slavic generalization of the 1- suffixes). It may be
useful to start with a short survey of the more important Indo-European
language families to indicate to which extent they may be utilized as sources of
information concerning this particular problem.
2 . 1 . Indo-Iranian. As *r and *1 merged in Proto-Indo-Iranian and the

unvoiced variant of the dental has been generalized, we have only evidence of
Indo-Iranian *-trarn and Mm. The material may thus only be used to ascertain
the accent and ablaut grade of a certain lexeme and to clarify whether a given
formation can safely be ascribed to the Indo-European protolanguage.
2 . 2 . B a l t o - S l a v i c . The sequence *-tl- ( > Lith. -kl- ) is generalized

in Baltic, *-dl- in Slavic. The significance of Balto-Slavic is thus comparable
to Indo-Iranian.2
2
The development of *tl / *thl in Slavic is otherwise unknown.
THE PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN NOUN SUFFIX *-TLOM 365
2 . 3 . Greek. There is evidence of all combinations of -r- / - 1 - and

-t- /th-, thus-ir- /-ti- / -thr- /-thl~. Suffixes containing -r- are productive. It
should be noted that -th- may continue Indo-European *th as well as*d h .
2 . 4 . Italic. The Latin state of affairs is severely obscured by

analogical processes and secondary dissimilations which make it all the more
important to separate the genuine inherited lexemes from secondary
formations. In words of Indo-European origin we should expect to find
*-trom / *-trah 2 > -trum f -tra, *-tlom / *-tlah 2 > -c(u)lum /-c(u)la,
*-T h rom /*-T h rah 2 > -brum /-bra and*-T h lom/ *-T h lah 2 > -b(u)lum /
-b(u)la. -br- / -b(u)l- may represent *-thr- /*-t h l- as well as *-dhr- / *-dhl-.
2 . 5 . Germanic. There are formations with -r- as well as -7- suffixes

and an unvoiced as well as a voiced dental spirant, i.e. *-pra-, *-prō, *-dra-,
*-ðrō, *-pla-, *-plō, *-ðla- and *-ðlõ. The distribution of -r- and -/- is
important for our reconstructions, since we have no evidence of later
analogical leveling of assimilations or dissimilations. The voiced spirant may
represent either *dh or a Verner variant of *t. Thus it is possible that we have
a generalized dental *t (as in Indo-Iranian). On the other hand, *p as well as *ð
may, of course, continue an original *t h as well as *t.
2 . 6 . Celtic. The evidence is clearly parallel to that of Germanic. The

distribution of -r- and -7- seems to represent the old state of affairs, while the
dental of the suffixes may be a generalized *-t-, though in all cases the
unvoiced aspirate *-th- would yield the same result as the simple *-t.
2 . 7 . Armenian. There are a few examples, particularly with the

suffixe -wr and -wi (*-tr-/*-tl-). As none of the suffixes are productive,
the distribution of -r- and -l- may reasonably be ascribed to the proto-
language.
2 . 8 . Albanian, H i t t i t e , Tocharian. The evidence seems to be too

scanty to give any indications of the Indo-European state of affairs.
3 . We may now proceed to a closer examination of some original Indo-

European derivatives. Since there hardly seems to be any vacillation between
suffixes containing *-r- and *-l- in these early formations, the material will be
divided into two groups: (a) items with suffixal *-trom / *-trah2 and *-l^rom /
*-Thrah2; and (b) items with suffixal *-tlom/*-tlah2 and*-T h lom/*-T h lah 2 .
3 . 1 . Suffix *-trom / * - t r a h 2 and *-T h rom / *-T h rah 2 .
(1) *uér-trom (IEW: 1161): Skt. vártram "protective dam, pond", Av.
varə9ra- "resistance, shield", MWelsh gwerthyr "fortress".
(2) *skér-tro- /*skr-tro- (IEW: 933ff.): OHG scerdar "cardo", Lat. culter
"knife", if dissimilated from *(s)kr-tro-.
(3) *uróp-trom (Kluge 1886:44): Gk. hróptron "club", OE ræfter (m.)

"balk, rafter".
(4) *réu(ə)-trom/*ru(h)-trom (IEW: 868): Lat. rutrum "spade, shovel",

OHG riostar "ploughshare" ( < *reud-); cf. also OCS rylu "spade,
hoe", Latv. raûklis "Raufeisen".
(5) *kleį-trah 2 /*kli-tráh 2 ( I E W : 601): Goth. hleipra "tent", Umbr.

kletram "feretrum, lecticam", OHG hleitara "ladder"; zero grade in MIr.
clethar "support".
(6) *kléu-trom(IEW; 605): Skt. srótram "ear", Av. srao9ra- "singing",

OE hleodor "tune, tone", OHG hliodar "tone, noise"; zero grade in
Arm. lowr "sound, voice". 3
(7) *(h 2 )ál-trom (IEW: 26f.): ON aldr (m.), OIr. com-altar "joint
fosterage".
(8) *mál-trom: OHG maltar "Malter - corn measure", Lat. marculus

< *martlo-, metathesized from *mal-tro-.4
(9) *légh-trom (IEW: 659): Gk. léktron "bed", OHG lehtar "womb,
afterbirth".
(10)* t é r ə 1-trom/*terə 1 -T h rah 2"drill" (IEW: 1071): Gk. téretron, OIr.

tarathar; aspirate/feminine Lat. terebra.
3
Arm. lowr hesitates between -i- stem and -o- stem inflection (instr. lriw / lrov). I
derive the -i- stem from *klu-tis, the -o- stem from *klu-trom, cf. Olsen (1986).
4
For a different interpretation cf. Niedermann (1903-1904).
(11) *gwérə-Throm/*gwrh-Throm "throat" (IEW:474): Horn. Gk. dérethron,

Att. bárathron (but cf. also the synonymous déletron),5OHG querdar
"bait", Arm. kokord with reduplication; further OPr. gurcle, Lith.
gurklps "Adam's apple", RussCS grula
(12) *kréh1-(į)Throm "sieve" (IEW: 946): OIr. criathar, Lat. crîbrum, OE

hridder
(13) "bhér-e-trom, also fern. -trah2 (IEW: 129): Skt. bharítram "carrier, i.e.
arm", Gk. phéretron "bier" and pharétrã "quiver", OE beordor "birth";
Lat. feretrum is a Greek loanword and ferculum formed independently
with verbal stem + productive suffix -culum.
(14) *lóuə1-trom/*luh1-Throm (IEW: 692): Gk. loetrón "bath", Gaul. lautro

"balneo", OIr. loathar "basin", OE leapor "lather", Lat. lātrina"drain";
zero grade in Lat. po-lbrum "wash basin".
(15) *(h2)álə1-trom (IEW: 28f.): Gk. aletréuō "grind", aletrís "female
miller", Arm. sławrì "mill".
(16) *(h1)érə1-trom "oar, rudder" (IEW: 338): Skt. aritram, zero grade in
Lith. irklas ; the Germanic forms (e.g. OE rōpor ) borrowed from Celtic
(*rā- < *h1rh1-) according to J.E. Rasmussen (1978).
(17) *b h léh 1 -T h rom/*b h lh 1 T h rom, also fern. -Thrah2 (IEW: 121): OS

blādara, etc. "blister", ON blaðra < *bh lə1-Thrah2 with analogical
vocalization; regular zero grade in Lat. flābrum.
(18) *klah2-Thrah2/*klhrThráh2 "alder" (IEW: 599): Gk. kléthrā, NHG

(dial.) lutter, ludere.
(19)*(h2)árə3-trom "plough" (IEW: 62): Gk. árotron, Lat. arātrum, Arm.
arawr, ON arðr, MIr. arathar; cf. also Lith. árklas, OCS ralo.
5
The exact analysis of the various Greek forms remains complicated. We are apparently
dealing with at least two roots *gwerhj- and "gwelh1-; I would consider déletron to represent
the vocalic variant of *-ǔ1 -, while dérethron seems to be a hybrid form of the two
synonymous roots, i.e. *gwerh1- with the aspiration taken over from zero grade formations
such as bárathron; cf. also the discussion by Peters (1980).
(20) *luh-Throm (JEW: 681): Gk. lúthron "soiling", Lat. lustrum "puddle",
with -str- suffix.
(21) *léuə-trom (IEW: 681): Skt. lavitram "sickle", ON lúðr "oak dugout",
OHG ludara "cradle".
It is easily observable that these examples of -r- suffixes are all derived
from roots containing aradicalliquid, either -r- as in *h2árə3-trom or -/- as in
*lóuə1trom.
3.2. Suffix *-tlom / *-tlah 2 and *-Thlom /*-T h lah 2 .
(22)*(h)ov-ûom/*(h)o*-ûàh2(IEW: 346): Av. ao9ra- "Schuhwerk", Lith.

auklé, Lat. sub-ucula "underwear".
(23)*sh2áį-tlom(IEW: 890): Lat. saeculum, Welsh hoedl "lifetime".
(24)*gh éu-tlom/*gVtlom,also f. (IEW: 447): Skt. hótra- "libation", Av.

zao9ra- (n.) and zao9ra (f.), Gk. khútlon "washing water", Arm. joyl
"poured-out fluid or mass".
(25) *uókw-tlom (IEW: 1135): Skt. vaktram "mouth", OIr. foccul "word",
Welsh gwaethl "quarrel".
(26) *bhéį-tlo- (IEW: 118): OHG bthal "axe", Czech hidlo "rod".
(27) *ghéįdh-tlom (IEW: 426): OIr. gíall, Welsh gwystl "hostage"; OE

gìsl, etc. It is not certain whether the Germanic examples are inherited
or Celtic loanwords.
(28)*séd-lo-/*sed-lah2"seat"(IEW:- 886): Lat. sella, Gaul. sedlon, Goth.

sitls, etc., Gk. (Hes.) bella: kathédra, probably also Arm. etł.
(29)*menth-lah2/*mnth-láh2 (IEW: 732): OHG mindil "Gebiss am Zaum",

Mod.Ir. méadal "stomach, guts".
(30) *ségh-e-tlom, also fern. (IEW: 888): Gk. ekhétlē, Welsh haeddel.
(31)*uéĝh-e-tlom (IEW: 1119): Skt. vahítram "vehicle, ship", Gk. ókhetla,

Lat. vehiculum.
(32) *séh1-(į)-Thlom "sieve" (IEW: 889): Welsh hidl, ON sáld.
(33) *néh1-(į)-Th lom, also fern. (IEW: 973): Goth, nepla, etc.; Gk. netron
"spinning wheel", probably with analogical (productive) suffix -tro-.
(34) *gnh1-Thláh2, also neut. (IEW: 373f.): Gk. genéthlë "kin, descen
dance", later génethlon, Ann. cnawł "procreator, father".
(35) *b h éuǔ1 -tlom/*b h uh 1 -T h láh 2 (IEW: 147): Skt. bhavitram "world",

Gk. phútlē "nature", OE botl "house"; cf. also Lith. buklà "habi
tation", Czech bydlo.
(36) *stáh2-Thlom, also zero grade (IEW: 1004ff.): Skt. sthātrám "standing
place", Lat. stặbulum (for orig. *stābulum), Welsh distadl "worthless",
ON stçðull, full grade in OE stōdl
(37) *páh 2 -(į)-T h lom (IEW: 787 and 839): Lat. pābulum "feed", Skt.
pãtram "container".
(38) *gnóh3-tlom (IEW: 377): Skt. jnatram "intellectual faculty", OHG

be-knuodilen "inform"; cf. also Lith. žìnklas.
(39) *póh3-(į)-tlom (IEW: 840): Lat. pōculum "cup", Skt. patram "recep
tacle, vessel".
(40) *gih-tlom or *gih-Thlom (IEW: 355): OHG kīld "wedge", Arm.

ən-ciwł "sprout", ciwł "stalk".
(41)*siuh-T h láh 2 (IEW: 916): Lat. subula "awl", OHG siula; cf. also
Czech šidlo.
(42) *teks-láh2 "axe" (IEW: 1058): ON pexla, Lat. tēla, OIr. tál; cf. also
RussCS tesla.6
It is evident from these examples that whenever the -1- variant of the
suffix is used, the consonantism of the root is neutral, i.e. does NOT include a
liquid -r- or -1-,
6
Originally an instrument noun -tlah2, cf. Joseph (1982).
3 . 3 . The only restriction to this general rule is roots ending in -s-,

which only accept the suffix *-trom / *-trah2, no matter how the root is
structured, hence, e.g., Lat. castrāre "cut off" (cf. Skt. śastrám "knife"), or
Hes. géstra, MHG wester "baptizing garment".
4 . Thus the relationship of *-Tro- and *-Tlo- is originally one of

complementary distribution: -r- after roots containing a liquid and after -s-,
-l- elsewhere, i.e. -/- is the unmarked variant and will thus have been the
original form in pre-Indo-European. A development *-Tl- > *-Tr- after -/- is
of course phonetically quite natural - we have numerous instances from Latin
and the Romance languages. On the other hand, *-Tl- > *-Tr- after a radical
-r-, i.e. a distant ASSIMILATION, is quite ararephenomenon, but examples such
as *h2árǔ3-trom (Greek, Latin, Armenian, Germanic, Celtic) and *térǔ1-trom
(Greek, Latin, Celtic) are so well preserved in so many Indo-European
languages that incontestably they must be old. The fact that the necessary
assimilatory process is so uncommon makes it all the more unlikely that it
could have taken place separately in at least five branches of Indo-European.
5. This analysis leaves us with four original suffixes: *-tlom, *-tlah2,

*-Thlom and *-Thlah2, and we may now take up the question of the dentals
involved to see if this system may be simplified even further. One variant of
this dental is certainly the simple tenuis *t, the other certainly an aspirate,
though the traditional reconstruction *dh seems to be quite arbitrary: Gk. -th-
and Lat. -b- may represent *th as well as *dh, and Germanic, Celtic and
Balto-Slavic, which are generally supposed to have eliminated the aspirated
versions of these suffixes altogether, may actually continue *th as well as *t,
which regularly merged in these languages.
6. If there is a phonetic justification of the contrast *t /*T h , the ex

planation should probably be found in the root final segment. Unfortunately,
only part of the examples mentioned above may be utilized here, since only
Greek and Italic can prove the existence of an original aspirate.
(a) Roots ending in a resonant or unaspirated stop. The following examples

point to IE *t: *skér-trom, *uróp-trom, *ru-trom, *mál-trom, *(h)óu-tlom
and *sh2áį-tlom. No examples indicate an aspirate.
(b) Roots ending in an aspirated stop. No decisive evidence: *uégh-e-tlom

and *ségh-e-tlom are not derived directly from the root.
(c) Roots ending in-h1(consonantal). Lat. crībrum, po-lübrum, fìābrum,

Gk. genéthlē,phútlē( < *phúthlē) indicate an original aspirate.
(d) Roots ending in *-ə 1 (vocalic). Gk. téretron, loetrón, aletréuō,
Lat. lātrīna- IE *-t-.
(e) Roots ending in *-h2 (consonantal). Gk. kléthrā, Lat. stặbulum (for
orig. *stãbulum, cf. Skt. sthātrām), pābulum - IE *-Th-.
(f) Roots ending in*-ə2(vocalic). No evidence.
(g) Roots ending in -h3 (consonantal). Lat. pōculum -EE *-t-.
(h) Roots ending in*-ə3 (vocalic). Gk. árotron, Lat. arātrum - IE *-t-.
It appears that the unaspirated -t- suffixes were the unmarked forms,
while the aspirate was originally restricted to a position after a CONSONANTAL
*h1 or *h2.7 These two laryngeals - in contrast to *h3 which is generally
considered to have been voiced - apparently had an aspirating effect on a
following unvoiced dental *t. Since the aspirated variant of the suffix thus
seems to be the result of an assimilation *-h1/2- + t- > *-Th-, it is phonetically
simpler to assume the existence of an UNVOICED aspirate in the suffixes
concerned. This solution has the further advantage of explaining more easily
that the languages in which *-t- and * - t h -merge(Celtic, Balto-Slavic and
Germanic) have only one form of the dental. According to the proposed
solution, then, an unvoiced aspirate may not only be the result of an
assimilation of tenuis + laryngeal (e.g., Av. padō ), but also the other way
around, i.e. *-h1/2- + t- > *-th-.
7. If this theory is correct, one should expect to find supplementary

evidence apart from the instrument suffix, and actually some corroborative
material may be brought into the discussion, mainly from Indo-Iranian.8
7
The theory that the unvoiced laryngeals (*h1 /*h 2 ) might be connected with the
aspirated variant of the suffix was originally tentatively suggested to me by J.E. Rasmussen.
8
For a more thorough analysis of the Indo-Iranian material, cf. Olsen (1988), which also
deals with evidence for the Indo-European instrument suffix, especially in Germanic and
Celtic, in greater detail. Obviously the Indo-Iranian derivatives in -tha- / -thu- / -thi-
< *-th 1/2- are lexically isolated relic forms, where the semantic link between root and
derivative is no longer clearly observable. Typically the Skt. -tha- derivatives are
substantives as opposed to the past participles where -tais generalized from the anit-roots.
Pre-consonantal *-h1- may be assumed for the following examples:
(43) Av. dāda- "wise, righteous" < *d h eh 1 to-; Gk. plêthus, Lat. plēbēs
< *pleh1-tu-; Skt. guthah "excrement", Av. güdəm "dirt, dung"
< *g w uh 1 -to-; Skt. várü-tham "protection, shield, army"
< *uéruh1-to-; Av. ząda- "procreation" < *genh 1 to- (consonantal
laryngeal originally belonging to zero grade).
Preconsonantal *-h2- is attested by:
(44) Skt. gāthā "song, verse", Av. gãdã < *gah2-(i)-tah2; Skt. nāthám
"help" < *nah2-to-m; Skt. pāthas "domicile, refuge" < *páh2(į)-tos;
Skt. dīrgha-yāthá- "long course" <*-įah2-tó-; Skt. Járuthah "name of
a demon conquered by Agni" < *gerh2u-to-; Dor.lãthos "oblivion"
< *lál2t-os; Gk. brīthús "heavy" < *gwrih2-tu-; OP gādu "throne"
<*gwah2-tu-.
For some examples the exact character of the laryngeal is not clear. On
the basis of the remaining evidence I would assume either*h1or *h2:
(45) Skt.tīrthám "passage, watering-, bathing-place, ford" < tlh-tó-; Skt.

nīthám, nīthā "means, way" < *nih-tóm / -tah2; Skt. yuthám "herd,
crowd" <*iuh-to-; Skt. vîthî, vithih "road, way" < *uih-ti-; Skt.
nisītha- "night" < *ni-kih-tó-.
8. Having thus reduced IE *-r- and *-th- to the status of allomorphs of

*-l- and *-t- respectively for some pre-stage of Indo-European, we shall finally
have to deal with the variation of gender, ablaut and accent.
As neither thematic neuters nor feminine ā-stems had ablauting
paradigms in the protolanguage, variations of the type Gk. n. loetrón (full
grade) / Lat. po-lubrum (zero grade) or Goth. f. hleipra (full grade) / OIr.
clethar (zero grade) are not immediately understandable. The only way out
seems to be the assumption of an original contrast between a full grade
barytone neuter, e.g. *térə1-trom and a zero grade oxytone collective (later
feminine), e.g. **trh1-tráh2. Thus we would have regular neuters in Gk.
léktron, árotron, loetrón, Lai. pōculum, and regular collectives in Gk. phútlê,
The introduction of the suffìx -tha- in anit-roots is clearly secondary and restricted to cases
where a substantive (e.g. ukthá- "sentence, praise") is semantically opposed to a plain
participle (e.g. uktá- "said").
genéthlē, Lat. subula. Later some amount of analogical leveling has taken
place, so the full grade of the neuter may have influenced the collective - hence
examples such as Lat. terebra or lābrum "basin", where the inherited zero
grade of the formation is still revealed by the aspirate of the suffix, which was
originally only possible after a CONSONANTAL laryngeal.
9. Summing up the results of the present investigation it may then be

concluded that the well-known complex system of eight separate instrument
suffixes is preceded by one single formation in pre-Indo-European, namely a
neutral/collective paradigm in*-tlo-,where the morphophonemic variation -r- /
-/- and -t- / -th- was originally clearly predictable.9
REFERENCES
Joseph, Lionel S. 1982. "The treatment of *CRH- and the origin of CaRa- in
Celtic". Ériu 33.31-57.
Kluge, Friedrich. 1886. Nominale Stammbildungslehre der altgermanischen
Dialekte. Halle: Niemeyer.
Niedermann, Max. 1903-1904. "Etymologische Forschungen. III. Lat.
marcus, marculus, marcellus, martulus, martiolus, martellus 'Hammer',
ksl. mlatǔ, russ. molótǔ, poln. młot usw. 'dass\ lat. malleus 'Hammer,
Schlägel'". IF 14.109ff.
Olsen, Birgit Anette. 1986. "Three notes on Armenian phonology. I. On the
development of final * -is and * -us". Arbejdspapirer udsendt af Institut
for Lingvistik, Københavns Universitet 5.139-160.
9
Supplementary material from separate branches of Indo-European may be listed, and
here the preservation of original -r- after a liquid, -1- elsewhere, is maintained quite clearly in
Germanic, Celtic and Armenian. For the -r- suffix, compare ON galdr, gróðr,leiptr, Goth.
maurpr, hwilfújõm, hairpram, OHG hlabtar, flōdar, klaftra, bluostar, quartar, OE leahtor,
rifter, scultor (cf. also Kluge 1886); from Celtic, e.g., Olr. briathar,riathar,láthar, Welsh
gwaladr, llestr. The -l- suffix is represented by, e.g., ON vçndull, mçndull, beisi; from
Celtic, OIr. scél, anáal, dál, MIr. cétal, MBr. malazn, balazn; from Armenian, šiwł and
erkiwł (the latter < *duei-tlo-). The evidence from Greek and Latin further supports the
theory of an aspirate after a consonantal laryngeal, but it is evident that when we go beyond
the inherited derivatives, Italic *-tlom (Lat. -culum ) and *-plom (Lat. -bulum ) are
immensely productive - hence formations such as gubernãculumotvocãbulum. Further, the
situation is blurred by a secondary dissimilation 1-1 > 1-r of the type *lavãtlom > *lavācrum.
Greek, on the other hand, has a clear preference for the suffix *-tro- / *-trah2 in later
derivatives.
Olsen, Birgit Anette. 1988. The Proto-Indo-European Instrument Noun

Suffix *-tlom and its Variants. (= Hist fìl. Medd., 55.) Copenhagen:
KDVS.
Peters, Martin. 1980. Untersuchungen zur Vertretung der indogermanischen
Laryngale im Griechischen.(= Sitzungsberichte, 377.) Vienna: Öster-
reichisches Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse.
Pokorny, Julius. 1959. Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch.
Bern: Francke. (= IEW. )
Rasmussen, Jens Elmegârd. 1978. Das Problem der indogermanischen
Langdiphtonge. Manuscript.
Wackernagel, Jacob Adalbert Debrunner. 1954. Altindische Grammatik.
Band II,2: Nominalsuffixe. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
OUIR, ENTENDRE, COMPRENDRE
UNE VUE PSYCHOMÉCHANIQUE SUR LE
RENOUVELLEMENT DU LEXIQUE
JACQUELINE PICOCHE
Université d'Amiens
0. Introduction.
Un des phénomènes les plus déconcertants de l'histoire du lexique français

est son formidable enrichissement en moyen-français (à partir du milieu du
XTVe siècle) et son non moins formidablement appauvrissement au XVIIe
siècle, appauvrissement qui n'est pas un retour à la case départ mais l'élimina
tion d'une quantité de mots anciens et le remaniement sémantique de beaucoup
de ceux qui furent conservés. Le sujet de ma communication: comment s'est
effectué le remplacement de ouir par entendre et d'entendre par comprendre
s'inscrit dans cet ensemble de transformations qui jusqu'ici ont été plutôt con
statées qu'expliquées, ou du moins expliquées par des raisons stylistiques que
linguistiques. Il est évidemment schématique et partiel, ces trois verbes n'étant
que les plus importants, mais non les seuls capables d'exprimer, ouïe, intellec
tion, inclusion. Il se trouve déjà effleuré dans mon dernier livre (Structures sé
mantiques du lexique français, Paris: Nathan, 1986) où je tente d'appliquer au
lexique quelques unes des notions fondamentales de la psychomécanique guil-
laumien.
1. Ancien français.
La situation en ancien français est la suivante: les différents emplois d'en-

tendre peuvent être placés sur un vecteur orienté représentant un 'cinétisme' ou
'mouvement de pensée'. Sur ce vecteur deux 'saisies' principales (ou immobi
lisation du mouvement de pensée, engendrant un effet de sens) me paraissent
pouvoir être décelées: Elles sont en somme de nature aspectuelle, si l'on définit
l'aspect comme la catégorie qui embrasse tout ce qui est relatif à la durée et au
degré d'achèvement des procès indiqués par les verbes. Mais il s'agit ici d'un
376 JACQUELINE PICOCHE
correspond à une activité de l'esprit en cours, tendant vers un résultat, d'où

une multitude d'emplois où, selon les contextes, entendre peut être traduit en
français moderne par "s'orienter vers, désirer, s'occuper de, être d'avis de,
écouter". La deuxième correspond au moment où l'esprit atteint le but qu'il
s'est fixé et à l'état qui en résulte, d'où les traductions possibles par "remar
quer, s'apercevoir de, prendre garde à, comprendre et ouir". Les deux der
nières acceptions sont étroitement liées en cela que dans les cas (fréquents dès
l'ancien français) où entendre apparaît comme un substitut de air, le complé
ment est le plus souvent une parole humaine, donc un sens, compris par l'intel
ligence en même temps que la chaîne sonore qui en est le support est perçue par
l'oreille. Ce n'est que dans le cas d'une langue étrangère qu'on pourrait dire
quelque chose comme je l'ai parlé mais je ne l'entends pas; dans le fonction
nement normal du langage air et entendre, c'est tout un, pratiquement.
Mais pas linguistiquement! Cette synonymie n'est que de rencontre. La
polysémie de entendre nous invite à voir en lui un verbe strictement intellectuel
et abstrait, dont l'objet peut être un phénomène sonore mais seulement en tant
qu'il est interprétable, alors que l'interprétation est étrangère au sémantisme de
air, verbe de sensation et de perception, dont l'objet, strictement concret, ne
peut être qu'un phénomène sonore. Ouir, qui a, en ancien français, un
fonctionnement parfaitement normal et non figé comme aujourd'hui, est stricte
ment monosémique, ne signifiant rien d'autre que "percevoir par les oreilles".
La situation en afr. de comprendre, rare et vraisemblablement savant, est
extrêmement marginale, par rapport aux deux verbes ci-dessus, populaires et
très usuels, et rien ne semble le prédisposer à devenir le grand verbe de l'intel-
lection qu'il est aujourd'hui. Mais il présente, malgré la rareté de ses attesta
tions, une variété d'emplois et un type de polysémie d'un tout autre genre que
celui d'entendre: un cinétisme au long duquel s'échelonnent des saisies allant
de l'emploi sémantiquement le plus riche, qui est en même temps le plus
concret, à l'emploi sémantiquement le plus pauvre, souvent métaphorique, qui
est en même temps le plus abstrait En saisie plénière, il est apte à exprimer une
relation "content"/"contenu" qui pourrait être traduite en français moderne par
les deux verbes contenir et remplir comme le montrent différents exemples cités
par les dictionnaires de Godefroy II:213 et Tobler-Lommatzsch II:635: les
chemins peuvent être insuffissants pour comprendre trop grant gent, de même
qu'un seul livre ne saurait comprendre une matière trop vaste. Mais récipro
quement, une nuée de mouches peut comprendre une église; un fleuve peut être
compris de nefs et de vaisseaux. En somme Al comprend A2 qui à son tour
comprend Al. J'ai étudié ce type de réversibilité, comparable à celle du verbe
LE RENOUVELLEMENT DU LEXIQUE 377
comprend Al. J'ai étudié ce type de réversibilité, comparable à celle du verbe

louer en français moderne de la société dans ma communication au congrès de
linguistique romane de Trèves en 1986. Vous pouvez comprendre vos enne
mis, c'est à dire les encercler et les faire prisonniers; mais vous ne direz pas
qu'ils vous comprennent', ils ne peuvent pas se dégager de votre emprise, mais
ils n'emplissent pas, à proprement parler, un espace déterminé; il s'agit déjà là
d'un emploi relativement abstrait et métaphorique; à plus forte raison lorsqu'on
dit (et les exemples en sont anciens) qu'un livre, un esprit comprennent une
certaine notion; mais dans ce cas, aucun des exemples recensés ne montre de
réversibilité possible: la notion ne comprend pas le livre. Donc, cette seconde
saisie, abstraite ne jouit pas de la même liberté syntaxique que la première
saisie, concrète; elle est de toute évidende, à l'époque, aussi métaphorique. On
peut ici parler de saisie plénière et de saisie subduite: en saisie plénière,
comprendre dénote l'idée qu'un contenant est empli d'une multitude d'objets;
en saisie subduite qu'un ensemble inclut des éléments. Dans la perspective
guillaumienne où le langage est une forme abstraite permettant de penser le
monde, on pourra appeler la saisie abstraite, subduite 'saisie précoce' et la
saisie concrète, plénière, 'saisie tardive'.
2. Français moderne.
En français moderne: ouir, extrêmement marginalisé, presque disparu,

n'apparaît plus, que dans de rares expressions figées. Entendre s'est substitué
à lui presque partout. Les emplois sensoriels concrets constituent désormais
l'essentiel de son sémantisme; ses emplois abstraits se sont reportés sur
plusieurs autres verbes dont le plus important est comprendre', il n'en subsiste
plus que quelques uns, tels que entendre raison, laisser entendre, entendre par
là que..., bien entendu!, s'y entendre à faire quelque chose, s'entendre bien ou
mal avec quelqu'un, s'entendre avec quelqu' un pour faire un mauvais coup,
j'agis comme je l'entends, j'entends faire des réformes, j'entends qu'on
m'obéisse. Les emplois survivants, d'ailleurs soumis à certaines restrictions
syntaxiques, donc figés ou en voie de l'être, n'appartiennent plus (sauf
quelques rares archaïsmes tels que Qu' entendez-vous par là, par ce mot?) au
domaine de l'intellection pure, mais à celui d'une activité d'esprit insérée dans
la vie pratique, dans la discussion, la coopération, dans l'élaboration de
projets. La grosse majorité des emplois où entendre exprimait l'intellection
s'est reporté sur comprendre: Vadius entend le grec est devenu un archaïsme; il
est aujourd'hui exclu de dire *entendre une langue, *entendre un problème',
j'entends ce que vous me dites ne signifie plus "je m'en fais une idée claire et
distincte, je peux l'analyser et le synthétiser", mais strictement rien d'autre que
"je l'ai", "audio". Tous ces emplois 'intellectuels' sont désormais du domaine
de comprendre qui, dans l'aventure a perdu ses emplois concrets et se trouve
scindé en deux acceptiopns d'importance très inégale, l'une exprimant l'intel-
lection, l'autre, l'inclusion.
Comment s'est fait le passage?
La réponse doit avoir une base philologique: nous avons demandé au
T.L.F. de Nancy de nous fournir une documentation non pas certes sur
l'ensemble du problème, ce qui aurait été beaucoup trop lourd pour une simple
communication, mais uniquement sur le mot comprendre.
Elle peut être aussi linguistique, la première approche éclairant la seconde;
et à ce second point de vue, on peut se demander, de façon analytique comment
chacun des trois items est affecté dans sa structure sémantique profonde par ce
ramaniement et de façon synthétique la portée de ce renouvellement de l'outil
lage lexical permettant de concevoir ces réalités psychiques que sont l'ouïe et
l'intellection.
3. Perspective philologique.
La recherche que j'ai demandée au T.L.F. consistait à m'envoyer toutes les

attestations du verbe comprendre
1) dans leur corpus de moyen français, qui ne comporte encore que quelques
oeuvres, mais certaines fort importantes, du XIVe et du XVe siècles. Celles qui
ont fourni des attestations, 45 en tout, sont de Nicole Oresme: Le livre du Ciel
et du Monde (1377); de Guillaume de Machaut: Prologue et Li rondeaulx
(1377); de Christine de Pisan: Le livre de la mutacion de fortune (1403);
d'Alain Chartier: Le débat des deux fortunes d'amour (1413), Le livre des
quatre dames (1416), Le Quadrilogue invectii (1422); La Complainte (1424),
Le débat de Réveille-Matin (1424); d'Antoinde de la Salle: Jehan de Saintré
(1456); de Jehan de Bueil: Le Jouvencel (1466); de Guillaume Tringant:
Commentaires du jouvence (1483).
2) (regrettant qu'ils aient totalement laissé de côté le XVIe siècle) dans les
textes dépouillés parus en 1600, 1650, 1700, 1800, 1850, 1900 et 1950. Le
résultat est le suivant:
1600: 29 exemples provenant de Pierre Charron, De la Sagesse, et de Claude

Fauchet, Lafleurde la maison de Charlemagne.
1650: rien; mais de 1649 à 1652 11 exemples provenant de Guy Patin, Lettres;
Blaise Pascal, Préface sur le traité du vide; Guez de Balzac, Le Socrate
chrestien.
1700: 6 exemples provenant de Dangeau, Journal, et de Regnard, Le retour
imprévu.
1750: 6 exemples provenant de Fougeret de Monbron, Le cosmopolite et
Margot la ravaudeuse; Marivaux, La colonie; Rousseau, Discours sur les
sciences et les arts.
1800: 14 exemples provenant de L. de Bonald, Essai analytique sur les lois
naturelles.
1850: 10 exemples provenant de Documents d'histoire contemporaine.
1900: 205 exemples provenant de Loi organique des troupes coloniales; M.
Beaumont, Affaire Dreyfus, documents diplomatiques; Léon Bloy,
Journal, Tome 1; Colette, Claudine à l'école; Octave Mirbeau, Journal
d'une femme de chambre.
1950: 167 exemples provenant de Enseignement musical, enseignement
officiel, Les musées en France; Julien Green, Moira - Journal, Tome 5;
Jean Guehenno, Jean-Jacques.
Dans ce relevé, purement aléatoire, de près de 500 exemples, je ne peux pas

dire que la chance m'ait favorisée, les oeuvres les plus importantes et les plus
significatives ne répondant pas toujours à ma chronologie et des moments
importants de l'évolution étant pauvrement représentés. Or, dans mon étude de
l'évolution de comprendre, je m'en tiendrai strictement au dépouillement de ce
listing. C'est dire que je poserai des problèmes pour une enquête future plus
approfondie, plutôt que je n'apporterai des réponses définitives. Les énormes
lacunes du corpus et le fait que le nombre total de mots des œuvres dépouillées
n'est pas indiqué rendraient ridicule toute tentative statistique et toute affirma
tion d'une date de première attestation d'une tournure. Néanmoins, cela ne doit
pas être tout à fait par hasard si, de 1377 à 1850, on arrive à une moyenne
d'occurrences de 5,45 par œuvre dépouillée (elles sont 22, et plusieurs fort
longues) contre 34,1 en 1900 (elles sont 6), et 33,6 en 1950 (elles sont 5). On
ne risque pas grand'chose à parier que comprendre se développe de façon
explosive à partir de la deuxième motié du XIXe siècle.
Et le dépouillement des contextes syntaxiques et des collocations lexicales
des occurrences relevées suscite tout de même la réflexion:
1) Dans les 47 premiers exemples, on relève un seul emploi concret avec le

sens de "remplir", chez Christine de Pisan (1403) décrivant une sorte d'aurore
boréale "une grande lueur apperceurent / devers septention venant / comme feu
grand lieu comprenant'
2) Dès le XVe siècle, et jusqu'à nos jours, comprendre signifie "contenir";
il est devenu un verbe extrêmement abstrait qui exprime l'inclusion d'un
élément dans un ensemble; cet ensemble peut être spatial: en plusieurs endroits,
on nous dit qu'un pays comprend plusieurs villes; et si, chez Nicole Dresme
(1377), "Dieu ... est incompréhensible", c'est parce que lui seul "a immensité
et c'est à dire que il ne peut estre compris en quelcunque espace ne finie ni
infinie". Mais il est généralement de nature plus abstraite, comprendre est le
verbe par excellence des classements et des taxinomies: ex. "tous gens de
guerre sont compris sous estat de chevalerie". Des origines à nos jours les
textes administratifs ainsi que les textes philosophiques définissant des
notions, comme celui de Pierre Charron ou de de Bonald, sont remplis de tels
emplois. Mais l'évolution s'est faite dans le sens d'une restriction sémantique
et syntaxique. La notion d''ensemble et d''inclusion' est moins rigide en
moyen français qu'aujourd'hui: le héros du Débat de Réveille matin d'Alain
Chartier (1424) a l'intention de veiller mais ses compagnons ont sommeil, ils
"n'y sont pas compris". Que représente y? le projet de ce personnage. En
Moyen français, des qualités peuvent être considérées comme des éléments
d'un ensemble: Christine de Pisan parle de "la beauté qui est en celui lieu
comprise"; l'ensemble peut être une personne: Dieu a compris en une certaine
dame tous les "biens" qu'on peut souhaiter (Guillaume de Machaut 1377); un
certain seigneur de Lesparre était "celluy où tout honeur était compris"
(Christine de Pisan 1403). Jusqu'en 1650 on peut comprendre, c'est-à-dire
"résumer" diverses notions en un petit nombre de mots, ainsi Epictète
"comprenant en deux mots toute la philosophie morale: sustine et abstine"
(Pierre Charron 1600). L'usage des prépositions est beaucoup plus varié: en,
dans, par et surtout sous qui indique un classement hiérarchique et dont j'ai des
exemples jusqu'en 1800. Les exemples anciens sont donc construits de façon
beaucoup plus libre qu'aujourd'hui et on peut penser que 'comprendre' au sens
d'"inclure" est à présent en voie de figement
Mais le fait le plus significatif me semble être celui-ci: aujourd'hui, on
trouve comprendre, au sens d'"inclure", surtout au passif, déjà très fréquent à
date ancienne: tel élément est compris dans tel ensemble (et il se pourrait que ce
soit par hasard que la locution y compris, d'allure archaïque, ne figure sur
notre listing qu'à partir de 1850). Lorsque l'actif apparaît, le sujet grammatical
est l'ensemble et jamais ou très difficilement un sujet humain, auquel cas nous
employons un autre verbe, en particulier inclure. Au contraire, le sujet humain
est tout à fait naturel avant 1700: en 1650 mon corpus m'a fourni plusieurs
phrases de Pascal de ce type: "quand nous disons que le diamant est le plus dur
de tous les corps, nous entendons de tous les corps que nous connaissons, et
ne pouvons ni ne devons y comprendre ceux que nous ne connaissons point";
mais je n'en relève plus à partir de 1700.
3) Dès le moyen-français on trouve une multitude d'exemplaires d'allure
moderne qui invitent à interpréter comprendre dans son sens intellectuel: ainsi
ce petit raisonnement de Guillaume de Machaut (1377): si une dame vous
apprend "les maus d'amour", elle peut aussi vous en apprendre "les biens",
qu'il conclut ainsi: "C'est legier à comprendre".
Néanmoins, plusieurs faits nous invitent à considérer que lorsque, avant le
XVIIIe siècle, un locuteur emploie comprendre pour entendre, il préfère à
l'archilexème un substitut expressif et métaphorique, comme lorsque nous
employons, aujourd'hui, les verbes assimiler ou saisir. Au lieu de se représen
ter l'acte de son esprit comme une tension allant jusqu'à son terme, un effort
aboutissant à un résultat, il se le représente comme l'introduction et l'intégra
tion d'un nouvel élément dans un ensemble déjà organisé; en somme l'esprit
est une sorte de contenant dans lequel trouve place un contenu supplémentaire.
a) À date ancienne, il est normal que le complément de comprendre soit un
nom ou un pronom; il se peut que ce pronom représente une proposition, mais
il est tout à fait exceptionnel que ce soit cette proposition elle-même. Jusqu'à la
fin du XVIIIe siècle, je n'en ai que deux exemples et encore, il s'agit d'une
exclamative et d'une interrogative indirecte. De même, aujourd'hui, nous
dirons facilement il a assimilé son programme de mathématiques, il a assimilé
ce que tu lui as dit, mais difficilemment il a assimilé que C'est que, même
très abstrait, un substantif est plus facilement conçu comme une 'chose' entrant
dans un contenant, un item prenant place dans une taxinomie, qu'une proposi
tion.
b) Pierre Charron (1600) a la bonne idée de nous expliquer, par une
comparaison très parlante, ce qu'il entend par comprendre: "Par l'entendement,
les choses entrent en l'âme, et elle les reçoit, comme portent les mots
apprendre, concevoir, comprendre, vrays offices d'iceluy: et y entrent non
entières et telles qu'elles sont, mais à la proportion, portée et capacité de
l'entendement, dont les grandes et hautes se raccourcissent et abaissent aucune
ment par ceste entrée, comme l'océan n'entre tout entier en la mer Méditerra
née, mais à la proportion de l'embouchure du destroit de Gibraltar.
c) Nicole Qresme (1377), nous parlant de l'éternité nous dit que "nous ne
pouvons comprendre ne proprement entendre ou ymaginer ceste chose et
nientmoins, raison naturelle nous enseigne que telle chose est". Or, de nos
jours, ce que nous comprenons est précisement ce que "raison naturelle" nous
enseigne. Je pense qu'aujourd'hui nous écririons quelque chose comme: "nous
pouvons comprendre, par la raison naturelle, que l'éternité existe, mais nous
ne pouvons pas comprendre à proprement parler sa nature, ni en concevoir une
représentation".
4) Mon premier il comprend que... est de 1700. À partir de cette date,
malgré la petitesse des corpus, les exemples foisonnent, et dans les relevés de
1900 et 1950, c'est de loin la construction la plus fréquente. Dès lors, à part un
unique emploi de la préposition sous, toutes les attestations de comprendre
sont conformes à la syntaxe et à la sémantique modernes; mais elles sont
encore rares jusqu'en 1850 inclus, preuve, apparemment, qu'entendre résiste.
En 1750, j'ai mon premier exemple de je n'y comprends rien qui devient
très fréquent à partir de 1900 avec la variante c'est à n'y rien comprendre.
C'est à la même date que je commence à trouver comme complément de
comprendre des mots dénotant une réalité linguistique, naguère domaine
réservé de entendre: "ils sauront composer des vers qu'à peine ils pourront
comprendre" (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1750); "il me bredouilla cinq ou six
phrases galantes que je n'aurais pu comprendre sans un rouleau de cinquante
louis" (Fougeret de Monbron, 1750). En 1800, je lis chez de Bonald, dans un
exemple où entendre serait impossible, que la négation fait "comprendre des
sons qui expriment ce qui n'est pas". Et en 1900, je trouve chez Léon Bloy
"comprendre une langue humaine" et "elle comprend ce que je dis".
C'est en 1800 que je trouve mon premier exemple de "Sujet humain
comprendre objet humain", mais avec le sens de "il comprend ce que je dis"; il
me comprend au sens de "il comprend ce que je pense, ce que je ressens,
comment je réagis" n'apparaît qu'à partir du relevé de 1900: "Comprenez-moi,
mon enfant, je suis un peu maniaque" (Octave Mirbeau, 1900)
En 1850 apparaît mon premier exemple du passif de comprendre au sens
d'"intelligere" alors que cette voix semblait jusque là réservée au sens
d'"includere": "ma pensée serait d'abord comprise. Je n'aurais pas besoin d'un
long discours" (documents d'histoire contemporaine) et en 1900, je relève "un
sentiment militaire mal compris" {Affaire Dreyfus, documents diplomatiques),
là où l'on aurait trouvé antérieurement "mal entendu".
L'omission du complément après comprendre ne se trouve, et encore
rarement, à date anciennce (trois exemples antérieurs à 1900), que dans des
incises du type "com je puis comprendre" (Christine de Pisan, 1403). Mais à

partir de 1900 c'est un phénomène courant et une tournure tout à fait naturelle:
Léon Bloy: "vous êtes parmi les rares qui peuvent comprendre", "cet homme
calomnié déclare ne pas comprendre", "Lutterez-vous contre les bons? Je ne
comprends pas", "plus je comprend, plus je m'enfonce dans les ténèbres (de
l'Ecriture Sainte)", "Avez-vous compris?", "Ah! je comprends! On voulait
vous utiliser", "vous ne voyez pas qu'il vaut mieux savoir que comprendre?"
Colette: "elle ne rit pas parce qu'elle ne comprend pas" (le fond de son pot à
eau est poussièreux) "c'est bon, on comprendi", "elles suivent péniblement [la
classe] sans chercher à comprendre", Anaïs comprend bien, elle!; Octave
Mirbeau: "qu'elle n'ait jamais rien vu, qu'elle n'ait jamais bien compris, c'est
ce qui m'épate le plus".
Enfin, à partir de 1900, on voit apparaître la tournure pronominale ça se
comprend: Octave Mirbeau: "en tout bien tout honneur, ça se comprend,
voyons!" À partir du relevé de 1900, non seulement les exemples deviennent
extrêmement nombreux avec une forte prédominance de comprendre que mais
on voit fleurir une variété de tournures qui n'étaient pas ou peu représentées
dans les relevés précédents; cette liberté syntaxique est le signe du caractère
bien vivant et archisémémique de ce mot.
4. Perspective linguistique.
4.1 Transformation de la structure sémantique profonde des trois items: Pour

ouir, encore conjugué au début du XVIIe siècle, la transformation a été si
radicale que Furetière, à la fin du siècle le tient pour "vieux" et n'en signale
déjà plus que les emplois figés qui survivent encore aujourd'hui. Je ne crois
pas que sa disparition soit due à des raisons morphologiques. Bien d'autres
verbes anomaux ont été refaits et ont survécu, et entendre, comprendre ne sont
pas non plus des verbes réguliers. J'émets l'hypothèse qu'il a été victime de sa
monosémie incompatible avec sa grande fréquence: les mots les plus fréquents
de la langue sont normalement polysémiques; en particulier les grands verbes
de sensation, comme voir, sentir, toucher, ont tous des emplois pléniers
concrets et des emplois subduits abstraits. Or, ouir s'est montré totalement
rebelle à l'abstraction. Les emplois abstraits qui lui correspondaient étaient
tenus par entendre qui a fini par aborder aussi les emplois concrets, au prix,
nous l'avons vu, de la perte d'une partie importante de ses acceptions
anciennes. J'ai cru pouvoir montrer dans mon livre que le problème se posait
de savoir si des emplois à première vue aussi hétérogènes que j'entends du
bruit, ils s'entendent pour faire un mauvais coup, et j'entends qu'on m'obéisse
doivent être considérés comme appartenant à trois verbes différents ou comme
trois acceptions disjointes d'un polysème. La solution que je propose est
polysémique, en particulier à cause de nombreux exemples ambigus pouvant
appartenir à une acception ou une autre: l'ancienne structure aspectuelle
d'entendre a disparu au profit d'une structure beaucoup plus courante: saisie
plénière fréquente et syntaxiquement libre, avec sensation auditive accompa
gnée d'une certaine activité d'esprit et saisie subduite, moins fréquente et
syntaxiquement plus contrainte, avec activité d'esprit en l'absence de sensa
tion. Mais j'ai cru pouvoir montrer qu'en contrepoint de ce cinétisme moderne,
on trouvait un cinétisme inverse, trace de l'ancien, où les emplois pouvaient
être classés dans un ordre d'activité d'esprit croissante, de la simple interpréta
tion d'une sensation auditive à l'élaboration d'un projet.
En ce qui concerne comprendre, je crois que le grand tournant de son
histoire est signalé par la quasi simultanéité de deux phénomènes: l'apparition
de je comprends que... semble être le signe que ce verbe est en train de devenir
inapte à représenter l'esprit comme un contenant; corrélativement, comprendre
se banalisant au sens d' "intelligo", je comprends devenait ambigu et gênant
devant un mot abstrait pour signifier "includo", d'où la disparition de je
comprends O dans 0', C'est dire qu'il se situe à la jointure du XVIIe et du
XVII e siècles. Jusque là, on pouvait y voir un mot polysémique signifiant
essentiellement l'inclusion, avec forte spécialisation d'un grand nombre
d'emplois dans le domaine intellectuel. Désormais, l'emploi "intelligo" et
l'emploi "includo" vont vivre chacun d'une vie tellement séparée qu'aucune
ambiguïté ne peut servir de transition entre eux deux; il est vrai qu'on peut
définir aujourd'hui S humain comprend O ("intelligent") par "S humain est
capable d'analyser en éléments et de synthétiser un objet mental", et S abstrait
comprend O ("includit") par la "synthèse S inclut l'élément O"; on peut donc à
la limite les considérer comme ayant comme substance sémantique commune
les notions conjointes d'analyse et de synthèse. Mais il y a un continuum dans
les emplois d'entendre qu'il n'y a pas dans ceux de comprendre dont la polysé
mie est beaucoup plus disjointe et à la limite de l'homonymie.
4.2 D'un point de vue SYNTHÉTIQUE, quelle est la portée de ce renouvelle

ment de l'outillage lexical? L'élimination d'ouir trop concret d'une part et
l'élimination des emplois figurés et expressifs de comprendre d'autre part
montrent de façon convergente un progrès indéniable de l'abstraction. Le
remplacement d'entendre par comprendre est plus ambigu étant donné qu'une
manière de se représenter l'intellection qui a dû être, pendant une assez longue

période, ressentie comme plus expressive et appropriée que l'ancienne, a perdu
ce caractère au moment où elle s'est généralisée. Ce qu'on peut en retenir est
qu'inconsciemment, comme c'est toujours le cas dans les faits de langue,
l'expression de la pure intellection a été ressentie à un certain moment qu'il y
aurait intérêt à préciser davantage, comme incompatible avec celle d'une sensa
tion. Je persiste à penser, comme je l'écrivais dans mes Structures sémantiques
(p.80) que si l'on étudiait la structure sémantique des mots 'vieux' exclus du
bon usage au XVIIe siècle et de leurs remplaçants, on constaterait un singulier
basculement dans la manière de se représenter l'univers extérieur et notre
univers intérieur, à une époque où se dessine la 'modernité'. Accompli métho
diquement, ce travail permettrait sans doute de vérifier cette réflexion de G.
Guillaume: "l'homme linguistique des différents âges peut penser les mêmes
choses. Il reste qu'il ne les pense pas mêmement".
NEUTRALISATION SÉMANTIQUE
ET MARQUAGE FONCTIONNEL
A PROPOS DE L'ÉVOLUTION DE CERTAINS
EMPLOIS DE CELUI ET DE CE EN FRANÇAIS
MICHEL PIERRARD
Vrije Universiîeit Brussel
0. L'interprétation des constructions celui/ce + relative reste un point

délicat et controversé de la syntaxe du français moderne.* Notre contribution
voudrait illustrer, à partir des données d'un certain nombre d'études de syntaxe
historique, comment une démarche de type diachronique apporte une dimen
sion à la fois originale et complémentaire à l'appréhension du fonctionnement
de ces 'démonstratifs' et de leurs rapports avec le système de la relative 'sans
antécédent' en français moderne, comment elle tend à confirmer la thèse
actuelle voyant en celui et en ce des déterminants de relatives nominalisées.
1.0 Il n'est guère facile de résumer en quelques pages la situation fort

complexe de ces morphèmes en ancien et en moyen français: "[...] aucun
ensemble de formes n'a, peut-être, subi des transformations aussi radicales, ni
aussi originales" (Dees 1971:1). En effet, au cours d'une même période, une
lutte morphologique et fonctionnelle oppose cil et cist, tandis que,
parallèlement, leur opposition de valeur monstrative ou indexicale s'use
lentement et que de nouvelles formes apparaissent pour remplacer les
morphèmes altérés. De même, en ancien français, ce 'neutre' était concurrencé
par les formes cest et cel mais cette diversité morphologique disparaît déjà
pendant la période de l'ancien français. D'autre part, en moyen français
* Le débat est pleinement d'actualité, comme le confirme l'intéressante contribution de X. C.

Carrete (1987) dont nous venons de prendre connaissance au moment de corriger les épreuves
de cet article.
388 MICHEL PIERRARD
encore, on constate des convergences entre les divers emplois de ce.1

Examinons plus en détail l'évolution des formes.
1.1 Celui.
En ancien français, une confusion extrême caractérise la fonction du
démonstratif cil et sa relation avec cisî, car deux types de distinctions
s'entrecroisent: d'une part, cil s'oppose sémantiquement au démonstratif cisî,
quelles que soient la forme — antonymique ou privative (marqué/non marqué)
— et la valeur de cette opposition: proximité vs éloignement (cf., entre autres,
Dees 1971); sphère de l'interlocution vs univers extérieur à l'interlocution
(Moignet [1973:153]: "cist évoque, subjectivement, ce qui concerne le domaine
de l'interlocution, cil, objectivement, ce qui est en dehors de ce domaine");
nécessité d'identification référentielle par le contexte d'énonciation immédiat
(cist) vs absence d'obligation de saturationcontigu(cil) (Kleiber 1987:18-23).
D'autre part, les deux formes sont originellement employées comme pronom et
adjectif. Dès le XIIe siècle, cil tend à se spécialiser en fonction pronominale
mais Dees (1971:153-155) démontre dans son excellent étude que la distinction
pronom (cil) — adjectif (cisî) ne s'établit définitivement qu'au début du XVIe
siècle après une longue période de flottement.
Cette spécialisation fonctionnelle de cil et cisî ne permet plus de les
opposer en tant que déictiques ou en tant que symboles indexicaux et ceci
provoque par la même occasion une réduction de la puissance sémantique de
cil. Aussi, dès l'époque du moyen français, cil peut être renforcé par
l'adjonction des adverbes ci et là. Mais ce n'est sans doute que vers le XVIIe
siècle que celui-ci et celui-là éliminent définitivement celui de la fonction
pronominale. En effet, G. Gougenheim constate dans sa Grammaire de la
langue française du 16e siècle que "la différence d'emploi qui existe
aujourd'hui entre les formes simples et les formes en -ci et en -là, n'existait pas
encore de façon aussi tranchée au XVIe siècle" (1974:76). Ainsi, on y trouve
la forme celui, en parallèle avec des formes en -ci et en -là, comme pronoms
démonstratifs. Inversement, on trouve celui-là comme introducteur de
complément prépositionnel (à celle là de mon beau procureur).
Depuis les plus anciens textes d'autre part, cil pouvait introduire une
proposition relative. Ces tours avaient déjà souvent une valeur sentencieuse.
Dès lors, l'antécédent doit rester indécis, ce qui expliquerait pourquoi Cisî et
1
En ce qui concerne, par exemple, l'emploi de ce devant un pronom relatif, P. Wunderli
avance l'hypothèse d' "une convergence des emplois comme proforme aphorique et comme
article propositionnel au cours de l'histoire" (1978:238).
L'ÉVOLUTION DE CELUI ET DE CE EN FRANÇAIS 389
cestui, qui évoquent le domaine de l'interlocution, "ne conviennent pas pour

ces emplois" (cf. Foulet 1970:172). D'une façon générale d'ailleurs, le pronom
démonstratif cil "peut être un terme d'appel, support d'une détermination qui
peut revêtir plusieurs formes" (Moignet 1973:154).
Dans ce cas, il peut être déterminé
— par un adverbe {cil dehors)',
— par un substantif introduit par de {cil de la sale);
— par une proposition relative {cil qui haut monte de haut chief).
À ce moment cil et celui conservent néanmoins leur valeur pronominale

puisque la même forme peut être employée comme pronom déictique.2 Ceci
est également démontré par la mobilité dans l'énoncé de celui, antécédent d'un
pronom relatif. Des exemples de ce genre sont encore courants dans la langue
du XVIe siècle:
(1) Celuy me semble avoir tres-bien conceu la force de la coustume,

qui premier forgea ce conte. (Montaigne; cité par Gougenheim
1974:77).
Mais déjà le processus de figement et de 'dépronominalisation' est amorcé, ce

qui apparaît dans une série de tours et de formules, surgissant à partir de
l'ancien français, où le segment celui qui semble déjà indissociable:
— Il n'y a (il n'est) celui (celle) qui = "il n'y a (il n'est) personne qui"
(2) N'y aura cil qui ne prenne cueur hault (Marot; cité ibid.)
— Comme celui qui = "en homme qui"
(3) Laquelle requeste j'ay voulentiers entreprise (...) comme celuy qui
ayme et honnoure à mon povoir la langue gallicane. (Lemaire de
Belges; cité ibid.)
2
Pour les exemples de ces formes dans des emplois pronominaux, consulter Wunderli
1980b: 19-21 (celui); 23-24 {celle); 28-29 (ceux); 32-33 {celles). Le moyen français utilisait
toutefois de préférence les formes correspondantes avec i prosthétique: icelui, etc. (Martin et
Wilmet 1980:167).
390 MICHEL PIERRARD
Le remplacement de celui par celui-cil-là et son glissement vers un rôle

d'introducteur de structure complexe nominalisée (celui qu-P; celui S Prép.),
s'accompagnent d'une période de confusion et de flottements. L'emploi de
celui-là et même de celui-ci en fonction de déterminant en est par exemple une
manifestation.
Chez les plus anciens auteurs du XVIIe siècle et chez La Fontaine, on trouve
très souvent celui-là, chez Malherbe et même chez Balzac celui-ci, tous deux
immédiatement suivis d'un relatif, rarement d'un infinitif avec de, emploi
qui disparaît à la fin du siècle. (Haase 1969:46)
1.2 Ce.
En ancien français, ce 'neutre' connaît des emplois multiples et variés.
En moyen français, P. Wunderli présente l'inventaire suivant de ses fonctions:
• ce 'neutre' peut être prime actant (sujet) d'une propostion ou d'une phrase;
• ce 'neutre' peut être second actant (complément d'objet direct) d'une
proposition ou d'une phrase;
• ce 'neutre' peut faire partie d'un 'syntagme prépositionnel' qui lui-même
peut remplir différentes fonctions, à savoir:
— tiers actant (complément d'objet indirect)
— circonstant (complément circonstanciel)
— complément nominal.
• ce 'neutre' peut être attribut d'une proposition ou d'une phrase;
• ce 'neutre' peut remplir les différentes fonctions susmentionnées dans le
cadre d'une phrase adverbiale;
• ce 'neutre' peut faire partie de certains pronoms relatifs, les soi-disants
'relatifs sans antécédent' (ce que, ce dont, etc.);
• ce 'neutre' peut faire partie de certaines conjonctions (jusqu'à ce que, après
ce que, pour ce que, etc.). (Wunderli 1978:189)
Dans la langue du XVIe siècle, G. Gougenheim (1974:78) relève tou

jours l'emploi fréquent du morphème
— comme sujet d'une proposition participiale absolue (cefaict);

— comme objet dans les incises (ce dit-il), avec un infinitif, un
participe présent ou un gérondif (Pour mieulx ce faire, ce voyant,
en ce disant);
— après les prépositions les plus diverses (à ce, par ce, pour ce),
soit différents tours qui ne seraient plus possibles aujourd'hui.
Toutefois, au XVIIe siècle, on ne rencontre plus guère que des traces
de cet ancien usage (Haase 1969:79).
En moyen français, ce pouvait donc encore remplir une double série de

fonctions, celles d’'indice morphologique' et celles de proforme, mais son
utilisation va se restreindre pour se limiter ajourd'hui aux emplois devant le
verbe être, devant la conjonction que et les relatifs ou dans les locutions toutes
faites.
En réalité, ce a, "dès l'époque la plus ancienne, perdu son sens nette
ment démonstratif' (Sneyders De Vogel 1919:58). À partir du XIVe siècle
apparaissent, pour remplir ce rôle de proforme indexicale, les formes
renforcées de ce, ceci et cela, qui l'ont remplacé dans l'usage moderne.
Toutefois, encore au XVe siècle cela et ceci sont relativement rares; ils ne
connaîtront un grand succès qu'au XVIe siècle (cf. Wunderli 1980a:25Q). Le
système traversa par conséquent une période de flottement. On en trouve
confirmation dans la langue du XVIe siècle où cela est utilisé dans des emplois
qui ressortissent traditionnellement au domaine de ce (Gougenheim 1974:79):
— comme antécédent d'une subordonnée relative {cela qui);

— dans la locution temporelle sur cela.
Quant au segment ce que en relative, on constate aussi qu'il tend à être

ressenti comme une unité indissociable. Alors qu'en ancien français le ce
aphorique était d'abord inconnu et ensuite facultatif, son emploi se généralise
en moyen français de telle sorte que les exemples où ce manque sont
exceptionnels et nettement archaïsants. Pour P. Wunderli néanmoins "[...] à
cette époque il subsiste encore des cas où ce est une vraie proforme; sont à
classer ici surtout les cas où il est séparé de la relative par un autre élément, par
ex. le verbe" (1978:238). De plus en plus, il devient obligatoire et perd son
caractère tonique tandis que ses fonctions predicatives se perdent. Il est devenu
"un indice morphologique intégré d'un certain type de relatifs" (p.221).
En outre, ce apparaît comme article propositionnel dans les complétives
introduites par que et dans un tas de locutions conjonctives dont quelques-unes
ont subsisté aujourd'hui (à ce que, de ce que, en ce que, sur ce que, parce
que). Au XVIIe siècle, il s'ajoute enfin à que dans l'interrogation indirecte.
1.3 Avec leur spécialisation fonctionnelle et la réduction de leur puissance

monstrative ou indexicale, les morphèmes cil et ce voient disparaître par la
même occasion leur valeur pronominale. C'est en gros au XVe siècle que les
grammaires historiques semblent situer le tournant et la percée des formes
composées en -ci et -là qui prendront la relève en fonction pronominale. "[...]
392 MICHEL PIERRARD
celui à lui seul pouvait suffire à indiquer la personne voulue. Il a gardé cette
force jusqu'au XVe siècle; au siècle suivant Meigret rejette celui l'a inventé et
réclame cettuy-ci l'a inventé" (Sneyders De Vogel 1919:64). La même évolu
tion peut être relevée pour ce.
Originellement, le ce des "relatifs sans antécédent" (ce qui, ce que, ce dont,
etc.) était sans aucun doute un ce aphorique (accentué) déterminé par une
relative. Mais en moyen français la situation semble avoir changé: ce
devant le relatif "sans antécédent" est devenu la norme et a perdu son
caractère tonique; il est devenu ou du moins en train de devenir un indice
morphologique intégré d'un certain type de relatifs. (Wunderli 1978:221)
Le recul de la valeur pronominale va de pair avec le glissement de ces

formes vers la fonction d'introducteur de structures complexes nominalisées.
Cela s'accompagne de l'inséparabilité des éléments du segment celui qui (ce
qui), alors que l'ancienne langue avait, comme nous l'avons vu, la faculté de
séparer celui de la relative qu'il introduisait. Cette construction se retrouve
encore jusqu'au XVIIe siècle mais elle est critiquée par les grammairiens3 car
celui n'a plus le poids sémantique suffisant pour fonctionner de façon
autonome. "À l'inverse, on trouve parfois au XVIe et au début du XVIIe
siècle celui-là et celui-ci, ceci et cela placés immédiatement devant la phrase
relative, et avec valeur determinative [...]" (Sneyders De Vogel 1919:66).
(4) Demandez à qui vous voudrez de ceux-ci qui vivent de

brigandage [...] s'ils ne seraient pas plus aisés que l'argent leur
vînt d'autre façon. (Malh.; ibid.).
TL s'agit apparemment d'une tentative pour raviver la valeur pronomi

nale de l'introducteur de la relative. Elle ne pouvait toutefois qu'avorter par
suite du marquage fonctionnel de plus en plus strict de celui (ce) devant une
relative.
L'histoire des morphèmes celui et ce confirme par conséquent l'hypo
thèse, accréditée d'un point de vue synchronique par une série de données
syntaxiques et sémantiques, selon laquelle ils remplissent aujourd'hui non pas
le rôle d'un 'antécédent' mais la fonction d'un déterminant de structure com
plexe nominalisée, telle la relative sans antécédent (5b). Ces déterminants
3
K. Sneyders De Vogel (1919:66) cite des exemples de Malherbe et de La Bruyère, critiqués
par Vaugelas.
LÉVOLUTION DE CELUI ET DE CE EN FRANÇAIS 393
jouent alors un rôle comparable à celui de l'article par rapport à l'adjectif

substantivé (6b).
(5) a) Le livre que tu m'as prêté,

b) Celui que tu m'as prêté.
(6) a) La robe rouge est dans l'armoire,

b) La rouge est dans l'armoire.
2. En quelle mesure l'histoire de la relative substantivée corrobore-t-elle

cette spécialisation fonctionnelle de celui et de ce? En ancien français, le
paradigme du morphème qu-, introducteur des relatives sans antécédent,
présente non seulement un système complet mais encore des occurrences
nombreuses et variées.
qui: C'est le pronom de l'être animé. En ancienfrançais,il évoque fréquem

ment "une personne non particulière et indéterminée" (Moignet 1973:
156):
(7) Qui tot convoite tot pert. (Prov.; cité par Moignet 1973:156)
(8) Qui at pechiet bien s'en pot recorder. (Alexis; cité par l'A.F.W.,
V)
Si l'emploi précédent est toujours productif en français moderne, qui pouvait

également représenter à l'époque une personne particulière: "Le pronom qui se
rapporte à une personne déterminée" (Franzén 1943:293; cf. aussi, pour ces
emplois, Korte 1910 et l'A.F.W.):
(9) Ki lui portat suef le fist nurrir. (Alexis; cité par Moignet, ibid.)
(10) Mout me fist grant honor Qui de touz ses chevauz m'envoia le
meillor. (La Vengeance Alixandre; cité par l'A.F.W.)
En moyen français cette flexibilité devient plus rare (cf. Jokinen. 1978:
5) encore que R. Martin et M. Wilmet soulignent toujours l'emploi plus souple
du morphème: "Qui peut s'employer dans un sens indéfini et signifier 'quel
que soit celui qui'" (1980:246).
394 MICHEL PIERRARD
que: Ce morphème évoque un concept inanimé. Le tour est bien implanté en

fonction objet.
(11) Que jones aprent vieus le retient. (Prov.; cité par Moignet
1973:159).
Si que apparaît aussi en fonction sujei, il y est déjà menacé par un qui neutre
comme dans la formule que (qui) mieuz est. U. Jokinen (1978:17-18) re
marque qu'il devient relativement rare en moyen français pour se limiter vers
1500 à des locutions figées.
quoi: Son emploi se concentre exclusivement en fonction de régime

prépositionnel où, dès l'origine, il n'a pas d'antécédent exprimé lorsqu'il
renvoyait au sens de l'énoncé complet
(12) mes de toi n'en issi onques nule, por quoi tu puez veoir
apertement que tu es plus durs que pierre. (La Queste del Saint
Graal; cité par Moignet 1973:161.)
En moyen français, R. Martin et M. Wilmet constatent que quoi renvoie

souvent à ce qui précède ou se limite au tour avoir de quoi (manger, boire,
vivre, faire,...) (1980:251).
où et dont: Le morphème où possède en ancien français une série d'acceptions

qui recouvrent le sens local pur, un sens métaphorique (lieu notionnel) et même
un sens temporel. Il réalise des emplois à tous les degrés de l'indifférenciation:
le lieu évoqué peut être totalement indéterminé, comme c'est le cas dans son
usage moderne, mais il peut aussi être plus particularisé. Ceci correspond
alors au domaine occupé actuellement par l'introducteur complexe là où qui
sélectionne la notion de localité.
Notons enfin qu'en ancien français "Dont peut ne pas avoir d'antécé
dent exprimé, il équivaut alors au moderne ce dont, introduisant une relative
apposée à l'ensemble de la régissante" (Moignet 1973:163). Dès le moyen
français, ce type de constructions est en net recul mais il continue d'apparaître
sporadiquement. A. Haase (1969:75) relève encore au XVIIe siècle l'emploi
de dont pour ce dont.
LEVOLUTION DE CELUI ET DE CE EN FRANÇAIS 395
Si les valeurs du qui sans antécédent sont multiples et variées en ancien

français, son utilisation au XVIIe siècle se limite déjà aux emplois généralisants
(Brunot & Bruneau 1969:208).
Entre ces deux points de repère, c'est-à-dire essentiellement au cours de
la période du moyen français, il s'est opéré tout un processus de réduction du
système de l'introducteur qui peut être ramené à deux grandes tendances:
— l'extension de la signification (plus précisément de l'emploi référentiel)

de certains morphèmes est limitée. En conséquence, une modification profonde
du fonctionnement du paradigme s'opère. Alors qu'en ancien français, il était
capable d'introduire toute la gamme des emplois sur la tension de l'indifféren
ciation, il ne peut aujourd'hui servir qu'à l'expression de l'indifférenciation
généralisante. Cette évolution fondamentale était déjà soulignée en 1910 par le
linguiste allemand J. Korte: "Im Neufranzösischen wird qui nur noch im
allgemeinen Sinne gebraucht [...] aber nicht mehr, wenn von einer bestimmten
Person die Rede ist [...]" (1910:4). Cette tendance touche en particulier les
morphèmes qui et où, qui perdent la capacité d'exprimer l'indétermination
particularisante;
— l'emploi de certaines formes est abandonné: dont finit par être
complètement éliminé comme introducteur de relatives 'sans antécédent', que
subsiste seulement dans une série de formules figées, quoi enfin voit ses
emplois strictement limités.
3. L'évolution des morphèmes celui et ce, tout comme l'historique du

pardigme de l'introducteur qu-, confirment donc l'hypothèse inférée d'un
examen synchronique de la construction (cf. Pierrard 1988:76-92). La présente
esquisse nous permet en outre d'appréhender comment la langue, entre le XVe
et le XVIIe siècle, fut amenée à suppléer au système défaillant et confus de
l'introducteur qu-, à le renforcer, à le préciser par l'adjonction des déterminants
celui et ce. De cette manière, elle créa de fait un nouveau paradigme intro
ducteur pour la relative 'sans antécédent', tout en n'éliminant pas complètement
le précédent.
En reportant les diverses saisies sémantiques du morphème sur un
schéma bi-tensif, il nous est possible de mieux représenter les transformations
fondamentales que subit le système de l'introducteur de la relative 'sans
antécédent' et qui sont soulignées par le passage de celui (ce) de la classe des
pronoms à celle des déterminants ou par le recul du paradigme introducteur
originel.
396 MICHEL PIERRARD
avant leXVesiècle
après le XVIIe siècle
Le survol de l'histoire des démonstratifs et de la relative sans

antécédent illustre comment l'évolution des morphèmes celui et ce génère les
caractéristiques favorisant leur fonctionnement au sein du système de la relative
sans antécédent, fonctionnement qui à son tour oriente cette évolution. Cet
aperçu nous a donc permis de confirmer, par des indices diachroniques,
l'interprétation de celui et de ce comme des déterminants de relatives
nominalisées.
RÉFÉRENCES
Brunot, Ferdinand & Charles Bruneau. 1969. Précis de grammaire historique
de la langue française. 3e éd. entièrement refondue. Paris: Masson.
Carrete, X. . 1987. "Les relatives libres en français médiéval (1200-1500):
Typologie, structure et restriction d'identité". Verba: Anuario galago de
filolxia, 403-439. Santiago de Compostela: Univ. de Santiago.
Dees, Anthonij. 1971. Etude sur l'évolution des démonstratifs en ancien et en
moyen français. Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff.
Foulet, Lucien. 1970. Petite syntaxe de l'ancien français. 3e éd. revue. Paris:
Champion.
Franzén, T. 1943. "Qui en lui creit il n'a nul bon talent: Quelques observations
sur l'emploi en ancien français, des propostions relatives indépendantes et
sur la structure de la principale qui suit". Mélanges de philologie offerts à
Johan Melander, 291-305. Uppsala: Lundequist
Gougenheim, Georges. 1974. Grammaire de la langue française du l6ième
siècle. Nouvelle éd. Paris: Picard.
Haase, Adolphe. 1969. Syntaxe française du XVIIe siècle. 7e éd. Paris:
Delagrave.
Jokinen, Ulla. 1978. Les relatifs en moyen français: Formes et fonctions. Hel
sinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia.
Kleiber, Georges. 1987. "L'opposition cisticil en ancien français ou comment
analyser les démonstratifs". Revue de linguistique romane 51.5-35.
Korte, J. 1910. Die beziehungslosen Relativsätze im Französischen. Göttin
gen: Dieterich.
Martin, Robert & Marc Wilmet 1980. Syntaxe du moyen français. (= Manuel
du français du moyen âge, 2.) Bordeaux: Sobodi.
Ménard, Philippe. 1976. Syntaxe du moyen français. Nouvelle éd. entièrement
refondue. (= Manuel du français du moyen âge, 1.) Bordeaux: Sobodi.
Moignet, Gerard 1973. Grammaire de l'ancien français. (-Initiation à la
linguistique; Série B: Problèmes et Méthodes, 2.) Paris: Klincksieck.
Pierrard, Michel. 1988. La relative sans antecédent en français moderne: Essai
de syntaxe propositionelie. Louvain & Paris: Peters.
Sneyders de Vogel, . 1919. Syntaxe historique du français. Groningue & La
Haye: Wolters.
Tobler, Adolf & Erhard Lommatzsch. 1971. Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch.
Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner.(= A.F.W.)
Wunderli, Peter. 1978. "Ce neutre en moyen français". Sémantique lexicale et
sémantique grammaticale en moyen français. Colloque organisé par le Centre
d'Etudes Linguistiques et Littéraires de la Vrije Universiteit Brussel (28-29
septembre 1978). Actes publiés par Marc Wilmet, 185-253. Bruxelles:
Centrum voor Taal- en Literatuurwetenschap, Vrije Univ. Brussel.
398 MICHEL PIERRARD
. 1980a. "Ceci et cela en moyen français". Linguistique romane et

linguistique française: Hommages à Jacques Pohl publiés par Marc Dominicy
et Marc Wilmet, 247-275. Bruxelles: Editions de l'Univ. de Bruxelles.
. 1980b. "Le système des démonstratifs en moyen français". Romania
101.1-34 et 145-191.
ROMANCE COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR AND
LINGUISTIC CHANGE
REBECCA POSNER
Universityof Oxford
These remarks are prompted by a reexamination of attitudes to linguistic

change in comparative Romance studies. I maintain elsewhere (Posner,
Forthcoming a, b, c) that Romanists participated only half-heartedly in the
mainstream linguistic developments of the 19th century and that alongside
'German-style' linguistics there persisted another strand (Trench-style', for
convenience) that continued many of the linguistic attitudes of the
Enlightenment, especially in viewing change in language as adaptive and
socially motivated.
The dominant German tradition located the destructive power of linguistic
change in gradual, unconscious and regular phonetic shifts which in course of
time cause havoc among the meaningful elements of language, necessitating
compensatory synchronic therapy in morphology, lexicon and syntax. This
tradition reached an impasse towards the end of the 19th century, as phonetic
science disclosed the vulnerability of the concept of the 'sound' as a unit that
changes, and as dialectology emphasized the degree of variability within a
speech community, seemingly giving the lie to the notion that all individuals
unconsciously conform to the regular sound-shifts (cf. Auroux 1979). The
impasse was eventually to be circumvented by the establishment of synchronic
linguistics, a statics abstracted from the dynamics of reality, "the theory of
how and why, under certain circumstances, nothing happens, i.e. why change
does not occur" (Popper 1957:39). Change was seen as atomistic and
individual; absence of change as systematic and social. A language system
could be replaced, but not changed; change proper could originate only in
speech.
The view of Romanists outside the German 'paradigm' was that
communities at certain cultural conjunctures developed a stable and systematic
language norm - l'idiome grammatical as it was sometimes called - a
regulated institution which, through inertia or by policy, resisted the
innovations that beset the colloquial idiom.
400 REBECCA POSNER
But the important difference between the two traditions was that the latter
are interested less in LINGUISTIC CHANGE - shifts of formal, especially
phonological, elements within a linguistic system - than in LANGUAGE CHANGE -
the creation of a new language which replaces another. Among French
Romanists a common view, well before the 1860s (cf. Aarsleff 1982:310),
was that language is a social institution (e.g. Ampère 1841:34), a
superstructure overlaying lectal varieties, but drawing on them (cf. Du Méril
1852). The German quasi-autonomous HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS of a Diez or a
Meyer-Lübke can be contrasted with the view continuing the Enlightenment
tradition that LINGUISTIC HISTORY partakes of the methods of institutional
history, and that the history of the Romance languages must make reference to
their social and cultural functions. It was, however, as linguists rather than as
historians that they were faced with the problems of what features characterize
a 'language' and how such features come into existence.1
Raynouard (e.g. 1816) addressed the first of these problems in his
postulation that 'Romance' is a different language from Latin, with the
Western languages2 sharing many of the 23 features he regards as distinctive.
Apart from the common use of versions of the name ROMAN to designate their
languages - clearly a cultural feature - and two phonological, or rather
morpheme-structure, features (to do with word-final segments) all of
Raynouard's criteria are morphological or syntactic.3
Diez (1836-1844), on the contrary, asserted that there was no
discontinuity between Latin and Romance, but that popular spoken Latin grew
almost organically, leaving behind the literary version to wither away. This
1
Note that Meyer-Lübke in the 3rd (1920) edition of his Einführung (1901) introduced a
chapter on Charakteristik und Systematik (pp. 65-70) in which he skirts the theoretical
problems and concentrates on the phonological characteristics of French - oxytonic structure,
forward articulation with a predominance of vowels, and sharply differentiated consonants.
The morpho-syntactic features that distinguish French are linked to its oxytonic structure -
tendency to preposed quasi-flexional elements, post-head ordering of negation and other
elements (e.g. the demonstrative in cet homme-ci, the possessive in mon livre à moi or
compounds like wagon-lit ). He believes untrammeled everyday speech realizes the true
character of the language better than the literary language, but points out the numerous
inconsistencies that stem from inertia and tradition. /
2
Raynouard (1821) examines similar developments in valaque (Rumanian) but sees
these as different enough to exclude that language from the langue romane group.
3
They include the use of the article and verbal auxiliaries, case markers, adjectival
classes, affixes, relatives, passive, future, participial and adverbial forms, comparative
structures, as well as miscellaneous features like the non-specific subject pronoun (on, etc.),
the use of 'expletive' negatives, the omission of the complementizer (que, etc.), the use of
the infinitive for the negative imperative, etc. The features are presented in tabular form in
Raynouard (1821:375), showing in which languages they are present or absent.
COMPARATIVE ROMANCE AND LINGUISTIC CHANGE 401
'Vulgar Latin' hypothesis, as it was later to be known (cf. Lloyd 1979),

became the accepted doctrine of all manuals, even though it was, as Lewis
(1835) points out, supported by very little concrete evidence. Even today,
when research has uncovered more evidence, it is still ambiguous; however
much we seek the function of the Romance definite article, for instance, or of
tense auxiliaries, in the cognate forms in Latin texts, we are left with an
unbridged gap between the linguistic systems.
The 'continuity' story holds that phonetic attrition gradually undermined
the communicative efficiency of Latin so that originally redundant adjuncts
used in careless Latin speech - like noun determiners and prepositions -
eventually grammaticalized and became obligatory. Raynouard, on the other
hand, was hazily aware that the gulf between Latin on one hand, and all the
Romance languages on the other, was the result of a radical change of
language system, or even of language type - a transformation that Schlegel
(1818) dismissed as an impossibility without intervention of external factors.
Contact between languages - or, better, between peoples - is the external
factor most often cited as triggering typological or systematic change, but there
were difficulties in describing the precise effects one language has on another.
Lewis (1835), improving on Sismondi (1813), suggests that the
transformation of Latin into Romance is an example of creolization, almost in
the sense of Bickerton (1981). German speakers, unable to grasp the
complexities of Latin grammar, had recourse, using Latin lexical material, to a
"neutral language" (p. 30), in which "each phrase is, as it were, built up of the
single ideas which compose it" (p. 29). Sismondi himself cites Haitian creole
(p. 33), and suggests that one day the origins of that language, if it became
"policée", and acquired orators and poets, would appear as obscure as now do
those of the Romance languages.
Was the choice of a 'continuity' or 'discontinuity' view of the genesis of
Romance connected with national attitudes to social and cultural history, rather
than with linguistic doctrine? Certainly the French seemed more ready to
envisage revolutionary upheaval, whereas Germans shrank from the prospect
of radical change (cf. Reill 1976:23).
Whereas for the French, as we have seen, advance of time has brought
desirable progress, the Germans regret the loss of a poetic past, even though
accepting the necessity of modernization. It may have been desire to reconcile
a recognition of the inevitability of change with the yearning for stability that
led Humboldt, for instance, in 1836 to describe the Romance languages as
fundamentally identical with Latin ("Es sanken Formen nicht aber die Form" -
cf. Trabant, Forthcoming), or Diez to suggest that the very changes admitted in
402 REBECCA POSNER
Romance were accommodations necessary to fend off "surrender" of the Latin

model (Diez 1820b, cited by Reill 1976:27).
The continuity approach in Romance historical linguistics was the one to
prevail, precisely because of its success in describing the regularities of
phonological development, and in spite of its failure to explain satisfactorily
WHY such development is regular, or how compensatory analogical reformation
or grammaticalization comes about. The elaboration of a set of techniques for
historical, or rather variational, phonology was an enduring contribution of
19th-century German-style linguistics. In comparison, the language history'
tradition appears amateurish and speculative. It was, however, confronting a
real issue that was evaded by Diez and Meyer-Lübke - how are the Romance
languages so like Latin and yet so different, and how could their grammatical
systems have evolved from the typologically distinct Latin one?
One drawback of many 19th-century works lay in their paucity of
methodological equipment: although progress was made in the recognition that
sounds and not letters are the stuff of phonology, grammar was still treated
only in terms of Graeco-Latin part-of-speech categories or General Grammar
semantic features. Grammar change is described mainly in terms of mor
phological innovations, like the introduction of a new element (e.g. the definite
article) or the disappearance of inflections (whose functions would then be
borne by some other morphological device). The communicative advantages
of such morphological 'simplification' (or perhaps 'rationalization'?) were
seen as sufficient explanation of the changes. Inertia would account for lack of
innovation, which is initiated by a tone-setting section of the speech
community and gains acceptance in certain social conditions. Implicit in this
story is the assumption that within 'Universal Grammar' there are certain
options available. However, it is not clear whether, for instance, the feature
"definiteness" is seen as present in Latin, though not overtly expressed, or
whether the feature itself is optional and in Romance is introduced into the
language, along with its overt expression, as the "definite article". Moreover,
no explicit account is given about the way the feature comes to acquire overt
expression among innovating speakers.
Nowhere in the 19th-century works I have examined is there any relevant
reference to first language acquisition. It is apparently assumed that, after
infancy, the child accurately masters the language skills of his elders and is not
the source of innovation. Discontinuity in language is not associated with a
generation gap, but with social upheaval or cultural renovation.
In other ways, however, the 19th-century 'French-style' discussions of
Romance linguistic history can be seen as foreshadowing some of the ideas of
the parametric model of inter-language differences (cf. especially Borer 1984).
The most obvious way in which languages differ one from another is in the
lexicon: the Romance languages however share many lexical items and
idiosyncratic properties of those items. These 'same' lexical items do of
course appear in different phonological guise, and the formulation of rules to
account for these differences forms the major part of traditional Romance
comparative works. However, it can plausibly be argued that such
phonological differences are not qualitatively different from those of intra-
language variation.
Inter-language grammatical variation appears more fundamental, and may
more seriously hamper mutual intelligibility. Assuming that all languages
draw on a set of Universal Grammar principles, we can account for inter-
language grammatical variation by postulating that a number of options, along
certain parameters, are available within Universal Grammar.
Closely related and minimally differentiated languages, like those of the
Romance family, can provide evidence about what parametric variation is
possible and how far choice of one option entails that of others (cf. Rizzi
1982, Jaeggli 1982, Borer 1984). By the same token, change from one
language to another must involve one or more different choices of option. For
example, assuming Latin was a SOV language compared with the SVO
Romance languages, and that either arrangement of categorial components is
possible within the phrase structure component of Universal Grammar, we
must suppose that the change from Latin to Romance involved a shift from one
option to the other. We must then seek to discern whether the shift will
necessarily occasion other changes (like preposition of inflectional elements)
which must then be viewed as part of the same parametric variation. I should
hazard the suggestion that bundles of inter-related shifts that may seriously
impede comprehension would be more important for language change than are
isolated and minor shifts,4 which result in variants that are readily tolerated
within a single speech community.5
4
The idea of 'parametric packaging' need not be so different from other ways of looking
at linguistic change. For instance, in Andersen's (1973) model, abductive change may lead to
consequent deductive adjustments, and the postulate of a tendency towards typological
consistency may be supported by similar data.
5
For instance, Borer (1984:184) suggests that a 'parameter' distinguishes one River
Plate Spanish (loísmo ) dialect from another (leísmo ) type, in that the latter allows
extraction from clitic-doubling configurations (¿a quién le vimos?)whereas the former does
not (*¿a quién lo vimos?). The explanation given for the difference (p. 185) - stemming
from an apparent mismatch between the dative-like a quién and the accusative-marked lo - is
totally acceptable. The leísmo usage is the more innovative, matching the 'case' marking of
the pronoun to the 'personal object' marker a (which is identical with the dative marker). It
is hard to accept that the 'discomfort' caused to speakers by morphological mismatches of
404 REBECCA POSNER
But what would occasion the shift in the first place? I have suggested
elsewhere (Posner 1986, 1987) that a 'creolization' process might result from
speakers switching their loyalty from one language to another, but seeking in
their adopted language some of the 'optional' grammatical features that
differentiate it from the abandoned language. The much-discussed intro
duction of a definite article into Latin, or common Romance, may indeed be an
example of just such a process. If we are right in assuming that overt
expression of definiteness is a marked option (as more languages lack it than
possess it) then it follows that language learners will not choose this option
unless there is some positive evidence in the data to which they are exposed,
which leads them to do so.6 If, however, speakers adopting Latin are already
familiar with a language (e.g. Greek) which does express definiteness overtly,
then it is likely that they will recruit for this function an element of the adopted
language (e.g. a demonstrative or identity pronoun). These speakers,
presumably of a substandard sociolect, will then in their turn supply to new
learners data which provide positive evidence for overt expression of
definiteness.
But is language-switching, or other language-contact processes, the only
way in which *'parametric' language change can come about? As an example,
let us examine the hypothesis that French differs from other Romance
languages along the so-called 'Pro-Drop' parameter (cf. most recently Safir
1986). We will take it as read that in Modern Standard French there is always
overt expression of the subject in tensed sentences,7 whereas in Italian and
Spanish use of the subject pronoun is not obligatory.8 Textual evidence amply
demonstrates that in older varieties of French overt expression of the subject
was also not obligatory, and it is well known that prescriptive rules on this
question were drawn up by grammarians in the 17th century. It may plausibly
be suggested that the 'parametric change' that rendered expression of the
this sort is related to the setting of parameters in the child's acquisition of language. We
recall that the Rio Platense child will in all probability receive data from both 'dialects'
during the acquisition process.
6
If however the Romance 'definite article' was originally introduced as a 'specificity'
marker, which Bickerton (1984) suggests is part of a linguistic 'bioprogram', then it is
possible to explain its introduction without recourse to the language-switching hypothesis.
7
On the other hand, the 'dummy subject' with impersonal verbs like il faut, il y a is
often elided in popular usage.
8
Expression of the subject of the tensed verb appears to be obligatory in the Swiss
Sursilvan dialect (where recent German influence is strongly felt) and is very frequent in
Brazilian Portuguese. Many Northern Italian dialects have obligatory clitic subject pronouns
(cf. Rizzi 1986 who claims these are inflexional and therefore are not overt expressions of the
subject). All Romance creoles obligatorily express the subject with verb forms.
subject obligatory occurred in spoken French, probably in the so-called Middle

French period of the 14th or15thcentury. Concomitant with the change, but
not necessarily causally linked with it, there was some merging of inflectional
endings marking the person of the verb, giving rise to some possible
ambiguity about the identity of the subject.
It is hard to maintain that language contact had any hand in these
changes.9 If however we assume, with Safir (1986:334), that overt
expression of the subject is the unmarked option, we can take it that, in the
absence of evidence to the contrary, the language learner should expect such
expression to be obligatory. Safins postulation that a "single tensed sentence
without a lexical subject" would be enough evidence to persuade the learner
otherwise, is surely too strongly stated. More probably, the Middle French
learner might have difficulty in discerning any clear pattern for personal
pronoun usage, which earlier probably depended on a rhythmic pattern that
must have radically changed in the Middle French period: the conclusion
drawn may therefore be in favor of non-Pro-Drop, together with recognition of
some idiosyncrasies of old-fashioned speech.10
The fixing of non-Pro-Drop as a distinguishing feature of Modern
Standard French was, as I have said, associated with the conscious regulation
of the language especially in the17thand18thcenturies. There is evidence -
in Canadian French, for instance - that the rule is still not consistently
followed in non-standard varieties, which perpetuate some aspects of older
stages of the language. However there can be little doubt that in this, as in
other respects, Modern French differs from the language of medieval texts.
Has there been a 'language change', in the sense I have adumbrated, or
can Old and Modern French be regarded as variants of the same language? I
would suggest that the adoption of non-Pro-Drop is one of the features that
mark a definitive shift from one language to another. French in the early
9
Noam Chomsky in a lecture in London in April 1987 did suggest, in an off-the-cuff
remark, that the change, which he thought dated back "300 years", might owe something to
Gennan influence. There seems to be no evidence for such a suggestion, though it is of
course possible that a non-literate French variety without Pro-Drop had been current from
earliest times, surfacing in textual evidence first in the troubled period of the 14th century.
10
Nineteenth-century writers commented frequently on the non-Pro-Drop character of
Modern French contrasting it with the Old French usage where the pronoun was
'unnecessary' because of the clear inflexional person marks (cf., for example, Raynouard
1821:30). Some commentators regretted the consequent loss of concision and vivacity
(Sismondi 1813:128, Ampère 1841:180), whereas others praised the gain in clarity
(Chevallet 1850.2:499). Diez (1844:45) points out that the 'accusative' pronoun (moi, toi,
lui, eux) has to supplement the clitics which are almost mere 'form-words', whereas Meyer-
Lübke (1894:97) suggests that for 'grammatically unschooled' Frenchmen the clitic pronouns
are 'flexional elements'.
406 REBECCA POSNER
modern period became a 'highly-focused' (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller 1985)

language, so that the permitted range of variation was severely curtailed.
Modern urban variants ousted archaic rural usage; clarity and unambiguous
expression was stylistically favored over ellipsis and abbreviation. Where
linguistic options were available, the choice of the social norm would be in the
same direction: the language 'progressed'. Nonetheless, it remains a pos
sibility that some subordinate social groups would retain their own identity by
opting away from the prestigious norm, either maintaining more archaic usage
or accommodating their usage to that of congenial neighboring communities.11
How far the abnormal usage of such recalcitrant groups can be regarded as a
variant of the community language, rather than as forming a separate language
will depend mainly on social criteria, though 'dialectometrical' measures of
linguistic divergence (cf. Goebl 1987, Guiter 1987) can make more precise
their relationship.
How should we conclude? I have mentioned that 'German-style'
Romance linguistics, for which change occurs primarily in the phonetic
realization of linguistic elements, can account better for variation within one
and the same language than for language change. Where a community
'changes' its language, it performs an act of social identity, perhaps adopting
and adapting as a prestigious norm a particular variety, or perhaps adjusting
aspects of different varieties with particular communicative ends in view.
'French-style' Romance linguistics in the 19th century continued the
Enlightenment interest in 'language history' rather than in 'historical
linguistics'. It did not, however, succeed in developing techniques for study
of inter-language grammatical variation and change that could match the
German-style account of intra-language phonological variation and change.
The notion of 'parameter' developed in recent Chomskyan theory offers
some possible insights into the question of how related languages can differ
one from the other and how a language can be transformed into a distinctively
different, though still similar, language, as a result of resetting of parameters in
the course of language acquisition.
The comparative study of the Romance languages is a privileged domain
for the exploration of possible parametric inter-language variation, insofar as it
is possible to isolate the comparatively few differentiating features among the
many common traits. Most of the differentiating features have arisen in
comparatively recent times, for which textual linguistic evidence is available.
There is some hope therefore of being able to trace the way the features were
11
'For some instances of how different non-standard Romance dialects can share features
absent from the related standards cf. Posner (1976).
introduced into the languages, and to test the hypothesis that in the course of
language acquisition a change of parameter setting was occasioned by certain
shifts in the data available to the language learner.
In this way, we may hope to revive the whole question of the possibility
of language CHANGE12 (rather than language SUBSTITUTION), which suffered
considerable setbacks under the impact of Saussurean structuralism.
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Didier.
Andersen, Henning. 1973. "Abductive and deductive change". Language
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Du Méril, Edélestand. 1852. Essai philosophique sur la formation de la
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Fauriel, Claude Charles. 1854. Dante et les origines de la langue et de la
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Guiter, Henri. 1987. "Etalonnage d'une méthode géolinguistique". RLiR
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Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich. 1986. "'Un souffle d'Allemagne ayant passé':
Friedrich Diez, Gaston Paris and the genesis of national philologies".
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Harris, Roy. 1977. On the Possibility of Linguistic Change. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
12
On this question cf. Harris (1979).
408 REBECCA POSNER
Jaeggli, Oswaldo. 1982. Topics in Romance Syntax. Dordrecht: Foris.

Le Page, Robert B. & Andrée Tabouret-Keller. 1985. Acts of Identity
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Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm. 1906. Die Ziele der romanischen Sprach-
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Kegan Paul.
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the description and definition of a language". YPL 6.75-87.
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créoles 9.127-134.
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Cornwall Lewis". Paper given at the XVIIIe Congrès International de
Linguistique et de Philologie Romanes, Trier, 1986.
Posner, Rebecca. Forthcoming c. "Theories of linguistic change in 19th
century Romance comparative studies".
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Troubadours. I: Grammaire romane ou Grammaire de la langue des
troubadours. Paris: Firmin Didot.
Raynouard, François-Juste-Marie. 1818. Review of Schlegel (1818).
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Troubadours. VI: Grammaire comparée des langues de YEurope latine.
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rustique sur les langues de l'Europe latine. Paris: Crapelet.
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century Germany". Friedrich Diez Centennial Lectures. Supplement to
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Rizzi, Luigi. 1982. Issues in Italian Syntax. Dordrecht: Foris.
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Romance Linguistics ed. by Oswaldo Jaeggli & Carmen Silva-Corvalán,
391-419. Dordrecht: Foris.
Safir, Ken. 1986. "Subject clitics and the NOM-Drop parameter". Syntax
and Semantics 19.333-356.
Schlegel, August Wilhelm. 1818. Observations sur la langue et la littérature
provençales. Paris: Librairie grecque-latine-allemande.
Sismondi, J.C.L. Simonde de. 1813. De la littérature du midi de l'Europe.
Paris: Treuttel et Würtz.
Trabant, Jürgen. Forthcoming. "Entre Raynouard et Diez: Humboldt
romaniste". Paper for the XVIIIe Congrès International de Linguistique
et de Philologie Romanes, Trier, 1986.
Wey, Francis. 1848. Histoire des révolutions du langage en France. Paris:
Firmin Didot.
LOCAL AND GLOBAL CHANGE IN WORD FORMATION
AMANDA V. POUNDER
Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
0. Introduction.
The diachronic dimension of word-formation systems is highly complex

due, among other things, to interaction between the word-formation
subcomponent and other components of grammar, in particular the lexicon.
However, there is no justification for the common dismissal of word formation
as synchronically and diachronically chaotic. The development of word-
formation systems can and should be investigated methodically. For example,
more clarity can be achieved by distinguishing local change - events occurring
on the level of the individual word formation and word-formation paradigm -
and global change - events occurring on the level of the word-formation rule,
operation, and process. Essential to the interpretation of events in diachronic
description is recognition of the fact that global and local change are subject to
different conditions and are thus separate although mutually dependent
phenomena.
1. Productivity.
The concept of productivity has long been central to synchronic and

diachronic description of word formation. Here is not the place to provide yet
another definition or an extensive discussion of the relevant literature; the
following points must suffice. Productivity in word formation is:
(a) a property of a morphological operation;

(b) gradable and relative;
(c) dynamic;
(d) relevant to (i) synchrony and (ii) diachrony.
Point (a) contains the notion 'morphological operation', which can be

informally characterized as containing a form rule and a semantic rule. The
import of this point is that affixes, paradigms, words and other morphological
or lexical units cannot be said to possess this property, and hence that
412 AMANDA V. POUNDER
expressions such as 'productive affix' are meaningless. The characterization of

productivity as a property implies that in one sense at least, it is absolute: an
operation is either productive or non-productive at a given point in time.
Concerning point (b), in another sense, of course, productivity is relative
in that given a morphological system with more than one operation with similar
potential applicability, one will be more productive than another. Indeed, the
only meaningful way of measuring productivity seems to be through
comparison. This leads to the extremely difficult question of how to measure
productivity in any concrete sense, which I shall return to presently.
Concerning point (c), the opposition dynamic vs. static corresponds to
points (a) and (b) above. Dynamicity is relevant to operations, that is, to the
word-formation act itself. The static dimension corresponds to the inter- and
intraparadigmatic relationships between lexical units (stems and complex units,
complex units amongst themselves), and is only indirectly related to
productivity.
Concerning point (d), it is the synchronic aspect of productivity that has
received the most attention in recent years. However, at least as important as
the productivity of operations at a given moment in a given system are the
gains and losses of these operations relative to each other; neglect of the
diachronic dimension can lead to incomplete understanding of the synchronic.
For example, consider the question of the relationship between 'restrictions'
on operations or the size of the domain (scope) of operations and the degree of
their productivity. It has repeatedly been suggested (cf., for instance, Booij
1977:120ff., Schupbach 1984) that the scope of an operation should be a
measure of or even defined as equivalent to the degree of its productivity. It is
not to be denied that there does appear to be a connection between high(er)
productivity and large domains (= few restrictions). However, that this cannot
be equated with productivity in any absolute way is shown by the existence of
other relations. For example, an operation can be quantitatively very
productive in that it produces many words within a very limited range; other
examples of operations do not appear to play any part in active word formation
in spite of their broad domain (e.g., the set of operations affixing -sam in
modern and earlier stages of German). A more reliable indicator of
productivity is the diachronic observation that the domain of applicability of an
operation is being expanded or reduced. As well, the actual rise or drop in the
frequency of word-formation acts must not be neglected. Productivity itself
might be informally characterized as the probability that a given operation be
applied to a stem of type Τ in subsystem S of the language L at a time Z.
The question remains, as to how the domain of an operation and how
changes in the domain may be determined.
LOCAL AND GLOBAL CHANGE IN WORD FORMATION 413
2. Domain definition and diachrony.
The definition of the domain of a word-formation operation provides at

the same time the basis for comparison with other operations and the potential
loci for language change on the systemic level. Such a definition contains the
following:
- The 'syntactics' of the operation
(a) stem conditions

- phonological (e.g., final phoneme (class), lexicophonological
class, number of syllables)
- morphological (e.g., morphologically complex, compound)
- lexical (e.g., (i) semantically/pragmatically determined lexical
class (e.g., animal designations, activity designations); (ii)
foreign, native; (iii) gender, class, etc.)
(b) conditions on the operation itself

- terminality of the operation (i.e., if another operation can be
applied to the result)
- recursivity
- morphophonological processes at boundaries (secondary formal
word-formation rules)
Also relevant are the domains of the corresponding formal and semantic rules
and of the formal rule elements themselves (affixes, etc.):
- Rule element
(a) number of operations containing it1

(b) (morpho)phonologically or lexically conditioned variants
- Form rules and semantic rules
(a) number of semanticruilesco-occurring with a given form rule

(b) number of formal rules co-occurring with a given semantic rule,
both of these to be calculated over the whole (sub)system and within the lexical
class. Incidentally, the number and variety of criteria in this minimal list
1
Each combination of form and semantic rule corresponding to one syntactic rule (e.g.
Verb→Adjective, Verb→Verb, Noun → Verb) is considered a separate operation.
indicate that more than an approximate comparison of two operations is very

difficult, as one may be more 'tolerant' regarding phonological stem criteria,
while the other occurs in more lexical classes, etc. This is evidence for the
probably unwelcome conclusion that productivity is an informal property
incapable of quantification.
Besides a comparison of two or more operations in every point, it is of
course necessary to compare these values to the "system-defining properties"
(cf. Wurzel 1984; cf. "kanonische Erwartungen" in Pounder 1987), i.e. to
that which is 'normal' in the particular subsystem of the language in question,
for example, the normality of morphophonological processes accompanying
the formal operation, operations containing native elements applying to foreign
stems and vice versa, and the normality of variants in the formal rule element.
Here the unavoidable circularity in the system definition becomes apparent.
These properties are determined on the basis of all existing relations on lower
structural levels in the system; these relations are then measured against the
system-defining properties.
On the level of system-defining properties there can be observed
expansions and reductions of the scope of a given operation, of general stem
conditions (i.e. for the set of all operations), of the normality of
morphophonological processes and of sets of operations 'assigned' to lexical
classes. These are all examples of global or systemic change. Changes in the
relative productivities of operations are changes - on a minute scale - in the
whole subsystem. If the productivity of an operation increases in a 'new'
domain, i.e. one not corresponding to the relevant system-defining properties
(for example, a 'foreign' operation on a native stem or vice versa), a new
system definition may be in order with far-reaching results. This implies a
transition from 'abnormal' formations in the first stages of expansion (subject
to conservative normative activity) to acceptability. It is probably impossible
to define precisely the number of operations necessary to allow reanalysis of
the system leading to new defining properties.
Returning to the question of operations with intersecting domains in a
word-formation (sub)system, both productive in the absolute sense, a change
in their relations might take place according to a scenario such as the following
(please note that the change is by no means necessary, that is, the intersecting
domain alone is by no means a sufficient antecedent condition for change).
Operation A has the wider domain; operation  begins to gain in productivity.
As a result of increased formation activity, an analogic extension of the domain
takes place, probably quite independently of A, at least at first. This extension
will likely include pragmatically/semantically determined lexical classes,
morphological structure classes or the like. Growth is often to be observed in
several directions. It is more difficult to chart the progress of a slackening or

reduction of productivity of an operation. Such a reduction is usually
supposed to be the result of the operation's insufficiency in some way or of its
overproductivity (cf., for instance, Schupbach 1984:40, 48), whereby this
insufficiency is resolved by homeostatic-teleological compensation through the
'new' operation B. Similar catastrophe theories are to be found, e.g., in
Gawelko (1977:83ff=), who speaks of productivity cycles in which an
operation necessarily passes through the stages of minimal - maximal - zero
productivity, whereby other operations in the system merely interfere with its
inevitable downfall. Such 'explanations' do not seem very plausible, aside
from all logical objections towards teleological explanations; moreover, they
cannot be supported by data in microinvestigation. Any reduced productivity
of Operation A is more probably a byproduct of the expansion of Operation 
(indirect causality). Other possible paths of development include the 'zero
path', that is, two productive operations in the same domain, or expansions
and reductions of both domains whereby the remainder is well defined (partial
specialization), etc. The whole development is a complex chain of
microevents, containing innumerable points of potential branching.
Each turn of events is dependent on many factors, including the
aforementioned system-defining properties on lower structural levels, but most
importantly on the lexical/morphological constellation of the word-formation
paradigm.2 These include such system-defining properties as:
- size of the paradigm (number of branches from the same stem with the
same syntactic rule, e.g., Verb → Adjective);
- complexity of the paradigm (number of secondary branching nodes) ;
- form-meaning relationships, such as: (a) word-formation synonymy
(two or more paradigm members with at least one common semantic
rule); (b) word-formation polysemy (a paradigm member formed with
two or more semantic rules);
- (typical, regular) correspondences between formal and semantic rules.
These relationships are extremely important, as they are decisive for the
fate of the relevant word-formation operations. If, for example, word-
formation synonymy is 'normal' (in the (sub)system, in the given lexical
class), then it is less probable that Operation A will be 'squeezed out' by an
increasingly productive B. Thus it can be affirmed that a 'Blocking Principle'
à la Aronoff cannot be considered a universal systemic law.
2
For definition and illustration of word-formation paradigms see Pounder (1977) and
Pounder (Forthcoming).
These points serve, on one hand, to limit the extent to which the domain
of an operation may expand and, partially at least, to determine the direction of
this expansion. On the other hand, in the case of (at least) one rapidly
expanding or diminishing domain, a corresponding change in paradigm-related
system-defining properties may take place. Thus, there exists a spiraling cause
and effect relationship between the typical paradigm and other system levels,
parallel to the operation-related properties.
These systemic properties must, however, be seen as an abstraction, that
is, a summation or generalization of all existing paradigms, operations,
processes, etc. The chain of microevents in morphological change is
dependent on the prevailing system-defining properties which form a
framework for possible change. In the case of expansion and reduction,
events can occur outside these boundaries so that the possibility of new
properties arises. A hypothesis may be proposed stating that systemic global
change is inherently deterministically caused, even though the historic chain is
so intricate that prediction is practically very difficult, so that post hoc
interpretation is usually substituted for it (reconstruction of the relevant
microevents is difficult enough!).
3. Systemic and non-systemic local change.
The now often-mentioned microevents make up a part of what is here

meant by 'local change' and consist of the following types:
(a) word-formation acts (formation of one word by means of a word-

formation operation);
(b) cognitive operations (all operations leading to analogical extension and
reanalysis).
Both of these may lead to reanalysis of formal and/or semantic relations in the
paradigm and restructuration of form-meaning correspondences of motivation
in the paradigm.
It should be possible to determine the sufficient antecedent conditions for
such events. It may be assumed that not immediately predictable events of this
type - the exact moment of a word-formation act, reanalysis of a particular
complex form - are subject to paradigm-specific conditions, so that these
events (or non-events such as the non-existence of a particular word-form) do
not need to be explained with reference exclusively to higher-level system
properties. This means among other things that there is no such thing as
'gaps' in productive operations or in word-formation paradigms.3 It should be

emphasized that two different sorts of causality are involved here: systemic
and independent or extralinguistic causality.
The relevance of the individual word-formation act to productivity can be
described as follows: every word-formation act by means of a productive
operation serves to reinforce this productivity by adding to the body of
candidate stems. Thus minute increases in productivity are minute changes in
the balance between different operations in the system. On the other hand,
word formation by non-productive operations is still possible (this belongs to
the realm of morphological creativity; cf. van Marie 1985, Pounder
1987:542ff.), but does not affect the system or the mentioned balance in the
same way. In this respect as well, productivity is always diachronic (cf.
Section 1).
There is yet another type of microevent: change excusively on the non-
systemic level (where system = word-formation system). Points of change
include:
- elements of lexical meaning (regular or circumstantial);

- lexical semantic relations between paradigm members, such as lexical
synonymy, lexical polysemy;
- stylistic, emotional-expressive, regional, frequential, or other types of
markedness.
All of these types of element may be tied to one or more operation or paradigm
member. Here, parallel to systemic (word-formation) levels, loss and gain of
features may be observed. These events differ from the preceding in that they
are dependent on the individual paradigm, but not necessarily on the
subsystem. Separation of lexical aspects of paradigm members from word-
formation aspects prevents systematic features of a 'lexicalized' word from
being ignored (cf. the frequent ploy of declaring all nuisance examples as
lexicalized so as to avoid having to account for them).
Here also important phenomena, such as the 'Blocking Principle' and
functional splits, should be situated as paradigmatic relations that do NOT
extend beyond the single paradigm (as opposed to systemic relations). By
functional split is meant the situation in which an original or potential
synonymy in the paradigm is fully or partly resolved into a one-to-one
3
A word-formation paradigm is, as opposed to an inflectional paradigm, an open
system, so that the expressions 'defective word-formation paadigm, and 'paradigmatic gap'
have no meaning.
correspondence between meaning and form. The following types are all
common:
(a) original/potential word-formation synonymy and polysemy → one form
rule to one semantic rule;
(b) the above synonymy with or without polysemy AND lexical synonymy
and polysemy → differentiation on the lexical level;
(c) word formation and lexical synonymy with or without polysemy →
differentiation through stylistic or other marking of one or more
participan(s) in the relation.
Again, it must be stressed that such changes cannot be systemic and must not
be attributed to systemic insufficiency, need for economy or other
functionalisic principles. They originate rather in a universal norm, related to
normative consciousness, which is the object of interest in natural language
theories. Unequivocal form-meaning correspondences are by no means
necessary for efficient communication, as can be seen in the fact that natural
languages are full of synonymy and polysemy. Potential ambiguities are
regularly resolved in the spoken chain. States of differentiation such as the
above are in addition unstable: analogic processes often cause synonymy and
polysemy among paradigm members as well as transfer of stylistic features.
Events in the chains (a), (b) and (c) above are principally unpredictable, as is
the direction or manner of the event, especially where non-systemic elements
are concerned (e.g., which element of lexical meaning will serve to
differentiate the paradigm members in question). The following hypothesis
may be proposed: the kind of change described here is principally different
from systemic change. Polyvalent relations are not causal in the sense of their
being necessarily resolved by monovalent states. Further, events of this nature
are irrelevant to productivity and irrelevant to the development of word-
formation (sub)systems.
The preceding may be summed up in the following hypotheses:
(a) global change is systemic change;

(b) local change is of two types, systemic and non-systemic;
(c) there exists a circular causality between the system-defining properties on
higher structural levels (process, operation, rule) and microevents of the
systemic type. This is not the case with microevents of the non-systemic
type.
4. Example: the development of a subset of the German deri

vational system.
In order to render the foregoing more concrete, I shall examine some of

the circumstances surrounding the fate of two operations in the German
derivational system. The general domain is desubstantival adjective derivation
from native stems.
4.1. Phase I: 1550-1750. A study of approximately 1300

paradigms permitted the identification of the following system-defining
properties:
- Derivation is a very active process among compounding, participle

formation, serial compounding (e.g., with elements such as -mäßiig,
-ähnlich, -reich, -artig); it is the foremost process for many word-
formation meanings in different lexical classes;
- The subsystem contains many operations, with a total of eight different
form rules (i.e. eight suffixes not counting complex variants such as
-enhaft, -erlich corresponding to -haft, -lich ).
4.1.1. System-defining properties for word-formation para
digms.
- Large paradigms are normal, especially in abstract lexical classes (over

two branches).
- Complexity is normal (embedding), e.g tugendhaft, tugendhaftig "vir
tuous"; fruchtbar, fruchtbarlich "fruitful, fertile".
- Word formation synonymy and polysemy are normal.
- Variants are normal (phonological, morphological), absence or presence
of secondary form rules such as Umlaut, ge- prefixation, e.g. saftig,
säftig "juicy"; geschmackicht, schmackicht "tasty".
4.1.2. -icbt. The domain of the set of operations containing the form
rule with the rale element -icht is as follows:
- It is represented in all pragmatically-semantically determined lexical

classes; it is very frequent, especially in concrete classes where it always
involves primary operations; it is very often the only paradigm member;
- It appears in cumulative series (e.g., DORN-, dornicht - dornichtig
"thorny".
The form rule is combined with at least five semantic rules and is the most
frequent partner for all of these in the concrete classes. It is frequent with
"WITH"(e.g., geschmackicht), the quantitatively most important meaning
overall, in the abstract classes.
Formal rule element: -icht has several variants, e.g. -echt, -acht, -et;
there are regional tendencies here, but in general these are free variants, not
lexically (paradigmatically) fixed.
Paradigm: word-formation synonymy with other members is normal

(occurs frequently with operations with -haft, -ig, -en ); word-formation
polysemy is frequent, depending on lexical class.
4 . 1 . 3 - -ig. The domain of the set of operations containing the form

rule with the rule element -ig is as follows:
- It is represented in almost all lexical classes; it is a relatively important set

of operations, especially in abstract classes where it is one of the two or
three most frequent; it plays a very subordinate role to operations with
-icht in concrete classes, although taking second place; it is seldom the
only paradigm member in concrete classes;
- It appears in cumulative series (e.g., SÜND-, sündig - sündiglich
"sinful".
There are not as many operations with -ig, as the set of semantic rules
co-occurring with the form rule is smaller; it is most frequent with "LIKE"
(beumig "treelike") and "WITH" in particular.
Formal rule element: the suffix -ig has no longer any formal variants.
Paradigm: word-formation synonymy is normal; word-formation

polysemy is rare in comparison with formations containing other suffixes.
4 . 2 . Phase II: 1750-19th century. A study of the system-

defining properties of the derivational subsystem under discussion allows the
following comparison:
- Derivation is still a very active process; however, compounding and

serial compounding are becoming increasingly productive, especially in
the concrete classes where they are in some places replacing derivation as
the primary process; contemporary grammarians frequently express
preference for another process or remark on its higher frequency in

individual paradigms; this is very dependent on lexical class;
- The number of operations in the system is unchanged, although some are
becoming less normal in some classes (relatively unproductive in Phase I
already).
4.2.1. System-defining properties for paradigms.
- Paradigms are becoming smaller (the number of large paradigms is

decreasing); paradigms with only one member are the rule in most
concrete classes; paradigms with one or two members are normal in
abstract classes.
- Paradigms are becoming formally less complex: reduction of embedding
at first in concrete classes, more slowly in abstract classes.
- Word formation synonymy is becoming rarer; there are occasional
examples of semantic differentiation on the word-formation level,
accompanied by reduction of polysemy.
- Variants of all kinds are less normal (they disappear very gradually; one
variant or another becomes lexicallyfixedwithout there being any marked
preference for a given type; intraparadigmatic relations determine whether
the form with the ge- prefix or the Umlaut goes or stays).
4.2.2. -icht. The following changes in the domain of the set of

operations with theruleelement -icht have occurred:
- It has a new distribution: operations are still well represented in concrete

classes, although taking second place to operations with -ig; they are no
longer normal in abstract classes.
The number of operations in the set is dwindling as certain semantic rules

tend to be restricted with other processes. However, the most important rules,
"LIKE" and "WITH", combine to form productive operations.
Formal rule element: variants are no longer normal; some persist

regionally.
Paradigm: in general, word-formation synonymy is present, especially

when a paradigm contains an operation with -ig; polysemy is also normal.
4.2.3. -ig. The following changes in the domain of the set of

operations with the rule element -ig have occurred:
- It has a new distribution: there is a remarkable increase of productivity in

concrete classes; it is stable in abstract classes.
The form rule is becoming more flexible, as combinations with "LIKE"

are more common than before.
Paradigm: in general, word-formation synonymy is present, depending

on lexical class and paradigm structure, namely when formation with -icht is
present.
4 . 2 . 4 . In Phase II there is an ever-increasing number of paradigms in

the concrete classes containing productive operations with -icht and -ig; in
fact, their domains in these classes are approaching identity. Essential for the
following development is a point at which the two operations are equivalent in
scope and productivity. A possible direction of change might be a
systematized functional split in the concrete classes, meaning that one formal
rule would be paired with "WITH" the other with "LIKE", thus reducing the
total number of operations. Such a split was even explicitly championed by
such normative grammarians as Adelung (around 1800). However,
circumstances seem to oppose such a development; not every lexical class
allows such a nice split between the two semantic rules (e.g., the large class of
'landscape' designations such as WALD- "forest", BERG- "mountain, hill"), in
which the primary rule is definitely "WITH". In addition, the fact that the rule
with -icht was so productively matched with "WITH" is not favorable to an
elimination of such a combination. A much different development took place,
with drastic consequences for the set of operations with -icht The identical
combinatorics of the respective operations allowed a reanalysis of the rule
element -icht, now made susceptible through the loss of its variants, as a
variant of -ig, i.e. as -(ig + t). This reanalysis has a parallel in the
deadjectival adjective derivation system: the complex variant -elicht was
reanalysed as -(1 + icht ). As part of the general tendency to eliminate
paradigmatic variation and variation of the rule element, the 'variant' -icht
gradually disappeared from the concrete classes as well. This served in
addition to support the general reduction in the size of paradigms. As well, the
productivity of the set of operations with -ig was increased even more. The
actual elimination of -icht formations in the concrete classes took place very
gradually, paradigm by paradigm. They survived longer in the spoken
language. In the Modern German language, the set of operations with -ig are
by far the most productive - and are indeed in some classes practically the only
ones (landscape designations, for example). There are no remnants in the

standard language of the once so productive operations with -icht
The study of a total of almost 4,000 paradigms from about 1,300 stems
confirmed that each such constellation has its own history. The manner of
conforming to new system-defining properties is in each case different. A
striking example of this is to be found in the typical paradigm structures: each
lexical class manifests a subset of all possible/typical structures (= operations
contained in a paradigm). A subset of this in turn represents the system-
defining properties for the class. In many classes changes in these structures
can be observed: new frequent types come into being (through paradigm
reduction, new formation, through newly productive operations, etc.); others
fall away. This is easy to calculate statistically, but on the basis of the
available data it is often impossible to predict that in a certain class (e.g.,
designations of 'emotional state') paradigmatic structures containing-ig-
operations are typical (e.g., stem + -ig; + -lich), it may still very well occur
that a reduction from a larger structure will eliminate the -ig- formation, leaving
a less productive operation (e.g., MÜH-, originally with mühig, mühsam,
mühlich ; in Phase II not mühsam but mühig has disappeared ("with trouble,
pains")). Typically, representatives of the primary types have several sources.
Given a particular paradigm structure in Phase I, it is not immediately apparent
how many members will 'survive' and which these will be. Similarly, it is not
predictable which derivational paradigms will be eliminated in favor of other
processes.
Lack of space prevents me from presenting the interesting studies of
Gawelko (for French), Vinogradov et al., and Mal'ceva (for Russian) in detail.
These researchers reported very similar patterns of development. The lexical
class seemed to play the primary role evidenced in the German subsystem as
well. A comparative study would certainly be of interest, as the antecedent
situation described here as Phase I resembles that in earlier stages of Russian
and French. The following period was characterized in all three cases by
similar extra-linguistic characteristics not yet mentioned here, such as intensive
normative activity, and the development of modern written and spoken
standards. The very different outcomes illustrate the numerous potential
branchings of historical causal chains.
5. Conclusion.
A systematic investigation of a word-formation system requires a

rigorously observed separation of local from global developments and
systemic local from non-systemic local developments. Only in this way can
the interaction between lower- and higher-level structural changes be accurately

captured. The example given of changing productivities was meant to illustrate
such an interaction. The complex role of the lexicon also becomes apparent:
the lexical class seems to be a major structural category, acting much as an
inflectional class paradigm does; on non-systemic local levels, relationships
between form and lexical meaning add another dimension to the word-
formation paradigm and are as much a part of it. Isolation and identification of
microevents of all kinds are necessary in order to determine sufficient
antecedent conditions for change and to make prediction possible.
REFERENCES
Booij, G. 1977. Dutch Morphology. A Study of Word-Formation in
Generative Grammar. Amsterdam: de Ridder.
Gawełko, M. 1977. Evolution des suffixes adjectivaux en français.
Wroclaw: Akademia Nauk.
Mal'ceva, LM. 1966. "Iz nabljudenij nad slovoobrazovaniem v jazyke
ΧνΠI-ogo veka (na materiale odnokorennyx parallelej -ost', -stvo, i
-ost', -ie)". Process formirovanija leksiki russkogo literaturnogo
jazyka (ot Kantemira do Karamzina) ed. by Ju.S. Sorokin, 259-264.
Moscow: Nauka,
van Marie, J. 1985. On the Paradigmatic Dimension of Morphological
Creativity. Dordrecht: Foris.
Pounder, A. 1987. Systemangemessenheit in der Wortbildung am Beispiel
desubstantivischer Adjektivableitung im Deutschen. Unpublished thesis.
University of Vienna. [English translation in preparation.]
Pounder A. Forthcoming. "The semantic organization of word-formation
paradigms and diachrony". International Conference on Word-
Formation. Veszprém, 1986.
Schupbach, R. 1984. Lexical Specialization in Russian. Columbus:
Slavica.
Vinogradov, V.V., ed. Izmenenija v slovoobrazovanii i formax
suščstvitel'nogo i prilagateVnogo v russkom literaturnom jazyke
XIX-ogo veka. Moscow: Nauka.
Wurzel, W. 1984. Flexionsmorphologie und Natürlichkeit Ein Beitrag zur
morphologischen Theoriebildung. Berlin: Akademieverlag.
GERMANIC VERSCHÄRFUNG:
TYING UP LOOSE ENDS
JENS ELMEGÅRD RASMUSSEN

University of Copenhagen
0. The Germanic Verschärfung problem, i.e. the question of the Indo-

European background of the Proto-Germanic geminate glides /jj / and /ww/
which assumed occlusion in Gothic and Norse (giving thereby Gothic ddj /
ggw, Norse ggj / ggv) while reflected in West Germanic as diphthong + j or
w, is now clear beyond any reasonable doubt. Following preliminary
laryngeal work by Smith, Jr., 1 Lehmann 2 and Lindeman, 3 and a happy
1
Smith, Jr. (1941).
2
Lehmann (1952:36-46), with the rule on page 46 "PGmc. -w- was lengthened after any
short vowel when reflex of a laryngeal followed -w-; PGmc. -j- was lengthened after i when
reflex of a laryngeal followed - j - , and after a when reflex of a laryngeal preceded or followed
- j - * (repeated in Lehmann 1965:215).
Lehmann's examples of "aXy" > /jj/ are: (a) Crim.Goth. ada : Lat. ōvum; (b) Goth.
daddjan; (c) OHG hei "dry" : Lith. kaistù "become hot"; (d) MHG heie "hammer" : Lat.
caedõ; (e) ON skeggja; (f) OSwed. prægge "covering" : Skt. Lat. intrūre; (g)
Goth. twaddje genitive of "two". Items (b) and (e) are shown below (Sections 2.1.1 and
2.1.3) to contain two ƒ s from of old; (g) has had * -, not *■ cf. footnote 4 below.
The same goes for (c) and (d) (the a-vocalism of caedõ does not prove laryngeal, preceding or
otherwise, *' and * - being simply different 'root extensions'. For
these and item (a) see the list of material in the Appendix; for prægge the etymology may
be called in question (Proto-Norse /, may also be from PGmc. but this does not
appear to offer a plausible connection either).
3
L i n d e m a n 1964. Lindeman's rules may be paraphrased like this: (a) normal
development: (b) emphatic development:
already in the Indo-European protolanguage (perhaps
only extra-Anatolian). Thus, Verschärfung "n'était possible que par la présence d'un élément
expressif assez fort. On a donc affaire ici à une création expressive " (Lindeman 1964:182).
The expressive force could be lost, so that its absence in the specific examples ("egg",
"suckle", "of two", "wall", "build", "dew", etc.) "ne présente par conséquent pas d'objections
sérieuses contre notre hypothèse" (Lindeman 1964:183).
Even granting that this could be so (and it is not easy to disprove that a thing that is not
there has been lost), one would have to insist that the idea completely neutralizes the
probative force of any observations we can make.
This hypothesis will therefore have to be kept in mind as the last resort to be appealed to
only if nothing else proves to work.
426 JENS ELMEGÅRD RASMUSSEN
observation by Karl Hoffmann, 4 Jay Jasanoff was able to spell out the
development in detail a decade ago: IE i- and u- diphthongs followed by
laryngeals (i.e. sequences of the structure aįha, ) lost the laryngeals and
filled the resulting hiatus with a replica of the preceding semivowel, i.e.
(Jasanoff 1978). Jasanoff was
able to prove his point by detailed analyses of practically all the etymologically
transparent words that present Verschärfung. Let me just illustrate the idea
with such well-known items as:
(1) Goth. -waddjus, ON veggr "wall" from PGmc. *wajj-u-/*wajj-a-, in

origin a root noun meaning "wickerwork", from the root "to
twist" and so obviously reflecting a Proto-Indo-European word-stem with
accusative singular which developed through pre-Gmc.
> *wajju-.5
(2) ON hqggva, Ger. hauen, identical with OCS k o v q "I strike",

originally containing a root-final laryngeal as seen, among others, from
the Lith. infinitive káuti "to forge": IE * -e/o- > pre-Gmc. * e/a-
> *haww-i/a-.
The bulk of the material complies with this interpretation, and one could
perhaps put the matter aside as one of those chapters in historical linguistics
where a definitive solution has indeed been found and move on to something
else.
The reason why I still want to highlight this piece of G e r m a n i c
phonological history is that I think a number of loose ends still remain to be
tied up.
I shall try to show that Jasanoff s rule, though as certain as anything we
know for sure, needs some restriction. I shall also try to demonstrate that our
general knowledge of the diversification of Proto-Germanic demands that we
imagine the phonetic side of Verschärfung in a fashion which I believe most
scholars will find surprising.
I shall group my observations into a few meaningful categories.
4
Hoffmann (1976:651), note 2 on the genitive and locative dual morphemes: if RV
G/L.du. hánuoh (hánu- "jaw") and Gãthic Avest. h "of the two existences" (ahu- ) are
both trisyllabic, the case ending must have had an initial laryngeal which may in turn explain
Goth, twaddje "of two" as being from *< - + analogical genitive plural ending. Repeated
by Lühr (1977:73) and Jasanoff (1978:83f.). On the amendment I deem necessary for the
desinential segment, see the Appendix.
5
On the morphological analysis see Jasanoff (1978:84); cf. also OE wag, nominative
plural with consonant-stem inflection pointing to nominative plural
GERMANIC VERSCHÄRFUNG 427
1. First, there are some cases where Verschärfung is predicted by the

rule but fails to appear. These may be subdivided into three groups.
1.1. There is no gemination after a vowel which was unstressed in

Proto-Germanic, i.e. after non-first vowel. This is seen from the Goth. 1st
singular optative bair, ON bera, from IE (Ved. bháreyam,
type seen in Arcadian Gk. exelaúnoia ) which apparently did not give a
Germanic form ending in -ajju, which would have been Goth.
**bairaddju, ON **berugg, but instead shows the normal reflex of a SINGLE
intervocalic /į/. Even if this is the only safe example I have been able to find
(cf., however, Section 1.3.6 below), it seems very reasonable in view of the
very strong reductions of Germanic vocalism outside the root syllable that the
gemination rule should be given the restriction that it only applies after the first
vowel of the word. This in turn rather obviously means that Verschärfung
wasfinallyprocessed in a linguistic state that already had thefixedinitial stress
of Germanic as we know it.
1.2. The adjective raw, OE hréaw, OSax. hrāo, ON hrár, mostly

taken to represent PGmc. *hrawaz, has been utilized by Beekes6 to refute the
laryngeal interpretation of Verschärfung. The word is obviously derived from
the word for "blood in wounds", Avest. xrū-, MIr. crú, Slovene all
"blood") from *krū-, older *kruh2-, the weak alternant of an old root noun
The laryngeal is proved by the s- stem (Ved.
krávis-, Gk. kréas ) "meat", and a reconstruction involving a segment *
seems inescapable. Beekes posits *krouh2o-s and sees in the product *hrawaz
a proof of the non-validity of some of Lehmann's and Lindeman's rules.
However, the Finnish loanword raaka "raw" has a long /a/ and appears to
have been borrowed from a Northwest Germanic form with a from PGmc.
e the Indo-European protoform being then *kreuh2-o-s which I would take
to be a vrddhi adjective "bloody" derived from the noun *kreuh2-/*kruh2-
"blood" with which the word is justly connected by everybody.8 It is now
interesting to note that Jasanoff himself (1978:84) cites Finn, nevä "fresh (of
food)", a very old borrowing from Gmc. *hrēwa- taken over before the
6
Beekes(1972).
7
As strongly suggested by the series xrū : crú : the generalization of the zero-
grade form of the "weak" cases was carried out in pre-Proto-Indo-European times already.
8
If the paradigm of "blood" itself did not contain any full-grade forms in Proto-Indo-
European (see footnote 7), the vrddhi adjective which is plainly based on the
alternant must have been formed in pre-Proto-Indo-European times also. This is of
some interest since vrddhi derivatives are productive in many branches of Indo-European.
food)", a very old borrowing from Gmc. *hrēwa- taken over before the
change of ë to ā, in which he claims that it was precisely the vowel length
that caused the lack of gemination of the-w- which was then, according to
Jasanoff, transferred to *hraw-a-. However, the semantic near-identity and
the obvious status of "bloody, raw" as a vrddhi derivative from "blood" make
it almost certain that rievä and raaka are in reality two stages of the
development of the very same word borrowed by Finnish in different periods
and in two different specializations within its semantic range, the renewed
borrowing being quite possibly facilitated by a semantic change within Finnish
whereby rievä ceased to be synonymous with the adjective "raw" of the
Germanic neighbors. We see, then, that Verschärfung did not fail to arise after
a long vowel, for t h e / k / of raaka can hardly be anything other than a
rendering of the velar increment that arose in the Germanic glide gemination
(cf. especially the weak alternant, e.g. genitive singular raa'an from
*raa a-η); it appears, then, that this velarization only arose after the stage
reflected by rievä had been left. We see here the first indication of the logical
counterpart of Verschärfung, which I shall call ENTSCHÄRFUNG, i.e. the
obliteration of the velarization produced by the gemination. Even so, Jasanoff
is certainly right in his observation that "in descriptive terms, Verschärfung
after long vowels is simply not encountered" (1978:84), and it is a mark of the
high quality of his paper that it contains not only the discovery of an important
regularity, but also points out one of its main restrictions.
I would like to add a few extra indications of this constraint:
1.2.1. Thus, Ger. sprühen and MHG spræwen which reflect Proto-
Germanic long vocalisms, *sprōw-ia-/*sprēw-ia-, do not present the
diphthong + /w/ structure of the etymologically related word Spreu, OHG
spriu, genitive spriuwes, which has a short vowel.
1.2.2. Also Ger. glühen and ON glóa reflect *glōw-ia- and *glōw-a-
from a lengthened-grade verb, causative-iterative * e-, base verb
probably *g h l -e/o-, without Verschärfung as against the short-vowel
adjective *ghlouh-o-s with regular sharpened reflexes in ON gloggr "clear",
Goth. glaggwo "carefully".
1.3. A number of examples present pseudo-problems for Germanic in

not exhibiting the reflex of a laryngeal simply because the latter had been lost
by regular development before the time of the glide gemination.
several interpretations. If the suffix is *- ο-, the protoform may have been
either *ka h- o- or *ko h- o- in which, one might argue, the sequence *- h~
was not antevocalic. However, Sievers' Law would then be expected to
change *- o- into *-io- after a long syllable so that the problem would arise
anew. Now Pinault has demonstrated that interconsonantal laryngeals were

dropped before the semivowel already in the Indo-European protolanguage
(Pinault 1982). If this rule applied before Sievers' Law, the result would be
*ka o-/*ko o- with no laryngeals, and therefore no Verschärfung. If
Pinaulfs rule applied after Sievers' Law, there is still a possibility of
vindicating an underlying form *ko h- o- (but not *ka h- o-), since this
would be subject to the laryngeal-dropping rule applying in morphological o-
grade formations as originally discovered by de Saussure. Therefore, there is
a very good chance that the Proto-Indo-European form was either *ka o- or
*ko o- without the proper environment of Germanic Verschärfung in any
case.
1.3.2. The example Goth, awi-ìiup "thanks, praise" is trickier. The old
etymology connecting it with Skt. ávati "helps, favors", ūtí- "help" seems a
sound one indeed and demands a root-final laryngeal in *(h)a h- "to favor".
As -liup is properly "song" (Ger. Lied, OHG Hot ), the compound is highly
reminiscent of the Gaulish personal name Auicantus meaning something like
"hymn of praise" (either as a determinative compound "he who is the hymn-of-
praise [of the clan]?" or as a bahuvrihi "he whose song is one of praise"). We
are therefore dealing with a first compositional member *(h)auh-i-, which must
be the 'Caland form' of the s- stem seen in Skt. ávas- "help, favor, mercy",
just as Gk. krátos "strength" is replaced by krati- in compound personal
names (Kratí-demos, Kartí-nikos). However, if a protoform *(h)ayh-i-le to-
is to escape giving Germanic Verschärfung, there is hardly more than one
natural explanation which may, then, be suggested as the last resort despite its
ad hoc nature. The root was indeed *hauh- with two laryngeals, the second of
which was dropped in pre-Germanic by spontaneous dissimilation and so
could not trigger Verschärfung: *ha h-i- > *ha i- >PGmc. *awi-.
1.3.3. The explanation by dissimilatory loss is not so far-fetched as it

may appear. We have an entirely parallel case in the Gothic kinship term awō
"grandmother" which is obviously connected with Lat. avus and Hitt. huhhas,
both "grandfather". The latter form points to IE *h2auh2os, the feminine of
which would be expected to give Gmc. *awwō-.9 The single glide of awõ
9
The -stem inflection of awōn- of course merely repeats the problem posed by words
like qinō "woman" or tuggö "tongue" where Germanic has added /n/ to an inherited stem
now in all probability reflects loss of the second laryngeal of the proto form by
dissimilation: in point of fact the feminine of this word contained THREE
laryngeals in the protoform *h2a h2ah2
1.3.4. There is a discrepancy between Goth, sniwan from *snew-a-

and OE snēowan from *sneww-a-, both meaning "to hasten". That the root
did end in a laryngeal is clear from the Verschärfung of ON snoggr "quick"
from *snaggw-u-/-ia- and the acute accent of SCr. snu pin (infinitive snòvati
"einfädeln"). The corresponding verb in Norse is snúa "to twist" which by its
ablaut points to an old athematic verb. We may posit *sné a-ti, *snuh-mós,
subjunctive *sné h-e-ti, of which only the last form should give
Verschärfung. The individual dialects have then simply generalized different
allomorphs of the paradigm.10
1.3.5. OIc. lé, genitive ljá "scythe" from *lewan- and OHG lō, geni
tive lōwes "id." believed to be from *lawa- (e.g. Pokorny, IEW 682) both
belong to Skt. lunati "severs" which points to a laryngeal-final root *leuh-,
cf. the expected Verschärfung in OIc logg "notch (in the staves of a barrel)"
from *lawwõ < IE *louh2-áh2. The only way out is lengthened grade, most
probably an r/n-stem neuter *lé h-n with dative *lé -- (the type
dative *hįékw-n-ei "liver"), whose alternants would give Gmc.
*lew- and *le -n- with no Verschärfung anywhere. Then lō is best derived
from a lengthened-grade form also, i.e. Northwest Gmc. *lāw-a- from PGmc.
*lēw-a-, pre-Gmc *l* h-on- with dialectal transfer to the o-stem class.
1.3.6. Finally, lack of Verschärfung is disturbing in Goth, unskaws

"sober-minded" and OIc. ørskár "prudent", both from the root *(s)ke h1-
"pay attention" of OSax. scauwōn "schauen" and Lat. cavēre, cf. the
vocalisms of Skt. kaví- "sage" and ā-kūti- "intention " as well as the
intonation of SCr. cuti "to perceive", all demanding a laryngeal. We
therefore expect Gmc. *skawwa-, but find *skawa- without gemination. I
think the obvious solution is that these words are compounds, so that the
expected geminate would not follow the first vowel of the word. This may in
turn be used to support the explanation of Goth, bairau (Section1.1above).
ending in *-ah2-. Did this originate in "woman" as an analogical reformation modelled on the
word *mann- "man" (from *mon )?
10
As an alternative to the subjunctive theory which would, under a strict Stammbaum-
like concept of Proto-Germanie, demand the positing of this mood as a separate category for
the final phase of the Germanic linguistic unity, one may suggest that the geminate /ww/
originated in the infinitive or the preterite (Indo-European perfect) and was generalized in Old
English from there.
1.4. We may therefore formulate the statement that Jasanoff s rule

works unrestrictedly after the first stressed vocalic mora of the Germanic
word. It appears, however, that, at least for the position after long vowels,
this is due to a relatively recent loss of the velarization that was caused by an
earlier less restricted application of the rule.
2. Special attention may be given, after the rule has been formulated, to a
few cases of Germanic /jj/ which I interpret differently from previous
researchers.
2 . 1 . In three words /jj/ is not from /i/ + ¡h/, but has been + all
along. The cases are:
2 . 1 . 1 . Goth, daddjan "suckle" is by its meaning a causative and thus

not identical with Skt. dháyati "sucks", but contains both the of the root
and that of the causative suffix *-i -e/o-. Although the exact ablaut properties
of the root are less than certain, an alternating root form *dheh1 -/*dhh1e ,- and
a reconstruction *dhh1o -é e-ti for daddjan and OCS doiti may be accepted as
offering the smallest amount of structural difficulties.11
2 . 1 . 2 . The theonym OIc. Frigg, the love goddess appearing also in OE

Frīg-dæg "Friday", PGmc. *frijjō, clearly belongs to the stem of Skt. priyá-
"dear", being either a feminine made by the suffix of Ved. at a time
AFTER *prih 2 -ó- had passed to *pri -ó- or - perhaps more probably - a
hypocoristic form derived by a synchronic process *frij-a- → *frijj-õ; in the
latter case the /jj/ will have arisen through a process of expressive
gemination.12
2 . 1 . 3 . OIc. skeggja "halbard" from PGmc. *skajjõn- is obviously

connected with OIr. scían, Welsh ysgien "knife" (PCelt. *ski enā). The root
is of Gk. skháō, Skt. chyáti "cut", the derivation being
clearly an ablauting n- stem, IE *s -ōn, genitive * -én-s with an
automatic glide in the weak stem which was generalized in Germanic, giving a
11
I treat the morphophonemic behavior of the 'long diphthong' roots in Part 1, Chapter
1, of Rasmussen (1989).
12
I fail to see the foundation of Jasanoff's derivation of *frijjõ- from an earlier *frijō-,
supposedly a e/o- adjective *prih- o- in the feminine (Jasanoff 1978:86f., following
Kuryłowicz). If the words for "owl" which Jasanoff adduces as parallels are onomatopoeic
anyway, OIc. ugla (*uww-) and OHG uwila (*ūw-) do not have to represent the regular
outcomes of the same Germanic protoform.
hybrid stem ōn(-) from which the form with -ggf- can plausibly be
explained.
2.2. A fourth example deserving a comment is the verb "went", Goth.

iddja, OE ēode. I disagree with Cowgill's derivation from the root "h1e -
"to go" (Skt. éti, OLith. eiti "goes", etc.) departing from a 3rd plural
imperfect "*ei t" (Cowgill 1960), since Ved. yan, injunctive yan, shows
that the actual form of this was *e-h ent which could not give Verschärfung.
I accept, on the other hand, Lindeman's connection with the Skt. verb y ti
"goes" (Lindeman 1967), but I must reject the further interpretation of this root
as an extension of *h1e - which led Lindeman to postulate a number of
improbable sound changes in these words. On the strength of Vedic forms like
imperfect áyãt, perfect yayáu, aorist áyāsam the root may be posited as
* eh2- without initial laryngeal so that the Proto-Indo-European perfect of this
verb should form 3rd singular h2-o13 and 3rd plural On
their way to Proto-Germanic, these alternants would become *ijō > * jō > *eõ
and *jejj- > *jijj- > *ijj- respectively involving the known changes of ji to i,
'a-umlaut' ( iCō >eCō), loss of intervocalic /j /and 'i-umlaut' (eCj > iCj).
By normalization according to the pattern of the weak preterites, the form *eō
gave OE ëo-de, ëo-don, while *ijj- gave Goth, iddja, iddjedum, etc., without
any problems.
3. A full survey of the relevant material - based primarily on

Lindeman's fundamental 1964 monograph - shows that there is not a single
counterexample to Hoffmann's and Jasanoffs rule (with the restrictions
mentioned above). I append a list of full analyses, including a few fresh
etymologies of my own.15
13
On the derivation of Ved. -au /-ā of 1st and 3rd singular perfect forms like dadáu,
jajnáu, etc., from regular structures in *-οh-h2e/*-οh-e see the analysis in Part 2, Chapter 1,
of Rasmussen (1989). Cf. also the comparable explanation given by Cowgill (1985:27). I
assume an assimilation of vowel timbre which was apparently not impeded by the
intervening laryngeal so that the Proto-Indo-European form ended in *-oh-o with or without a
following sandhi increment/-../.
14
For the interplay of i/u and e in the reduplication, which I consider was governed
originally by the accent, cf., most instructively, Avest. buuauua vs. 3rd plural babrə
reflecting *bhu-bhd h1-e, (the latter allomorph being supported by the
invariable Vedic stem babhū- ). The matter has been dealt with in my paper "The make-up of
Indo-European morphology'' (preprinted in Rasmussen 1984).
15
Bammesberger's Studien zur Laryngaltbeorie (1984) contains a number of hostile
comments on the laryngeal explanation of the Verschärfung forms. As elsewhere in that
book, the non-laryngeal alternatives presented are mostly plainly inferior to the theories they
4. In closing one may address the basic question of the dialectal position
of the Verschärfung isogloss within Germanic. It appears to be the only
significant innovation combining Norse and Gothic. All other post-Proto-
Germanic changes unite Norse and West Germanic, thus the lowering of ë to
if; the development of ζ towards r; of word-final -ō to -u; and of the
inflectional endings *-a-maz (whether dative plural of IE o- stems or 1st plural
present of thematic verbs) to -um instead of Goth, -am; further the analogical
reformation of the 2nd plural personal pronoun, Goth. jus, to *j ζ (after *wîz
"we"); and, most spectacularly perhaps, the replacement of verbal redup
lication by the è 2 - structure. All of this can only be explained by the
assumption that Norse and West Germanic remained undivided for some time
after Gothic had left the old community. With this background, the very
striking coincidences ggv / ggw and ggj / ddj between Norse and Gothic
look absurd, indeed so absurd that they cannot be innovations at all. As
Finnish raaka showed (Section 1.2 above), Verschärfung can also disappear.
Therefore, in the dialectal distribution of Verschärfung, the innovation
probably lies on the side of West Germanic which shows not lack of
Verschärfung, but ENTSCHÄRFUNG of a velarized Common Germanic
pronunciation.
4 . 1 . That West Germanic indeed does eliminate a velar element in

geminated glides may be seen from a few interesting cases of a sound law
are meant to improve upon, a sole exception being the statement on Goth, daddjan (p. 82,
note 3) where the laryngeal interpretation was replaced by one involving two
morphologically motivated / į / ' s by earlier researchers already. The reproach, "... die
wortbildungsmässigen Zusammenhänge werden meist nicht genügend berücksichtigt"
(Bammesberger ibid), is ironically illustrated by Bammesberger's criticism of the derivation
of Goth, waddjus from -, where Bammesberger appears not to have grasped the wisdom
of Jasanoff s morphological argument (Jasanoff 1978:84) of the attested forms as exactly the
ones one would expect from an Indo-European root noun. It is difficult to see the logic of
the suggestion on page 85 that Gmc. *hawwana-, the infinitive "hauen", may have its /ww/
from a suffixal formation *kawa-wo-, allegedly parallel to the spread of/w/ in OE sāwan
which is known to be post-Proto-Germanic. That *heww- and *beww- ("bauen") are
supposed to have their second /w/ 's from the 1st dual form in *-we (pages 85 and 86) is even
contrary to elementary rules of Indo-European phonotactics: the 1st dual perfect of *ka h-
and *bh ah 1 -/*b h e h 1 - can of course only be *ke-kuh- e, *bhe-bhuh- e, so that a
consonantal /w/ of the root segment is simply excluded. Also the explanation of Gmc. *ijj-
of Goth, iddja as from *e-ey-, a reinterpretation of *-, the 'weak alternant' corresponding
to *ey- as TeK- to TeK- (gēbun : giba, etc., in Gothic terms), supposing a development
*e-ey- > Gmc. *ijj-, is not logical if it is PRESUPPOSED that the actual pronunciation was
already *ēy-; and, incidentally, the whole line of reasoning is at variance with the known fact
that the root of Skt. étí "goes" was *h1e -, not vowel-initial *e -. Bammesberger's "klares
Gegenbeispiel" Gmc. *hrawa- "raw" (p. 86) has been explained above.
434 JENS ELMEGÂRD RASMUSSEN
which was suggested by F. Kluge in 1913 (Kluge 1913:75, cf. also Lindeman
1964:119), namely the development of original *-j - + -j- to WGmc. i-
diphthong + The two cases are:
(a) OHG reia, OE rage "female roe". The corresponding word for the male
or of the species as such is OHG rēh (n.), rēho (m.), OE rā / rāha
"roe" which points to PGmc. *raiha-; from this the feminine is obviously
a jō- derivative with Verner's alternation, i.e. - so that the pre-
Germanic fonns *ró k-o-s (*-o-m) : *ro k- áh2- are much like Ved.
"wolf : "she-wolf.
(b) Ger. Blei, Bleibe, OE blage (name of a fish) from cf. for
the velar Swiss Ger. blicke, Swabian blecke from *bliG-n- (G = a velar
spirant, pre-Gmc. *k or *gh).
In both words we find a West Germanic reflex -jj- where the

morphological analysis demands (*-jg-j-). This means, of course,
that if the Proto-Germanic reflex of geminated /j/ was velarized already, the
velarization would be expected to disappear in West Germanic anyway.
5. My solution is therefore that the geminated glides /jj/ and /ww/ -

whether inherited or produced by the Hoffmann-Jasanoff rule - in pre-Proto-
Germanic assumed some degree of velarization, and that Norse -aggja-/
-aggva- and Goth. -addja-/-aggwa- represent two equally likely, but inde
pendent, continuations of that process while West Germanic -aija-/
-auwa- reflects a REGULAR loss of the velar component of sequences which in
Proto-Germanic must have sounded something like -aiyia- /-auyųa-. We
thusfindourselves forced to give up Verschärfung as a dialectal phenomenon
in Germanic but, by recompense, we may have gained a more accurate insight
into the phonetics of Proto-Germanie.
REFERENCES
Bammesberger, Alfred. 1984. Studien zur Laryngaltheorie. Göttingen:

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Beekes, R.S.P. 1972. "Germanic Verschärfung and no laryngeals". Orbis
21.327-336.
Cowgill, Warren. 1964. "Gothic iddja and Old English ēode ". Language
36.483-501.
Cowgill, Warren. 1985. "PIE *du o '2' in Germanic and Celtic, and the
nom.-acc. dual of non-neuter o-stems". MSS 46.13-28.
Emout, A. & A. Meillet. 1959-1960. Dictionnaire de la Langue latine.
Histoire des mots, 4th ed. Paris: Klincksieck. (= Ernout-Meillet.)
Hilmarsson, Jörundur. 1984. "East Tocharian kñom 'the expanded hood or
neck of a serpent'". KZ 97.287-290.
Hilmarsson, Jörundur. 1986. Studies in Tocharian Phonology, Morphology
and Etymology. Reykjavik: Hilmarsson.
Hoffmann, Karl. 1976. Aufsätze zur Indoiranistik, 2 vols. ed. by Johanna
Narten. Wiesbaden: Reichert.
Jasanoff, Jay. 1978. "Observations on the Germanic Verschärfung". MSS
37.77-90.
Kluge, Friedrich. 1913. Urgermanisch. Vorgeschichte der altgermanischen
Dialekte. (= Grundriss der germanischen Philologie, 3.) Strassburg:
Trübner.
Koivulehto, Jorma. 1977. "Germanisch-finnische Lehnbeziehungen: drei
Wörter mit fi.-aw- - urgerm. -aww- > urn. -aggw- ". FUF 42.132-147.
Lehmann, Wilfred P. 1952. Proto-Indo-European Phonology. Austin:
Lehmann, Wilfred P. 1965. "Germanic evidence". Evidence for Laryngeals
ed. by Werner Winter, 212-223. The Hague-London-Paris: Mouton.
Lindeman, Fredrik Otto. 1964. Les origines indo-européennes de la
"Verschärfung"germanique. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.
Lindeman, Fredrik Otto. 1967. "Gotisch iddja und altenglisch ëode". IF
72.275-286.
Lühr, Rosemarie. 1977. "Germanische Resonantengemination durch
Laryngal". MSS 36.73-92.
Mayrhofer, Manfred. 1986. Indogermanische Grammatik. I, 2. Halbband:
Lautlehre: Segmentale Phonologie des Indogermanischen. (= pp. 73-
181.) Heidelberg: Winter.
Morris-Jones, John. 1913. A Welsh Grammar, Historical and Comparative.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pinault, Georges-Jean. 1982. "A neglected phonetic law: the reduction of the
Indo-European laryngeals in internal syllable before yod". Papers from
the 5th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, 265-272.
Pokorny, Julius P. 1959-1969. Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörter
buch, 2 vols. Bern: Franke. (= Pokorny IEW. )
Rasmussen, Jens Elmegård. 1984. "The make-up of Indo-European mor
phology". Arbejdspapirer udsendt afInstitut for Lingvistik, Københavns
Universitet 4.119-134. (Now also Diachronica 4.107-122, 1988.)
Rasmussen, Jens Elmegård. 1985. "The Indo-European origin of the Balto-
Slavic -ē-and -ā- preterite". Papers from the 6th International Con
ference on Historical Linguistics ed. by Jacek Fisiak, 441-450.
Rasmussen, Jens Elmeg rd. 1989. Studen zur Morphophonemik der indo-
germanischen Grundsprache. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissen
schaft.
Schindler, Jochem. 1969. "Die idg. Wörter für 'Vogel' und 'Ei'". Die
Sprache 15.144-167.
Schindler, Jochem. 1972. "L'apophonie des noms-racines indo-euro
péennes". BSL 67.31-38.
Smith, Jr., Henry Lee. 1941. "The Verschärfung in Germanic". Language
17.93-98.
APPENDIX: List of Examples16
1. PGmc. /jj/.
1.1 /j/ + /j/.
(1) Goth, daddjan, OSwed. dæggia "suckle" < *dhh1 e-ti = OCS doiti. Section
2.1.1 above. Comparably Lü., p. 84, note 4; Jas., p. 85.
(2) ON Frigg, etc. < *frijjõ (< »pri ). Section 2.1.2 above.
(3) ON skeggja < *skajjōn- < with analogical glide from genitive
Section 2.1.3 above.
1.2. * h-with (reasonable) certainty.
(4) OE hwa(i)g (.), Eng. whey, Dutch wei < Gmc. *hwajj-a-. I suggest a comparison
with Skt. ks rá- (.), Gāthic Avest. "milk" under a root * -,
whence *
(5) Goth, iddja from stem *ijj- < h2- originating in 3rd plural perfect. Section 2.2
above.
(6) OE clag (.), OSax. klei "clay", Dan. klæg "claylike" < Gmc. *klajj-a-, from
*gloįh-o-, a *bhorós-formation from the root of OIr. glenaid, OHG klenan "to stick"
(*gli-n-ǔ-).
(7) Goth, twaddje, ON tveggja, OHG zweiio, genitive of numeral "two" < Gmc.
*twajj-ōn < IE Hoffman-Lühr-Jasanoff s is a mistake using
the LOCATIVE dual ending which, as we know from Avestan, was not identical with the
genitive dual morpheme in Proto-Indo-European (see the references in footnote 4). I
take the ending *-oh3s to be properly the thematic allomorph containing the 'thematic
vowel' *-o- + the dual morpheme *-h3- + the zero-grade of the case-ending *-os. The
segment 1- appears to be optional (cf. RigVeda ayóh : asya beside enoh :enān),
wherefore I take it to be originally the NEUTER dual ending which is known to have had
16
In the list the abbreviations Jas., Li., and Lü. stand for Jasanoff (1978), Lindeman
(1964) and Lühr (1977) respectively.
this form. The hybrid structure of the oblique case forms of the dual is one of many
signs of early decay of the dual category. The protoform is directly continued by
Younger Avestan duuaii The locative was probably *-o- h1-h1-oh3u (Avest. zastaiiö
"in the hands"), an originally endingless locative with added topicalizing particle *-u,
i.e. dual *-h3-u like plural *-s-u. Like tveggja also beggja, genitive of "both".
(8) Goth. -waddjus, ON veggr, OE wäg, plural wæg "wall" from Gmc. *wajj-u-,
*wajj-iz, IE *uoįh-es "twisting" : Skt. váyati, Lith. vyti, OCS viti, etc.
Section 0 above.
1.3. Insecure examples of *-ih-.
(9) Crimean Goth, ada "ovum" (in reality plural = Biblical Goth. *addja?), ON egg, OE
g, OHG ei (dative eiie ) < Gmc. *ajj-a- (.). The Indo-European languages differ
somewhat in the details: is indicated by Gk. õión, Lat. ovum (with loss of
intervocalic after antevocalic *ō had ceased to give /äw/) and Welsh wy (Morris-
Jones 1913:107), while the *ō om reflected by SCr. jáje, Iranian *Iya(ka)- (Osset.
ay ) and Arm. ju ( io- by assimilation) is no doubt a reduction of this form. The
Germanic form is precarious in two ways, Verschärfung being almost certainly re
stricted to the position after short vowels (Section 1.2) and, even more certainly,
caused by a laryngeal for which we seem to have no real evidence in this word. How
ever, if Schindler's morphological analysis of the word as a hypostatic prepositional
compound "das beim Vogel Befindliche" with the noun corresponding to Lat. avis as
the second member (Schindler 1969) is correct, these obstacles may perhaps be over
come. Schindler's reconstructions are: "bird" (meaning nominative
i-s, genitive -s, cf. Schindler 1972:33) : -óm "egg". If the lack of
lengthening in the Vedic nominative singular vel· (Ind.-Ir. *uais) is to be explained at
all, it demands a stem ending in TWO consonants, so one would like to posit a stem-
final sequence *-įh-, probably *-ih1-judging by Gk. aietós "eagle". Since both Lat.
avis and Arm. haw "cock" appear to demand a vowel /a/, one would further prefer to
take the *-ih1- element as belonging to a suffixal segment. Hitt. šu-wa-iš "bird" and
Welsh hwyad, Breton houad "duck" (Celtic *swijeto-, cf. Morris-Jones 1913:101
where the reconstruction is further backed by the Gwynedd dialect form ch adan ) both
show 'mobile s- ' which is not otherwise known before vowels, wherefore one would
believe the a- to have been preceded by a laryngeal which because of the Hittite form
cannot be /h2/. This gives the Indo-European reconstructions *h h1-s, genitive
*h h1-s "bird", *o-h h1-o-m "egg" (preposition of Gk. o-kéllō : kéllō, both "run
ashore", compositional type of Ved. upa-bd-á- "trampling", properly "[that which is
created] under one's feet"). Since laryngeals do not affect syllabification in the second
member of compounds (the ábhva-m rule known from the Vedic outcome of IE
* -bh h1-o-m with consonantal as if antevocalic), the word "egg" may be expected
to have been a disyllable in Proto-Indo-European, despite its complicated make-up.
Now we simply have no other relevant material to show us what the regular Germanic
outcome of intervocalic *-h h- is. If we see that it coincides with the reflex of
intervocalic *- h- in *ajja-, we have no basis for taking this as irregular. If laryngeals
are lost before vowels at about the same time as they give length before consonants,
the immediate reflex of *oh ho- would be *ō .-, whence, with glide insertion,
* - and, with Osthoff s shortening, * It then seems that - - was

reduced to -. - before the simplification of the geminates after long syllablcs, thus
giving the pre-form *o o- pointed to by PGmc. *ajja-. Thus, "egg" in the last
analysis appears to represent /jj/ from intervocalic /įh/ like the rest of the material.
(10) OIc. sókn-heggr (Lex.Poet. "kamp-hagg", a kind of warrior) is connected with the
personal names OHG Haiio, OSax. Heio and further perhaps with OCS cěna "price"
(references in Li., p. 120). If a laryngeal may be seen in Lith. káina, Gk. m the
word would be an adjective *kw h-o-s "paid for, hired, soldato". The development of
the initial is as in *halsa- "neck" from *kwol-so-.
(11) OSax. leia (f.) "reef, rock in the sea", Mid.Dutch leie, Mod.Dutch lei, Ger. Lei "slate
(material)" from *lajj-a-/-ō is not related to Gk. laas "stone" (thus Li., p. 120, after
Kluge) which is *lah2s-ə2- (Eichner apud Mayrhofer 1986:133). I suggest a connection
with the root of Lat. lino "stick, cling to". OIr. lenaid "follows" (*li-n-a-), i.e.
*loih-o- meaning approximately "slippery thing".
(12) Dan. blegn, blegne "blister", according to Falk & Torp, Et.Wb., from *blajjinõn-as
opposed to *blajjnōn- which is posited for OSwed. blena, OE biegen, Eng. blain,
looks at first glance as a plausible case of 'expressive' gemination. However, if the
root is *bh h- (none of the material given by Pokorny, IEW, p. 156, is diagnostic
as far as the /-h-/ goes, unless one wants to stake everything on Gk. ph "doorpost"
as meaning originally "swollen thing"), we may have *blajjena- and *blaina-, of which
the former would be the participle of a Class VI strong verb, possibly meaning
"swollen" or "inflamed", while the latter would have the shape of the word type seen in
Gk. pórne "prostitute", i.e. IE *bh1oi-nah2 "swelling" or "inflammation". In that case
the laryngeal should only show in the participial form, not in the substantival
derivative.
1.4. Unclear examples.
(13) OIc. gneggja, OE hnægan, OSax. participle hneihida "neigh" < *hnajjō- is ob
viously onomatopoeic. My instinctive impression is that the word would be
unsuitable as a rendition of the neighing of a horse before the sound shift, wherefore I
would consider it a novel creation of Germanic.
(14) OHG hei "dry", 3rd plural preterite ar-beigëtun "they dried out" from *hajj-a-,
*hajj-ē-. A root kai- is posited (Pokorny, IEW, p. 619) on very insecure grounds, the
form *ka h- which would explain the /jj/ being also entirely possible.
(15) MHG heie "Schlägel", Mid.Dutch heien "to ram" < *hajj-V-.
(16) OHG hwaiion, MHG weijen "to neigh". Pokorny (IEW, p. 628) posits
comparing Lith. "breathe squeakingly", but the words may also simply be
independent Elementarbildungen.
(17) OHG scrîan preterite screi "scream", noun screi < Gmc. *skrajj-a- of uncertain
antiquity (Pokorny, IEW, p. 570).
(18) OSwed. pragge "a covering" is completely opaque, cf. the observations in footnote 2.
It should be pointed out that the words of this section (examples (13)ff.), excepting
perhaps the last one, may all have expressive gemination which would comply well with
their semantics.
2. PGmc. /ww/.
2.1. *- h-reconstructiblewith (reasonable) certainty.
(19) OIc. bygg, dative byggve "barley ", OE bēow, OSax. genitive plural beuwo "der
Ernten". All from *beww-a- (n.) < IE *bhé h-o-m "growth", the word-type * -o-m
"work", * érdh-0-m "word" from the root of Skt. bbávati "becomes, arises". For
semantics, cf. Gk. pbutón "plant". As I intend to propound elsewhere, I take the
North Germanic reflex of PGmc. *-eww- (phonetically [ ]), to be [ ] (spelled
-yggu- ), later [ ] (spelled -yggi- ), cf. the same development in examples (20),
(21), (25), (37) (and perhaps (23) and (32)) where the other Germanic languages also
point to *-eww-. This development is obviously to be seen in connection with the
raising of *e to iu > jú before velars and labials (sjúkr, djúpr, but brjóta ). This
sound law makes the assumption of a special stem-formation with *-ja- for the North
Germanic correspondences of ALL words that show reflex of *-ewwa- in the other
languages superfluous.
(20) OIc. byggva, byggja "build, dwell" is thus simply *beww-a-, identical with Skt.
bhávati < *bhéuh1-e-ti, cf. OIc. búa, Ger. bauen of like meaning from the old
aorist, Skt. ábbūt.
(21) OIc. bryggja (participle bruggenn ), OE brēowan, OSax. breuwan, OHG briuwan
(younger brūwan ) "brew", all from *breww-a- < *bhre h-e-, a reformation of
-e-ti (Lat. feruō or ferueō OIr. beirbid) "ferments, bubbles" triggered by the
ambiguous (indeed misleading) participle *bhruh-tó-s with regular metathesis. See
Jas., p. 82, with footnote 9 (p. 89).
(22) Goth, adverb glaggwö "meticulously", adjective OIc. glçggr / gløggr, OE glēaw,
OSax. glau, OHG glauwër "clear, clearsighted" < *glaww-u- from a root
*g h l e h/*ghlo h-/*ghluh-, cf. zero grade in OSwed. glūna "squint", East Fris. glūmen
"lauern". On OIc. glóa, etc., as a lengthened-grade causative-iterative see Section
1.2.2 above. Li., p. 150.
(23) OIc. bnçggva, preterite bnçgg, participle bnuggenn (also hnyggja ) "strike against,
sever, bereave", OHG hniuwan, preterite hnou. The OIc. vocalism is normally
analogical to bçggva (example (24)). From PGmc. *hneww-a-, IE *kne h-e/o-. In
Gmc. further OIc. hnøggr (i-umlaut of-q-), Mod.Norw. nogg (-q- ) "scanty, stingy",
OE bnēaw, MHG nou(we) "stingy, exact" from *hnaww-u-/*hnaww-ia-. Outside
Gmc, cf. zero-grade in Gk. knóõ "I scratch", verbal noun knuma, Latv. knūt "to
itch". Li., p. 143.
(24) OIc. hoggua,OE bëawan, OSax.hauwan, OHG bouwan "hew" < Gmc. *haww-a-,
from a root *kauh-, cf. Section 0 above. I disagree with Jas., p. 79, who assumes
metathesis from *keh2u- on the basis of Toch.B kaut- "split" and Lat. caudex "tree-
trunk" considering these to be from an extension *keh2u-d-; instead, I posit two
parallel roots, *kau-h2- and *kay-d- (cf. also footnote 2). Li., p. 144.
(25) OIc. tyggva /tyggja "chew" (with analogical t- ), OE cē wan (participle cēaw,
cuwon ), OHG kiuwan, all from *keww-a- < -e/o-, thematicization (sub
junctive?) of -/*giuh- seen in OCS žijetu < *zjy-je- < - (+ productive
*- e/o-), aorist ïǐva from aorist mid. *giuh-o-t (see Rasmussen 1985) and Toch.B
3rd singular present śuwam, Toch.A śwās, Toch.B 3rd plural śuwam, Toch.AB
infinitive śwatsi reflecting - or uh- (with /h2 / or /h3 / ) or both. The same
development is seen in MHG kiuwe "jaw" from *kewwōn- < IE * -ōn, cf. the
accent of Lith. žiáunos, Latv. žaunas (feminine plural), Bulg. žúna "id." < -n-
(old neuter plural -ōn, genitive ). Li., p. 144.
(26) OIc. lçgg (f.) "notch (made by sawing)" < *laggwō < *lawwō < IE *lou2-áh2 (word
formation like Lat. toga ), from a root *leuh- seen in the Skt. nasal present lunati
"severs" (*lu-né-h-ti), corresponding root aorist mid. *luh-o elaborated to thematic
present *luh-e-ti in Gk. lúō, Lat. luō, zero grade in participle *luh-no- (Skt. lūná- )
or *luh-tó- (Lat. solūtus). Li., p. 145.
(27) OIc. rçggr (.), rqgg (f.), OSwed. ragg "coarse hair, tuft of wool or„hair"
< *raww-a-2/*raww-õ < IE *rouh-ó-s/*áh2 from a root *reuh- which seems to have
formed a root present, 3rd singular * -ti, 1st plural *ruh-mos, 3rd plural *ruh-énti
seen in Lith. ráuti, ráuja "pull, tear"; OCS ryti, ryjetu "dig, root"; OIc. ryja
"rupfen"; OCS ruvati, ruvetu "tear to pieces"; Lat. ruŌ "I ruin". Li., p. 145.
(28) OIc. söggr "moist" (for *sqggr), OE sēaw (.), OHG sou, souwes "juice"
< *saww-a- < *souh-ó-, adjective in different genders (Finn, sauvo "well" borrowed
from the feminine), probably to the root *seuh- of the words meaning "rain", Alb.
substantive shî < *sū, verb in Gk. b dei, Toch.B 3rd singular present su watą,
Toch.A 3rd plural swinc from *seuǔ-/*suh-. If Hitt. subbai, suhhanzi and isbuwai,
isbuwanzi, both "scatter, pour out", belong here (as * s ó h 2 - e and *suh2-ént >
[sxwant] > [isxwánt] respectively), the laryngeal is /h2/. Li., p. 145f.
(29) OE scéawian (weak verb), OSax. scauwon, OHG scouwōn "schauen" < PGmc.
*skaww-ō- supposing an Indo-European action noun *skou-áh2 or *skóuh2-s (cf.
MHG schouwe and schou, -ouwes, OHG scou "Anblick, Gestalt" mirrored in Finn.
kaava "pattern, model" as explained by Koivulehto 1977:137ff). Judging by Gk.
koéõ, Lat. cayere "be attentive" the laryngeal is /h 1 /, i.e. IE *(s)kouh1 e-ti; on
Goth, un-skaws, etc., see Section 1.3.7. Goth, skuggwa, OIc. skuggi, OE scQwa
"picture, mirror, shadow" from *skuww-an- must be explained by paradigmatic
analogy, since Verschärfung would here otherwise demand a sequence *-uuh- which is
not phonotactically admissible in Indo-European: nominative *ské h 1 -õn >
*skeww-ōn, locative *skuh1-én-i > *skuw-én-i, levelled to *skuww- in all forms.
Li., p. 146.
(30) OIc. snöggr / snqggr "quick" from *snaww-u-/-ia-; the u- stem must represent an old
root noun, IE accusative masculine singular *snóuh-m, feminine *snouh-ih2 (probably
the ultimate origin of the ja- stem in the oblique cases of u- stem adjectives in
Germanic). Root *sneuh- of OE snēowan "make haste". On Goth, sniwan and
further ramifications, see Section 1.3.4 above. Li., p. 146f.
(31) OHG spriu, genitive spriuwes "Spreu" from *spreuh-o-, cf. Ger. sprühen and see
Section 1.2.1. Li., p. 147.
(32) Goth, triggws "loyal, true" < *treww-a-, OIc. tryggr, OSax. triuwi, OHG gi-triuwi
< *treww-ia-, from the root of OIc. trua, OHG trūēn, Goth, trauan "to trust", IE
*dreyh-/*drah-, cf. OPruss. druwit (infinitive) "believe" and Lith. (adjective from
preterite past participle) diutas, "hard, solid" (and Gallo-Romance *drūtos in French
dm ?). Li., p. 148.
2.2. Insecure cases of *- h-.
(33) OE bēaw "gadfly" from PGmc. *baww-a- may be IE *bho h1-o-s "being'', especially
if Lat. fūcus "drone" is not from *bho kwo- (thus Pokorny, IEW, p. 163) but
belongs to *bh - "bee" as *bhoi-ko-s (Ernout-Meillet).
(34) Goth, bliggwan "blow, beat", OHG bliuwan, OSax. bliuwid "er bleut" from
*bleww-a-, cf. OIc. bleg (m.) "a blow" < *blaww-ida-n- (weak form of the participle
of the iterative verb), IE *bh1 h-e-ti, *bhloyh-eįe-ti. Perhaps related to Gk. pblóõ
"sparkle, boil over, gossip".
(35) OIc. dçgg (f.), OE dēaw (m., n.), OSax. dou, OHG tou (.) "dew" from
*daww-a-/-ō-, the obvious connection being with Ved. dhütá- "washed down" (about
the soma) under a root *dheuh- which may or may not be identical with the root of
Ved. dbavati, dbávate, Gk. théō, tbeíõ "run" (which would then be *dhéuǔ-ti, mid.
*dh -to-r. Li., p. 143.
(36) Swed. fnugg, fnagg, Dan. fnug "Flaum" from *fnaggwa- < *fnawwa-, cf. Finn, naava
"Bartflechte (bark disease on trees)", Lapp.L nāvva "Flaum, soft hair" which
Koivulehto (1977:142ff) explains as borrowings of these words. I venture to suggest
an etymological connection with Gk. pnéõ "breathe, blow", ám-pnūto "regained his
breath" (Homer) under a root *pneuh1-. As the root is obviously onomatopoeic
anyway, there may well have been a form *pney- also, as seen in Gk. pneu ma
"breath" which is proved Indo-European by the beautiful correspondence with Toch.A
kñbm "inflated serpent neck" found by Hilmarsson (1984) (= Hilmarsson 1986:94-97).
(37) OIc. bryggva/hryggja "hurt", OE hrēowan (preterite brēaw), OSax. breuwan
(preterite hrau) OHG (b)riuwan "regret, repent" < *hreww-a- (for Norse cf. ad (19)
above). The root is not safely identifiable, *kre h2- "to be bloody(?)", identical with
the root of  w (Section 1.2) being merely a possibility. Li., p. 150f.
(38) Goth, un-mana-riggws "cruel, untamed", according to WP to be connected with Gk.
oroúō "rush forward", Lat. ruŌ "run, rush along" (perhaps identical with TUO "tear"
of example (27)); if correct, this gives IE *h3reuh- (-o-in Gk. orou- perhaps from the
intensive). Li., p. 151.
(39) OIc. skrqggr "fox, devil, goblin", Mid.Dutch scbröuwel, OE scrēawa (n-stem)
"shrew, shrewmouse" from Gmc. *skraww-a(n)- which points to *skroyh-o-; possibly
zero-grade in OIc. hruor "scurf, crust", OHG rūda : s- mobile variant of *kreuh2-
("blood", etc., cf. (37))? Li., 151.
(40) OSax. tou, Dutch touw, OFris. tauw "tow" < Gmc. *taww-a- < *do h-o-, possibly
"dragging, hauling" connected with the following examples.
(41) MHG zūwen, preterite zou, zouwen "hasten, succeed (cf. Russ. spex "haste" :uspéx
"success"), draw" from *teww-a- < IE *de h-e/o-, a thematicization of *deuǔ-ti, mid.
*duh-o-į (-ó-r) > Avest. duiie "chases away" (Ind-Ir. *duyai); zero-grade *duh-ro-
possibly in Skt. dū-á- "far". If Goth. taujan "to do", Gk. dunamai "I can" and
Gaulish -dūnum "fortress" belong here, *dé h2-e-ti (/-tor) was the aorist subjunctive
that went with *du-n-ǔ2-. On (40) and (41) see Li., p. 151f, and Li., p. 149,
respectively.
(42) OE pēaw "custom", OSax. thau "discipline", OHG katbau< *paww-a- < IE
*touh-o-, probably from the laryngeal root of Ved. taviti "is strong, avails". Li., p.
151.
MÉCANISMES ET NATURE DU
CHANGEMENT SYNTAXIQUE
LE CAS DE LA PHRASE COMPLEXE
EN INDO-EUROPÉEN
ANDRÉ ROUSSEAU
Université de Lille III
0. Nous avons fait choix d'un sujet syntaxique pour élargir les perspectives du
changement linguistique et, à l'intérieur de la syntaxe, nous avons retenu la
phrase complexe pour trois raisons: l'existence parfois contestée de la phrase
complexe en Indo-Européen (cf. l'article souvent cité de E. Hermann); la dua
lité des particules employés (les langues se partageant entre *yo- et *kwo- ur
le relatif et les autres subordonnants); l'apparente divergence du germanique
employant l'anaphorique *so/to-.1
Après avoir constanté qu'il y a évolution non seulement des signifiants de
dépendance, mais surtout des CADRES SYNTAXIQUES de la phrase complexe,
nous centrerons l'exposé sur l'analyse de MÉCANISMES du changement
syntaxique en proposant ensuite quelques réflexions sur la NATURE de ce
changement.
Il est nécessaire d'opérer avec des concepts précis: plutôt que d'utiliser la
terminologie traditionnelle jamais nettement définie, qu'elle soit d'origine latine
(subordination/coordination) ou greque (hypotaxe/parataxe), il sera question ici
de phrase complexe, dont nous proposons la définition 'provisoire' suivante:
une prédication complémentaire ajoutée à un procès initial.
1
Certains auteurs utilisent ce critère pour nier l'existence ancienne de la phrase complexe en
germanique, cf., par ex., Paolo Ramat, BSL 79:XIV-XV (1984). Le gotique apporte un
témoignage décisif par ses deux implicatifs jabai "si" (qui se retrouve dans sa-ei "si
quelqu'un"—"celui qui"; cf. Rousseau 1984:107-108) et -uh "si" (cf. ni-h "si ne pas"), qui
correspondent tout à fait aux deux implicatifs des langues Indo-Européen anciennes (par ex.
véd, yád et ca.
444 ANDRE ROUSSEAU
1. Reconstruction descriptive de l'évolution de la phrase

complexe en Indo-Européen
Cette reconstruction repose sur une conception ÉVOLUTIVE de l'Indo-Euro-

péen, qui représente une succession de plusieurs états de langue étalés sur des
millénaires (Watkins 1969:17).
1.1 Les principales marques d'énoncé dépendant.
Nous pouvons citer cinq marques principales qui, toutes, indiquent la

dépendance d'un énoncé: l'emploi de particules (enclitiques); la postion initiale
de la forme verbale personnelle; la tonicité de cette forme verbale; les cas
obliques du nom verbal; l'apposition.
Ces différentes marques peuvent être employées séparément ou ensemble
pour certaines d'entre elles:
(RV 6,51,2)
"der ihre drei Geschlechter kennt, der Götter Geburt fern und nah, der
Weise"
Ici, trois marques d'énoncés dépendant sont associées: position initiale et

toncicité de la forme verbale (véda) et position seconde de la particule relative
(yds).
1.2 Les types d'énoncés complexe.
L'Indo-Européen possède une grande richesse d'énoncés complexes, fort

diversifiés et appartenant visiblement 'a des types linguistiques différents.
Nous nous proposons de distinguer et de caractériser six types: trois ont déjà
fait l'objet d'analyses plus ou moins détaillées: énoncé corrélatif (Haudry
1973), énoncé lié (Dressler 1969, 1971), énoncé expansé (Gonda 1959); trois
autres n'ont pas encore été identifiés en tant que tels: énoncé apposé, énoncé
anaphorique, énoncé amplifié.
LA PHRASE COMPLEXE EN INDO-EUROPEEN 445
1.2.1. L'énoncé corrélatif.
La corrélation a été, en syntaxe Indo-Européen, successivement décrite par

B. Delbrück (1888), W. Porzig (1923), A. Minard (1936) et J. Haudry
(1973), tous spécialistes du sanskrit védique, langue où il est fait un usage
abondant des corrélations, comme en témoignent les statistiques de W. Porzig
(1923:288-289). La structure corrélative est caractérisée par la mise en oeuvre
de trois types de relations étroitement associées entre elles: une relation
SÉMANTIQUE variable établie entre deux contenus énonciatifs, respectivement
la protase et l'apodose; une relation SYNTAXIQUE stable utilisant les outils
syntaxiques par excellence que sont les particules, réparties sur la protase et
sur l'apodose (corrélatif); une relation PROSODIQUE constante, où le verbe
personnel de protase, à la différence de celui de l'apodose, est tonique. Ainsi,
se trouvent créées les conditions d'existence d'un lien nécessaire et orienté
entre deux procès. La structure corrélative fonctionne aussi bien pour
l'implication (en "si") que pour les particules dérivées (par ex. temps, cause:
lat. cum, quod) et notamment le relatif. Les principaux exemples sont indiqués
en note. 2
1.2.2. L'énoncé lié.
Nous rendons par ce terme la notion de 'gebundener Satz' introduite par

W. Dressler dans la syntaxe de l'Indo-Européen (1969, 1971). La définition
de l'énoncé lié tient au principe formulé par Dressler: la position initiale de la
forme verbale indique le lien de cet énoncé avec un autre qui suit ou qui
2
Attestations d'énoncé corrélatif:
(SB IV 1,3,3)
"s'il est vivant, tu seras, toi, promptement de retour".
(Illiade 24,
768ss)
"si quelqu'un s'en prenait à moi [...] alors, toi, tu le contrais".
quod habuit, id perdidit
"ce qu'il a eu, il l'a perdu".
nu kuis tan pedasDUMURUnu LUGAL-us apas kisaru. (BOTU 23 A Π 37f)
"wer ein Sohn zweiten Ranges (ist), der soll König werden".
saei ni andnimiÞ Þiudangardja gudis swe barn, ni Þauh qimiÞ in izai. (Mc 10,15)
"celui qui ne reçoit pas le royaume de Dieu comme un enfant, pourtant (litt.) il n'y entre
pas".
446 ANDRÉ ROUSSEAU
précède3. La forme primitive de l'énoncé lié correspond à la position initiale

du verbe en protase, comme cela existe encore dans les langues modernes:
Kommt er, so freue ich mich.
Vient-il, alors je me réjouis.
Cette position initiale du verbe personnel marque fondamentalement une

attente, une suite, qui se réalise dans l'apodose. Ce type d'énoncé complexe
est illustré par les exemplesfiguranten note.4
1.2.3. L'énoncé expansé.
Nous transposons ainsi l'expression 'amplified sentence' de J. Gonda,

dont la caractéristique réside dans le fait qu'un énoncé simple peut, en recevant
une expansion, devenir un énoncé complexe. Ce type d'énoncé complexe a
connu une certaine fortune en Indo-Européen grâce à la syntaxe, riche en cas,
du nom verbal. En effet, la flexion du nom verbal témoigne par elle-même de
son origine syntaxique au sein de l'énoncé expansé, car les formes anciennes
attestées sont toutes des cas obliques — à l'exclusion du nominatif, qui est né
par réfection tardive. Ainsi, à chaque cas était attachée une valeur particulière
de circonstant (Meillet 1931): instrumental — accompagnement, cause; locatif
— simultanéité; datif — finalité; génitif/ablatif — origine; accusatif — but,
temps. Le védique est la langue qui atteste le mieux les diverses formes
3
W. Dressler (1971:18) écrit: "Anfangsstellung des Verbums weist auf einen weiteren
verbundenen Satz, der vor oder nach dem vorliegenden Satz steht".
4
Attestations d'énoncé lié:
m e - m a - i - m a - a t ku-e-da-ni na-an-kan a-an-ti-i U.UL t i - i a - z i . .
(KUB XXVI 12III11s)
"(if) the man to whom he says it, does not denounce him..."
asid raja Nalo nama... (Nala)
"Es war ein König mit Namen Nala..."
(Illiade 22,393)
"(si) nous avons acquis une grande victoire, (c'est que) nous avons tué le divin Hector"
vincis, gaudes; perdis, ploras. (Tablette de Dessau n° 9453)
"(si) tu gagnes, tu te réjouis, (si) tu perds, tu pleures".
atsaihwiÞ armaion izwara ni taujan in andwairÞja manne du saihwan im, aiÞÞau laun ni
habaiÞ fram attin izwaramma Þamma in himinam. (Mt 6,1)
"gardez-vous de faire l'aumône en présence d'hommes pour être vus d'eux, ou sinon vous
n'aurez point de récompense de votre Père aux cieux".
LA PHRASE COMPLEXE EN INDO-EUROPÉEN 447
casuelles de l'énoncé expansé, comme le montrent les quelques exemples cités

en note 5.
L'énoncé expansé a laissé au moins trois traces dans les langues Indo-
Européen: la construction dite du 'double datif';6 celle connue sous le sigle AcI
(= accusativus cum infinitivo); une dernière évolution de l'énoncé expansé
concerne le nom verbal au locatif-datif, qui, par thématisation, a directement
donné naissance aux 'noms d'agent':
got. manna weindrugkja (L 7,34) "homme à boire du vin"→"homme

qui boit du vin".
1.2.4. L'énoncé apposé.
Un énoncé apposé à un premier énoncé est considéré comme incident à

celui-ci, car l'apposition fonctionne comme une marque de dépendance.
Enoncé apposé et énoncé lié reposent sur le même fait de position syntaxique:
la position initiale de la forme verbale, mais ils se distinguent par une
distribution complémentaire en chaîne, l'énoncé apposé étant obligatoirement
postposé:
Enoncé lié:
Enoncé apposé:
Une autre différence, sémantique, est importante: alors que l'on peut rendre
compte de l'énoncé lié à partir de la notion de verbe personnel, il est nécessaire
5
Attestations d'énoncé expansé:
LÚ
SANGA akuuanna yekzi (KBo Π 14IΠ 2f)
"der Priester verlangt zu trinken"
aita adam ahuramazdam jadiyãmiy (NRa53)
"I implore Ahuramazda to grant this".
(=Acc.) (RV 7,86,3)
"I go to the wise to inquire".
(=Dat.) (Illiade 6,227)
"j'ai beaucoup de Troyens à tuer".
faursnau sal bon mein leik du usf ilha (=Dat) (Mc 14,8)
"d'avance embaumer mon corps pour l'inhumation".
6
exemple de 'double datif avec dédoublement de l'un en datif-sujet et datif-objet:
brahmadvise sara ve h ntav u (D. objet D. sujet nom verbal) (RV 10,125,6)
"pour que laflèchefrappe l'ennemi de la formule sacrée (du brahman)".
448 ANDRÉ ROUSSEAU
d'avoir recours au concept plus large de prédicat pour embrasser l'ensemble

des types d'énoncé apposé. Nous pouvons en effet distinguer trois types
d'énoncé apposé (qui sont en général dispersés dans les manuels):
type 1 (à prédicat verbal):

gr. . "il conduit le peuple";
type 2 (à prédicat adjectival) plus connu sous le nom de
'bahuvrihi':
got. laus-handus "vide (est) la main".
type 3 (à prédicat nominal):
(T.S.3,3,2 a)"le saman
L'énoncé apposé exerce deux fonctions: apposition à un GV (ce sont les

incises à verbum dicendi (cf. lat inquit) et apposition à un GN, ce qui conduit
fréquemment à une nominalisation:
véd. janī, deva-patnī "femme, dont le mari est un dieu"

(et non "maîtresse des dieux"). Pour les exemples, voir note 7.
1.2.5. L'énoncé anaphorique.
L'énoncé anaphorique part d'un principe simple, inhérent à toute forme de

discours: un premier énoncé est 'repris' en partie ou en totalité par un élément
figurant dans un énoncé ultérieur. Cette reprise, cette anaphore revêt deux
formes: anaphore d'un GV et anaphore d'un GN. Mais le problème essentiel
est celui de l'interprétation de Γ anaphore fonctionnant comme relation
Attestations d'énoncé apposé:

véd. "des hommes, bons (sont leurs) chevaux".
gr. "il porte sa maison".
lat. magnanimus "au grand coeur"
got. armahairts "miséricordieux"
freinais "libre (est) le cou"
fidurdogs "(qui dure) quatre jours"
hitt. da-iuga "(âge de) deux ans"
salla-karta "au grand coeur"
syntaxique: s'agit-il encore d'un pur lien anaphorique textuel, ou bien avons-
nous déjà à faire à un lien relatif qui s'amorce?8
En fait, nous pouvons suivre l'évolution par le témoignage successif de
trois langues.
En védique, il ne semble pas qu'il y ait autre chose qu'une anaphore:
tad va dev abruvan téd va gamam. (RV 1,161,2)
"das sagten euch die Götter, darum bin ich zu euch gekommen"
Le grec homérique est ambigu quant à l'interprétation du lien anaphorique:
(¡Illiade 1,72)
"grâce à sa faculté de divination, celle-là/que Phoebus Apollon lui avait
donnée"
En revance, le gotique a crée l'outil d'un lien de dépendance: sah pour un
GN,Þaîuhpour un GV:
unleds sums was namin haitans Lazarus, sah atwaurpans was du daura
is. (L 16,20) (Naming-Phrase)
"il y avait un certain pauvre du nom de Lazare, qui était étendu à sa
porte".
frauja, augei unsis Þana attan,Þatuhganah unsis. (J 14,8)
"Seigneur, montre-nous ce Père - ce qui nous suffit".
1.2.6. L'énoncé amplifié.
Un énoncé initial est 'renforcé' par un second énoncé, qui en est le

prolongement, la continuation, la comparaison, la justification, le renchérisse
ment, etc.— toutes ces valeurs dépendant du contexte. L'outil syntaxique
utilisé est la particule enclitique IE *-kwe (véd. ca, lat-que, got. -uh); déjà les
grammairiens indiens, notamment Patañjali auIIèsiècle avant J.C., avaient
8
Certains auteurs (e.g., Chantraine 1953:166) font intervenir l'accentuation de l'anaphorique
pour distinguer le relatif de l'article. Si ce critère joue, partiellement, en grec, il est
inapplicable au védique (où l'anaphorique est tonique). De son côté, P. Monteil (1963:28ss)
croit pouvoir discerner une évolution en grec homérique, mais le schéma qu'il propose n'est
guère probant
450 ANDRE ROUSSEAU
distingué quatre fonctions de la particule ca, dont la seconde est "anvācaya,,

c'est à dire "connection of a secondary action with a main action" (Gonda
1957:59).
Le témoignage du latin, par ses particules soudées en -que (quoque, neque,
itaque, atque, usque) apporte une confirmation: s'il n'avait pas existé un type
de construction syntaxique complexe, fondé sur l'enclitique -que en apodose,
nous n'aurions pas ces associaitons lexicalisées de particules, dont la valeur
ancienne remonte à leur emploi dans l'énoncé amplifié (notamment le sens
ancien de atque "et d'autre part"). Il faut situer l'apparition de l'énoncé
amplifié à date moyenne, car il n'est pas, à notre connaissance, attesté en
hittite. Les exemples d'énoncé amplifié figurent en note 9.
1.3. Schéma d'évolution.
Il semble évident que tous ces énoncés complexes, en raison même de leur
nombre, n'appartiennent pas à la même couche synchronique, au même état de
langue — même s'ils peuvent se rencontrer à l'occasion dans la même langueet
le même texte: il faut pas oublier que tout état de langue offre pêle-mêle le
système commun, les survivances et les innovations. Faute de place, nous
nous contentons de résumer l'évolution par le tableau ci-dessous, en adoptant
comme critère général de reconstruction la productivité du type considéré et
comme facteur décisif d'évolution l'inversion de la corrélation — qui sont des
critères incontestables:
Attestations d'énoncé amplifié:

ni mag bagmsÞiuÞeigsakrana ubila gataujan, nih bagms ubils akranaÞiuÞeigagataujan.
(Mt 7,18)
"un bon arbre ne peut donner de mauvaisfruits,pas plus qu'un mauvais arbre ne peut
donner de bons fruits".
jah atsteigands in skipufarlaiÞjah qam in seinai baurg. Þanuh atberun du imma usliÞan
ana ligra ligandan. (Mt 9,1-2)
"et montant dans une barque, il traversa la mer et arriva dans sa ville, sur quoi ils lui
amenèrent un paralytique allongé sur un lit".
ÉTAT I
ÉTAT Π
ÉTAT III
2. Les mécanismes du changement syntaxique.
Il faut faire choix d'un modèle explicatif: nous décrirons l'évolution

syntaxique par CAUSALITÉ INTERNE. Les étapes de ce changement seront
conçues comme des 'catastrophes' (au sens de Réné Thom), qui nécessitent le
recours à d'autres cadres syntaxiques. L'évolution crée en effet de NOUVEAUX
CADRES SYNTAXIQUES et, par voie de conséquence, des survivances
marginalisées. Du point de vue méthodologique, notre corpus représente un
ENSEMBLE DIA-CHRONIQUE, constitué de plusieurs systèmes synchroniques, à
l'intérieur duquel joue une causalité interne. Mais il y a un principe directeur à
cette évolution, une sorte de 'drift': c'est l'énoncé corrélatif qui est le pivot
central de l'évotion. Nous examinerons plus particulièrement quatre faits
d'évolution.
2.1. La fusion (ou coalescence) de rénoncé corrélatif et de

l'énoncé lié.
Ces deux types, originellement distincts, deviendront de pures variantes

syntaxiques, attestées jusque dans les langues modernes:
Wenn er kommt, so freue ich mich.

Kommt er, so freue ich mich.
Le critère de coalescence est ici incontestablement le schéma prosodique, plus

exactement la tonicité du verbe personnel en protase. Cette tonicité est acquise
(a) pour l'énoncé lié, que cette position soit initiale ou non-initiale:
452 ANDRÉ ROUSSEAU
soma ev smai réto dádhāti / pus paśun pra janayati. (M.S. 2,5,1)
"Soma lui donne-t-il de la semence, Pusan fait naître des animaux".
(b) pour l'énoncé corrélatif, qu'il s'agisse de corrélation conjonctive

(exemple gotique) ou de corrélation implicative (exemple védique):
diz-uh-Þan-sát ijos reiro jah usfilmei jah ni qeÞun mann-hun waiht.

(Mc 16,8)
"et la peur et le trouble les avaient saisies, et elles n'en dirent rien à
personne"
yadi jīvisy ti tvam ev ksipram punar gamisyasi.
"s'il est vivant, tu seras, toi, promptement de retour".
2.2. L'inversion de la corrélation.
L'inversion de l'énoncé corrélatif consiste à renverser l'ordre respectif des

constituants du diptyque: ainsi la séquence protase + apodose devient apodose
+ protase et, à partir de ce moment, il faut renoncer à cette terminologie
devenue contraire aux faits. L'inversion de la corrélation représente une évolu
tion commune à toutes les langues indo-européens; elle a même dû se produire
assez tôt, car elle a affecté le hittite et le védique. Inégalement toutefois, car si
ces inversions sont relativement peu fréquentes en hittite, elles sont très
courantes en védique. C'est sans doute un phénomène qui s'amorçait en hittite.
Le renversement de structure est tellement brutal qu'il doit correspondre à
une nécessité interne. Les raisons 'stylistiques' (descente de la subordonnée,
remontée de la principale) invoquées par A. Minard (1936:119-127) ne sont
guère convaincantes. Plus récemment, on a fait appel à la typologie pour
justifier l'inversion. Ainsi, pour W. P. Lehmann, l'inversion est liée à un
changement typologique de l'indo-européen, qui est passé de l'ordre SOV à
l'ordre SVO (1974:68). Une telle constatation nous confirme que l'évolution
de l'indo-européen est conforme a des normes générales, mais ne nous
renseigne nullement sur les causes profondes, qui, À L'INTÉRIEUR DE L'INDO-
EUROPÉEN LUI-MEME ET À TEL MOMENT DE SON ÉVOLUTION, ont provoqué
cette inversion. Or, ces causes sont évidemment syntaxiques et liées au
renouvellement et à l'apparition d'autres constructions syntaxiques, d'autres
types de phrase complexe.
La cause profonde est, à notre avis, le renouvellement de relatives
anciennes postposées, bien étudiées par H. Jacobi (1897):
(a) d'une par le tatpurusa, appartenant à l'énoncé expansé:

got. weindrugkja "qui boit du vin";
arbinumja "qui reçoit l'héritage";
lat. carnivorus "qui se nourrit de chair".
(b) d'autre part le bahuvrīhi, forme essentielle de l'énoncé apposé:
got. laushandus "aux mais vides"

twalibwintrus "(âgé de) douze hivers"
Ces formes anciennes de détermination relative étaient postposées à la base

nominale, comme dans les exemples suivants:
véd. nérah sváéah "hommes aux bons chevaux"

gr. (Illiade 1,247)
"Nestor au doux parler"
got. manna weindrugkja jah afetja (L 7,34)
"un homme qui boit du vin et qui dévore tout".
Voilà la raison interne et profonde de l'inversion de la corrélation: lorsque les

relatives corrélatives ont été amenées à prendres la relève des anciennes
relatives postposées, la corrélation s'est inversée:
got. *manna saei weindrigkiÞjah afiüÞ.
Cette inversion va, à son tour, avoir deux autres conséquences, que nous
allons examiner maintenant.
2.3. L'intégration de l'énoncé anaphorique.
Le facteur d'intégration de l'énoncé anaphorique comme énoncé complexe

a été l'inversion de la corrélation, comme le prouve la comparaison avec
l'énoncé corrélatif avant et après l'inversion.
(1) En effet, il existe un parallélisme de fonctionnement, par ex. en

védique, entre tád anaphorique et tád corrélatif de yád(i):
454 ANDRÉ ROUSSEAU
énoncé corrélatif: yád / tád

énoncé anaphorique: / tád
ce qui se manifeste dans les exemples suivants:
yádi stotãrah śatá yát / sahásram grnánti, gírvanasam śám táú

asmai (RV 6,34,3)
"wenn hundert Sänger, wenn tausend den Liederfreund besingen, so
ist ihm das angenehm".
tad va deva abruvan tád va ãgamam. (RV 1,161,2)
"das sagten euch die Götter, darum bin ich zu euch gekommen".
(2) Ce pur parallélisme formel se transforme en équivalence syntaxique à

partir du moment où l'énoncé corrélatif est inversé, c'est-à-dire où sont créées
les conditions syntaxiques d'une équivalence entre le relatif dans la corrélation
inversée et Γ anaphorique, tous deux étant désormais postposés:
enoncé corrélatif inversé:

énoncé anaphorique:
Cette équivalence se manifeste dans les exemples grecs suivants:
(Odyssée 16,200)
"voici qu'à présent tu ressembles aux dieux qui occupent le vaste ciel"
(Illiade 16,471)
"les rênes s'emmêlèrent, à quoi Automédon trouva de l'aide".
Ainsi peut également s'expliquer l'équivalence entre *yo et *so / to dans les
'relatives formelles':
ved. viśve marúto yé sahSsah (RV 7,34,24)

"tous les Maruts, les puissants"
got. sunus meins sa liuba (Mc 1,11)
"mon fils, le bien-aimé".
2.4. La fixation du discours indirect.
Comme en témoignent les différents articles d'E. Keckers (1912, 1913),

le discours indirect n'avait pas de statut fixe dans les langues indo-européens
anciennes; il s'est peu à peu grammaticalisé en s'alignant sur la corrélation
inversée — et en pratiquant la concordance des temps et la transposition des
personnes. Pour ce qui est des faits de position, son évolution est tout à fait
parallèle à celle de l'inversion de la corrélation:
(1) hwaiwa nu saihwiÞ ni witum (J 9,21)

"comment il voit, nous ne (le) savons pas".
(2) ni wait hwa qiÞis (Mt 26,70)
"je ne sais pas ce que tu veux dire".
Cette grammaticalisation amène le discours indirect à se confondre avec la

relative inversée; il est intéressant de comparer avec le dernier exemple cité (Mt
26,70):
(3) iÞ silba wissa patei habaida taujan

"mais il savait lui-même ce qu'il avait à faire".
Cette exemple est significatif, car le relatif got. Þetei traduit un interrogatif
indirect du grec, Ce phénomène n'est pas isolé: il se retrouve en grec
homérique où parfois le relatif est employé en fonction d'interrogatif indirect:
(Illiade 7, 171)
"tirez au sort, tous sans exception, (pour savoir) qui sera désigné"
Ces faits sont révélateurs d'une filière: discours indirect et corrélation
inversée sont liés, comme le prouve la contamination entre interrogatif indirect
et relatif.
Ainsi, le mécanisme de l'évolution se présente comme une 'drag- and
push-chain', le premier changement entraînant une cascade de mouvements en
série, de modifications en chaîne.
456 ANDRÉ ROUSSEAU
3. La nature du changement syntaxique.
Après avoir décrit les ressorts du changement syntaxique, il faut analyser la

nature de ce changement et notamment son aspect sémantique. Pour le sujet
qui nous occupe, l'énoncé complexe, défini comme "une prédication complé
mentaire ajoutée à un procès initial", le changement semble porter sur la
NATURE DE LA CONNEXION (au sens de Tesnière) reliant les deux portions de
l'énoncé. Nous reprendrons l'analyse de trois cas.
3.1. L'apparition de l'énoncé anaphorique.
Comme nous l'avons montré dans la seconde partie, l'énoncé anaphorique

doit sa grammaticalisation à l'inversion de l'énoncé corrélatif, qui a créé un
modèle parallèle; mais au plan sémantique, il est dans la lignée de l'énoncé
apposé. Le changement en question fait appel à un phénomène textuel, l'ana-
phore, qu'il ramène à la dimension de la phrase par une dépendance synta
xique. Cette grammaticalisation d'un fait de discours montre à l'évidence qu'il
ne s'agit pas en l'occurrence d'un pur 'renouvellement formel' (cf. Haudry
1979:185).
Ce premier exemple nous permet de dégager un premier principe: les
cadres syntaxiques eux-mêmes évoluent, mais toujours à partir d'un modèle
existant, qui se trouve sémantiquement renouvelé. Or, à l'intérieur de l'en
semble constitué par notre corpus, les possibilités de renouvellement ne sont
pas infinies; dans cette mesure, il est donc possible de prévoir des champs ou
des aires d'évolution.
3.2. L'inversion de la corrélation.
La manière dont nous avons traité précédemment l'inversion de la

corrélation peut laisser croire qu'il s'agit d'un phénomène purement
mécanique, n'affec-tant pas l'aspect sémantique. En fait, l'inversion de la
corrélation n'est pas automatique, mais facultative; et le linguiste doit chercher
ce qui se cache derrière ce terme de 'facultatif'. Nous effectuerons cette
démonstration sur le gotique, ce qui n'exclut pas une généralisation à d'autres
langues.
Il existe deux types sémantiques de corrélation implicative, distingués l'un

de l'autre par deux critères: le 'mode', qui détermine un univers de validité et
le 'corrélatif, qui assure la cohésion de la corrélation.
1er type: la corrélation représente des procès liés par une progression
interne. Il y a dans ce cas ACCORD MODAL entre protase et apodose et PRÉ
SENCE D'UN CORRÉLATIF du type jah, Þau, aiÞÞau, swa, comme cela appa
raît dans les exemples:
jabai ni afletiÞ mannam missadedins ize, ni Þau, atta izwar afletiÞ

missadedins izwaros. (Mt 6,15)
"si vous ne pardonnez pas aux hommes leurs fautes, alors votre Père
ne vous pardonnera pas vos fautes".
jabai allis Mose galaubidedeiÞ, ga-Þau-laubidedeiÞ mis. (J 5,46)
"car si vous croyiez en Moïse, alors vous croiriez en moi".
2ème type: la corrélation porte sur des procès autonomes l'un vis-à-vis de
l'autre. Il y a alors INDÉPENDANCE MODALE de la protase et de l'apodose (ce
qui n'exclut pas qu'il puisse y avoir coincidence modale), et ABSENCE DE
CORRÉLATIF en apodose, ce qui est attesté par les exemples suivants:
jabai sa ungalaubjands skaidiÞ sik, skaidai. (K 7,15)

"si le non-croyant se sépare, eh bien qu'il (se) sépare".
jah jabai hwas meinnaim hausjai waurdam jah galaubjai, ik ni stoja ina
"et si quelqu'un peut entendre mes paroles et croire, moi je ne le juge
pas". (J 12,47)
De ces deux types de corrélation implicative, le premier est soudé et

progressive, tandis que la seconde, plus lâche et formé de procès indépen
dants, est seul soumis à l'inversion. Cette analyse, qui n'est valable que pour
les langues indo-européennes anciennes, permet de dégager la nature
sémantique de l'inversion de la corrélation: il s'agit bien entendu, là encore, de
sémantique connexionnelle.
458 ANDRÉ ROUSSEAU
3.3. Influence de l'énoncé anaphorique.
Nous avons signalé précédemment, à propos du védique, le parallélisme de

fonctionnement entre le corrélatif tád d'un côté et Γ anaphorique tad de l'autre,
tous deux représentés par la même particule. Comme la corrélation implicative
originelle a la forme encore attestée en gotique: jabai ...pau ... "si... ou ..." et
jabai ... jah ... "si .... et ...", il n'est pas douteux que le corrélatif habi
tuellement rencontré: *so/to représente un renouvellement.
Et précisément l'énoncé anaphorique a fourni le modèle en renouvellant le
corrélatif: de la corrélation ancienne *yo/kwe ...we/kwe ... représentant "si...
ou... " et "si....et...." (cf. Rousseau 1983:1260ss, 1986:46ss), on est passé à
*yo/kwe ... solto ... "si ... alors ...". Ce renouvellement a dû se produire
assez tôt, car presque toutes les langues indo-europeénes ne connaissent à date
historique que le second schéma. Mais surtout, ce renou-vellement formel s'est
accompagné d'un renouvellement de signifié: le corré-latif de l'implicatif a
repris la valeur de l'ancien anaphorique. Ainsi, il est devenu, selon le terme
couramment employé, un 'résomptif'. La corrélation implicative a changé de
signifié: on est passé de "si ... ou"/"si ... et" à "SI ... ALORS", ce qui s'est
conservé jusque dans les langues modernes.
L'énoncé anaphorique a donc modifié de manière externe et interne la
structure implicative de l'Indo-Européen, démonstrant ainsi qu'il y a inter
action réciproque entre le modèle initial et l'énoncé qui en est issu.
4. Conclusion.
Par ces différentes analyses, on voit peu à peu se dessiner les possibilités
de variations, constituant l'AIRE D'ÉVOLUTION de l'énoncé complexe indo
européen. La connexion est soit SYNTAXIQUEMENT marquée par deux
particules (corrélation) ou par un morphème de dépendance casuelle (énoncé
expansé), soit créée PRAGMAΉQUEMENT par un effet d'attente (énoncé lié),
soit obtenue DISCURSIVEMENT par une reprise (énoncé anaphorique) ou par
une greffe (énoncé apposé). Mais les procédés pragmatiques et discursifs
finissent par se grammaticaliser.
Il faut également souligner que ces renouvellements impliquent des
modifications sémantiques importantes: l'apparition du RÉSOMPTIF en est un
exemple frappant, qui efface désormais la parenté de "si" avec "et" et "ou".
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THE UNACCUSATIVE HYPOTHESIS AND THE HISTORY OF
THE PERFECT AUXILIARY IN GERMANIC AND ROMANCE
THOMAS F. SHANNON
University of California, Berkeley
1. Introduction.
It is a well-known fact that certain Germanic languages such as German
and Dutch, as well as certain Romance languages like French and especially
Italian, distinguish between two different perfect auxiliaries HAVE vs. BR1
The sentences given under (1) and (2) exemplify this distinction in German
and Dutch.2
(1) a. Der Junge hat den Hund geschlagen,
b. De jongen heeft de hond geslagen.
"The boy has hit the dog."
(2) a. Die Gäste sind schon gekommen,
b. De gasten zijn al gekomen.
"The guests are [= have] already come."
One of the important descriptive and theoretical issues that arise here is the
question: what principles govern this auxiliary selection? At least two kinds of
possibilities exist: the auxiliary choice is determined (a) by purely formal
syntactic criteria, or else (b) by semantic criteria; various hybrids are also
imaginable. Traditional accounts have largely espoused the second view.
However, recent analyses within formal syntactic frameworks have challenged
this and strongly defended autonomous syntactic accounts.
Contrary to the latter proposals, in this paper I will attempt to motivate
synchronically and diachronically a semantic approach based on the notion of
1
In the context of this paper we cannot look at all the Germanic and Romance lan
guages, so for present purposes we will only consider German and Dutch within Germanic
and Italian and French in Romance. As far as I am aware, of the modern Romance languages
only these two still distinguish between HA VE and BE as a perfect auxiliary, while in
Germanic Frisian, Danish, and Icelandic continue to use both auxiliaries.
2
The English glosses given here are at times rather literal and therefore not always fully
idiomatic.
462 THOMAS F. SHANNON
transitivity proposed by Hopper & Thompson (1980) and the concept of

prototype developed especially within cognitive grammar (cf. Langacker 1987,
Lakoff 1987). In my account I am to a large extent returning to the more
traditional view and building on the work of my predecessors. No attempt will
be made to give a full chronological account of these developments, nor will
other important related issues such as the history of the whole verbal
tense/aspect/voice system be considered. Instead I propose to map out an ap
proach which I feel delineates the major aspects of the use of the perfect
auxiliaries and sheds considerable light on their historical development.
Moreover, Hopper & Thompson's (1980) definition of transitivity, specifically
low transitivity, will not be fully adopted in the definition of BE-auxiliary
verbs 3 because it relates to states and we will be dealing with events or
changes, at least in the prototypical uses of HAVE and BE as perfect auxi
liaries. However, we will see that their transitivity parameters are influential in
accounting for many instances of variation in the use of HAVE vs. BE as a
perfect auxiliary, particularly in varying construais of a given clause as closer
to the HAVE or BE prototype.
2. The unaccusative hypothesis and the perfect auxiliary.
The reason why the perfect auxiliary in German, Dutch, and Italian has
come into the limelight of recent work in syntax and therefore warrants re
thinking is the claim made by researchers adopting some version of the so-
called 'unaccusative hypothesis' that auxiliary selection is determined solely by
the putative syntactic property of unaccusativity. Basically this hypothesis
states that intransitive verbs do not form a homogeneous group but split into
two complementary classes: those that have an underlying or initial object
(which surfaces as the surface subject), i.e., so-called unaccusatives or
ergatives, and those which do have an underlying subject (so-called un-
ergatives). Given these syntactic differences - which purportedly can be uni
quely ascertained on other, independent syntactic grounds - the rule of auxi
liary selection is essentially very simple: unaccusatives take BE, unergatives
take HAVE. Thus, in examples (3a) and (3b) schlafen/slapen "to sleep" are
unergatives, taking an underlying subject and therefore HAVE, whereas (4a)
and (4b) einschlafen/inslapen "to fall asleep" are unaccusatives, their final
subject being an underlying object, and thus they take BE.4
3
Actually, as we will see, the semantics of the whole clause, and not just the verb, is
crucial, but I will use this handy locution from time to time.
4
For simplicity's sake I ignore the problem of reflexives in Italian (and French) at this
point, but will return to it later in this paper.
THE UNACCUSATIVE HYPOTHESIS AND AUXILIARY CHOICE 463
(3) a. Die Frau hat lange geschlafen,

b. De vrouw heeft lang geslapen.
"The woman sleptfora long time." [= unergative; auxiliary =HAVE]
(4) a. Die Frau ist in fünf Minuten eingeschlafen.
b. De vrouw is in vijf minuten ingeslapen.
"The woman fell asleep in five minutes." [= unaccusative; auxiliary =
BE]
In relational grammar terms, sentences like (3a) and (3b) have an underly
ing or initial subject (= 1) but no object (= 2), whereas sentences like (4a) and
(4b) with unaccusative predicates contain an initial direct object (2) but no sub
ject (1). They acquire a surface subject through 'unaccusative advancement' of
the initial 2 to 1. Thus stratal diagrams for these sentences would be as in (3c)
and (4c).
(3)c. P 1 (4) .
P 2
sleep woman Ρ 1
fall woman
asleep
Thefirstattempt to account for the selection of perfect auxiliaries in terms

of the distinction between unaccusative and unergative verbs was made within
Relational Grammar by Perlmutter (ms.) for Italian and is cited in Rosen
(1984:46) as follows:
Auxiliary Selection in Italian
Select essere 'be' in any clause that contains a l-arc and an object-arc with the same
head. Otherwise, select avere 'have'.
This analysis has since been reformulated by Burzio (1981, 1986) in Govern
ment and Binding terms. Here unaccusatives (for which Burzio uses the
curiously inappropriate term 'ergatives') are analysed as having an empty
subject position but a filled object position in D-structure (the object later
moves to subject position to pick up case), as in (4d), whereas unergatives
have a sole D-structure subject (3d) with no relevant movement involved.
(3) d. [ NP V ] = unergative
(4) d. [ e V N P ] > [NPį V ti ] = ergative
Burzio (1986:55) then formulates the following rule for assignment of the per
fect auxiliary.
Esssere Assignment
The auxiliary will be realized as essere whenever a 'binding relation' exists between
the subject and a 'nominal contiguous to the verb'.
Later similar proposals were made for Dutch by Hoekstra (1984) in both RG
and GB terms and for German by Haider (1985) in a GB framework. Despite
certain differences of detail and theory, they almost all agree that perfect
auxiliary selection is determined by syntactic principles, though Perlmutter
does not deny possible connections with meaning.
However, there are various problems with such a syntactic account. Let
me just mention a few of them. First of all, inspite of, or perhaps precisely
because of the high degree of abstractness and arbitrariness involved in the
analysis, it offers no insight into the mechanisms of language at work here and
no real motivation for the specific correlations found, even if it were
empirically correct, which it unfortunately is not. Such analyses show perfect
auxiliary selection to be a rather arbitrary, ad hoc matter and in no way
motivate the patterns found. Moreover, as we will see, there are certain
differences in auxiliary selection based on meaning, but such approaches do
not show why the splits found are precisely the way they are.
In addition, a central problem is independently determining which verbs
are unaccusatives; several criteria for establishing this have been proposed,
but none seems to give exactly the same split. Let us consider just one:
passifizability. Claiming that BE- verbs do not passivize, whereas HAVE- auxi
liary verbs do, Hoekstra (1984) maintains that this correlation is due to
unaccusativity: unergative verbs take HAVE and passivize, unaccusatives take
BE and do not passivize. Thus, the unaccusative verbs bleiben/blijven "to
remain" and verdampfen/verdampen "to evaporate" (both of which take BE)
do not passivize, as we see in (5) and (6); but the unergative
verbsweinen/huilen "to cry" and sprechen/spreken "to speak", which take
HAVE, do passivize, as we see in (7) and (8).
(5) a. Die Kinder sind da geblieben,

b. De kinderen zijn daar gebleven.
"The children remained there."
a'.*Es wird (von den Kindern) da geblieben.
b'. *Er wordt (door de kinderen) daar gebleven,
[unaccusative: auxiliary = BE, passive out]
(6) a. Das Wasser war bald verdampft.

b. Het water was vlug verdampt.
"The water had quickly evaporated."
a', *Es war bald (durch das Wasser) verdampft worden.

b', *Er was vlug (door het water) verdampt.
[unaccusative: auxiliary = BE, passive out]
(7) a. Ein Kind hat lange geweint.

b. Een kind heeft lang gehuild.
"One child cried for a long time."
a'. Es wurde lange geweint.

b', Er werd lang gehuild.
[unergative: auxiliary = HAVE, passive okay]
(8) a. Man hat oft darüber gesprochen.

b. Men heeft daarover vaak gesproken.
"One has often spoken about that."
a', Darüber wird oft gesprochen.

b'. Daarover woordt vaak gesproken.
[unergative: auxiliary = HAVE, passive okay]
However, the claimed correlation does not hold with full generality,
since there are veibs which take HAVE but do not passivize (cf. (9); also
(33c), (33d), (34c) and (34d)), as well as verbs which take BE but do
passivize (cf. (10)).
(9) a. Der Vortrag hat stundenlang gedauert.

b. De lezing heeft urenlang geduurd.
"The lecture lasted for hours."
a'. *Es wurde (vom Vortrag) stundenlang gedauert.

b', *Er werd (door de lezing) urenlang geduurd.
[auxiliary = HAVE, but passive out!]
(10) a. Er ist endlich eingeschlafen.

b. Hij is eindelijk ingeslapen.
"He finally fell asleep."
a'. Jetzt wird aber endlich eingeschlafen!

b'. En nu wordt er eindelijk ingeslapen!
[auxiliary = BE, but passive okay!]
Thus, passivizability is not a reliable test for perfect auxiliary selection (or
vice-versa); cf. also Fagan (1988), Shannon (1987), Zaenen (1988). In
Shannon (1987, 1988) I have argued that passivizability has nothing to do
with unaccusativity - which I do not believe is a real or even coherent concept
- but rather with semantics: BE- auxiliary verbs normally have a patient or
theme subject, and therefore passive, which defocuses agentlike entities, does
not apply to them, logically enough.
In light of the failure of these theories to give an empirically adequate
definition of and criteria for unaccusativity as well as a motivated account of
perfect auxiliary selection, it seems that a different approach is called for, one
based on meaning. Such an account is not likely to be forthcoming from such
circles, however, for despite some lip service paid to semantics, meaning is
hardly ever truly considered as a viable basis to account for such facts.
Hoekstra (1984), for example, explicitly rejects semantics outright as a basis
for handling Dutch perfect auxiliary selection with only a few words and no
discussion; likewise Haider (1985) for German. But neither really seriously
pursues this avenue of investigation. Furthermore, although Hoekstra for in
stance flatly denies that Dowty's (1979) semantic classification of verbs could
shed any light on this issue, Van Valin (1988) and particularly Centineo (1986)
have shown convincingly that such an account can work well for Italian and is
even empirically superior to formal syntactic accounts. Similarly, Hoekstra
rejects traditional accounts like that of Kern (1912), which relies on the notion
'mutative', but I will try to show that this concept is at the heart of the matter
and can very nicely be integrated into a full account of perfect auxiliary selec
tion in the languages under investigation here. This study will present a
broader historical and comparative survey and attempt to show that such a
semanticaly based account is not only possible, but also more insightful and
realistic.
3. An alternative account of perfect auxiliary selection.
The account I am going to propose crucially involves two central concepts

- viz. transitivity and prototype theory - and takes semantics, and conceptual
content as well as construal, seriously. Basically I would like to consider per
fect auxiliary selection in terms of transitivity (cf. Hopper & Thompson 1980)
and prototypes (cf. the literature cited in Lakoff 1987): prototypical HAVE-
auxiliary verbs are very high in transitivity, whereas BE- auxiliary verbs are in
certain specifiable ways low in it, with HAVE often the default in these
languages for unclear or borderline cases (e.g. many statives). Specifically,
BE- auxiliary verbs are single-participant, perfective predicates denoting the
THE UNACCUSATIVE HYPOTHESIS AND AUXIUARY CHOICE 467
beginning or end point of a change which the patient subject (non-volitionally)

undergoes and which is not (conceived of as) brought about by another
agentlike entity. This is the rationale behind the traditional claim in grammars
of these languages, for example, that BE- auxiliary verbs typically express a
change of state or place.
In their very important, seminal paper, Hopper & Thompson (1980)
dermed their own notion of transitivity, claiming that it is of widespread signi-
ficance in grammar. For them the basis of this concept is semantic (and, ulti-
mately, pragmatic) and they propose ten binary parameters which it encom-
passes. These are listed in Table 1.
High transitivity Low transitivity
Participants 2 or more (A & 0) 1 participant

Kinesis action non-action
Aspect telic atelic
Punctuality punctual non-punctual
Volitionality volitional non-volitional
Affinnation affinnative negative
Mode realis irrea1is
Agency A high in potency A low in potency
Affectedness of 0 o totally affected o not affected
Individuation of 0 o highly individuated o non-individuated
Table 1. Hopper & Thompson's transitivity parameters.
I will argue that Hopper & Thompson's high transitivity relates directly to the
prototypical HA VB- auxiliary situation and certain differences in the use of
HA VB vs. BE. Low transitivity, however, does not account too well for BE-
auxiliary verbs. This is because they consider the opposite of high transitivity
action situations to be states, whereas the prototypes for both HA VB and BE as
perfect auxiliaries involve change. Nevertheless, their parameters, especially
those dealing with change, will be seen to be relevant in perfect auxiliary
selection.
In a recent paper Rice (1987) has proposed within a cognitive grammar
framework a somewhat different view of transitivity, which I think is even
better and will get us still farther in our search for the perfect auxiliary (cf. also
Van Oosten 1984 for a prototype approach to agent and topic). Rice notes the
following (11) assumptions of Hopper & Thompson's proposal, which she
calls 'the semantic view' .
(11) Assumptions of Hopper & Thompson's semantic view:

- Transitivity is not subsentential, but a global property of a clause.
- The syntax and semantics of a language interact.
- The transitivity components have morphological reflexes.
- When two or more of these elements are obligatory in a language,
they co-vary with respect to high or low transitivity.
Rice's contribution is to propose a cognitive view of transitivity based

not only on conceptual content but also on conceptual construal, a point to
which we will return later in our context. She also proposes a prototype for
transitive events which seems to match nicely the prototype which we need
for the auxiliary HAVE, i.e. prototypical transitive events are encoded in the
perfect with HAVE in the languages under discussion. That prototype is
given in (12). Prototypical HAVE- auxiliary verbs should then have the pro
perties listed for high transitivity given in Table 1.
(12) Prototypical transitive events:

- Transpire in physical space.
- Involve two entities that are differentiated from each other, from their
setting, and from the observer.
- Involve two entities that participate in an interaction and are asymme
trically related.
- Describe interactions in which the first participant moves toward and
makes contact with the second participant.
- Describe interactions in which the second participant is affected and
reacts externally by changing state or moving.
The prototype on which BE- auxiliary verbs are based, which I will call
the 'mutative prototype' following Kern's (1912) use of the term, is in many
ways similar to the transitive prototype, except that there is no external agent
but only a single participant which is affected, an undergoer (THEME or
PATIENT) in Role and Reference Grammar (cf. Foley & Van Valin 1984)
terms, i.e. the subject undergoes the non-causative change involved. I give
this prototype in (13).
(13) Prototypical mutative events:

- Transpire in physical space.
- Involve only a single entity, differentiated from the setting and from
the observer.
- Describe an event in which the single participant is affected and
changes externally by changing state or position [i.e. by moving].
Thus, prototypical mutative events involve single participant, perfective

(punctual) predicates denoting the end point (or beginning) of a change
which the undergoer (THEME or PATIENT) non-volitiona11y undergoes and which

is not (conceived of as) brought about by another agentlike entity. Situations
which do not fit either prototype will range according to which one they are
conceived of as most closely approximating, subject to Hopper & Thompson's
parameters of transitivity, as we will see later. Languages differ in what
extensions from the prototype they sanction, but these always appear to be
motivatable in conceptual terms, i.e. they are not arbitrary, albeit not uni
versally predictable either.
4 . The historical development of the perfect auxiliary in Ger

man.
Having now outlined our understanding of the transitive versus mutative

prototype, let us proceed to see how well it accounts for the historical
development of the perfect auxiliaries HAVE and BE in German, as well as
their synchronic distribution in German, Dutch, French, and Italian.5 Accord
ing to traditional acounts, perfect forms arose in Germanic and Romance
through the use of the present and past tense of HAVE and BE6 plus the past
participle of the main verb. Since the past participle denoted being in the state
resulting from the event expressed by the verb, it could only be predicated of
the undergoer (THEME or PATIENT), i.e. the object of transitive verbs and the
subject of intransitive mutative verbs. Let us consider briefly, however, the
development in German.
It appears that the past participle was first used in German with BE (cf.
Dieninghoff 1904, Zieglschmidt 1929): with transitive verbs it then received a
'passive' interpretation (= being in the affected state resulting from the action
denoted by the verb), while with mutatives it was interpreted as an 'active'
form (= being in the state resulting from the process undergone). Eventually
these combinations, which at first merely expressed being in the state, were
reinterpreted as perfect forms, i.e. as expressing the presupposed past change
leading to the state in question. Interesting for us is the fact that according to
Dieninghoff (1904:9) the first and most frequent intransitive verbs to appear
with BE come very close to the mutative prototype: queman "to come" and
werdan "to become". The other verbs which follow chronologically also fit the
posited prototype nicely, e.g., arsterban "to die", erbolgan "to get angry",
arqueman "to become horrified", arstandan "to rise", arwerdan "to
5
Vincent (1981) contains an extremely important and illuminating discussion of the
developments in Romance to which I am greatly indebted.
6
At times other verbs (e.g. in OHG werdan "to become") are found, at least for a
while, but we will disregard this here.
disappear", and araltên "to become old", ardorrên "to dry up", arfriosan "to
freeze up/over", arhartên "to become hard", and many examples of various
forms of gangan and faran both meaning "to go", with aperfectivizing prefix,
such as antgangan "to escape", fargangan "to go by", and antfaran "to es
cape". In almost all cases the verbs of motion are accompanied by a directional
particle or phrase indicating the goal, i.e. they are telic and punctual. The
frequent use of the prefix ga-, usually said to be a perfectivizer, should
likewise be noted. Oubouzar (1974) also observes that duratives are not
regularly used until later. All of this is quite in agreement with our mutative
prototype: only single participant telic/punctual verbs denoting a change in
position or state are found in the incipient perfect with BR Later the use of BE
is gradually extended to non-prototypical mutatives. Examples are given in
(14), taken from Dieninghoff(1904).
( 14) a. dhazs Christ iu ist langhe quhoman.

"that Christ to you long is come."
b. dhurah inan ist al uuordan, dhazs chiscaffanes ist.
"through him is everything become that created is."
 uuanta arstorbana sint thie thar suohtun thes knehtes sela.
"because died are they who there sought the boy's soul."
d. ther thir si erbolgan.
"he to:you is become:angry."
e. Er ist fon hellu irwúntan joh úf fon tóde irstantan.
"He is from hell returned and up from death arisen."
f. Er diê sundigen ersterben, êr sint sie Góte irdórrêt.
"Before the sinful die, sooner are they to:God dried:up."
g. Fremidiû chint sint irfirnet.
"Other children are grown:old."
Periphrastic forms with HAVE begin to arise somewhat later, but they too
follow their prototype. This periphrastic form is widely held to have arisen
from cases where HAVE had its literal meaning ("to own, possess") and the
participle qualified the state of the object involved.7 The commonly cited
example is phigboum habeta sum geflanzota in sinemo wingarten "Figtree had
some(one) planted in his vineyard." (i.e. "Some[one] had [owned] a fig tree
[which was] planted in his vineyard."), according to the parallel Latin
construction arborem fìcihabebat quidam plantatam in vinea sua. Other exam
ples are given in (15).
7
Two different verbs meaning "to have" are found in OHG, viz. haben and eigan (cf.
the cognate English verbs have and own ).
(15) a. er hábet álegáro gespánnenen sînen bógen.

"he has already drawn his bow."
b. herro, senu thin mna thia ih habeta gihaltana in sueizduohhe.
"Lord, behold your mna which I had held in sweatcloth."8
 Sie eigun mir ginomanan liabon druhtîn mîn.
"They have from me taken dear lord my."
d. du habest dih seibo fertriben.
"you have your self driven:out."
e. Uuir eigen gehôret, truhten, mit unseren ôron daz úns únsere fórderon
zalton.
"We have heard, Lord, with our ears that to:us our ancestors paid."
f. Nu hábent siê dir úbelo gedanchot.
"Now have they to:you badly thanked."
g. so uuir eigun nû gisprochan.
"So we have now spoken."
h. Uuir eigen gesúndot sáment únseren fórderon.
"We have sinned like our ancestors."
It is also crucial to note here that the first participles found in this con
struction are formed from transitive prototype verbs - which take an accusative
(affected) direct object (cf. (15a) through (15d)) - and that this use gradually
spreads to verbs with a dependent that- clause object (cf. (15e)), certain ob
lique objects (cf. (15f)), and finally, with increasing grammaticalization of the
construction, verbs which can take no object at all (cf. (15g) and (15h)). That
is, we find a gradual extension from the transitive prototype to other verbs
here. Note, however, that the verbs used here are not mutative, but rather still
express an action and are by and large perfective, not durative. In fact, the use
of durative, especially statai, verbs with HAVE only comes in slowly, as the
extension from the transitive prototype reaches farther out. Time does not
permit us to further pursue this development here, but suffice it to say that our
prototype account appears to handle things very well. The claim is that there
are prototypes for HAVE andBE as auxiliaries, that the development begins
with these and that gradual extension takes place in various directions until all
verbs are covered by one of the perfect auxiliaries.
5. A crosslinguistic comparison: German, Dutch, French and

Italian.
Besides such diachronic data, we can also observe interesting differences

in such extensions from the prototype when we compare the synchronic
Cf. the Latin original: domine, ecce mna tua, quam habui repositam in sudario.
distribution of HAVE and BE across modern languages which have these two
verbs as perfect auxiliaries. We will consider here the languages for which data
was most readily available: French (Byrne & Churchill 1986, Huffmann
1977),9 Italian (Centineo 1986, Turtle 1987), German (cf. Paul 1902, 1918;
Curme 1960:287ff.; Drosdowski 1984:121ff.; Jørgensen 1966: 32ff.;
Helbig & Buscha 1975; and Heidolph 1984), and Dutch (cf. Kern 1912 and
Geerts 1984:518ff.). When it comes to extending from the prototypes to cover
all verbs in the language in terms of an obligatory binary grammatical category,
there is no single correct way to slice up the semantic pie, and alternatives are
often possible. In fact, there appears to be a sort of cline from French, on one
hand, where the use of BE is rather restricted, through German and Dutch,
where its use is much more widespread, finally to Italian, where extensions
from the prototype have proceeded the farthest, even to statai verbs.
In all these languages BE is used at least with some verbs which very
closely approximate the prototypical mutative. In all four languages BE is
used with at least some prototypical telic/punctual verbs of motion. In French
this is largely restricted to a rather small class of high frequency, core
vocabulary items like aller "to go", venir "to come", arriver "to arrive",
partir "to leave", monter "to go up", descendre "to descend", tomber "to
fall". All of these verbs evince lexical semantics which inherently includes
directionality toward the goal or end point and are thus not easily construed as
simple activity verbs which happen to involve motion, such as nager "to
swim" or courir "to run", for instance; more on this later when we discuss
'motional activity verbs'. In the other languages this class of verbs is much
larger and includes virtually all verbs of motion with an undergoer subject,
although as we will see later the use of HAVE vs. BE is also at times sensitive
to transitivity factors such as telicity.
Furthermore, all these languages contain at least some inchoative (change
of state) verbs which are conjugated with BE Once again, in French this class
is very restricted, being limited to a few very frequent and highly prototypical
verbs such as devenir "to become", mourir "to die", and naître "to be
born".10 In the other languages this class is much larger, essentially being
extended to all pertinent intransitive inchoatives. Significantly, the verbs in
9
Huffmann's very illuminating approach to the problem of perfect auxiliary selection
in modern French is quite kindred to the approach adopted here in that it too proposes a
semantic motivation for the use of HAVE vs. BE. However, he does not invoke prototypes
or transitivity and thereby misses something, I feel.
l0
Huffmann (1974) mentions changer "to change" as a verb taking BE in the perfect,
but this observation seems to be incorrect, as was pointed out in discussion by Maria
Manoliu-Manea.
French which take BE include those which first are found with BE in the
history of German outlined above and they are all among the verbs which take
BE in the other modern languages considered, i.e. the French BE- verbs appear
to constitute a (proper?) subset of the BE- verbs in the other languages. There
thus seem to be grounds for maintaining that French has for some reason
restricted the use of BE largely to a few prototypical, high frequency mutative
verbs, whereas the other languages have extended this class to cover all verbs
of this type and others as well. The endpoint of such a restriction of the use of
BE is the exclusive use of HA VE as the perfect auxiliary, which we find today
in most of the Romance languages and among the Germanic languages for
example in English (cf. Shannon Forthcoming b). However, the case of
certain central Italian dialects discussed in remarkable detail and with keen
insight by Tuttle (1987) demonstrates that when syncretism occurs in the
perfect auxiliary it does not always have to be HAVE which wins out. Due to
certain special developments which Tuttle clearly lays out, in these dialects BE
has become the universal perfect auxiliary. To my knowledge, however, in all
other languages the universal auxiliary resulting from syncretism has been
HAVE.
Things become even more interesting when we consider other extensions
of BE Strangely enough, in all four languages the verb meaning "to remain"
- hardly very close to our prototype - takes BE. Why should BE be used
here, even though the verb expresses no change and is thus not mutative?
First of all, note that this verb does not fit either prototype very well; in fact, it
is the antithesis of activity/action verbs as well as of imitatives. Secondly, its
subject is not an actor but an undergoer, i.e. the THEME or PATIENT located in a
given position or state. Moreover, there is a sense in which the subject is in a
resultant state, namely as the result of not changing, e.g., by deciding not to
change/move. Its meaning could be paraphrased as "not-", whereas
all the other verbs considered contain BBCOME in their semantic representation,
according to Van Valin (1988) and Centineo (1986). Note also that this implies
that in the negative "to remain" entails a change: if one does not remain a
linguist, for instance, one necessarily becomes something else. Finally,
traditional studies in German (cf. Paul 1902; Curme 1960) point out that at
least in some uses bleiben is or was mutative: for instance, Er blieb stehen.
"He stood still." [lit. "He remained stand(ing)."]. These various factors could
all have converged to motivate the use of BE with this verb.
Whatever the ultimate explanation, the use of BE with "to remain" seems
to have possibly served as a link for further extensions to at least some statai
verbs in all the languages except French, which has clearly stopped here (and
probably even retreated historically). For example, in all these languages
except French - the language where the use of BE is most limited - the verb
"to be" takes BE as its perfect auxiliary. Once again, this is not a prototypical
BE- auxiliary verb (nor a prototypical HAVE- auxiliary verb, for that matter);
but the use of BE with "to remain" may well have served as a model for at least
this modest extension in the use of BE as a perfect auxiliary to the "most
general single lexical item that expresses a predication of location" (Lakoff
1987:497).
From here the remaining three languages differ greatly, which should not
surprise us, given that outside the prototypes the borders are fuzzy and there
is therefore more than one possible way to fit the other verbs in the language
into the rigid grammatical choice between BE and HAVE. Italian has extended
the use of BE to statai verbs, for example, whereas standard German has
practically stopped here. However, in dialects we find a different picture: it is
a well-known fact that in Southern German 'basic level verbs of location' (La
koff 1987) like stehen "to stand", liegen "to lie", and sitzen "to sit" take BE,
contrary to the largely Northern influenced standard language.11 This appears
to be yet another step in extending the use of BE to non-prototypical non-
mutative statal/locational verbs. In fact some dialects (cf. Paul 1902:205),
e.g., certain Swiss ones, have gone even farther and use BE with other
locational verbs like wohnen "to dwell" and the non-actional schlafen "to
sleep". Of the standard languages, however, Italian has extended BE the
farthest. According to Centineo, BE is generally used with statai verbs such as
"to exist", "to belong", "to please", "to be enough", "to lack", "to live" (the
latter also with HAVE). Both Dutch and Italian also extend BE to aspectual
verbs like "to begin" and "to end" (typically intransitive), whereas standard
German uses HAVE here.12 In Dutch, there are even some apparently transi
tive verbs which take BE in the perfect, including verbs like verliezen "to
lose", vergeten "to forget", volgen "to follow" and beginnen "to begin" in its
11
In fact, the use of BE with a verb of position like sitzen allows Southern Germans
to distinguish two different meanings here: Er ist/hat gesessen. With BE the verb has its
literal meaning of sitting and hence designates a basic positional state, whereas with HA VE
it takes on the idiomatic meaning "to be in jail, to sit out one's sentence" and thus refers
more to a durational activity, a (most unpleasant) way of "spending time". In Standard
German both meanings are possible, but not distinguished by the auxiliary, since there only
HAVE is possible for both meanings.
12
Note, however, that in Northern German the use of BE with verbs of beginning such
as anfangen is quite common according to Curme (1960:293), as I can confirm from
conversations with Northern Gomans.
transitive use.13 We do not have time to discuss these very interesting cases in
detail here, but it should be noted that these verbs have highly non-agentlike
subjects which could be interpreted as undergoers in a sense, so that the use of
BE here is in all probability not fortuitous. In addition, further diachronic
developments which we cannot go into here may also be at work in these
instances; cf. Shannon (Forthcoming a, §4) for more on such cases as these in
Dutch and German. Once more, although we perhaps could not predict that
these verbs would take BE, we can certainly see a rationale behind it.
Finally, no doubt the most striking difference between German and Dutch
on the one hand and Italian and French on the other is the use of BE with
reflexives in these Romance languages and HAVE in Germanic. How - and
why - could this be? First of all, note that transitive reflexive verbs do not
fully correspond to the transitive prototype in that the subject is not maximally
differentiated from the object; hence it is in a sense an 'affected actor' in a
sentence such as She washes herself (Ger. Sie wäscht sich, Fr. Elle se lave).
Moreover, in so-called medio-passive reflexive constructions like The door
opened (Ger. Die Tür öffnet sich, Fr. La porte s'ouvre), the subject is really
a very non-potent entity in Hopper & Thompson's (1980) schema and hence
more an undergoer than an actor in Foley & Van Valin's (1984) terms. Vincent
(1981) claims that the statistical frequency of this medio-passive usage led to
the shift to BE here, but if this were the case then why did no Germanic
language develop the use of BE with similar reflexives? It would appear that
something else in addition was going on in Romance.
As I see it, there are at least two other factors found in Romance but not in
Germanic which may have played a crucial role here. First of all, in Romance
the reflexive pronoun has become a preverbal clitic, thereby losing its
privileged status as a clear, independent argument of the verb (e.g., in French
it apparently cannot be stressed by itself, contrasted or moved)14 and instead
becoming incorporated into the verb as a detransitivizing prefix to the verb.
Furthermore, the past participle in Romance agreed with the undergoer object.
Now the reflexive object pronoun did not of and by itself signal the number
and gender of the object, especially in the third person, and so the participle
13
In German too there are some apparently transitive verbs which take BE such as
durchgehen "to go through" (cf. Helbig/Buscha 1975: 116), as in Der Jurist ist die
Paragraphen durchgegangen. "The lawyer went through the paragraphs.".
14
Interestingly enough, according to Burzio (1986:62f., 396ff.) this is not necessarily
true in Italian. When the intensivized reflexive pronoun se stess-a/-o is used contrastively
after the verb - thereby, it seems, regaining independent argument status - the auxiliary
HAVE is found instead of BE.
(i) Maria si e accusata, but (ii) Maria ha accusato se stessa.
actually looked as if it was agreeing with the subject - which had the same
features for number and gender as the reflexive but expressed them more clear
ly; cf. French examples with a feminine subject and participial agreement such
as Elle s'est lavée or La porte s'est ouverte. Since the past participle agreed
with the undergoer, this may well have signaled to speakers that the reflexive
was not really a separate argument and moreover that the subject was in fact
the undergoer - which would of course have motivated the use of BE, not
HAVE. These last two factors were missing in German and Dutch, where the
reflexive retains its lexical integrity as an argument, not becoming a clitic, and
there is no agreement in the past participle, this having been given up early.
Therefore there was no chance for a similar scenario in these languages and
hence reflexive verbs have always been conjugated with HAVE in the perfect.
Once again, although we perhaps could not predict these developments
beforehand, we can at least make good sense out of them in view of these dif
fering facts about the languages in question.
In summary, comparing these four languages in the use of HAVE and BE
as perfect auxiliary we have claimed that the similarities and differences to be
observed are motivatable, if not fully predictable, by viewing the developments
in terms of prototypes and extensions away from them, which may differ to a
certain extent from language to language but can be seen as plausible in terms
of the semantic motivations involved. Time precludes further consideration of
other interesting differences between all these languages, but we will mention
at least a few of them in the next section, in which we will discuss the use of
HAVE and BE in Dutch and German with particular reference to Hopper &
Thompson's (1980) transitivity parameters.
6. Regularities in the synchronic distribution of the perfect

auxiliary in German and Dutch: the effects of transitivity.
Both the historical development of the perfect auxiliaries HAVE and BE

and their cross-linguistic spread seem to follow closely the posited prototypes.
To this day the same is true of modern German and Dutch: in both languages
verbs (closely) approximating the transitive prototype take HAVE, whereas
clear mutatives take BE However, the farther away from the prototypical ex
tremes we get, the more room for variation we find. It is clear that in a number
of non-prototypical cases there is room for differences of interpretation, since
the criteria are 'fuzzy' (cf. LakofF 1987) and allow for varying possibilities of
construal. The second claim of this paper is that Hopper & Thompson's
(1980) transitivity parameters are relevant to auxiliary selection, and we will
demonstrate that now with examples from German and Dutch.
Perhaps this can best be seen in examples where a given verb can take
either HAVE or BE, but with fairly clear semantic differences which corre
spond to our prototypes. In both languages we find many transitive/causative
versus intransitive/resultative verb pairs such as auftauen/ontdooien "to thaw",
brecben/breken "to break", heilen/genezen, helen "to heal", reißen/scheuren
"to tear", schmelzen/smelten "to melt", trocknen/drogen "to dry",
verderben/bederven "to spoil", verbrennen/verbranden "to burn (up)" and
ziehen/trekken "to pull, move". The relevant parameters are number of
participants, volitionality and potency of the subject and affectedness of the ob
ject or subject (i.e. actor versus undergoer subject). Here the verbs relate very
closely to the opposite prototypes and therefore take the corresponding perfect
auxiliary (cf. (16) and (17)).
(16) a. Er hat das Eisen gebrochen/geschmolzen.

b. Hij heeft het ijzer gebroken/gesmolten.
"He has broken/melted the iron."
c. Das Eisen ist gebrochen/geschmolzen.
d. Het ijzer is gebroken/gesmolten.
"The iron broke/melted."
(17) a. Ich habe das Rohr abgebogen.

"I bent the pipe."
b. Ich bin nach rechts abgebogen.
"I turned [lit. "bent"] right."
However, not just the inherent lexical semantics of the main verb is im
portant but also the meaning of the whole clause and differences in construal
along the transitivity parameters. For instance, in both languages certain
'motional activity verbs' can be interpreted as either denoting an action - the
focus is on the actor doing something, in which case the auxiliary is HAVE -
or as denoting a change of position - the focus is on the subject reaching a
spatial goal, in which case the auxiliary is BR The relevant parameters seem to
be agentivity, punctuality (perfectivity), and telicity. Thus intransitive verbs of
motion normally take BE in both languages, because even though the subject
may act under its own power, the view is toward its being affected in the sense
of changing position - especially if a goal is mentioned. However, for at least
some intransitive activity verbs involving motion in both languages HA VE or
BE can be used in the perfect, depending on whether the emphasis is on the
change of position toward a goal or simply on the manner and/or type of
activity involved. This leads to well-known contrasts as in (18).
(18) a. Viele Leute haben getanzt.

b. Vele mensen hebben gedanst.
"Many people danced. "
c. Die Kinder sind nach draußen getanzt.
d. De kinderen zijn naar buiten gedanst.
"The children danced outside [= goal]."
Similar examples can be found with any number of other verbs of motion
in both languages: HAVE places emphasis on the activity itself continuing in
time (non-punctual, and usually non-telic as well). Thus rudem/roeien "to
row" can designate an activity with no focus on change of position - and
indeed with the advent of stationary rowing machines for exercise need not
involve any movement at all! - and then take HAVE as in (19); cf. (21b) also).
However, in a row boat change of place is also usually involved and BE is
preferred, especially when the event is characterized as punctual and telic by
the presence of a directional phrase as in (20). In such cases the focus is on at
taining an endpoint or directional goal (cf. (22a) and (22b)), which also
correlates with the occurrence of different adverbs. However, the tendency
with pure verbs of locomotion seems to be to use BE always, even when
atelic, especially in German; this is the reason why some speakers seem to
accept or even prefer the use of BE in examples like (19a) and especially (21a).
(19) a. Ich habe/??bin stundenlang geschwommen/gerudert,

b. Ik heb/*ben urenlang gezwommen/geroeid.
"I swam/rowed for hours. "
(20) a. Ich bin/*habe zur anderen Seite geschwommen/gerudert,

b. Ik ben/*heb naar de overkant gezwommen/geroeid.
"I swam/rowed to the other side."
(21) a. Die Kinder *haben/sind viel (herum-)gesprungen.

b. De kinderen hebben/*zijn veel (rond-)gesprongen.
"The children jumped (around) much."
(22) a. Das Kind ist/*hat vom Stuhl (runter-)gesprungen.

b. Het kind is/??heeft van de stoel gesprongen.
"The child jumped (down) from the chair."
Undoubtedly similar differences could have been found in earlier stages of

these languages as well. However, the differences are often quite subtle and
since we do not have access to native speaker intuition, it is much more
difficult to get a handle on what was going on in each instance. But this does
not necessarily mean that semantic differences of the type observed here in the
modern languages were not involved. A good type of example comes from
motion verbs in apparently telic, and therefore, we would assume, punctual
usage with directionals. Although in such instances we often find BE, as we
would expect, there are surprising examples with HAVE, for example the
Middle High German sentence given in (23), cited by Curme (1960:288).
(23) durch weihe schulde die helde her gevarn han.
"for what purpose the heroes have come here."
Now it might be claimed that such examples prove that a semantically

based account is doomed to failure, since we find HAVE in a context that
would clearly seem to call for BE. However, once again this appears to
involve a matter of at times subtle semantic distinctions: even though there is a
directional present, "the idea of an action in gevarn is more prominent than
that of goal" (Curme 1960:288). In view of the absence of native speakers of
Middle High German to corroborate this, it might seem that such a claim is no
more than handwaving, or at least begging the question. But Hoekstra
(1984:177) notes just such cases of different semantic focus in modern Dutch,
although he does not make much of the point. His examples are given in (24).
(24) a. dat ik (urenlang) gewandelt heb/*ben.
"that I have walked for hours."
b. dat ik naar Groningen gewandelt heb/ben.
"that I have walked to Groningen."
Hoekstra himself observes a subtle semantic difference here:

In [the] case that zijn is selected, a suitable paraphrase would be 'that I went to Gro
ningen on foot' [focus on change of position, arriving there, i.e. telic achievement,
TFS], whereas the sentence with hebben is more appropriately paraphrased with
'that I was walking on my way to Groningen' [emphasis on the activity, not on
reaching the goal, TFS].
Since we find such comparable examples in modern Dutch with precisely the
meaning differences we would expect based on our account, one should not be
too hasty in claiming that the use of the auxiliary in examples from older stages
of a language like (23) is arbitrary and not associated with any discernible
differences in meaning or construal.
It should also be noted that the conceptual imagery used to encode a given
concept in a language is very important in understanding the motivation for the
use of a given auxiliary. Moreover, the conventional image employed may in
fact change over time, thereby also leading to a possible change in the
appropriate perfect auxiliary. For example, in older stages of German (and
Dutch) träumen (Du. dromen ) "to dream" occurred with a dative experiencer
and often with the dream content as the subject (25).
(25) a. mir ist getroumet hinte von angestlîcher nôt, wie allez daz gefügele
were tôt.
"to:me is dreamed last night of frightful calamity, how all the birds
were dead,"
b. (hi) dachte dattet hem gedroemt waer.
"he thought that:it to:him dreamt was."
In Modern German and Dutch, however, the experiencer is the subject, not the
dative object (26), and the dream content - if expressed at all (cf. (26a), (26d))
- can be the direct object ((26b), (26e)) or the object of a preposition ((26c),
(260).
(26) a. Ich habe heute nacht schlecht geträumt.

"I had a bad dream last night."
b. Ich habe etwas Schreckliches geträumt.
"I dreamed something terrible."
c. Sie hat von ihrem Vater geträumt.
"She dreamed about her father."
d. Ik heb vannacht naar gedroomd.
"I had a crazy dream last night."
e. Je hebt het zeker gedroomd.
"Surely you dreamed it."
f. Ik heb van u gedroomd.
"I dreamed about you."
The change in grammatical construction here appears to be due at least in

part to a switch in the conventional imagery employed to depict the process of
dreaming. Evidently the conceptual image has changed from one where a
dream is portrayed as something that enters one's consciousness ('to appear to
someone in a dream'; cf. ModGer. im Traum erscheinen "to appear in a
dream" with BE ! ) to one where it is viewed as something that one does while
sleeping. The former conceptual image is based on the so-called conduit
metaphor (cf. Reddy 1979, Lakoff & Johnson 1980): mental contents, includ
ing dreams evidently, are objects which can move through mental space. Mo
dern German and Dutch still have any numberof parallel expressions of mental
content utilizing this metaphor (cf. Shannon, Forthcoming b, §5 for more on
this). The modern experiencer subject is no doubt part of the general shift
away from such an impersonal 'dative experiencer' construction to personal
experiencer subjects (cf. Seefranz-Montag 1983; Shannon Forthcoming a).
Important for our purposes, the difference in imagery also motivates a different
perfect auxiliary: the imagery with metaphorical movement induces the use of
BE whereas the non-motional activity image leads to the use of HAVE
Continuing our discussion of varying construais based on Hopper &
Thompson's transitivity parameters, it appears that volitional control can in
some instances lead to a verb of motion being construed as denoting an activity
as opposed to a telic/punctual change of position and hence taking a different
auxiliary in the perfect. According to Curme (1960:291; cf. also Drosdowski
1984:122), with verbs which denote driving (in) a vehicle like fahren "to
drive", fliegen "to fly", BE is always used when the motion of the vehicle is
not under one's own control and one is therefore just a conveyed passenger, as
in (27b), whereas HAVE may be found when the subject is actually in control
as the driver, as in (27a). 15
(27) a. Er hatte in Wien zehn Jahre gefahren.

"He had driven in Vienna ten years."
b. Wir sind heute nach der Stadt gefahren.
"We drove to the city today."
Of course the telic/punctual versus atelic/durational distinction holds as

well. Moreover, if the focus is on an aspect of the motion as an ongoing acti
vity, thereby 'distracting attention' from the goal and hence change of position,
then HAVE may be found (cf. Curme 1960:291). This focus may be on the
manner or kind of motion, or the distance and/or length of time spent engaged
in the activity and not on reaching the endpoint. Therefore, this different focus
suggests more the actional (atelic) reading with HAVE, as in (27c) and (27d);
and (28a) and (28c) versus (28b) and (28d).
(27)  Er hat schlecht gefahren.

"He drove poorly."
d. Sie hat fünf Kilometer gefahren.
"She drove five kilometers."
(28) a. In seiner Jugend hat er gut geritten.

"In his youth he rode well."
b. Er ist fortgeritten.
"He has ridden away."
 Als wir drei Wochen marschiert hatten.
"When we had marched (for) three weeks."
15
Not all present-day speakers of German accept the use of HA VE in examples (27) and
(28) from Curme. The tendency nowadays seems to be to use exclusively the auxiliary
which most closely matches the prototypical meaning of the verb, i.e. BE. In addition, the
unusual use of nach der Stadt instead of in die Stadt in (27b) should also be noted.
d. Wir sind in drei Tagen hierher marschiert.

"We marched here in three days."
Further examples of this kind are found in (29) and (30). In (29), begeg
nen "to encounter, meet", which normally takes BE, may be used with HAVE
to mean "to treat, handle" according to Curme (1960:292) when emphasis is
placed "upon the idea of a conscious agent acting with intention". Similarly
with einbrechen in the examples given in (30).
(29) Er ist/hat mir hart begegnet.

"He has met me hard."[-"He dealt harshly with me."]
(30) a. Dunkelheit ist eingebrochen.

"Darkness is broken [= settled] in."
b. Der Dieb hat eingebrochen.
"The thief broke in."
Note that in the latter example the volitional aspect involved is also heightened:
the subject is more an ACTOR, not a THEME. Thus (30b) can even be passivized
(cf. (30c), whereas (30a) cannot be (cf. 30d), thus showing that the subject in
(30b) is more agentlike than in (30a). The same holds true for (29),
incidentally. Hence it appears that focusing on the situation as a
controlled/willed act rather than on the change of position can shift the
auxiliary from BE to HAVE
(30)  Gestern abend wurde bei uns eingebrochen.

"Last night there was a break-in at our house."
d. *Gestern abend wurde von der Dunkelheit eingebrochen.
Continuing on, we should note that if a given verb of motion is used tran
sitively with a (PATIENT) direct object (31) - including reflexives (32) - it of
course takes HAVE
(31) a. Er hat/*ist den Wagen zur Garage gefahren,

b. Hij heeft/*is de auto naar de garage gereden.
"He drove the car to the garage."
(32) a. Ich bin/*habe nach Hause gelaufen.

"I ran home."
b. Ich habe/*bin mich außer Atem gelaufen.
"Iranmyself out of breath."
The situation is perhaps even more interesting when the verb is used
intransitively but the subject does not denote the THEME (the 'thing moved'). As
Jørgensen for example (1966:34; cf. Curme 1960:292) observes, when the
subject of verbs of motion like fließen "to flow", laufen/rinnen "to run",
tropfen "to drip" denotes the entity which moves (i.e. PATIENT or THEME ), as
is normally the case (cf. (33a), (34a)), the auxiliary is BE; furthermore, we
can note, if the subject is human, e.g., with laufen, the clause may passivize,
but not if the subject is inanimate, as in (33b), (34b). However, when these
verbs are found with a 'transposed subject' indicating the SOURCE/LOCATION of
the movement (cf. (33c), (34c)) instead of the PATIENT or THEME, then the
auxiliary is HAVE (and, we note, passive is not possible; cf. (33d), (34d)),
since the meaning then corresponds more to that of the HA VE- auxiliary type
(non-affected subject, less of an UNDERGOER, durative).16
(33) a. Der Wein ist aus dem Faß gelaufen/geronnen/geleckt.

"The wine ran (flowed)/leaked out of the keg."
b. *Vom Wein wird aus dem Faß gelaufen/geronnen,
 Das Faß hat gelaufen/geronnen/geleckt.
d. *Vom Faß wird gelaufen/geronnen/geleckt.
(34) a. Das Wasser ist auf den Boden getropft.

"The water dripped onto the floor."
b. *Vom Wasser wird auf den Boden getropft,
 Der Wasserhahn hat getropft.
"The faucet dripped."
d. *Vom Wasserhahn wird getropft.
Moreover, there are a number of intransitive change of state verbs in both

languages which can take either HAVE or BE: HAVE is used when the duration
of the action or event is focused on, whereas BE is found when the com
pletion or result is the focus (cf. (35)). This list appears to be much larger in
German, where it includes verbs such as altern "to age", bleichen "to bleach,
fade", faulen "to rot", gären "to ferment", heilen "to heal", reifen "to ripen"
and trocknen "to dry", as in ((36); cf. Curme 1960:290). Note that in
several instances focus is on the manner of the process being carried out, not
on the actual attainment of the final state. However, the current tendency
seems to be the use of BE in all cases, regardless of the contextual semantics.
Moreover, several of these verbs also have transitive counterparts, which of
course only take HAVE.
l6
Centineo (1986) points to the existence of similar cases in Italian as well.
(35) a. Es hat heute nacht gefroren.

b. Het heeft vannacht gevroren.
"There was a frost last night."
 Das Wasser ist zu Eis gefroren.
d. Het water is tot ijs gevroren.
"The water has frozen to ice."
(36) a. Die Wunde hat gut/ist geheilt.
"The wound healed (well)."
b. Die Wäsche hat gut/ist getrocknet.
"The laundry has dried (well)."
Finally, the individuation of the object - Hopper & Thompson's (1980)

final transitivity parameter - can also play a role in perfect auxiliary selection.
Thus, as we noted earlier, fahren "to drive" when used transitively takes
HAVE, as in (31) and (32) above. However, if the object is not individuated
and indeed non-referential, meaning "to drive a car" in the generic sense, we
find BE, as in (37a). One finds a similar situation with other complex verbs
such as Ski fahren "to ski" (37b).
(37) a. Er ist noch nie Auto gefahren.
"He has never yet driven[a car]."
b. Sie ist oft Ski gefahren.
"She has often skied."
These non-referential 'objects' seem to become incorporated into the verb

as a kind of adverbial qualifier of the motion and lose any possible status as the
affected entity to which energy is transferred. In a parallel sense one might
want to say that the reflexive pronoun in Romance discussed above is
incorporated into the verb as a meaning qualifier and thus loses it status as an
independent argument, thereby leading to the detransitivization of the verb in
question.
7. Perfect auxiliary choice and irrealis in Middle Dutch.
So far we have seen that the developments with regard to the historical
rise and synchronic regularities of usage with the perfect auxiliary in these lan
guages have pretty accurately reflected what we would expect based on our ac
count of the transitive and mutative prototypes. We have also seen that almost
all of Hopper & Thompson's transitivity factors such as volitional/non-
volitional, agency, telic/atelic, and especially punctual/durative seem to be
involved in motivating a switch from BE to HAVE. However, there remain
two final parameters of potential influence which have not come up yet in our
discussion and deserve mention in this connection: affirmation and mode. The
examples given by Paul (1902) for German and by Kern (1912) for Dutch
strongly suggest that both these factors for a time at least motivated a switch
from BE to HA VE with mutatives.
The most interesting examples in this regard are those cited by Kern
(1912) from Middle Dutch which demonstrate the influence of irrealis versus
realis. Though this is not always the case, Kern found that with the irrealis
forms there seems to have been a strong tendency to use HAVE with mutative
verbs, which normally or otherwise exclusively took BE. I cite here a few
relevant examples of this sort in (38) from a wealth of material which Kern
collected. In each case the verb in question otherwise takes BE as its perfect
auxiliary, but in the irrealis (and often negative!) context cited HAVE is used
instead. In the examples given in (38) instances of HAVE instead of the usual
BE are indicated by italics, the page references from Kern in brackets.
(38) a. en had ghebroken niet syn speer, hy wær doot [267]

"had his spear not broken, he were [= would have been] dead"
b. had cristus nie verresen [270]
"had Christ not arisen"
 haddict gheweten,... ic hadde ghecomen te hare [268]
"had-I-it known,... I had [= would have] come to her."
d. ne hadde hi niet om dusent marc binnen Nimaghen ghebleven.
"he wouldn't have stayed in Nijmegen for a thousand marks."
The irrealis context appears to lessen the mutativity of the clause in a

sense, since the change is portrayed as one that did not or would not have
taken place and therefore HAVE could be seen as the more appropriate
auxiliary in such contexts. Hopper & Thompson (1980:277) note that "as a
reduced assertion of the finite reality of the state or event referred to by the
clause, irrealis forms could be expected to occur in less Transitive
environments"; this seems to be the case here. Since BE is the more restricted
auxiliary of the two and HAVE the apparent default case which includes non-
mutatives, it is not surprising that the latter auxiliary might occur in just these
semantic contexts with verbs which otherwise always take BE As far as I can
see, no other account leads us to expect such a development nor helps us to
understand its motivation. I find Kern's observation that irrealis, one of Hop
per & Thompson's ten transitivity parameters not otherwise observed as influ
encing the choice of perfect auxiliary, should play a role in perfect auxiliary
selection after all a marvelous confirmation of the correctness of the general ap
proach adopted here.
8. Conclusion.
In this paper I have attempted to outline an alternative, semantically based
analysis of perfect auxiliary selection. Instead of previously offered purely
syntactic accounts in terms of the vague, empirically inadequate, and unexpla-
natory notion of unaccusativity, an analysis based on prototype theory and
transitivity was presented here. It was claimed that there are prototypes for
both transitive and mutative clauses and that these relate directly to the use of
HAVE and BE as perfect auxiliaries. We then argued that our approach nicely
accounts for the historical rise of HA VE and BE as perfect auxiliaries in
German. Moreover, due to the inherent fuzziness of the criteria beyond the
prototypes, there can be differing extensions from the prototypes, which leads
to variation cross-linguistically and within a language. It was claimed that our
approach can make plausible sense of this variation in synchronic distribution
by showing the regularities of the semantic splits. However, in order to do so
we must take meaning seriously into account, something recent formal
syntactic theories have been loath to do. I hope that I have been able to
establish here that such an undertaking is not only possible but also fruitful in
leading, or perhaps returning, to a more insightful and realistic picture of
linguistic structure as it is embedded in the larger context of cognition and
meaningful human communication.
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Byrne, L. S. R. & E. L. Churchill. 1950. A Comprehensive French Gram-
mar, 3rd edition completely revised by Glanville Price. London: Black-
well. (3rd ed., 1986.)
Centineo, Giulia. 1986. "A lexical theory of auxiliary selection in Italian".
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FUNCTIONAL DIFFERENTIATION IN THE EMERGING
ENGLISH STANDARD LANGUAGE: THE EVOLUTION OF A
MORPHOLOGICAL DISCOURSE AND STYLE MARKER
DIETER STEIN
Justus-LiebigUniversität Gießen
The history of the replacement of -th by -s in the third singular present

indicative of English verbs (singeth vs. sings ) is a long and intricate one.
The -s first surfaced in 10th-century Northumbrian texts, and during the
Middle English period (1100-1500) gradually worked its way south until
around 1700, when the Modern English state of affairs was reached with -th
found only in liturgical and facetious use. This replacement process is a
convenient testing ground for all kinds of linguistic theory, as it obviously
involves quite different problems at different stages. They include questions
such as where the ending came from in the first place, how it got from the
second person - where it was originally concentrated - to the third person,
what the factors were that favored the victory of -s over -th, how the fact that
English is the only language with an ending solely in the third singular relates
to the prediction from natural morphology that this is universally a most
unpreferred state of affairs, and what kind of external factors were involved in
the replacement. Treatments of the various problems include, without
attempting to provide a comprehensive bibliography, Holmqvist (1922), Bernd
(1956), Stein (1986), Stein (in press) and Markey (1987).
The present paper addresses itself to the latter stage of the replacement
process only, and primarily to the latter of the problems mentioned above. The
point of departure is a time at the end of the Middle English period, for there is
good reason to assume that -s was the normal ending of the spoken language
in the whole country by 1500 (Holmqvist 1922:132, 185). The primary
explanandum is what must seem, from the frequencies of the two endings in
the extant written documents, a reversal of a diachronic trend. In terms of
frequencies the texts show an actual increase in the outgoing -th forms up to
just before 1600, at which time there is a rather sharp and sudden drop in -th
forms. In the 17th century -th is still present in a variety of texts, but clearly
constitutes an exception and as such is deliberately used as a marked form with
certain kinds of meaning which will be at the center of interest in the latter part
490 DIETER STEIN
of this paper. The central concern and explanandum of this paper is, then, the
interruption of the direction of change at the end of the 15th century, the
predominance of the -th forms in written texts in the 16th century and the
sudden end of this morphological Indian summer at the close of the century.
I would suggest that an explanation of this pattern of development must
make reference to the rise of a written standard (certainly not a spoken one)
from the 15th century onward. The replacement of -th by -s was in its final
stages, with the awareness of -th as an older ending still existing in the minds
of the people who acted as trendsetters for the emerging written standard. The
act of settling for the older ending is one aspect of the development of a
medium with its own norms or markers which sets it off against other contexts
and purposes of language use. Its difference from the spoken language is a
functional necessity: as with all linguistic norms, the difference from other
contexts and purposes of use, i.e. other varieties and registers, is part of the
identity of that norm and variety. A formal difference in linguistic norms is the
necessary correlate of the difference in function. The new written norm takes
over the 'high' functions formerly carried out in Latin and French:
administration, law and clerical matters previously utilized another - prestige -
language. The signaling of 'otherness' or 'difference', formerly represented
by the difference in language, is now transferred to a language-internal vehicle
as a resource of its own. For English, coming into its own as a national
language, i.e. the rise of English from a lowly status to an antonomous
language carrying all functions - high and low, involves using its own
resources in defining linguistic norms for domains of high functions. The use
of the older form is therefore a linguistic vehicle in functional elaboration.
It is not difficult to identify the trendsetting decisions which led to the
association of -th with the written register of high domains. Caxton,
introducing the printing press around 1476, settled for the old form. Prior to
Caxton, and perhaps the decisive influence prior to and on Caxton in this
respect, was the development of the written standard of the Chancery and the
Signet Office, which settled for the old ending (Richardson 1980:733). The
influence of the Chancery Office cannot be overrated, as this was what people
heard or read as language 'from above', thereby providing the critical
association between written authority and morphology. Further and later
factors contributing to the 'high' connotation of the form were the use of the
form in Tyndale's New Testament (1525) and Cranmefs Book of Common
Prayer (1549), with the Authorized Version (1616) continuing and cementing
the tradition of high domain and liturgical use. The effect of all this was the
association of -th with the written medium and 'high' functions, as the latter
were essentially carried out in the written medium.
A MORPHOLOGICAL STYLE MARKER IN ENGLISH 491
The situation in the 16th century - and the revival of -th in quantitative
terms - is therefore a consequence of the emergence of the national language as
an autonomous language with functional elaboration and the selection of an
indigenous resource as a register marker. Despite the fact that the bulk of all
written and preserved documents belong to that register and thus increasingly
remove the spoken language from our eyes, there are numerous windows on
the form of the spoken language at the time. Thus there are cases like Harvey,
who in private correspondence prefers -s, but in writing to the Master of his
College prefers -th (Wyld 1953:33 and passim). While official documents,
the higher literary prose and pamphlets all have -th, diaries are a borderline
case, depending on the social situation of the writer. Thus Thomas Hoby, a
traveling diplomat, uses -th 99% of the time in his diary; Henry Machyn, a
supplier of funeral trappings, uses -s. It is also significant that -s should
occur in proverbs in the middle of a text with otherwise exclusively -th
(Harman 1565:86, 32). It is typical, too, that the genre nearest to colloquial
spoken language and lowest on the scale of stylistic formality, i.e. drama and
the early novel or narrative excluding Euphuistic writing (cf. below), should
have -s. Marlow and Shakespeare have -s.
There are two more phenomena cited by Holmqvist (1922) which tally
with our interpretation of an influence of standardization, and which would
otherwise be very difficult to explain. The first one is the reversal of the
replacement of the old Southern indicative plural ending (all persons) -th by
•en (they loveth vs. they loven ). Holmqvist (1922:150 and passim ) notes
that here too we witness a revival and clear increase in frequency of the old -th
in the course of the 15th century, after it had been completely supplanted by
-en. The second phenomenon concerns the syncopation of -eth in poetry.
Holmqvist (1922:165 and passim ) notes that "the gradual progression of
syncopation seems to have been checked towards the close of the 15th century
and sounding of the vowel to have been the rule again about the middle of the
next century". The common denominator for all these phenomena seems to be
the acquisition by -th of a connotation of high domains in written language.
Of course, -s or written -es (never pronounced syllabically) continues to be
used in poetry beside syllabic -eth for obvious metrical purposes. Wherever
the extra syllable is needed, the older ending -eth appears, making for "a quite
unexpected distribution, one in fact without parallel in the history of the
English language, which depended on the contrast of verse vs. prose,
'respectable' vs. popular (if prose), and the time factor" (Görlach 1986:4). The
distribution in the 16th century is less mysterious if we include the process of
the evolution of a written standard and functional elaboration in our perspective
on the distribution of -th and -s, including the plural and syncopation
492 DIETER STEIN
reversals, and also bear in mind that markers of linguistic norms are never
100% categorical. The genre in which we should least expect this is poetry,
with its metrical exigencies. It also fits in perfectly with our hypothesis that
with Lyly and Sydney the printers replaced "manuscriptal -es by the more
formal spelling -eth (Gõrlach, ibid.). This is not only what "must be
reckoned with" (Gõrlach, ibid. ), but what would be expected.
Connected with the register connotation of -th is a specific stylistic
association of -th. There were several stylistic ideals in the 16th century which
included as an essential component the idea of a "vernacular prose as an art of
fine writing" (Krapp 1963:310). The creation of such a vernacular prose style
is another part of the coming into being of English. It is another facet of
acquiring functional autonomy. After a phase of experimentation the
Euphuistic style, so called because of the two Euphues novels by John Lyly
{Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit, 1578, and Euphues and his England, 1580),
is the first full-fledged, elaborated vernacular prose style in English. It was a
tradition of "fineness and bravery of speech" (Krapp 1963:310), of "fine
writing for fine gentlemen" (Krapp 1963:313). The aim was to provide
Year of Origin % of -s
Ascham Toxophilus 1545 6
Robynson More's Utopia 1551 0
Knox The First Blast of the Trumpet 1558 0
Ascham The Schoolmaster 1570 0.7
Underdowne Heliodorus' An Aethiopian History 1587 2
Greene Groats-Worth of Wit; 1592 50
Repentance of Robert Greene;
Blacke Bookes Messenger
Nashe Pierce Pennilesse 1592 50
Spenser A View of the Present State of Ireland1596 18
Meres Poetrie 1598 13
Dekker The Wonderfull Yeare 1603 84
Dekker The Seven deadlie Sinns of London 1606 78
Drummond A Cypresse Grove 1623 7
of Hawthornden
Donne Devotions 1624 74
Donne Juvenilia 1633 64
Fuller Historie of the Holy Warre 1638 0.4
Jonson English Grammar 1640 20
Milton Areopagitica 1644 85
Daniel A Defence of Rhyme 1607 62
Daniel The Collection of the History of England1612-18 94
Table 1. % of -s in texts of the 16th and 17th centuries.
profitable instruction in an agreeable form. In an age in which a doctrine of

station, appropriateness and decorum was of paramount significance, the style
must be appropriate to the high matters: -th is obligatory. To fit the linguistic
decorum is another reason for choosing an ending that is no longer the one of
the spoken language. Again the difference to the spoken colloquial language is
iconic, this time for the loftiness of the matter.
This state of affairs - -th as a marker of high register and style - persists
until the 1590s. Between 1590 and 1600 there is a dramatic and sudden drop
in the frequency of -th, and -s is the normal ending (Table 1). This abrupt
change in morphology exactly correlates in time with a change in
morphology in those genres which had -s as the predominant ending, like
drama. In those latter texts, -th had been confined to main verbs whose stem
ends in a sibilant and where the ending is therefore syllabic {purchaseth ), and
to the auxiliaries (hath, doth). As described in more detail in Stein (in press),
the years around 1595 witness an equally sudden shift towards -s in those
residual contexts. Table 2 gives for the Shakespeare corpus (1590-1611)
the diachronic distribution of -th and -s with have and do. It can be seen
that from the middle of the chronological extension of the corpus onwards,
just before the turn of the century, -s forms of have and do suddenly appear
in greater numbers. This higher written prose reaches a diachronic stage in a
morphological development at the very moment the dramatic genre leaves that
stage and moves on in a kind of phase-shifting or chain development.
The interesting point is that both processes - the shift in the higher prose
and the shift in the dramatic language - happen at the same time and are rather
abrupt. The very fact of this abruptness alone is an important piece of
evidence that we are not dealing with some sort of 'natural' or language-
internally triggered change. Rather, the reason may well have to be sought in
an external, sociological factor. I would like to offer the following
speculation. The type of literature with which the form was associated - fine
literature for fine gentlemen - was becoming unpopular in view of the rising
middle class and gentry whose pastimes were certainly not this type of courtly
Euphuistic literary delectation. As the courtly style goes down, so does the
linguistic decorum associated with it. This social process, together with the
rise of Baconian prose and the scientific movement, may very well have been
instrumental and critical for putting a sudden end to the revival of the old form.
This hypothesis seems not implausible in light of smother development which
seems socially determined: the rise of the middle class is thought to be
instrumental in ousting the second person pronoun in English (thou), because
its bid for social power involved the claim to the finer and higher plural
pronoun you, causing the descent of thou. The social changes at the time can
494 DIETER STEIN
Play doth does hath has

1 21 1 62 3
2 32 - 60 1
3 35 - 52 -
4 36 - 65 1
5 16 - 34 -
6 30 - 59 2
7 16 6 35 8
8 14 1 53 2
9 43 - 37 -
10 48 - 64 -
11 32 1 70 -
12 31 - 38 -
13 41 1 64 -
14 39 - 52 2
15 30 3 52 2
16 58 3 64 7
17 24 1 74 3
18 33 2 58 6
19 30 4 35 3
20 25 1 52 3
21 13 24 35 20
22 27 27 65 10
23 7 18 61 22
24 37 9 60 16
25 6 24 52 28
26 24 9 71 7
27 17 16 67 9
28 15 18 55 14
29 6 24 52 19
30 5 29 44 23
31 9 19 51 35
32 9 24 29 33
33 19 11 38 16
34 20 8 79 7
35 7 23 42 31
36 13 15 26 7
Table 2. Morphology of auxiliaries in Shakespeare.
hardly be underestimated in their triggering effect on structural changes of the

language of the times on all levels, not only phonology. Further support for
this hypothesis comes from the fact that the courtly Euphuistic style was
obviously noticed and commented upon, especially as it spilled over into the
spoken language as a kind of "affected speech" to "Parley Euphueisme"

(Krapp 1963:362), and was satirized in a Shakespeare play before the turn of
the century (Krapp, ibid. ).
What happens around 1600 is that -th ceases to be a register or style
marker in the sweeping sense as in the 16th century. But, apart from the well-
known liturgical and biblical residues there are some more interesting fossils of
this function late into the 17th century which seem to have gone unnoticed. -th
lingers on for some time with have and do and the sibilant ending main verb
type. In addition, there are various standard contexts such as sayings, general
truths and the mention of God. Those are not the interesting cases. The
interesting cases are those where individual authors use the now marked form
in a way which exploits its old register and style connotation.
The Cornwallis Correspondence is a family correspondence (1630-1644)
concerning domestic and private affairs. The letters are written mostly to Lady
Cornwallis, who remarries to become Lady Bacon. The great majority of
letters has -s, with significant exceptions. The main one is her suitor and later
husband (31-th, 3 -s, always excluding sibilant ending main verbs and
auxiliaries). The suitor is in a position of politeness vis-à-vis Lady
Cornwallis, and in this deferential position uses -th, as does the future
mother-in-law in writing to Lady Cornwallis (3 -th, 1 -s ). This function of
-th is reminiscent of the old pronominal contrast between thou and you. This
explanation is in accordance with the instance, quoted above, of Gabriel
Harvey using different endings in writing to different people. It would also
explain the different morphological behaviors of the two nieces, where one
(Dorothy Randolph) has the expected morphology (36 -s, 4 -th), but the other
(Mary Countess of Bath) deviates by having 6 -th and 0 -s. In accordance
with the above hypothesis, this could be connected with the fact that the latter
niece lived in destitute conditions and repeatedly had to ask Lady Cornwallis
for help, putting herself in a lowly and deferential position vis-à-vis the
addressee. This factor of social and personal relationship seems indeed a
plausible common denominator for the use of -th in this corpus of letters.
The letters by Dr. Thomas Browne (1660-1685) may be divided into two
groups, those to his younger son and those to his older son, a practicing
physician, leaving aside the letters he wrote to women. The letters to his
younger son, fourteen years of age and on an educational trip to France,
contain private matters, essentially advice and admonishments. They show
less use of -th than the letters to the older brother. In this latter group, -th
regularly appears in the discussion of medical matters, of science and of the
well-being or otherwise of his patients. The old ending in ( 1) below is clearly
tied to the domain dimension of register.
496 DIETER STEIN
(1) [Jan. 1, 1664-5.]

Honest Tom,
God blesse & protect thee & mercifully lead you through the wayes of
his providence. I am much greived you have such a cold, sharpe & hard
introduction, wch addes newe feares unto mee for your health, whereof
pray bee carefull & as good an husband as possible, wch will gayne you
credit & make you better trusted in all affayres. I am sorry you went
unprovided with bookes without which you cannot well spend time in
those great shipps. If you have a globe you may easily learne the starres
as also by bookes. Waggoner you will not bee without wch will teach the
particular coasts, depths of roades & how the land riseth upon severall
poynts of the compasse. Observe the variation of the compasse.
Blundevill or Moxon will teach you severall things. I see the little Comet
or blazing starre every cleare evening; the last time I observed it about 42
degrees of hight about 7 aclock in the constellation of Cetus or the whale,
in the head thereof. It moveth west & northerly, so that it moveth
toward Piscis or Linum Septentrionale piscis. Ten degrees is the utmost
extent of the tayle. Anno 1580 there was a comet seen in the same place
& a dimme one like this discribed by Mæstlinus. That wch I saw 1618
began in Libra & moved northward, ending about the tayle of ursa major.
It was farre brighter then this & the tayle extended 40 degrees, lasted little
above a moneth. This now seen hath lasted above a moneth alread[ie]
so that I beleeve from the motion that it began in Eridanus or Fluvius. ...
(Dr. and Mrs. Browne to their son Thomas at sea.)
The final example is taken from the Letters from New England (1629-
1638), the collection of letters written home to England by the earliest colonists
of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (56 letters, 455 occurrences of the variable).
The normal ending is -s. The excerpt (example (2)) reproduced here gives a
typical instance of the type of content that appears with -th. In truly
predestinarían manner they see in the abundant natural resources signs of a
(2) [...], where you may see how God blesseth husbandry in this land.
There is not such great and beautiful ears of corn I suppose anywhere else
to be found but in this country, being also of variety of colors, as red,
blue, and yellow, etc., and of one corn there springeth four or five
hundred. I have sent you many ears of divers colors that you might see
the truth of it.
Little children here by setting of corn may earn much more than their
own maintenance. They have tried our English corn at New Plymouth
Plantation, so that all our several grains will grow here very well, and
have a fitting soil for their nature. Our governor hath store of green peas
growing in his garden as good as ever I eat in England.
This country aboundeth naturally with store of roots of great variety and
good to eat. Our turnips, parsnips, and carrots are here both bigger and
sweeter than is ordinarily... (from Letters from New England).
special ruling of Providence, confirming their covenant with God. The eulogy
on the new land - as in the excerpt reproduced - gives evidence for the
correctness of their belief and therefore calls for -th, -s being reserved for
private matters, accidents, or, in short, everything that could be interpreted as
negative evidence. There are two letters by nearly illiterate men, workmen (W.
Hammond and W. Pond), where one would expect -s, especially as their
letters are about personal matters. The fact that their letters show -th can only
be interpreted as hypercorrection. They are aware of the existence of a specific
connotation of -th, but they employ it in the wrong place, probably associating
it with letter-writing generally. In sum, then, these 17th-century uses point
back to and preserve some of the old 16th-century functions of -th as a style
and register marker. Their existence in the 17th century is in fact good
evidence for such a status of -th in the previous century.
Among several open questions is the question why some variable forms
are functionalized in one way and others in another, a question which applies
to analyses of present-day languages, too. For instance, there is no evidence
that the variable of-genitive vs. inflected genitive was functionalized in the
same way (Altenberg 1982). There may be language-specific traditions
determining which structures act as markers (Hartung 1987:332). Concerning
the sudden collapse of the function of -th as a register marker, I suggested a
sociological reason. Another 'embedding' condition may well be the fact that
around that time English developed a vocabulary differentiation along register
lines. It may well be the case that at least for languages like English, register
marking is typologically customarily done by lexemic differentiation.
Finally, the effect of the emergence of a standard language on individual
forms and the rise and effect of text types generally is much too little studied
for English, apart from the effect of demoting certain variants to dialectal and
low-prestige status. The other way round, too often the traditional
explanations of the history of individual forms and structures have failed to
look at this type of external factor and looked for purely internal reasons for
quite surprising turn-arounds in the fate of individual forms. It does not seem
unreasonable to suggest that the 'unnaturalness' of having an inflectional
ending -s in the third singular only is a consequence of the style and register
function of the predecessor ending -th, which may have been prevented from
dropping off by this function. In the East Anglian dialect the third singular
ending was also dropped (he sing), starting in the 15th century, as witnessed,
for instance, by numerous examples in the Paston Letters in the 15th century.
It may well be that this normal process of dropping the third singular ending
was caught in the process by having a register connotation assigned to it. As a
consequence, the habit of marking the third singular was artifically preserved
498 DIETER STEIN
and carried over to the 17th and 18th centuries with their nonnative tendencies,
with little chance for the natural tendency of dropping the ending to continue.
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London: Oxford University Press, Early English Test Society, E.S. IX.
1869.
Hartung, Wolfdietrich. 1987. "Sprachnormen - ihr sozialer Charakter und
die linguistische Begrifflichkeit". Zeitschrift fur Phonetik und
Kommunikationswissenschaft 40:3.317-335.
Holmqvist, Erik. 1922. On the History of the English Present Inflections,
Particularly-th and-s. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.
Krapp, George Philip. 1963. The Rise of English Literary Prose. New
York: Frederick Ungar.
Markey, Thomas L. 1987. "English -s vs. -th in the third person singular;
historical contrasts and cross language argumentation". Paper presented
at the XXIIIrd International Conference on Contrastive Linguistics,
Poznan, Poland, May 5-7, 1987.
Richardson, Malcolm. 1980. "Henry V, the English Chancery, and Chancery
English". Speculum 55:4.726-750.
Stein, Dieter. 1986. "Old English verb inflection revisited". Linguistics
across Historical and Geographical Boundaries. In Honour of Jacek
Fisiak. I: Linguistic Theory and Historical Linguistics ed. by Dieter
Kastovsky & Aleksander Szwedek, 637-650. Berlin: Mouton de
Gruyter.
Stein, Dieter. In press. "At the crossroads of philology, linguistics and
semiotics: notes on the replacement of th by s in the third person
singular in English". To appear in English Studies.
Wyld, Henry C. 1953. A History of Modern Colloquial English. Oxford:
Blackwell.
VERB PHRASE CONJUNCTION IN OLD ENGLISH
ROBERT P. STOCKWELL DONKA MINKOVA
Department of Linguistics Department of English
University of California, Los Angeles
0. •Preliminaries.
Conjunction is of two types: coordinating and subordinating. We are

concerned primarily with coordinating conjunction or coordination, by which
we mean the linkage of hierarchically equivalent syntactic structures through
words such as and, but, either...or, neither...nor, otherwise referred to as
'syndetic parataxis'. We follow Mitchell (1985, I:693) in understanding
'parataxis' to mean
a construction in which sentences or clauses are not formally subordinated one to the
other. When no conjunctions are involved ... we have 'asyndetic parataxis'. When
conjunctions such as ond and ac are present... we have 'syndetic parataxis'.
(This is quite different from the usage of some other scholars, e.g. Shores
(1971:208), for whom parataxis refers to "an independent clause and
dependent clause ... placed next to each other showing a logical relationship,
but not formally joined by a subordinator".)
We do not include what is called asyndetic parataxis in our discussion for
two reasons: (1) it is primarily a semantic phenomenon, not formally marked
in the syntactic system of the language; and (2) instances of it that are singled
out in the literature often allow interpretations ambiguous between coordination
and subordination, as in
9a waes sum consul, Boethius waes haten
then was a-certain consul, B. was named
"Then there was a certain consul, who was named Boethius"
or
"Then there was a certain consul and he was named Boethius",
and furthermore asyndetic paratactic constructions may either involve clearly

demarcated independent clauses, as above, or they may involve verb phrases,
500 ROBERT P. STOCKWELL & DONKA MINKOVA
the second of which is subjectless: what would be called 'Verb Phrase

Conjunction', if there were a conjunction, as in
pa comon on sumne sæl ungesælige ðeofas, eahte on anre nihte, to ðam

arwurðan halgan: woldon stelan ða maðmas ... (Ælfric 164-166)
then came on certain time wicked thieves, eight in one night, to the
venerable saint: wanted to-steal the treasures ...
"Then there came at a certain time some wicked thieves, eight of them on
a single night, to the venerable saint, and they wanted [OR because they
wanted] [OR who wanted] to steal the treasures ...".
We are not prepared to offer a satisfactory analysis of the subjectless

clause woldon stelan ða maðmas ..., but we are satisfied that one should not
conflate the analysis of it with the analysis of explicitly marked conjoined units
("syndetic parataxis").
Old English had rules of conjunction that are similar in some ways to
those in Modern Dutch and German, different in others. We turn now to this
question.
1. Sentence conjunction.
Among the rules which govern the structure of coordinately conjoined Ss

and VPs in Modem German and Modern Dutch are the following:
A. In Modern German and Modern Dutch when both are root clauses,
both must obey the verb-second constraint.
(1) Da waren sie schon, und mit einem Freudensprung sah ich, dass es nur
drei waren.
"There they were already, and my heart leapt up when I saw that there
were only three of them."
(2) Hij heeft zijn boek op gepakt en zijn vrouw heeft de kast open gemaakt.
"He picked up his book and his wife opened the drawer."
B. In Modern German and Modern Dutch when both are subordinate

clauses, both must obey the verb-final constraint in relatively formal styles.
(3) Er hatte es so eilig, dass sein langer texanischer Schnurrbart im Wind

flatterte und seine lange schwarze Zigarre unangezündet im Mundwinkel
hing.
"He was in such a hurry that his long Texas beard fluttered in the wind
and his long black cigar hung unlighted in the corner of his mouth."
VERB PHRASE COJUNCTION IN OLD ENGLISH 501
(4) Ik geloof dat de studenten gekke ideeën hebben, maar dat zij altijd
beleefdzijn.
"I believe that the students have funny ideas, but that they're always
polite."
In less formal styles of German, and under pragmatic conditions

discussed by Dunbar (1985), a subordinate clause may have a non-canonical
verb-second order, e.g.:
(5) Er ist weggelaufen, weil er batte Angst.1

"He ran away because he was afraid."
(6) Ich begegnete jemand, der batte $5000 in der Tasche.

"I met someone who had $5000 in his pocket." (Dunbar 1985:21)
Following the same principles, one finds sentences of a type which might
be analysed as instances of anacoluthon in formal written language, but which
occur in relaxed colloquial styles commonly enough:
(7) Ich glaube, weil er die Karten vergessen bat, und seine Frau hat das
Geld verloren, ist der ganze Abend ruiniert.
"I believe that because he forgot the tickets and his wife lost the money,
the whole evening is ruined."
2. V P conjunction. 2
In VP conjunction, the two VPs are ALWAYS parallel in structure, order of

elements, etc., that is, there are no examples, to our knowledge, of even
colloquial or dialectal deviations comparable to (7):
(8) Dort sitzt der Präsident und verwaltet ein Budget von vier Milliarden
Kronen.
"There sits the president and manages a budget of four billion crowns."
1
There is disagreement among native German speakers we have consulted about the
grammaticality of this example: some literate and linguistically sophisticated native speakers
allow it in colloquial German and others do not.
2
We assume that Old English, like Modern English, was not a Pro-Drop language - a
language like Italian or Spanish in which the subject may be specified only in the affixes of
the verb (our reasons for this belief are given below). Therefore, we distinguish between
Sentence Conjunction and Verb Phrase Conjunction in Old English, though the two are
commonly conflated in philological studies of Old English word order.
(9) Ich glaube, dass er die Karten vergessen hat und sein Geld vertieren
wird.
"I think he has forgotten the tickets and will lose his money."
In particular, strings like (10) and (11), corresponding to (8) and (9)
respectively, are strictly ungrammatical:
(10) *Dort sitzt der Präsident und ein Budget von vier Milliarden Kronen
verwaltet
(11) *Ich glaube, dass er die Karten vergessen hat und wird sein Geld
verlieren.
Similarly in Modern Dutch, conjoined VPs are always identical in structure

(except for order of auxiliaries, which is determined by lexical properties of
different auxiliaries):
(12) Ik geloof dat hij de kaart vergeten heeft en zijn geld nooit zal verliezen.
"I believe that he forgot the card and will never lose his money."
(13) *Ik geloof dat hij de kaart vergeten heeft en zal zijn geld nooit
verliezen?
3. Conjunction in Old English.
3 . 1 . Sentence conjunction. During both the early classical

(Alfredian) period and up to the Conquest, CONJOINED ROOT SENTENCES generally
have parallel positionings of the finite verb, but not always:
A. Parallel:
(14) Both clauses verb-initial:

Hæfde Hæsten ær geworht ðæt geweorc aet Beamfleete ... ond wæs se
micia here aet ham 4 (Chronicle 893.46-47)
Had Hásteinn earlier built the fort at Beamfleet ... and was the great
army at home.
"Hásteinn had earlier built the fort at Beamfleet, and the great army was at
home."
(15) Both clauses verb-second:
3
Our thanks to Hilda Koopmann and David Denison for the Dutch examples.
4
Unless otherwise identified, all excerpts from the Chronicle are taken from The Parker
Chronicle in the version edited by A.H. Smith. We cite year and line in Smith's numbering.
ða gesette se munuc ealle ða gereccednysse on anre bec and (eft 5a 5a

seo boc com to us binnan feawum gearum) 5a awende we hit on
Englisc. 5 (Ælfric 8-10)
Then set-down that monk all that sorrow in a book and (later when the
book came to us within a-few years) then translated we it into English.
"Then that monk wrote down all the sorrow in a book and (when the
book came to us a few years later) then we translated it into English."
(16) Both clauses verb-final:

& Hæstenes wif & his suna twegen mon brohte to ðæm cyninge & he hi
him eft ageaf.6 (Chronicle 893.52-54)
and Hásteinn's wife and his sons two one brought to the king and he
them to-him back gave.
"And Hásteinn's wife and his two sons were brought to the king and he
gave them back to him."
B. Divergent:
(17) First clause verb-second and second one verb-final:

Eala ðu bisceop, to bysmore synd getawode ðas earman landleoda and
me nu leofre wære ðœt... (Ælfric 55-57)
Alas you bishop, to shame are mistreated those poor landspeople and to
me now dearer would-be that...
"Alas, bishop, those poor peasants have been mistreated, and I would
rather that..."
(18) First clause verb-final and second one verb-second:7
5
Unless otherwise identified, all the Ælfrician excerpts in this paper are taken from
Ælfric's "St. Edmund, King and Martyr". References are given simply as Ælfric 00, where
00 represents the line number in Needham's edition.
6
It should be clear from this example that by 'verb-final order' we do not mean "strictly
final, before pause" but "structurally final in the sense of Greenberg's Type III", having the
direct object before thefiniteverb, but allowing extraposition of an occasional adverb or even
the indirect object, as in the first clause of this example, and with clausal objects always
extraposed. This particular example is subject to a more problematic analysis, however: if
mon is counted as a clitic, though it would NOT be in van Kemenade's terms (1984:108), the
first clause is verb-second, and of course in her terms the second clause is certainly verb-
second. So it would exemplify verb-second & verb-second rather than verb-final & verb-
final. We have not yet found an absolutely clear case of verb-final & verb-final (except in
poetry, which doesn't count) where neither clitic interpretations nor any sort of extraposition
need be invoked to defend the verb-position categorization.
7
This is the possibility that exists in colloquial German. Our only examples of it are
conjoined subordinate clauses. There are, of course, other ways in which conjoined sentences
may fail to be syntactically parallel, but they are irrelevant to the question of verb placement.
For example, Mitchell (1985, I:706) calls attention to sentences like
For pisum antimbre ic gedyrstlsehte... and eac forŏam pe menn behofìaò' godre lare.
... ða ða Dunstan iung man wæs ond se swurdbora wœs forealdod man.
(iElfric 6-9)
... then when Dunstan young man was and the swordbearer was aged
man
"When Dunstan was a young man and the swordbearer was an aged
man."
3.2. VP conjunction.
3 . 2 . 1 . Parallel order. In Old English, very commonly in the early

classical period and continuing with diminishing frequency right up through
the middle of the 12th century, conjoined VPs have properties, described
below, some of which are not shared by the Modern West Germanic
languages.
In examples (19)-(21), the order of constituents in the second conjunct is
identical to that of the first, as it must be in Modern English, Modern German
and Modem Dutch.
(19) 9a wæron hie mid metelieste gewægde & hæfdon micelne dæl ðara
horsafreten {Chronicle 893.80-82)
then were they with famine distressed and had large part of-the horses
eaten
"Then they were distressed by famine and had eaten most of their
horses."
(20) and se foresæde Hinguar færlice swa swa wulf on lande bestalcode and
ða leode [of]sloh, wæras and wif and ða unwittigan cild8 (Ælfric 35-
37)
and the aforementioned Hingwar suddenly so as wolf on lande stalked
and those people slew, men and women and innocent children
"And this Hingwar that we mentioned before stalked over the land like a
wolf and killed the people, men, women and innocent children."
For this reason I dare ... and also for-the-that men require good learning.
"For this reason I dare,... and also because men require good learning."
In this example the failure of the linked elements to be parallel from a grammatical point of
view follows from the change from personal to impersonal verb. Such examples are in no
way surprising or even deserving of special comment, since it is surely a language universal
that conjoined sentences may be yoked in parallel by nothing more than the logic of the
situation or the (sometimes unfathomable) logic of the speaker: e.g., He stayed on through
the whole session, and it seemed to me a waste of time.
8
In this example there can be no question but that wærasand wif and òa unwittigan cild
must be treated as extraposed, in apposition with òa leode, so that both predicates are verb-
final in structure.
(21) Hi læiden gaeldes on the tunes aevre umwile & clepeden it tenserie.
(Chronicle 1137.39)9
They laid taxes on the towns ever time-after-time and called it tax-for-
protection.
"They taxed the towns at recurring intervals and called it protective
taxation. "
3 . 2 . 2 . Divergent order. But in examples (22)-(23), the order of

constituents in the first conjunct is like that of the majority of main clauses in
Old English prose (either verb-second or verb-third, predominantly the
former), whereas the order of constituents in the second or third conjunct is
like that of many subordinate clauses, especially restrictive relative clauses,
namely verb-final.
(22) ða forrad sio fierd hie foran & him wið gefeaht set Fearnhamme & ðone
here gefliemde (Chronicle 893.21-24)
then intercepted the army them from-in-front and them against fought at
Farnham and the (other-) army put-to-flight
"Then the Anglo-Saxon army intercepted them and fought against them at
Farnham and put them to flight."
(23) He wæs cystig waedlum and wydewum swa swa fæder, and mid
welwillendnysse gewissode his folc symle to rihtwisnysse, and 5am
reðum styrde. (Ælfric 21-22)
He was munificent to-poor and to-widows so as father, and with good
will directed his people always to righteousness, and the cruel punished.
"He was generous to the poor and widowed like a father, and directed his
people always to righteousness, and punished the cruel."
This well-known observation has called forth a good deal of comment but
no explanation that we have found persuasive. We do not expect to explain it
fully here either, but we can try to throw the problem into bolder relief and
perhaps get further insight into the nature of syntactic change. The views of
two major Old English philologists will serve as background to statistics and
some theoretical considerations.
Campbell (1970) constructs an elegant, though not in the end persuasive,
argument that failure of Old English prose to display consistent correlations
between the three main verb positions and clausal types is because "the new art
of prose was influenced at its inception by the old-established art of verse"
(1970:94), in which certain rhythmic considerations outranked syntactic
9
Laud Ms., Earle and Plummer edition.
considerations in the determination of constituent order.10 It is Campbell's

position that there was no basis for distinguishing between 'subordinating' and
'coordinating' conjunctions - all conjunctions, in principle, require
subordinate order "in which the verb may be indefinitely delayed" (1970:93),
and "even co-ordinating conjunctions are syntactically subordinating" (93,
fn.4). His account of the rise of the verb-second rule resonates in Vennemann
(1984), since both emphasize the importance of verb-second order for the
demarcation of main vs. subordinate clauses.11
Mitchell (1985, I:694) weakens substantially Campbell's claim that verb-
final order is a marker of subordination, pointing out that "its validity was not
universal", going on to cite numerous counterexamples, and in the end
rejecting the view that all conjunctions (in particular ond/ac) are subordinators.
He also criticizes the conclusion arrived at in Bacquet (1962) that the order ond
... V is the norm and the order ond V is marked.
As a matter of terminology, Mitchell, like Andrew (1940),12 dislikes the
term 'coordinating' because, as he puts it, "such OE conjunctions as ond and
ac are frequently followed by the element order S ... V, which is basically
subordinate" (1985, I:694). But, as pointed out above, in spite of his
10
Even if one concedes some theoretical plausibility to the prosodic motivation of some
preferred constituent orders in poetry, it would be very difficult, as Campbell admits, to make
a strong stand for poetry as influencing prose. Poetry is both archaic and formulaic, and there
seems little reason to postulate that this kind of language can be so crucial to the subsequent
history of constituent order in a language. Unfortunately, the claim is without any
possibility of achieving a significant measure of empirical confirmation or disconfirmation
from the history of other Germanic languages, as Campbell acknowledges (98).
11
We return to Vennemann (1984) below. Campbell's view about this development can
be summarized briefly: the three orders, to interpret the tradition within which he is
working, are (1) common, i.e. SVX; (2) subordinate, i.e. CONJ S ... V; and (3)
demonstrative, i.e. XSV or XVS where X # CONJ. Since there may be many homophonous
conjunction/adverb sets in Old English (e.g., ða, ðonne, ðær), the distinction between
demonstrative and subordinate may be clarified by choosing XVS [i.e. verb-second] when X
is intended as an adverb, as opposed to XSV when it is a subordinating conjunction.
Therefore, "the demonstrative order is of great value for clarity" (94). "The new prose, with
its need for precision, had to develop a more rigid distinction of demonstrative and
subordinate word-order. It partially achieved this by frequently marking demonstrative clauses
by inversion of subject and verb, thus using the order normal in verse in both demonstrative
and subordinate clauses, when the verb was unaccented ... This frequent use of inversion in
the demonstrative clause [i.e., verb-second in main clauses - RS & DM] had the effect that
the clause without inversion after an introducing word would normally be subordinate." (95-
96).
12
Andrew (1940) favored the 19th-century label 'conjunctive order' for verb-final order
whether in subordinate clauses or coordinate clauses, but the label is no better than, say,
'subordinate order', which is in fact the label preferred by Campbell (1970:93, fn. 2), because
either label links the form to a particular function to which it is not in fact restricted.
acknowledgement that S ... V order is basically subordinate, and that it is

found also after coordinating conjunctions, Mitchell takes the sensible position
(1985, I:713) that "in view of the subsequent disappearance of the order S ...
V it would be surprising if the dictum [of Campbell, quoted above] were
universally valid for OE". In short, we understand Mitchell to have taken the
position that verb-final order is the basic subordinating order, but while he
admonishes us to watch out for it in ond and ac clauses, he is not of the
opinion that such clauses should be viewed as subordinate.13
4. Word order counts.
We now turn to statistical data on conjunct constructions and con

structions with which they must be compared.
4.1. Early Old English. In the 892-900 segment of the Parker

Chronicle, the counts made independently by Bean, Denison and ourselves14
show that in conjunct-VPs, verb-final order is about evenly split with other
orders (mainly verb-second and verb-third = SVO), 18 out of 39 (about 46%),
whereas verb-final order is somewhat rarer in main clauses introduced by
and/ac though perhaps not significantly so - 12 out of 39 (about 30%). Even
at this date, however, both S-conjuncts and VP-conjuncts are considerably less
frequently verb-final than relative clauses, which are about 80% verb-final
according to Bean (1983:102), or subordinate clauses of all types taken
together (somewhat over 60%). In summary form:
Conjunct-VP Conjunct-Main Relative Subordinate

ca.900 46% 30% 80% 60%
Table 1. % verb-final order in conjuncts and subordinates.
13
In this discussion, it is our impression that Mitchell (1985) does not distinguish
sharply between S-conjunction and VP-conjunction, viewing the latter as clauses "in which
the subject of the verbs is the same, but is not repeated" (1985, I:707). From our point of
view, this is not desirable because it loses an important SYNTACTIC distinction: it is precisely
in VP-conjuncts that the most similar modern languages, Dutch and German, DO NOT ALLOW
divergent word orders. Mitchell's viewpoint is a defensible SEMANTIC one, since the subject of
the second VP may be viewed as elided and supplied semantically by identity with that of the
first of the two conjoined VPs.
14
The actual numbers given are our own, which are very close to Denison's; both his
and ours differ from Bean's by about 10% (Denison's estimate).
Denison (1986:283) assigns "intermediate status" to and/ac constructions

of both types (main clauses and VP-conjuncts, in our terms), intermediate
"between ordinary main clauses and full subordinate clauses".15 As he notes
(283):
Conventional studies of OE have repeatedly emphasized that second and subsequent
coordinate clauses [i.e., S-conjuncts and VP-conjuncts, in this context] have a
tendency towards the verb-final order which is often found in genuine subordinate
clauses.
The label "intermediate status" is a reasonable descriptive label for a

situation of roughly this form: main clauses usually are verb-second, true
subordinate clauses usually are verb-final, conjunct main clauses lean toward
verb-final order about one-third of the time, conjunct VPs almost half the
time.16 Though accurate as a description of the facts, this extrapolation leaves
us wondering how to write a grammar from which these proportions will fall
out in a natural way. We agree with Denison (283) in rejecting the idea of
scrapping the main/subordinate distinction in Old English, and in recognizing
the usefulness of Vennemann's (1984) observations17 about the role of verb-
second vs. verb-final order in marking the main/subordinate distinction prior to
the rise of reliable formal marking. As long as verb-late order could be one of
the formal means of signaling subordination, one can see how the relevant
statistics might lean towards a closer match, albeit not consistent or absolute,
between form and function.
There is, however, a serious data problem for this hypothesis: as we
understand the figures we find in Shores (1970:187-197), Kohonen
(1978:134) and Bean (1983:102-104), confirmed by our own counts, verb-
final order in relative clauses was at all dates as frequent as, or up to 30% more
frequent than, verb-final order in other types of subordinate clauses. Now, if
the hypothesis about the functionality of verb-final order is to have data
support, it should NOT be the case that the most clearly marked of all
15
Denison is clearly correct in claiming (283) that "the proportion of main clauses
consistent with V-2 [verb-second] goes up significantly when and/ac clauses are left out [of
total counts]: on my totals from 71% to 84%." But leaving them out deletes 16% of the
data base, and of those 41 clauses only 10 (or perhaps 12) are characterized by verb-final
properties.
16
Conjunct VPs are of two types: following a main clause, or following a subordinate
clause. None of the counts we have seen distinguish between the two types. Our own data
contain too few examples of VPs conjoined to a subordinate clause to warrant a separate
treatment of them, but we are aware of the possible significance of this distinction in a larger
data base.
17
Foreshadowed, as we noted earlier, in Campbell (1970).
subordinate clauses (namely, relative clauses, most commonly with peas an

unambiguous subordination marker)18 should also be the most frequently
verb-final. On the contrary, to support this hypothesis, we should find verb-
final order most commonly in precisely those subordinate clauses where the
form of the subordinating conjunction is homophonous with an adverb. That,
unfortunately, is simply not the case. In Bean's count of the Chronicle, in the
892-900 segment, relative clauses are 80% verb-final (n=38), other
subordinate clause types are only 50% verb-final (n=55). In the 1048-1066
segment, relative clauses are 62% verb-final (n=48), other subordinate clause
types are 47% verb-final (n=86). In Kohonen's count (134) of the Catholic
Homilies of Ælfric, relative clauses are verb-final (or at least 'verb-late', i.e.
S.V. in Kohonen's notation) 56% to 59% of the time (n=246), other
subordinate clause types are verb-final between 50% and 55% of the time
(n=549). In Shores' count of the Peterborough Chronicle 1122-1154, relative
clauses are 60% verb-final (n=56), other subordinate clause types are 25%
verb-final (n=73). In summary:
Relative n Subordinate n
892-900 80% 38 50% 55
1048-1066 62% 48 47% 86
ÆCH 56-59% 246 50-55% 549
1122-1154 60% 56 25% 73
Table 2. % verb-final order in relative and other subordinate clause types.
4.2. Late Old English. About 33% of the main clauses introduced
by and/ac in Ælfric's Catholic Homilies are verb-final in structure, according
to Kohonen (1978:90), which confirms Mitchell's (1964:133) figure of 30%.
Kohonen's figure (1978:191) for VP-conjuncts is 41%. (Mitchell conflates
the two types.) By comparison, real subordinate clauses were still verb-final
55% of the time (Kohonen 1978:134).
4.3. Transition from Old English to Middle English. Ac

cording to Mitchell (1964:133), in the so-called "First Continuation" of the
Peterborough Chronicle, verb-final order with and/ac clauses has reduced to
only about 20%, and only 15% in the second continuation (up to 1154), a
marked reduction from Ælfric's 30% - but not nearly so striking as the change
in subordinate order. Mitchell (1964) is obviously correct that, syntactically -
8
See Mitchell (1984:281) for an enlightening discussion of the status of this particle.
with the CONSPICUOUS exception of word order in subordinate clauses - this

portion of the Chronicle is as close to Old English as to Middle English. He
does not discriminate between main clauses introduced by ond/ac and conjunct
VPs, but in his characterization of both of these, on one hand, and true
subordinate clauses on the other, he makes an insightful observation about a
fact that we believe is the crucial turning point toward Modern English
constituent order, namely (1964:139) that "in subordinate clauses ... the
change [to SVO order in the period of 150 years from Ælfric to the end of the
Peterborough Chronicle] is quite striking".
4 . 4 . Early Middle English. Kohonen (1978:190) shows a highly

suggestive decrease in the verb-final order of VP-conjuncts between 1000 and
1200, specifically between the Homilies of Ælfric and two early Middle
English texts, Vices and Virtues (VV) and Sawles Warde (SW). By his
figures, 41% of VP-conjuncts in Ælfric are verb-final in structure if not
absolutely verb-final,19 20% in VV and only 6% in SW. He shows (90) a
slower loss of verb-finality in coordinate main clauses than in conjunct-VPs:
26% and 12% surviving in his two Middle English texts, as against the 20%
and 6% cited above for conjunct-VPs. These differences are possibly
significant.20
The figures in Sections 4.1 to 4.4 above suggest that there was a
hierarchy of loss of verb-final order. The process begins, of course, in main
clauses; then verb-finality disappears in conjunct-VPs, faster than in conjunct
main clauses (perhaps because the perception of parallel structures - totally
realized in the modern languages - is more accessible); next it happens in
conjunct main clauses; and finally verb-final order disappears in the most
highly marked subordinate clauses.
The discrepancy between the rates of disappearance of verb-finality in
conjunct main clauses versus conjunct VPs is of consequence for the issue of
whether Old English was or was not a Pro-Drop language, like (say) Modern
Italian or Spanish.21 We do not believe it was, for the following reasons:
19
His category is labeled S.V., which allows some extraposition but is fundamentally
XV in the order of constituents.
20
In St. Edmund, the figures are more dramatic than in Kohonen's count: 45% verb-
final order in main clause conjuncts vs. 21% verb-final order in VP-conjuncts, in the first
210 clauses.
21
The position that Old English was a Pro-Drop language has been taken by respectable
scholars - for example, Shannon (1964), Brown (1970) and Palmatier (1970) all assumed that
there were as many clauses as finite verbs. On the other hand, Shores (1971) explicitly
rejects this manner of counting, asserting that "This study, unlike the other recent studies of
Old English syntax, did not treat the coordinated predication as a clause" (104). Though
(a) If it had been, then second conjunct VPs would really be clauses and
should follow rules of conjunction identical to those followed by
conjoined clauses with overt subjects.
(b) Putting aside the second conjunct VPs which are at issue, and looking
elsewhere for Pro-Drop examples (i.e. freely in main or subordinate
clauses), we find only a very small number, with only one type occurring
with sufficient frequency to be of interest. This one type has a noun
clause as logical subject without an expressed anticipatory 'hit' (the latter
type of course also occurs commonly):
(24) ... pæt him wærlicor wære, pæt hi sumne dæl heora landes wurðes
æthæfdon ... Ælfric Catholic Homiliesi.316.23 in Mitchell 1985, I:629)
... that to-them more-friendly would-be, that they some part of the value
of their land retained ...
"... that it would be more friendly to them if they retained some part of
the value of their land ... "
(c) If Old English had been a proper Pro-Drop language, it should be

possible to find, with some reasonable frequency, sentences of the form
S VPsg & VPpl, which are rare even in poetry (where Pro-Drop is much
more common than in prose, where it is an archaic but frequent stylistic
convention).22 Mitchell (1985, I:633) captures the puzzle succinctly.
calling them clauses, Bean (1983) counted them separately, allowing subsequent scholars to
make accurate comparisons (which, on this point, are precluded by the decisions made as to
clausal assignment in Shannon, Brown and Palmatier), as did Kohonen (1978). He dealt
quite explicitly with what he calls the relation between ellipsis and word order (190), where
by "ellipsis" he means second conjunct VPs (in our terms). His statistical information is
quoted earlier in this paper. Mitchell (1985, I:629) asserts simply that "When the same
subject serves for more than one simple sentence or co-ordinate clause, it can be repeated by a
personal pronoun, but need not be. This is true whether the parataxis is syndetic or
asyndetic."
22
A rare prose example is singled out by Mitchell (1985, I:709) in the Chronicle entry
for 871:
(25) & pa. hergas begen gefliemde & felapusendaofslægenra & on feahtende wæron op niht
& the armies both put-to-flight [2nd sg. or ppt.] and many of-thousands slain [ppt.] &
at fighting were [3rd pl.] until night
"& (he) defeated both armies and many thousands were slain, and (they) fought on until
night.*
Mitchell's assumption that this is a valid example is possibly incorrect: Smith suggests that
gefliemde is to be taken as a past participle (1935:27, fn. 19) with wseron, in which case
the translation is "& both armies were defeated and many thousands were slain and (both
armies) werefightinguntil night".
the non-expression [as distinct from equi-deletion - RS & DM] of a pronoun subject
which can be supplied from a preceding clause must be accepted as idiomatic OE ....
But the fact that it occurs (or survives) only spasmodically is hard to explain.
It would be even harder to explain on the assumption that Old English

was a regular Pro-Drop language.
5. Possible explanations.
A. Perhaps ond/ac are not to be taken as real coordinating conjunctions

having the properties generally associated with coordination. Indeed, perhaps
they should be taken as subordinating conjunctions, as Campbell (1970)
argued. An argument which would strongly support this position would
consist of showing that ond/ac sentences in Old English have, with a
reasonably high degree of regularity, subordinating semantic readings -
purpose, time, cause, condition, concession, result, etc. With some ingenuity,
it is possible to provide semantic readings of many ond clauses which can be
assigned, at least plausibly, to these various subordinate types,23 but after
exhausting one's ingenuity it is impossible not to agree with Maisenhelder
(1935:62),24 quoted by Mitchell (1985, I:716) with the note that "the truth of
this will be apparent... ":
Thus, in all instances where and has the sense of "that", "but", "when", "until",
"for", this is not the result of the meaning of "and" but of the meaning and
interrelationship of the sentences linked by "and".25
Also, an obvious formal property which may well be decisive, if ond/ac

were on a par with genuine subordinating conjunctions, one would expect to
find at least some instances of the subjunctive verb forms that are so typical of
many subordinate clause types. If they exist at all, they are extremely rare and
certainly atypical.
B. Perhaps these verb-final examples survive as fossils of an earlier

perfectly consistent SOV stage in the history of the language. But this
explanation is ruled out on several grounds: (1) The examples are not
formulaic expressions of the type that might be explained by fossilization: they
23
See especially Maisenhelder (1935); Mitchell (1985, I:715) provides a good sample of
plausible adverbial relations.
24
In alien Fällen also, wo and den Sinn von "dass, aber, als, bis, denn" erhâlt, liegt dies
nicht etwa an der Bedeutung von and, sondern an dem Inhalt und gegenseitigen Verhältnis der
durch and verbundenen Sätze.
25
Mitchell's translation.
are clearly ordinary everyday rule-governed freely generated strings. (2)

There is in any case little reason to believe that Old English or West Germanic
was ever consistently SOV in its surface constituent order. This is not the time
and place to go into detail, but surely the consensus view is that pre-Old
English had a fair amount of verb-finality, of verb-initial, and of course also of
verb-second order. It was probably less head-initial (post-specifying) and
more head-final (pre-specifying), which favors verb-final order as pre
dominant, but that is about as far as one can go.
C. A third explanation, the one we adopt if only for lack of a better one,
is that in Old English the verb-second rule was allowed to apply to the first
conjunct only, the one with the expressed subject where there would be a
surface basis for identifying a verb-second context and main clause status, and
the other VPs were permitted to remain optionally in their underlying order -
on the assumption, of course, that Old English base order was SOV -; then
the domain of verb-second application gradually spread, presumably with the
motivation to make conjunct VPs increasingly parallel in surface appearance,
and ultimately providing the crucial basis for reanalysis of the base order from
SOV to SVO,26 after the rise of formal subordination markers had eliminated
the need for a correlation between word order and the main/subordinate
distinction.
6. Conclusion.
In German and Dutch, the verb-second constraint is an across-the-board

rule, in the sense that it applies to all Ss and VPs in coordination. In Old
26
This question remains vexed; van Kemenade (1987) takes it as settled by Canale
(1978) that English was SVO by 1200, a position with which we agree; but she goes on to
argue that verb-second order had nothing to do with bringing about this change. We have not
yet seen this portion of her dissertation, but we are somewhat skeptical about the claim.
Vennemann (1985:632) has argued that the introduction of verb-second word order into
subordinate clauses (which would create a superficial verb-third order - pa he com ) played a
major role in establishing SVO as the English base order, since it thereby provides a
systematic distinction between main clause order (verb-second) and subordinate clause order
(verb-third). Our view is that indeed the accelerated establishment of SVO in subordinate
clauses (it is the most conspicuous "modemness" about the syntax of the later portions of the
Peterborough Chronicle, as Mitchell has pointed out) played a crucial role, but not for the
same reasons as those pointed out by Vennemann. The claim was made by S.O. Andrew
(1940) that verb-third order is necessarily subordinate in Old English, but many
counterexamples exist and the claim has not been generally accepted. There is much still to
say on this issue, but this is not the place, because the empirical data about the chronology
of unambiguous subjunctions do not yet exist. We pursue this question further in Stockwell
& Minkova (Forthcoming).
English, verb-second order resulted from afirst-VPrule, optionally applying

to subsequent conjuncts or leaving them unchanged. Since verb-final order is
functionally identified with, though not fully correlated with, subordination in
Old English, the option of leaving the verb infinal(or 'late') position, when
taken, would give the surface appearance also of subordination even when it in
fact served no such function. Since the distinction is highly valued in
universal grammar, one supposes,27 this potentially misleading syntactic
signal would have great difficulty surviving.
REFERENCES
Andrew, S.O. 1940. Syntax and Style in Old English. Cambridge:

Bacquet, P. 1962. La Structure de la phrase verbale à l'époque Alfrédienne.
Paris: Les belles lettres.
Bean, Marian C. 1983. The Development of Word Order Patterns in Old
English. London & Totowa, N.J.: Croom Helm.
Brown, William H., Jr. 1970. A Descriptive Syntax of King Alfred's
"Pastoral Care" . (= Janua Linguarum, Series Practica, 101.) The
Hague: Mouton.
Campbell, Alistair. 1970. "Verse influences in Old English style".
Philological Essays in Old and Middle English Language and Literature in
Honour of Herbert Dean Meriti ed. by J.L. Rosier, 93-98. (= Janua
Linguarum, Series Major, 37.) The Hague: Mouton.
Canale, William M. 1978. Word Order Change in Old English: Base
Reanalysis in Generative Grammar. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation,
McGill University.
Denison, David. 1986. "On word order in Old English". Dutch Quarterly
Review of Anglo-American Letters 16.277-295.
Dunbar, Ronald W. 1985. "Context and syntax". Beyond the Sentence:
Discourse and Sentential Form ed. by Jessica Wirth, 11-29. Ann Arbor,
MI: Karoma.
Kemenade, Ans van. 1987. Syntactic Case and Morphological Case in the
History of English. Dordrecht: Foris.
Kohonen, Viljo. 1978. On the Development of English Word Order in
Religious Prose around 1000 and 1200 A.D. Abo: Åbo Akademi
Foundation.
Maisenhelder, C. 1935. Die altenglische Partikel'and'mit Berücksichtigung
anderer germanischer Sprachen. Doctoral Dissertation, Kõnigsfeld.
27
We have no idea how to prove it, but it does seem reasonable that a language should
provide a clear set of markers for this universal or - to weasel a bit - near universal
distinction.
Mitchell, Bruce. 1964. "Syntax and word order in 'The Peterborough

Chronicle'". Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 65.113-144.
Mitchell, Bruce. 1984. "The origin of Old English conjunctions: some
problems". Historical Syntax ed. by Jacek Fisiak. Amsterdam:
Mouton.
Mitchell, Bruce. 1985. Old English Syntax. Oxford: Clarendon.
Needham, G.I., ed. 1966. Ailfric: Lives of Three English Saints. London:
Methuen.
Palmatier, Robert A. 1970. A Descriptive Syntax of the "Ormulum". (=
Janua Linguarum, Seríes Practica, 74.) The Hague: Mouton.
Plummer, Charles, & John Earle, eds. 1892/1952. Two of the Saxon
Chronicles Parallel. Oxford: Clarendon.
Shannon, Ann. 1964. The Descriptive Syntax oftheParker Manuscript of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle from 734 to 891. (= Janua Linguarum, Series
Practica, 14.) The Hague: Mouton.
Shores, David L. 1971. A Descriptive Syntax ofihe Peterborough Chronicle
from 1122 to 1154. (= Janua Linguarum, Series Practica, 103.) The
Hague: Mouton.
Smith, A.H., ed. 1935/1966. The Parker Chronicle (832-900). London:
Methuen.
Stockwell, Robert P & Donka Minkova. Forthcoming. "Subordination and
word order change in the history of English". Presented at the Vienna
Conference on Historical English Syntax, September 1988. Proceedings
ed. by D. Kastovsky. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Vennemann, Theo. 1984. "Verb-second, verb late, and the brace construc
tion". Historical Syntax ed. by Jacek Fisiak, 627-636. Amsterdam:
Mouton.
ÉVOLUTION DROITE OU SINUEUSE
LES PALATALES DU FRANÇAIS*
HENRIETTE WALTER
Université de Haute-Bretagne et
École pratique des Hautes Etudes
Les palatales du français au XIXe siècle.
Parmi les changements phonétiques dont on a la chance de suivre le développe

ment dans ses diverses étapes, certains semblent se dérouler toujours dans le
même sens, alors que d'autres paraissent s'amorcer dans une certaine direction
pour, ultérieurement, changer de cours. A considérer l'évolution récente d'une
partie du système des consonnes du français, on peut trouver une assez bonne
illustration de ces deux types d'évolution dans celles de et de
Toutefois, s'il nous paraît que le passage de s'est fait sans à-coups,
alors qu'on relève dans le cas de un certain flottement, c'est peut-être que
nous acceptons le premier comme un fait acquis, alors que le sort de la nasale
palatale est encore en jeu.
Nous partirons du système consonantique de la fin du XIXe siècle tel
qu'on peut le reconstruire à partir des indications données par Littré (1872) et
par Michaelis & Passy (1897):
* Je remercie André Martinet dont les suggestions ont été déterminantes pour la rédaction de
la version définitive de cet article.
518 HENRIETTE WALTER
On remarque la présence de trois consonnes palatales: une orale la

semi-voyelle , une nasale et une latérale , dont le nombre et la
vitalité permettaient alors de justifier leur intégration à l'intérieur du tableau des
corrélations. Si l'on compare ce système à celui que nous pouvons établir un
siècle plus tard, on constate dans ce dernier le délabrement de l'ordre des
palatales: la disparition de la latérale remplacée par (dans des mots
comme travailler ou bouteille) et une tendance grandissante à la confusion de la
nasale palatale (de gagner) avec la succession [nj] (de panier).
L'évolution de la latérale palatale.
Ces deux évolutions ne coïncident pas dans le temps. A la fin du siècle

dernier, était encore stable alors que le processus d'élimination de
était déjà bien entamé (c'est pourquoi cette consonne a été mise entre paren-
hèses dans le tableau précédent).
Littré constate avec amertume que "la juste prononciation des //
mouillées est souvent manquée [...] à Paris, on les prononce souvent comme
un y: bou-te-ye, a-yeur". Dans l'espoir de corriger "cette prononciation
vicieuse" (Littré 1872:232), il prend grand soin de répéter sa mise en garde
pour chacun des mots comme ailleurs, bouteille, paille, péril ou bail, où il
aurait fallu, selon lui, maintenir la prononciation mouillée que l'on trouve dans
l'espagnol // et dans l'italien gl.
Combat d'arrière-garde, si l'on en juge par ace qu'en disent Michaelis
et Passy, qui considèrent déjà cette prononciation comme un archaïsme que, de
leur temps, on n'entendait plus guère que dans le Midi de la France et en
Suisse (Michaelis & Passy 1897:XVm).
L'élimination de est aujourd'hui pratiquement consommée et l'on
en chercherait en vain des traces dans les usages les plus répandus, tels que
ceux qui sont décrits dans le Dictionnaire de la prononciation du français dans
son usage réel de Martinet & Walter (1973): celui de personnes de tous âges,
d'origines diverses mais de résidence parisienne et de haut niveau d'instruc
tion.
LES PALATALES DU FRANÇAIS 519
Les enquêtes régionales.
On constate la même absence dans la plupart des diverses enquêtes régionales

qui se sont succédé depuis une cinquantaine d'années. Nulle trace de chez
les 409 sujets interrogés par écrit dans un camp d'officiers prisonniers en 1941
(Martinet 1945), chez les 500 étudiants enquêtés en 1962 (Deyhim 1967), chez
les 1.151 sujets poitevins observés entre 1970 et 1974 (Houdebine 1978), chez
les 100 personnes interrogées à Toulouse en 1972 (Borrell 1975), non plus
que chez les 103 informateurs de l'agglomération lilloise, où les 67 personnes
de l'enquête que j'ai moi-même dirigée dans les Mauges de 1977 à 1980
(Walter 1980).
Survivance de la latérale palatale.
Tout cela ne signifie pas pour autant que la latérale palatale avait complètement
disparu de toutes les régions dès le milieu du XXe siècle. Selon Jean Séguy
(Séguy 1950:21), elle était encore attestée à Toulouse à cette époque, mais son
replacement par [j] était déjà en train de s'y généraliser puisque, vingt-deux
ans plus tard, aucune mention de cette consonne n'apparaît dans l'enquête de
Borrell dans cette même ville (Borrell 1975).
Les attestations les plus récentes de cette latérale palatale se trouvent
dans les données de l'enquête que j'ai moi-même dirigée de 1974 à 1980
(Walter 1982). Elle a aussi été signalée à Saurat dans l'Ariège en 1971 (Builles
1973:149), chez une personne âgée, et également dans le Puy-de-Dôme.1
La carte No. 1 présente les résultats de l'enquête Walter. On y constate
la survie de uniquement dans des zones situées dans la moitié sud du
territoire: Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Dordogne, Pyrénées-Orientales, Vaucluse,
Hautes-Alpes, Val d'Aoste et Corse.
1
L'évolution de a été aussi étudiée chez les habitants de Glaine-Montaigut (Puy-
de-Dôme), où la latérale palatale n'est attestée que chez ceux de plus de 46 ans (Potte
1977:191-198).
La confusion de /Á/ et /j/.
Partout ailleurs, l'évolution générale semble s'être produite dans le sens de

à [j], depuis la plus ancienne attestation du phénomène au XVIe siècle (Nyrop
1904, I §351). Au XVIIe siècle, on trouve de nombreuses graphies en y pour
ill qui montrent ce changement de prononication: cayou pour caillou ou fiye
pourfille (Bourciez 1967, §190).
Longtemps considérée comme typique de la petite bourgeoisie
parisienne (Hindret 1687), cette prononciation avec la semi-voyelle [j] au lieu
de la latérale s'est propagée, tout en étant combattue pendant le XVIIIe
siècle. Apparemment sans résultat, puisqu'elle était au contraire devenue
courante, "même chez les personnes très savantes, dans la conversation" vers
le milieu du XVIIIe siècle (Boulliette 1760 et 1788). Il y a bien eu de rares cas
"inverses" comme asseillez-vous, peiller ou faillance pour asseyez-vous, payer
ou faîence (Thurot 1881:299 et Nyrop 1904, I, §351, 2°), mais ils sont restés
sans lendemain.
On signale aussi un certain nombre de phénomènes d'hypercorrection
aboutissant à [lj]. Ces prononciations, déjà signalées pour Paris au XVIIe
siècle (Thurot 1881:300), étaient encore vivantes au début du XIXe siècle
(Desgranges 1821, passim): caliou, calié, roulié, tailieur, valiant pour caillou,
cahier, rouiller, talieur, vaillant2. Mais elles ont été abandonnées.
D'autre part, il y a également eu des hésitations entre et / l / : on
signale boulli, désabiler, gentile pour bouilli, deshabiller, gentille (Rosset
1921:321). Jusqu'au début du XXe siècle, on disait semouille aussi bien que
semoule et noule aussi bien que nouille (Rosset 1921:322-323). Toutefois les
prononciations avec /]/ n'étaient courantes que dans le nord du pays
(Lefebvre 1984:79, 149,-153, 225).
Dans les usages les plus largement répandus, c'est presque sans heurts
que s'est faite l'élimination de la latérale palatale au profit de la semi-
voyelle
2
Il est curieux de constater que Desgranges qualifie d'"affectées" les prononciations talieur et
roulier (pour tailleur et rouiller) mais de "négligée" celle de valiant (pour vaillant).
La nasale palatale /Ñ/: première confusion.
Beaucoup moins directe a été l'évolution de la nasale palatale, qui semble avoir
longtemps hésité entre plusieurs directions et dont le sort n'est pas encore
réglé.
Une première confusion avec /n/ dental se produit dès le XVIe siècle
(Palsgrave 1530:22-23) et, au XVIIe, les attestations sont nombreuses, de
prononciations n pour gn dans agneau, règne, digne, enseigner, signe, signer,
assigner, etc. (Thurot 1881:346-351). A la même époque, Racine, pour
illustrer son nom (ra-cine) avait fait représenter dans ses armes parlantes un rat
et un cygne (Martinon 1913:282-283, note 4). De son côté, La Fontaine faisait
rimer machine avec maligne dans la fable "L'oiseleur, l'autour et l'alouette"
(Fables, Liv. VI, 15).
Au XVIIIe siècle, on trouve aussi anneau pour agneau, peut-être par
désir d'éviter des prononciations [-jo] dans les mots comme eau, beau, seau,
veau, etc. Pour agneau, le Père Buffier (1709:868) précise que l'usage est
partagé: "les gens de lettres prononcent plus souvent agneau, et les personnes
de Cour, plus souvent anneau". Selon Dumas (1733, III:201), "bien des gens
à Paris et en province prononcent aneau en fait de table et de cuisine, mais on
dit agneau, avec le gn mouillé, en fait de bercail et de bergerie".
Cette confusion avec n ne s'est par poursuivie. Pourtant, un mot
comme signet pouvait encore s'entendre avec un n à la fin du XIXe siècle
(Michaelis & Passy 1897:265). Cette dernière prononciation n'avait pas
complètement disparu au début du XXe siècle (Martinon 1913:282-283, note
4) et, de nos jours, on peut encore entendre, à côté de maligne dans tumeur
maligne, la prononciation maline dans elle est pas maline! (Il est vrai que
matine peut être considéré comme un féminin 'régulier' de malin, comme fine,
de fin ou câline, de câlin.)
Deuxième confusion.
C'est la confusion de et /n j / (gagner /panier) qui s'est ensuite manifestée

et qui a perduré, en aboutissant tantôt à tantôt à [n j ].
Cette confusion s'est d'abord produite dans le sens de l'extension de la
nasale palatale , comme on peut le voir par la plupart des exemples3 le plus
3
A de rares exceptions près, par exemple baigner prononcé comme barder attesté chez Van
der Aar au début du XVIIe siècle (Rosset 1911:316).
souvent cités jusqu'au milieu du XXe siècle: mignaîure pour miniature

(Académie 1694 et 1878), opignatre pour opiniâtre (Dobert 1650:106-107),
pagné et jardigné pour panier et jardinier (Hindret 1687), magner, magnière,
magniéré pour manier, manière, maniéré (Dupuis 1836:124), uño pour union
(Grammont 1914:63-64), fagnon pour fanion (Straka 1965:150, note 66).
A la fin du XIXe siècle, Thurot, tout en signalant l'existence de la
prononciation [n j ] (pour gn) estime qu'elle est encore très rare à cette époque:
"La prononciation de l'n mouillée s'est conservée dans l'usage actuel; à la
différence de l'l mouillée, la prononciation ni, qui paraît avoir été répandue au
temps de Richelet, s'entend rarement" (Thurot 1881, II:311). Cet avis semble
partagé par Michaelis & Passy, qui, tout en mentionnant l'existence de
prononciations divergentes, aussi bien pour panier avec[p]que pour agneau
avec [nj] (Michaelis & Passy 1897:321), ne les font pas figurer dans le corps
de leur dictionnaire.
L'articulation vélaire et les articulations relâchées.
Au début du XXe siècle, on trouve chez Bauche (1920:47) la mention d'une

prononciation vélaire [g], caractérisant selon lui les classes sociales élevées.
Georges Straka les mentionne aussi et en fait des mesures instrumentales, en
ajoutant qu'elles étaient plus fréquentes chez les femmes (1952b:341).
Il signale aussi, surtout chez les dernières, des articulations relâchées,
où l'occlusion disparaît4 (Straka 1952a:38 et 1965:149).
On peut encore entendre ce type de [p] faiblement articulé — que l'on
peut noter [J] — dans les disques enregistrés dans les années 50-60 par la
chanteuse de variétés Patachou. Ses nasales palatales sont si relâchées que la
nasalisation en est très peu perceptible.
Les réalisations [g] vélaire sont peut-être à rapprocher de prononcia-
ions comme [bake] pour banquier, [eke] pour inquiet, attestées dans l'usage
de certaines personnes de la haute bourgeoisie et qui vont de pair avec la
prononciation [age], courante à Paris pour Enghien.
4
Straka en 1942 avait effectué des mesures instrumentales sur la prononciation d'une jeune
fille qui présentait des articulations nasales palatales relâchées. Cinq ans plus tard, après la
guerre, ses nasales palatales étaient devenues occlusives: exemple d'évolution sinueuse, sur le
plan individuel.
Une situation confuse dans les années 60.

À la fin des années 60, on a ainsi pour "n mouillé" une situation confuse avec,
selon les individus, des articulation diverses: la vraie nasale palatale occlusive
, la réalisation relâchée l'articulation vélaire [g] et la succession [nj].
Pour ceux qui confondent nasale palatale et succession [nj], la réalisation
doit alors être fréquente puisque des prononciations fagnon pour fanion y sont
encore courantes (Straka 1965:150, note 66).
Mais déjà les jeunes favorisent plutôt la réalisation [n j ], aussi bien pour
des mots du type opinion que pour ceux de type oignon, comme le fait
remarquer Péla Simon à la même époque (Simon 1967:255-256 et 260-263 et
1970:67-69).
Un renversement de tendance.
C'est sans doute entre la fin de la deuxième guerre mondiale et la fin des
années 60 que la tendance à favoriser [n j ] a dû commencer à s'accentuer, mais
elle ne devait pas encore être très sensible en 1941 car, si tel avait été le cas,
Martinet n'aurait pas manqué de poser une question sur la manière dont se
réalisait la confusion, qui devait à l'époque se faire surtout dans le sens de
Ce dernier rappelle (Martinet 1975) qu'il était lui-même sans doute influencé
par son expérience francoprovençale, où était généralisé. Son enquête
générale montre en tout cas que la confusion était en progression à Paris (53%
d'opposition chez les Seniors, mais seulement 11% chez les Juniors — cf.
Martinet 1945:173).
Le témoignage de Marcel Cohen va dans le même sens: dans la 1ère
édition de son Histoire d'une langue: le français, qui date de 1947 (Cohen
1947:325), il indique que les prononciations étaient "variées" et n'en désigne
aucune en particulier. Vingt ans plus tard, dans l'édition de 1967, c'est la
succession [nj] qui est mise en évidence: "ñ est mal prononcé par un certain
nombre de personnes, qui tendent à leur substituer ny" (Cohen 1967:377).
Quelques années plus tard, Martinet revient sur cette question à propos
d'un article où Henri Frei (Frei 1973:487) discutait de l'évolution de l'oppo
sition - / n j / en postulant une confusion généralisée dans le sens de la
nasale palatale unique . À la lumière des résultats du Dictionnaire de la
prononciation du français dans son usage réel (Martinet &Walter 1973) qui
525
Enquête Régions Date État de l'opposition Majorité des confusions en Réf.

Martinet toutes 1941 Confusion en progression Pas d'indication p.171
LES PALATALES DU FRANÇAIS
Deyhim toutes (étudiantes) 1962 Confusion majoritaire Pas d'indication II, p.60
Rittaud-Hutinet Besançon 1967 Confusion majoritaire pp.120-123
Martinet & Walter Parisiens d'origines div. 1968 Confusion majoritaire [nj] passim
Baudrillard Paris (adolescents) 1969 Confusion majoritaire Pas d'indication p.92
Houdebine Poitu 1970 Confusion majoritaire Probablement [nj] p.950
Borrell Toulouse 1972 Opposition majoritaire p.218
Walter toutes 1974 Opposition majoritaire [nj] passim
Lefebvre Agglomération lilloise 1977 En voie de disparition Pas d'indication p.292
Schoch suisse romande (collég.) 1974 Confusion majoritaire Pas d'indication p.13
Walter Les Mauges 1977 Opposition majoritaire [nj] passim
Jacquemin Grenoble 1978 Confusion unanime Pas d'indication p.86
Tassara Paris 1980 Opposition majoritaire [nj] p. 103
Tableau 1: et [nj] dans les enquêtes régionales
manifeste au contraire une majorité de [nj], Martinet montre que "de toute
évidence la tendance a été renversée: de [nj] à au début du siècle, elle allait
de à [nj] dans les années 60.
Martinet insiste également sur le fait que non seulement le n mouillé
traditionnel se prononce alors majoritairement [nj] mais aussi que, parallèle
ment, les prononciations pour aumonier, meunier ou panier étaient
devenues l'exception. Ajoutons que pour chaudronnier, dernier, harmonieux,
harmonium, niable, niais ou opiniâtre, on trouve l'unanimité pour une
prononciation [n j] dans le Dictionnaire (Martinet & Walter 1973). Martinet
(1975) fait aussi remarquer que la prononciation [nj] s'étend également à la
finale pour un petit nombre d'informateurs (campagne avec [-n j ] à la finale)
Les prononciations régionales.
La progression de [nj] et le recul de semblent se manifester aussi dans

différentes régions. Comme on peut le voir sur le tableau I, les seules
populations pour lesquelles l'opposition soit encore majoritaire sont les
habitants de Besançon (l'enquête date d'il y a vingt ans; Rittaud-Hutinet 1970),
ceux de Toulouse (l'enquête date de 17 ans), ceux des Mauges (il y a 10 ans) et
les adultes parisiens (enquête en 1980). Mais les jeunes Parisiens (Tassara
1987:103), comme les plus jeunes informateurs des Mauges, confondent [nj]
et en favorisant [nj]. Ce qui apparaît ainsi, c'est que, à l'exception de ce
qui se produit à Besançon et à Toulouse, lorsque la confusion s'installe, c'est
vers [nj] que vont de plus en plus les préférences, contrairement à ce qui se
produisait avant la deuxième guerre mondiale.
Le parallèlisme n'est qu'apparent.
On peut schématiser ainsi les mouvements des palatales du français tels qu'on
peut les reconstituer en s'appuyant uniquement sur des faits attestés.
Bien que l'on trouve de part et d'autre l'esquisse des mêmes processus,
tels que la perte de la palatalité (/l/, /n/) et la dissociation des deux traits
pertinents ([lj], [nj]), le parallèlisme n'est qu'apparent. En effet, les
confusions avec /l / de la latérale palatale n'ont pratiquement été attestées que
dans le nord du pays, et la dissociation en [lj], signalée en différents endroits,
ne s'est guère maintenue sinon un peu en Belgique. De ce fait, l'élimination de
la distinction entre et / j / au profit de / j / et aboutissant à la disparition de
a somme toute rencontré peu de résistance.
En revanche, la première tentative d'élimination de la nasale palatale par
confusion avec /n/ avait, de son côté, été momentanément acceptée par le 'bon
usage'. Depuis le milieu du XVIIe siècle cependant, c'est la confusion de
avec [nj] qui tente de s'imposer, mais avec bien des hésitations sur la voie à
suivre: confusion en , confusion en [nj], intermèdes en et
Et maintenant?
H est évidemment hasardeux de faire des prévisions car d'autres retournements

de situation sont toujours possibles, mais à l'heure actuelle les jeux semblent
faits et l'évolution a toutes les chances de continuer dans le sens de la
confusion en [nj].
Si donc, comme toutes les enquêtes semblent l'indiquer, , tout
comme , finit par disparaître du système consonantique français, il restera
alors à expliquer quels ont été les facteurs (structuraux, historiques,
sociologiques) qui ont pu déterminer des cheminements aussi différents pour
l'élimination de ces deux consonnes palatales du français.
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Imprimerie nationale.
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Baudrillard, Lucile. 1970. "Enquête phonologique faite en 1968-1969 par les
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direction de Mortéza Mahmoudian). Recherces pédagogiques 43.83-95.
Borrell, André. 1975. Enquête sur la phonologie du français parlé à Toulouse.
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Builles, Jean-Michel. 1973. La commune de Saurat (Ariège). Description
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(non publiée).
Cohen, Marcel. 1947. Histoire d'une langue: le français. Paris: Édition Hier et
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Desgranges, J.C.L.P. 1821. Petit dictionnaire du peuple à l'usage des quatre
cinquièmes de la France [...]. Paris: Chaumerot.
Deyhim, Guiti. 1967. "Enquête sur la phonologie du français contemporain".
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Dobert, Antoine. 1650. Récréations literales et mysterieuses...[sic]. Lyon.
Dumas, Louis. 1733. La bibliothèque des enfans ou les premiers éléments des
lettres. 4 vols. Paris.
Dupuis, Sophie. 1836. Traité de prononciation ou nouvelle prosodie française,
Paris: Hachette.
Frei, Henri. 1973. "Pour l'n mouillé". Travaux de linguistique et de littérature
de Strasbourg 11 487-494.
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Delagrave.
Hindret, Jean. 1687. L'art de bien prononcer et de bien parler la langue
française. Dans l'avant-propos non paginé intitulé "Discours sur le sujet de la
Métode [sic], 9 e et 10epage.
Houdebine, Anne-Marie. 1978. La variété et la dynamique d'un français
régional. Étude phonologique, analyse des facteurs de variation à partir d'une
enquête à grande échelle dans le département de la Vienne (Poitou). Thèse de
Doctorat d'Etat, Univ. René Descartes (Paris V) (non publiée).
Jacquemin, Denise. 1980. "Esquisse d'une dynamique des phonèmes dans le
lexique grenoblois contemporain". Bulletin de l'Institut de phonétique de
Grenoble 9.41-100.
Lefebvre, Anne. 1984. Lille parle: du nombre et de la variété des registres
langagiers. Étude des facteurs sociolinguistiques dans le français de la région
lilloise. Thèse de doctorat d'Etat, Univ. René Descartes (Paris V) (non
publiée).
Littré, Emile. 1872. Dictionnaire de la langue française. Paris: Hachette (Ré
imprimé, Paris: Pauvert-Hachette, 1956.)
Martinet, André. 1945. La prononciation de français contemporain. Témoi
gnages recueillis en 1941 dans un camp d'officiers prisonniers. Genève:
Droz.
Martinet, André. 1975. "Le sort de n mouillé en français". World Papers in
Phonetics (Mélanges Onishi). Tokyo.
Martinet, André & Henriette.Walter. 1973. Dictionnaire de la prononciation du
français dans son usage réel. Genève: Droz.
Martinon, Phillippe. 1913. Comment on prononce le français. Paris: Larousse.
Michaelis, Hermann & Paul Passy. 1897. Dictionnaire phonétique de la
langue française. Hannover: Carl Meyer.
Nyrop, Kristoffer. 1904. Grammaire historique du français. Copenhague:
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Connaissance du milieu et approche phonétique". Les français régionaux,
sous la direction de Gérard Taverdet & Georges Straka, 191-198. Paris:
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Rittaud-Hutinet, Chantai. 1970. Le français parlé à Besançon. Thèse de
Doctorat de IIIème Cycle, Univ. de Dijon (non publiée).
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XVIIe siècle, d'après les remarques des grammairiens. Paris: Armand Colin.
Schoch, Marianne. 1980. Résultats d'une enquête phonologique en Suisse
romande. (= Bulletin N° 2 de la section de linguistique de la Faculté des
lettres de Lausanne). Lausanne.
Séguy, Jean. 1950. Le français parlé à Toulouse. Toulouse: Privat.
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. 1970. "A propos de la desarticulation de la consonne palatale".
Phonétique et linguistique romanes (Mélanges Straka), Vol.I, 67-98 Lyon-
Strasbourg: Société de Linguistique Romane.
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ses traits généraux". Bulletin de la Fac. des Lettres de Strasbourg 1952.1-47.
1952b. "Quelques observations phonétiques sur le langage des
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—. 1965. "Naissance et disparition des consonnes palatales dans
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3.117-167.
Tassara, Gilda. 1987. Étude phonologique et phonétique des semi-voyelles en
français parisien. Thèse de Doctorat de Illème Cycle, Paris: Univ. de la
Sorbonne Nouvelle (= Paris III) (non publiée).
Thurot, Charles. 1881. De la prononciation française depuis le début du XVIe
siècle, d'après les témoignages des grammairiens. 2 vols. Paris: Bibliothèque
nationale. (Ré-impression, Genève: Slatkine, 1966.)
Walter, Henriette. 1976. La dynamique des phonèmes dans le lexique français
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(sous la direction de) 1980. Les Mauges. Présentation de la région et
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P.U.F.
ON THE HISTORY OF GROUNDING MARKERS IN
ENGLISH NARRATIVE: STYLE OR TYPOLOGY?1
BRITA WÅRVIK
Åbo Akademi, Turku, Finland
1. One of the problems in historical linguistics is the relative role of

styles and language types in diachronic change. The study of discourse
markers is particularly likely to bring out such questions. When our data show
a change in the use of a discourse marker during the history of a language, we
may have to decide whether we are dealing with stylistic differences between
the samples of text, or with a genuine historical change. The purpose of this
paper is to discuss such problems in one small area of diachronic text
linguistics: the development of grounding markers in English narrative prose.
I will start with some remarks on grounding in narratives.
2. One of the ways of studying the organization of textual material is to

look at the relative degrees of foregroundedness vs. backgroundedness of
textual elements and the signals of foregrounding and backgrounding.
Linguists interested in these distinctions have mostly concentrated on
narratives. They have used the terms 'grounding distinctions' (Hopper 1979;
Hopper & Thompson 1980; Kalmar 1982; Reinhart 1984; Chvany 1985,
1986; Wårvik 1987), "distinctions between main-line and supportive material'
(Longacre 1981, 1983), 'foregound-background distinctions' (Weber 1983)
and "narrative subordination' (Fleischman 1985). They have found that such
distinctions are not only made in a great number of unrelated languages, but
also that they are frequently signaled by morphosyntactic markers. These
foreground markers or background markers vary greatly both as to their form
and as to their explicitness from one language to another, and they may even
change from one stage of a language to another.2
1
I am grateful for discussions, comments and criticisms on earlier versions of this paper
to Nils Erik Enkvist, Jan-Ola Östman and the members of the Research Group 'Style and
Text' at Åbo Akademi: Martina Björklund, Bo Pettersson, Ànnamari Soini and Tuija
Virtanen. Any deficiencies are, of course, my own responsibility.
2
For studies of grounding markers in various languages see, e.g., Grimes (1975),
Grimes, ed. (1978), Hopper & Thompson (1980), Longacre (1981, 1983) and Tomlin, ed.
532 BRITA WÀRVIK
In this framework 'foreground' stands for the most salient, or main-line

material, which is opposed to the down-graded or secondary material which
we call 'background'. The distinction between foregrounded and back-
grounded pieces of material is not a dichotomy, but a scale according to which
textual elements can be ranked as more or less foregrounded or more or less
backgrounded in relation to each other. Thus, we can consider grounding as a
cluster concept, so that the degree of foregroundedness vs. backgroundedness
of an element is dependent on several criteria, each of which affects its
grounding value, but none of which is alone decisive. A tentative list of
grounding criteria in narratives is given in Table 1 (more about these criteria in
Chvany 1985, 1986; Fleischman 1985; Hopper 1979; Hopper & Thompson
1980; Reinhart 1984; Wallace 1982; Wårvik 1987; also Labov & Waletzky
1968; Longacre 1981, 1983; Osgood 1980; Weber 1983).
This list of grounding criteria is not exhaustive. We can certainly find
further criteria which have to be taken into account. One approach that has to
be related to, or if possible incorporated into, this text linguistic view of
foregrounding is the understanding of foregrounding as 'strikingness' or
'unexpectedness' in literary theory (cf., for example, Van Peer 1985).
As we can see, the criteria are of very variable nature. We can, as
Reinhart (1984) does, distinguish between the criteria that concern primarily
the form and the criteria that concern more the content of the textual element.
Moreover, some of the criteria are dichotomous, while others are scalar. In a
fuller treatment of grounding, such scales would have to be worked out in
greater detail with intermediate steps specified. Finally, it appears that some of
the criteria are weightier than others: we would thus have to order them in
some sort of hierarchy.
3.1. English during its different stages gives us interesting data for a
study of changes in the uses of grounding markers. Text (1) serves as an
illustration of the system of marking grounding distinctions in Modern English
narratives. Verb forms in foregrounded clauses are in italics.
(1) The shapeless mass of darkness he had lifted split apart. It sundered,
and a pale spindle of light gleamed between his opened arms, a faint oval
reaching from the ground up to the height of his raised hands. In the oval
of light for a moment there moved a form, a human shape: a tall woman
looking back over her shoulder. Her face was beautiful, and sorrowful,
and full of fear.
(1987). For studies of diachronic changes in grounding markers see Enkvist (1986),
Fleischman (1985) and Wåvik (Forthcoming).
ON GROUNDING MARKERS IN ENGLISH NARRATIVE 533
Foregrounding Backgrounding
Participants referential non-referential

S = subject; definite indefinite
O = object individuated non-individuated
agentive S non-agentive S
highly affected O little affected O
Verb/predicate simple tenses compound tenses
perfective imperfective
telic atelic
punctual durative
dynamic static
unique repeated/habitual
realis irrealis
affirmative negative
purposeful accidental
volitional non-controllable
Main-clausiness main clause subordinate clause
finite clause non-finite clause
Temporal event/action forwarding event/action off
sequentiality the story-line the story-line
Figureness figure ground
Prominence prominent down-graded
Salience salient non-salient
Vividness vivid (intense, active, less vivid
dynamic)
Speaker-motivation/ human non-human
'Me First' animate inanimate
socially or culturally socially or culturally
close far
Topicality given participant new participant
Table 1. Grounding criteria in narrative text.
Only for a moment did the spirit glimmer there. Then the sallow oval
between Ged's arms grew bright. It widened and spread, a rent in the
darkness of the earth and night, a ripping open of the fabric of the world.
Through it blazed a terrible brightness. And through that bright
misshapen breach clambered something like a clot of black shadow,
quick and hideous, and it leaped straight out at Ged's face. (Le Guin
1980:61.)
In Modern English the main burden of marking grounding distinctions in

narratives is carried by main-clausiness and the tense-aspect system.
Backgrounded elements are, by definition, textually subordinate. Thus the
534 BRITA WÂRVIK
contrast between main clauses on one hand and subordinate clauses and other
less clauselike constructions on the other correlates with the distinction
between foreground and background. Subordination, abbreviation and
nominalization indicate backgrounding, for instance, (that) he had lifted (Text
(1), line 1), reaching from the ground up to the height of his raised hands
(1:3) and a ripping open of the fabric of the world (1:9-10). In the tense-
aspect system the principal contrast in narratives is between affirmative,
indicative simple past tense forms and other forms. This is evident from Text
(1) where the verb forms evaluated as foregrounded are all simple pasts. Here
most of the backgrounded material is expressed in abbreviated clauses by past
and present participles, such as opened (1:2), and raised (1:3), reaching (1:3)
and looking (1:5).
Two important points must be noted about the Modem English system of
marking grounding distinctions. First, Modern English appears to rely more
heavily on background-marking than foreground-marking. Thus, though
affirmative, indicative simple pasts are typically foregrounded, they are not
exclusively so, but may occur in backgrounded clauses as well. Similarly,
foregrounded clauses are, by definition, main clauses, but all main clauses
need not be foregrounded. On the whole, these forms that we find in
foregrounded clauses in Modern English narratives seem to be less restricted to
certain grounding values than the forms found in backgrounded clauses. The
opposing, background-marking forms, such as subordination, negation,
pluperfect or progressive form, hardly occur in the foreground. They are thus
reliable signals of backgrounding.
Secondly, it is worth noting that in Modern English grounding
distinctions are typically signaled through an interplay of several markers
rather than by a single, discrete marker. For instance, as mentioned above, an
affirmative, indicative, simple past tense form is not necessarily alone a
sufficient signal of foregrounding. The same three features may also be shared
by verb forms in backgrounded clauses, such as was in Text (1), line 5.3
However, this clause does not satisfy many other criteria of foregrounding,
such as agentivity of the subject, telicity, punctuality, dynamicity,
purposefulness and temporal sequentiality, which then weigh more than those
three features, and the clause is evaluated as backgrounded. Thus we can
characterize the system of marking grounding distinctions in Modern English
narratives as a fuzzy grounding system which favors background-marking.
3
This example is not the best possible illustration of such a case, as be is something of
an exception among verbs, also in the framework of grounding. For instance, looked in this
context would better illustrate my point
3 . 2 . Another kind of grounding system was in use a thousand years

ago in Old English. This is illustrated by a sample of narrative prose from
Ælfric's Catholic Homilies.
(2) An aepelboren wif w ea micclum geswenct mid langsumere

untrymnysse. and hire ne mihte nan læcecræft fremian; pa lærde hi sum
Iudeisc man pæt heo name ænne wernaegl of sumes oxan hricge. and
becnytte to anum hringe mid hire snode. and mid pam hi to nacedum lice
begyrde; pa ferde heo swa begyrd to paes halgan cyðeres cyrcan. paet
heo 5aer hire haele abaede; pa wicode heo be wege wið pære ea pe is
gehaten BAGRADE, and on ærnemerein siðode swa swa heo gemynt
haefde; Da geseah heo licgan done hring on 5am wege aetforan hire foton
mid snode mid ealle. and paes micclum wundrode; pa wende heo paet se
hring toburste. o55e seo snod toslupe; Ac 5a 5a heo afunde pone hring
gehalne. and pa snode mid eallum cnottum swa faeste gewri5en swa heo
aer waes. 5a understod heo paet paet wundor gelamp purh 5aes halgan
mihte. 5e heo to fundode. and micclum truwode hire haele toweard ðurh
his geearnungum. and wearp done hring mid pam bendum into 5am
flowendum streame; Heo ferde 5a mid bli5um mode to 5aere halgan
cyðeres cyrcan. and 5aer hire haele gefette. purh 5aes halgan cy5eres
ðingunge; (Godden 1979:14.)
"A noblewoman was greatly afflicted by a long illness, and she could
not be helped by any art of healing; Then a Jew taught her that she took a
warnel from an ox's back. and bound it to a ring with her ribbon. and
with that girded it to her naked body; Then she went so girded to the holy
martyr's church. that she would pray there for her healing; Then she
rested on the way by the river that is called Bagrade. and on the
following morning went on her way as she had intended; Then she saw
the ring lying on the road in front of her feet with the ribbon and all. and
wondered greatly at that; Then she thought that the ring broke into pieces.
or that the ribbon opened; But when she found the ring whole. and the
ribbon with all knots as fast bound as it was before. then she understood
that the miracle happened through the might of the saint to whom she
wanted to go. and she trusted firmly that she would get her healing
through his merits. and threw the ring with the band to the flowing
stream; She went then with a happy heart to the holy martyr's church.
and there obtained her health. through the holy martyr's intercession;"
One of the characteristic features of Old English narratives is the high

frequency of the adverbial pa "then". According to Enkvist (1986; cf. also
Enkvist 1972; Enkvist & Wârvik 1987), this particle is a marker of
foregrounding. In Text (2) we find pa in clauses depicting actions and events
that constitute the main points, the gist of the story. Though these clauses do
not satisfy all the criteria of foregrounding, they are characterized by several of
536 BRITA WÂRVIK
them. Thus, the subjects of the foregrounded clauses are individuated, definite
and referential: in all except one pa - clause the subject is the main character of
the story, the noblewoman referred to by beo "she". As is typical of
foregrounded story-line clauses, the events depicted in these clauses are
unique, not repeated or habitual; their actions are usually punctual and
completed, and, in most cases purposeful rather than accidental. The verbs in
the clauses marked by pa are all in the indicative, affirmative simple past,
which is expected of foregrounded clauses. Further, all clauses marked by pa
are main clauses which are on the sequential story-line.
What about overt signals of backgrounding? Here, too, syntactic
subordination indicates backgrounding, for instance, pe is gehaten BAGRADE
(2:6-7) and ða ða heo afunde pone bring gebalne... (2:10-11). Of the verb
forms, subjunctives and negatives are typical of background, as in 2:2, where
we find a negation in the introductory part of the story, and in 2:5-6, where a
subjunctive is used in the clause expressing the purpose of her journey. As in
Modern English, the use of tenses other than the simple past often indicates
backgrounding in narratives, as, for instance gemynt hæfde "had intended"
(2:7-8). But the Old English periphrastic forms habban + past participle and
beon /wesan + present participle are not used in the same way as the Modern
English pluperfect and progressive forms (cf. Aristar & Dry 1982; Mitchell
1985; Nickel 1966). The Old English forms are not as clearly limited to
backgrounded contexts as the Modern English forms, nor are they always used
in the contexts where we in Modem English would require them.
4. On the basis of the use of grounding markers in Old English

narratives we can characterize Old English as a foreground-marking language.
There the main burden of signaling grounding distinctions is carried by the
foreground marker pa, functioning in an interplay with content criteria. We
can also find some 'unreliable' signals of backgrounding, namely
subordination and certain forms in the tense-aspect system, such as
subjunctives and the periphrastic pluperfect and progressive forms.
From the 11th century onwards, this system of grounding signals
gradually starts to give way to a system which resembles that found in Modern
English narratives. The new system relies more heavily on background-
marking. In Modern English, backgrounding can be marked by a growing
variety of forms in the tense-aspect system, especially progressive forms and
pluperfects. Further, syntactic subordination seems to play a more important
role in grounding now than in Old English: main and subordinate clauses are
kept apart by a greater variety of distinguishable subordinating conjunctions,
for instance when vs. then instead of pa- adverbial and pa- conjunction dis
tinguished by word order.
However, the most characteristic feature of the grounding system in
Modern English narratives is the reliance on a great number of criteria of
grounding rather than the presence or absence of specific, discrete grounding
markers, such as the Old English pa. Thus the grounding strategies in Modern
English narratives could be characterized as predominantly background-
marking, but fuzzy (cf. Hopper & Thompson 1980). Such changes in the
uses of grounding signals in narratives suggest a change away from
foreground-marking in Old English to a fuzzier, background-marking system
in Modern English narratives (cf. Wårvik Forthcoming).
5. This leads us to the question of styles and typology. First I wish to

make a digression on text types and explain why this study is limited to only
one text type.
In defining foreground vs. background we must pay attention to text
types, for the simple reason that different kinds of material constitute the main
line in texts of different types (cf. Grimes 1975; Longacre 1981, 1983).
Thus, for instance, while narratives typically concentrate on events and actions
in which one or several main characters are involved, in argumentation or
exposition this kind of event-centered material may be used as backgrounded
illustration of the main line of information. Consequently, certain grounding
criteria, such as temporal sequentiality and individuation of the agent as criteria
of foregrounding, are not relevant in all text types. Moreover, grounding
markers may be text-type-specific, for instance, the Old English pa which is a
foreground marker in narratives.
If the aim is to study discourse markers in a diachronic perspective, the
samples of text used as material must represent comparable text types (cf., for
example, Longacre 1983; Wald 1987). Otherwise the differences in the uses
of discourse markers which we may find in the texts from different periods can
be due to differences in text types and, consequently, they are not necessarily
evidence of any change in the language system. The drawback of the
limitation to one text type is, of course, that we cannot say anything general
about the development of the language unless we carry out similar studies of
other text types. Thus all hypotheses in the present paper concern only
narrative texts, and we cannot make pretensions to applying them directly to
texts of other types.
6. If we wish to know the nature of the changes that have taken place in
English narrative we have to face the crucial problem of styles and typologies.
538 BRITA WÂRVIK
As was suggested above, the changes in the system of grounding markers in

English narrative can be described as a movement from a predominantly
foreground-marking narrative to a fuzzy, but predominantly background-
marking narrative. The question is, then, are these different narrative styles or
typological varieties?
6.1. Though Modern English narratives typically rely on background-

marking, we can also find narratives which use foreground markers. Thus,
Modern English then can be used in very much the same way as Old English
pa. Such a strategy is not infrequent in spoken narratives, especially in
impromptu speech and in stories by children. It is, of course, possible also in
written narratives, though there it is typically used to imitate, or to give the
impression of imitating, spoken originals. But, in contrast to Old English, this
kind of organizing with then is not the only alternative available in Modern
English narratives, even in spoken ones.
Another feature which is also typically found in Modern English spoken
narratives is the historic present. This alternation of the past with the present
tense seems to have discourse motivations: the functions of the historic
present suggest that it is a foregound marker (cf., for example, Schiffrin 1981;
Wolfson 1979). If it is, then such uses of the present tense are highly
interesting for this study because the historic present did not exist in Old
English, but is said to havefirstappeared in Middle English in the 13th century
(cf. Mitchell 1985). Thus it never coexisted wiht the foreground marker pa.
Let us return to the question of styles. If we define style as contextually
motivated choice (cf. Enkvist 1964, 1973; Traugott & Romaine 1985), the
structural use of then in Modern English narratives is certainly a feature of
style, as it is not obligatory in any kind of narrative. In Old English, on the
contrary, the use of pa in narratives cannot be regarded as a mere stylistic
option, as Anglo-Saxon story-tellers seem to have had no other alternative.
Thus, what appears to have been a structural necessity in Old English has
become a stylistic option today. Similarly, the use of the historic present is a
stylistic alternative found in certain contexts only.
It is interesting to note that Old English narratives, where pa signals
foregrounding, and Middle and Modern English narratives characterized by the
foreground-marking use of then, or of the historic present, share one
important feature which places them in opposition to Modern English
background-marking stories. This feature might be called ' orality'.4 This
4
An alternative term for this feature could be 'spokenness'. However, I prefer to use the
terms orality and literacy when discussing cultures or story-telling traditions, as here, and to
orality is, naturally, not the primary orality of cultures without writing. The
Old and Middle English narratives that have come down to us have, of course,
all been preserved in writing, but they come from a culture where the oral
story-telling traditions were still predominant (cf. Bäuml 1984; Ong 1984).
Their oral nature is reflected, for instance, in the addresses to the hearer instead
of the reader, and in certain structural features which are typical of orality,
such as parataxis rather than hypotaxis (cf. Ong 1982; Rynell 1952). The
orality of spoken Modern English narratives is very different from the orality
of the Old and Middle English texts; in Modern English we should perhaps
speak about spoken narratives in a literate culture, as opposed to the Old
English narratives, which can, then, be characterized as written texts from an
oral culture.
On these grounds it is tempting to hypothesize that the use of the
adverbial pa in Old English and the use of the historic present in Middle
English narratives are somehow characteristic of the oral traditions which were
still dominant at that time. As the story-telling traditions started to change
towards our modern literate standards, these discourse markers dropped out of
use in written stories, but they survived as stylistic alternatives in the spoken
mode.
6.2. To conclude, we must face the problem of typologies. The first

question is, then: Are we justified in speaking about TYPOLOGIES when we are
dealing with discourse markers within one single text type? I would be
inclined to answer in the affirmative, as long as we concentrate on the same
text type all through our studies. Thus, here we would talk about typologies
of narrative grounding markers.
The second and more important question is: Can we use the grounding
markers or grounding strategies as starting points for typological
classification? We can perhaps agree with Comrie, who says that "(in)
principle, one could choose any linguistically relevant parameter along which
to typologize languages" (Comrie 1981:35). The alleged universality of
grounding distinctions (cf. Hopper & Thompson 1980; Longacre 1981, 1983)
certainly gives the markers of this distinction a status of linguistically relevant
features. The interesting task, which is also a test of the validity of the
typology, is to see whether there are any correlations between the kinds of
grounding markers used in a certain language and other characteristics of the
language. We could, for instance, study the forms that grounding markers
may assume and see whether such differences reflect any characteristic
use 'spokenness' about characteristics of speech as opposed to writing, thus referring to

modes of presentation.
540 BRITA WÀRVIK
tendencies in the language. Another and perhaps more useful typology is one
which groups together languages according to the types of grounding marker
they prefer into, for instance, foreground-marking and background-marking.
In such terms, the development of the system of grounding signals of English
narrative could be seen as a change from a predominantly foreground-marking
type to a fuzzy grounding type which favors background-marking. When we
look for parallels to this development, a tempting solution would be to see a
correlation between the types of grounding strategies and the orality/literacy of
the language. The idea that story-telling traditions can be relevant to changes
in grounding markers is proposed by Fleischman (1985) in her discussion of
the changes that have taken place in the use of the tense-aspect forms in Old
French and later. Though these changes in the history of English and French
point in the same direction, we still need further research before we can decide
precisely WHAT KIND of correlation there is between the orality/literacy of a
language and its predominant grounding strategies.
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542 BRITA WÅRVIK
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Language 55.168-182.
COGNITIVE GRAMMAR AND KURYŁOWICZ'S
LAWS OF ANALOGY
MARGARET E. WINTERS
Southern Illinois University - Carbondale
1. Introduction.
1.1. It is safe to say that Kuryiowicz's "La nature des procès dits
'analogiques'" (1966)1 has raised more controversial questions than it has
settled on the nature and functioning of analogy.2 Often cited and analysed in
introductions to historical linguistics and elsewhere, it begins with remarks
about the relationship between basic and derived forms (158-161), followed
by the famous (not to say notorious) six 'laws' of analogy (162-174), each
discussed and illustrated with examples from various Indo-European
languages. Of the six 'laws', five are grammar internal, having to do in very
general terms with the direction of analogical extension, while the sixth is a
statement of the relationship between language and society, between, roughly,
langue and parole in the creation of new forms.
1.2. Several problems arise from this article, even if one accepts, as I
do, the validity of this study of the nature of analogic processes and is not
questioning the data used to illustrate the principles. The first problem is
Kuryłowicz's concept of loi "law", which seems at first to give a rather 19th-
century feeling to his analysis. It is interesting to note, however, that while
Kuryłowicz, indeed, does use the word loi, he prefers formule and simply
designates each of the six items with Roman numerals. In his conclusion he
specifies that he is proposing directions of possible analogical change, but that
the social factor decides if and to what extent analogy takes place. His well-
1
A11 citations will be from the article as reprinted in Hamp et al. (1966). It was
originally published in Acta Linguistica 5:121-138 (1945-1949).
2
Geoffrey Nathan has discussed and criticized many versions of this paper, for which I
am grateful. At the conference in Lille where this paper was presented orally, I benefited
from discussion with Joan Bybee, Paulo de Carvalho, Pieter van Reenen and Lene Schosler.
I appreciate their taking the time to give me their reactions and suggestions. They are not
responsible, of course, for weaknesses and errors here.
544 MARGARET E. WINTERS
known image of gutters and their use when and only when it rains ( 174) seems
to clarify further the nature of his laws.
A second problem is that of the interpretation of these laws3 and of the
article as a whole. Arlotto (1974) and Hock (1986), among others, devote
pages to explicating them, analysing both what is meant by a 'basic' and a
'derived' form, and how these interact according to the directionality principles
that constitute the laws. I will return below to a discussion of some of the
interpretation.
Lastly, once the laws are clear, at least to the satisfaction of any analyst at
a given moment, there is the question of the validity of Kurylowicz's
principles, Are they true? All of the time? Some of the time? How do they
compare to other attempts to provide a typology for analogy, especially
Mańczak's(1958)?
Implied in all of this discussion are wider questions about the subject:
what is the nature of analogy? Is there truly a division between the purely
structural aspects of language and this aspect, always recognized as
psychological? In the present paper I will consider in some detail two of
Kurylowicz's laws and discuss some of their implications for the study of
language evolution. I shall do so within the framework of Cognitive
Grammar, which, because of its stance on the close relationship between
language function and human cognition in general, is particularly well suited to
such a study,
The next section of the paper, therefore, is a brief overview of Cognitive
Grammar and its applicability to the study of analogy and analogical change.
The following section will turn specifically to Kurylowicz's second and fourth
laws and consider them in light of Cognitive Grammar. I shall end with some
further questions which arise from this discussion.
2. Cognitive Grammar.
Cognitive Grammar is a theory of language processing and production,

based on the notion that in order to understand linguistic function ii is essential
to integrate it with general cognitive functioning. It is a meaning-based theory,
positing the fundamental nature of semantics (taken in the widest sense to
include much of pragmatics too) as underlying all of linguistic function.
Involved in processing language (and hence meaning) are the same activities
that we use as human beings to interact in a wide range of circumstances with
3
Although it is reasonably clear by Kuryłowicz's use of the word loi that he did not
mean it in the Neogrammarian sense, he did use it and I will therefore continue the
convention among commentators to use the word 'law' without further explanation.
COGNITIVE GRAMMAR AND ANALOGY 545
the world: comparison, assignment of saliency, entrenchment of certain

routines (Langacker 1987) and categorization of the environment, both mental
and physical (Lakoff 1987).
2.1. In ways similar to those in which we categorize colors, shapes,

faces, music, we also categorize linguistically significant sounds, morphemes
and words, phrases, constructions, sentences. They form what Lakoff
(1987:91ff.) calls radial categories, arranged around prototypical members of
the given semantic category or set. Extended from the prototypical or central
member are others which share some features of the prototype, but differ in
regard to others. These less prototypical members of the category or set can be
understood as belonging to it via lines of extension back to the center, but may
or may not be directly related to each other. A cup of butter (which often
refers to two 4-ounce sticks and has no container involved at all) is only related
to a trophy (also called a cup ) by a consideration of the ways in which the
central notion of 'cup' has been extended quite far from the prototype in
several different directions not necessarily related at all to each other (see
Winters 1987b for further discussion). It is important to note that no two
items in a radial category share all the same features: some are added,
eliminated, substituted for in each instance in relation to the center.
Important for categorization is the assignment of saliency to certain
features (Langacker 1987:39-40), Not all features of any given item (linguistic
or non-linguistic) are of equal importance, and those which are considered
more important are those which will guide the assignment of any item in a
category. Not only is the choice of category to which anything is assigned
determined by the choice of features used to categorize it, but also the place in
the category (central, extended somewhat from the center, peripheral) comes
from how the human mind views the various features.
Obviously each human being does not have the fresh task of assigning
saliency anew to every item he or she encounters at every minute. Much of the
categorization of the universe we consciously or unconsciously know is
conventional, based on history and social norms. It is, therefore, to a large
extent language or even dialect specific, on a continuum of degrees of what
Langacker (1987:59-60) calls entrenchment or conventionalization.
2.2. Diachronic change is often change in categorization. As I have said

elsewhere (Winters 1987a), there are two ways in which set membership can
change: either an item (again: sound, morpheme, construction, etc.) can
change from one set to another (as happens when an indicative trigger becomes
a trigger of the subjunctive), or its place within the set in relationship to other
items can change (as when Lat. passum becomes the unmarked negation
particle in Modern French (Winters 1987b)).
A refinement to this notion of diachronic change must be added here: this
kind of movement across categories or within categories is at least part of the
time a result of changes in assignment of saliency to a given item or to a given
feature of some item. With changes in saliency come changes in how
subsequent items are scanned, compared and assigned to categories. To use a
trivial, non-linguistic example, our way of looking at people and grouping
them changes if we are concerned with height (and thus assign saliency to that
feature) instead of being concerned with eye color.
2.3. Analogical change can be characterized more precisely, therefore,

as a subset of linguistic change, different in the kind of item being changed,
perhaps, but not in the fundamental mechanism of change. When analogical
change takes place, as is well known, morphemes and words become more
like each other, or more like some basis of comparison, following lines of
development which are morphological and not phonological; that is, these
changes do not, most of the time, involve the normal course of sound change.
What happens, instead, is that given morphemes or words are perceived,
through one or more features, as being like other, better entrenched items, and
undergo modification of some feature or features to make them even more like
the basis of comparison.
To use an often-cited example, the German plural form Baüme did not
always have the fronted diphthong. Speakers of German, comparing the
morpheme of "plural" in this word to the morpheme of "plural" in others,
assigned over time a more salient position among the expressions of "plural" to
the feature of fronting on well-entrenched and frequently used forms. That
feature was then perceived as part of the pluralization in words where it was
not originally present. In this particular case I would say that the form Baüme
did not change category when it added the umlaut, but moved closer within the
morphological set of plurals to what had become the prototypical form for
German nouns. In other cases the analogy does cause a full set change; to use
an example I have also used elsewhere, the comparatively recent use of the
subjunctive with Fr. après que "after", which is generally recognized as being
a consequence of its close (polarized) semantic relationship with avant que
"before", constitutes a full category change for après que, a former trigger of
the indicative, and places it near the periphery of its new semantic set of
subjunctive triggers (Winters 1987a:612).
3. Kuryłowicz's laws of analogy.

3.1. Kuryiowicz's second law states that:
Les actions dites 'analogiques' suivent la direction: formes de
fondation — formes fondées, dont le rapport découle de leurs sphères
d'emploi.
As Hock points out (1986:213), this law should be divided into two sections,
one on the direction of change (from the fondation or basic form to the fondée
or derived form) and one on the meaning of sphère d'emploi or sphere of
usage.
The direction of change, of course, is simply a restatement of the basic
proportion of analogy, from a form which serves as base of comparison to the
form which changes to become more like it. Within Cognitive Grammar it can
be seen that the base form has the property of being better entrenched than the
form which changes, and also has features which are perceived as more
salient. The change, therefore, is a change in feature or features to those
which share the saliency. The notion of entrenchment is itself a radial category
and can involve various ideas of frequency. Most obvious for morphology is,
probably, type frequency: there are, for example, simply more regular verbs
(weak in Germanic, those belonging to the -are class in Romance) in
comparison to which others regularize. But there is also token frequency. The
French first person plural verb ending, -ons, is generally believed to have
spread from the present tense form somes of the highly irregular verb être "to
be" in Early French. Here, then, a single instance, but one of exceptionally
high token frequency, was the cause of an analogical change throughout the
rest of the Old French verbal system.4
Sphere of usage can be reinterpreted as the assignment of category, and
place within category, in any form. Based on work considering a variety of
languages (see, for example, Manczak 1958, Bybee 1985) a prototypical verb
form, for example, is usually cited as present, indicative, active, third person
and singular. A prototypical noun is singular, masculine in gender systems,
and, in case languages, in the nominative.5
4
Hock (1986:215) suggests productivity as a measure of the basicness of a given form,
but I believe he has fallen into a circular trap: is the form productive because it is basic or
basic because it is productive?
5
These grammatical categories are, of course, based on Indo-European. Both
Kuryiowicz's work and mine are within this family, and the analysis in this paper reflects this
bias. The work should be extended eventually to a much wider number of diverse languages.
This form of the noun serves as citation form in dictionaries and, often,
when the word is used in isolation. It is also the subject of an active verb, a
position of salience in a prototypical sentence (see, for example, van Oosten
1986), and, in many languages, the form of direct address. Diachronically it
serves as the base for analogical change involving a model OUTSIDE the
paradigm (Latin fourth declension nouns usually merge with the second
declension in large part because of the identity of nominative singular
-us forms), but not, interestingly, for change WITHIN a single paradigm. Here
the sphere of usage factor has to be balanced against sheer frequency of forms:
In Latin nouns whose nominative singular form had one syllable fewer than
any other form, when the number of syllables was made equal within the
paradigm, the majority of nominative singulars (the significantly different
form) changed in the direction of the rest of the paradigm. Examples include:
(1) Classical Latin Late Latin
Nom. sg. Full New Nom. sg.
mor- mort- mort- "death"

leo leon- leon- "lion"
fio- flor- flor- "flower"
aesta- aestat- aestat- "summer"
There are, naturally, some counterexamples:
(2) sangui- sanguin- sangui- "blood"

here- hered- here- "heir"
In verbs, there is some question about the basicness for analogical change
of the third person among the various categories which are cited, It is true, as
Hock (1986:220) points out, that there is reason, in view7 of its frequency, to
perceive that form as basic. But citation forms of verbs tend to be the bare root
(as often in English) or the infinitive (as in the Romance languages) or even
more or less random (as in Latin as evidenced by dialogue in plays). In other
cases clusters of forms seem to be involved rather than any one single base.
Old French, as a result of the Latin stress system, had many verbs which,
simply within the present tense system, had a diphthong in the singular forms
and the third person plural, and a simple vowel in the first and second plural,
and in the infinitive:
(3) Infinitive: amer "to їove"
aim anions
aimes ames
aime aiment
The modem verb has generalized the diphthongized stem, which occurs in the
third person singular. There are, however, many verbs which also became
regular, but modeled on the infinitive, and the first and second plural forms:
(4) Infinitive: lever "to raise"
lief levons
lieves levez
lieve llevent
The assignment of saliency and therefore the condition of being basic is

hierarchical, I believe, with certain features being salient, not automatically in
an absolute sense, but if other features are not present. To return to examples
(1) and (2), nominative singular is the central member of the set of forms of a
given paradigm, but only when some other feature is not valued more highly,
in this case the number of different forms having the same syllabic and stress
pattern. In other cases as exemplified by (3) and (4), one cannot talk of the
saiiency of one person in contrast to all the others, but only of tendencies
toward saiiency and basicness of sets of persons.
3.2. Kuryiowicrs fourth law states that:
Quand à la suite d'une transformation morphologique une forme subit

la différenciation; la forme nouvelle correspond à sa fonction primaire
(de fondation), la forme ancienne est réservée pour la fonction
secondaire (fondée).
This is what happens when doublets arise through analogical change: the
original form is used for secondary functions, while the analogically created
form takes on the primary meaning of the word. The primary function of the
form is again the central or prototypical meaning within a category, and the law
can be restated to reflect what occurs when there is a shift in category
organization so that a new prototype replaces an older one. The older form
does not disappear, but becomes part of the radial set extending out from the
new prototype. In this case, the fact that any form is made up of a series of
features helps explain how the new prototype arises. In these cases we find
two different features coinciding: one of the central meaning of the morpheme
and one of the high frequency (and therefore high saliency) of a morphological
marking. To use one of the most often cited examples, brethren becomes
specialized to church-related use alongside brothers because the -s (regular
plural) morpheme reinforces the centrality of the more usual meaning of
brother.
Kiparsky (1984) cites numerous counterexamples to this law (of the type
louses "unpleasant people", Maple Leafs "members of the hockey team of
that name", badder "tougher"), and argues that Kuryłowicz's statement
should be reversed, that in the majority of cases, all other things being equal,
the analogically derived form will have a secondary meaning. Hock
(1986:226-227) defends Kuryiowicz, on the grounds that the semantic
differentiation (of lice and louses, for example) predates the analogical
morphological change, and that these examples are therefore irrelevant to the
interpretation of the law. The two meanings coexisted within the radial
category of meaning, therefore, before morphological differentiation became
part of the language, It still leaves us with the question, however, of why in
the time-honored examples, regularity of morphological marking coincides
with basic meaning, while it is the derived meaning in the examples proposed
by Kiparsky which exhibits morphological regularity. This may be a genuine
example of polarity in language, with competition between saliency (here in the
case of NON-prototypicality) and reinforcement of two kinds of prototypicality
as suggested above.
4. Summary and conclusions.
4.1. What I have attempted to illustrate in this paper is that the theory of
Cognitive Grammar can shed some light on the nature of analogical change and
on the interpretation of Kuryiowicz's laws of analogy. It is necessary to start
with the notion of the radial semantic set, as used not only for lexical items,
but for morphemes such as case, number and person markers. Analogical
change depends on the saliency of some features of the prototypical member of
the set, against which other members are compared and then, in many cases,
changed. Saliency in itself is not monolithic, but is arranged in a hierarchy of
features which are language and time specific and therefore not predictable.
4.2. There is no place in the scope of this paper to test the other four of
Kuryiowicz's laws. I believe, however, that the first, third and fifth are also
understandable within the framework outlined above, and that such an analysis
will shed further light on the nature of analogy.
In addition, there is much work to do on the actual assignment of saliency

to given features, linguistic or non-linguistic. The question goes beyond the
scope of linguistics per se; it is a matter of cognitive psychology, Ï think, and
will be answered as we answer questions about how much of the world we are
born ready to understand, and how much we must learn about. Child
cognitive development will not be sufficient on its own, moreover, since adults
are capable of learning new ways of seeing the world and, both linguistically
and extralinguistically, of making analogical leaps leading to new organization
and new insight.
REFERENCES
Arlotto, Anthony. 1972. Introduction to Historical Linguistics. Boston:

Houghton-Mifflin.
Bybee, Joan L. 1985. Morphology: A Study of the Relation between
Meaning and Form. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Hock, Hans Heinrich. 1986. Principles of Historical Linguistics. Berlin,
New York & Amsterdam: Mouton-de Gruyter.
Kiparsky, Paul. 1974. "Remarks on analogical change". Historical Lin
guistics, vol. II ed. by J.M. Anderson & C, Jones, 257-275.
Amsterdam & Oxford: North-Holland.
Kuryłowicz, Jerzy. 1945-1949, "La nature des procès dits 'analogiques5".
Acta Linguistica 5.121-138. (Repr. in Readings in Linguistics, vol. II
ed. by E. Hamp et al., 158-174. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1966.)
Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, What
Categories Reveal about the Mind, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. I:
Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Mańczak, Witold. 1958. "Tendences générales des changements
analogiques". Lingua 7.298-325 & 387-420.
van Oosten, Jeanne. 1986. The Nature of Subjects, Topics and Agents: A
Cognitive Explanation. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics
Club.
Winters, Margaret E. 1987a. "Syntactic and semantic space: the development
of the French subjunctive". Papers from the VIIth International
Conference on Historical Linguistics ed. by Anna Giacalone Ramai,
Onofrio Carruba & Giuliano Bernini, 607-618. (~ Current Issues in
Linguistic Theory, 48.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Winters, Margaret E. 1987b. "Innovations in French negation: a cognitive
grammar account". Diachronica 4.27-53.
SEMANTIC CHANGE ÏN ROMANCE WORDS FOR "CUT"
ROGER WRIGHT
University ofLiverpool
We can illuminate several semantic changes at once if we visualize some

parts of the vocabulary as structured wholes, where changes in the criteria for
the use of one word can have consequences for others. Intrinsic links between
lexical items arise partly because one early stage in the cognitive process that
prepares us to be able to talk about the world is that which identifies separate
entities as being distinct from each other; Wright (1985) studied changes that
can be located at this stage (in Spanish words for parts of the face). Today I
consider linked changes located at a subsequent stage: if we wish to choose a
word with which to refer to one of these separately delimited potential
referents, one of our next tasks is to decide on the appropriate level of
generality or specificity (a decision that is usually made on pragmatic
grounds). For much of our vocabulary structure is organized according to
scales of increasing specificity. The standard examples of these scales are
terms of natural history, sometimes represented on paper as in Table 1.
Thing
Creature Object
Animal Insect Fish Bird
| Duck J Owl Crow etc.
Mallard Teal Wigeon Shelduck etc. |
Table 1.
In this theory (e.g., Lyons 1960, ch. 10) a term is said to be the
'hyponym' of the ones directly above it on these scales, and the
'superordinate' of the ones directly beneath it; the English words duck and
owl are thus hyponyms of the word bird. Hyponyms of the same
superordinate are said to be 'incompatible' with each other; for example, any
bird describable as a duck cannot also be described correctly as an owl. The
vertical lines in these scales correspond to our criteria for choosing between the
554 ROGER WRIGHT
hyponyms of a superordinate term, and these distinguishing criteria are based

on some perceptible difference that we have learned. It seems most likely that
in our search for a word with which to refer to our intended referent, we
usually enter the vocabulary from the most general end, if only because it is
easier for lazy speakers to find the word thing ( thingie, whatsit) than wigeon ;
and then we are faced with increasingly specific choices to make, until we find
the most pragmatically suitable place to stop searching. In this way we can
find words for referents which we have not seen before, and changes in the
world do not necessitate a change in the semantic structure. For example,
when the Spaniards first met pineapples in the New World, they called them
pinas, as they still do, which until then had only been used for "fircones"; the
perceptual criterion distinguishing fircones from other fruits also worked to
separate pineapples out as part of the same category, and no Spanish speaker
finds this polysemy confusing. Choices from the hyponymic scales are not the
only ones that need to be made, of course; words are always chosen by the
speaker from several possible available items, and even though these choices
are normally unconscious they are never forced on us by logical necessities in
square brackets inherent in our intended meaning.
The hyponymic scales are the scene of two of the standard categories of
semantic change: generalization and specialization. Generalization occurs
when a word moves up the scale to a higher level. One example is the Spanish
word argolla. In Spain that means "large ring", as on a quayside, or at the
smallest as a bracelet, as opposed to an anillo "small ring", as on a finger; but
in parts of America the criterion of size is lost and argolla can be used for an
engagement ring, which sounds daft in Spain. The converse is specialization:
where a word only survives with a specialized sub-part of its original potential
reference. An extended case involving several words is the semantic structure
of words meaning "cut" in the Romance languages.
The English word cut can be defined as "strike a successful blow with a
sharp edge"; that is, it is a hyponym of the word strike with the criterion of
"successfully with a sharp edge". In Latin the word for "cut" was SECARE,
and in a few parts of the Romance-speaking world, including Sardinia
(segare), that word still means in general "cut". There are many different
kinds of cutting, each of which might require a separate lexical hyponym of its
own. One of these is "to cut corn", that is "reap", "harvest". With a specific
direct object, SECARE could naturally always be used to refer to this. But in
some areas, notably the Iberian Peninsula, segar came to mean specifically
"reap" even when used elliptically without a direct object. For example, in the
13th century the Riojan poet Gonzalo de Berceo intended the phrase tiempo del
segar to convey unambiguously "harvest time" ( furtávalis las miesses al
SEMANTIC CHANGE 555
tiempo del segar ( Vida de Santo Domingo 420a )), and the translator of St.
Matthew's Gospel used the agent noun segador to mean the only thing that it
has ever meant, "harvester" (La miess es mucha e los segadores pocos ("the
crop is heavy but the labourers are scarce" in the New English Bible, 9:37,
also 9:38 and 13:30)). This is specialization: SECARE, segar, has moved to
occupy a slot to which it was originally subordinate. At this point you will be
wondering whether this journey was really necessary; did Latin not already
have a perfectly good word for "to reap"? It did: METERE, which is common
in the Vulgate Bible. That word survives in It. mietere with that same
meaning (and Oc. meire). In Spain METERE itself has gone; perhaps because
of potential confusion with MITTERE > meter, METIRI > medir or METUM >
miedo, when the rhizotonic ' -ere paradigm disappeared in Spain (as it did not
elsewhere); but the so-called frequentative form MESSARE survived, formed
from the past participle of METERE. In Sardinia it is this form that means
"reap", as also in some Northern Iberian valleys; elsewhere in Spain mesar
specialized further to mean "pull out" - that is, a form of harvesting but
specifically without using any sharp-edged instrument - and then extended its
referential criterion slightly so as to be applicable to pulling out hair from the
head as well as grass or corn from the ground. In the Poema de Mio Cid (of
c. 1200), mesar is used on five occasions, all referring to pulling pieces out of
someone's beard (lines 2832, 3186, 3286, 3289, 3290), and the point would
be lost if any connotations of using a razor, knife or scissors lurked still. The
result was that "cutting corn" was becoming a vacant slot, a potential squat ripe
for colonization by something else. And yet the noun MESSIS "harvest", both
the action and the result of reaping, survived into Old Spanish with its meaning
unchanged, as mies (cf. the Berceo quotation above); so mies came to be
semantically the nominalization of segar rather than of its formal cognate verb
mesar.
In France, however, the derivative of SECARE, OFr. seier, ModFr.
scier, usually means "to saw", that is, "cut with a saw", although in some
areas it can also mean "reap", as in Spain. Latin had not had a separate hypo-
nym of SECARE for "saw", using SERRĀ SECARE to convey the meaning
merely syntagmatically. In Spain, Sardinia and parts of France a derivative
verb (a)serrar(e) was formed to fill the gap; for words created by affixation
can fill apparent lexical gaps as much as can semantic change or neologism -
the processes are intimately linked. In Northern France the coining was in the
reverse direction; they eventually created a noun scie from the verb, unam
biguously meaning "a saw". Modern Italy is similar to France: It. segare
usually means "to saw", and the noun sega was originally only "a saw"
(segatore being "a mower"). In France METERE disappeared, and MESSARE
556 ROGER WRIGHT
may well never have existed, but another verb formed from the cognate noun,
in this case MESSIO, -ONIS rather than MESSIS, took that place: Fr.
moissonner.
Meanwhile, SECARE itself had acquired a frequentative form *SECTARE,
which, where it survived, in Old Portuguese and Asturian (as)seitar, meant
"reap". The Castilian equivalent, if it existed, would have been *sechar, and
Malkiel (1947) was surely correct to argue that cosecha, which has in modern
times become commoner than míes for "harvest", has some kind of con
nection with sectare, despite Corominas's disagreement (1980:121).
To sum up so far: where SECARE survives it has, outside Sardinia,
specialized, that is, acquired extra criteria for use concerning the nature of the
cutting concerned. Where METERE has survived, mostly in Italy, it has kept
its meaning of "reap", so that SECARE has there not slid down the scale to
occupy that particular hyponymic slot. SECARE seems thus not to have been
determined to 'push' its way into any particular lower slot, but we could
reasonably call these developments a 'drag chain'. Where a hyponym (e.g.
METERE ) is going out of use, for whatever reason, its superordinate (here
SECARE) can always be used instead, by definition. Eventually this pattern of
choices can shift the distributional pattern of the reference of the original
superordinate term, and, as Erica Garcia has been arguing persuasively, such
distributional shifts can lead to semantic change. In this case it has. In most
of Spain segar came usually only to be used if the referent cut was grass or
corn. The superordinate slot for "cut" was not left as a vacuum, since it was
still possible to use segar for referring to other types of cutting; but it would
have increasingly felt metaphorical to do so, as If we were now to talk in
English of barbers "harvesting" their clients' hair. So it was not logically
necessary, but it was nonetheless convenient, to consider using something else
as the superordinate.
The French for "cut" is now couper, formed from the noun coup. Fr.
coup, It. colpo, Sp. golpe and Cat. cop all mean "blow"; they derive from
LLat. (Early Romance) COLAPHUS, which was originally borrowed from the
Gk. kólaphos, meaning "punch", but COLAPHUS had semantically generalized
to mean "a blow of any kind", losing the criterion of "with a fist". This had
thus come to fill the slot being vacated by the Latin superordinate terms; the
noun ICTUS was going out of general use, and PLAGA only survived with the
sense of "wound" (the results of the blow rather than the blow itself)' in Sp.
llaga, Port. chaga, Fr. plaie. The superordinate Latin verb CAEDERE "strike
a blow", also went out of use. The Old Spanish verbs colpar, golpar and
golpear (the form that survives), Cat. copejar and It. colpire kept close
semantic contact with their cognate noun, similarly generalizing to mean "strike
SEMANTIC CHANGE 557
a blow of any kind". In France, however, they then chose to specialize the
verb couper with the new criterion of "with a sharp edge" which distinguishes
the meaning of "cut" from "punch", "slap", "kick" and other fellow hyponyms
of "strike" (cf. Lehrer 1974). The French word meaning "strike" is now
frapper, of uncertain etymology, which had previously meant "to hurl oneself
onto". The timing of the semantic changes shows the change in frapper to
have begun at a slightly later stage than that in couper, but the change may not
yet be complete. {Frapper has certainly become the superordinate for most of
the hyponyms of "strike", but not all French speakers seem to see couper also
as a modern hyponym of frapper. ) The change in Fr. couper happens to
none of its cognates in other languages, and can for this reason plausibly be
dated to a late enough time for it to be seen as an intermediate stage there in a
drag-chain, as the superordinate couper slid down to where scier would have
been if it had not itself specialized, and then the loss of couper from the
"strike" slot dragged frapper across in turn.
It. tagliare, Cat. tallar, Port. talhar, Rum. tàià and OSp. tajar all came
to be normal superordinate words for "cut". They come from LLat. (Early
Romance) TALIARE (or TALEARE, [-lj-]). This word has generalized from
being once a hyponym of SECARE, for it was formed from the noun TALEA,
which was originally "a cutting", a small section cut off a bush in order to be
independently planted. Fr. tailler, on the other hand, from this root, remained
on the same level of the hyponymic scale but enlarged its criterion for use,
being now suitable for any careful cutting such as shaping precious stones,
carving wood, pruning trees and cutting out clothes. In Spain TALIARE >
tajar has since respecialized, but it seems to have been the superordinate term
in at least Early Medieval Spain. In a 10th-century document from León it
appears to be used for slicing cheese {quando la taliaron (Menéndez Pidal
1926:25; Wright 1982:173)). In the Poema de Mio Cid, tajar is used for
"cutting down orchards" (line 1172: tajavales las huertas) rather than taking
cuttings from them, and also for "cutting hair" (1241: Nin entrane en ella
tigera, ni un pelo non avrie tajado ). King Alfonso X's Siete Partidas I.IV.99
has the phrase mesabanselos cabellos et tajabanlos("they pulled out and cut
their hair"). The agent adjectives tajador (five times in the Cid) and tajante
(as in the Libro de Alexandre 1347d, todos eran tajantes como foz podadera )
both meant "sharp". Tajante still means "sharp", mostly in a metaphorical
sense, "trenchant", but the verb itself, tajar, has since in Spain specialized
again to mean usually "chop into pieces", implying strong action as with an
axe, and is now unsuitable for referring to cutting hair, or to cutting a finger
without cutting it off.
558 ROGER WRIGHT
There are two possible reasons for the decision to respecialize the reflex
of TALEARE in Castilian, unlike elsewhere. One may lie in the potential
confusion, at places and times where TALEARE preserved the lateral
consonant, with talar. Talar comes from a Germanic root (talan ) and
originally meant "devastate"; it tends now to be like the English fell and be
confined for use with trees. The noun tala could already be used to refer to
the peaceful right to cut firewood from trees on common land in 11th and
12th-century law. Thus both tajar and talar came to be hyponyms of "cut".
For "felling" trees Latin had tended merely to use CAEDERE "strike", the
general superordinate of SECARE, in the absence of a specific lexicalized
hyponym. Later, in the 16th century, It. tagliare was borrowed into Castilian
as tallar with only the meaning of "engrave"; this is a combination of
borrowing and specialization that need cause no surprise, given the shape of
the slot it was borrowed to fill. Thus now a Spanish tree can be felled ( talar)
and chopped into sections (tajar), and those sections be given an engraved
carving ( tallar); a phonological minimal trio of three hyponyms of "cut".
But OSp. tajar may have been losing the battle to fill the superordinate
slot anyway to its rival cortar. The origin of cortar was a fairly rare Latin
word CURTARE, meaning "shorten, reduce", semantically related to CURTUS
"short". Lat. CURTUS could mean "castrated" or "circumcised", so even then
could be used to refer to the results of some cutting actions, but the adjective
survives in Romance with the meaning of "short" and no cutting connotations:
Sp. corto, Cat. curt, Port. curto, Fr. court, It, corto. Rum. scurt comes
from a form with the prefix EX-. So does the Rumanian verb scurtà and
dialectal It. scortare "shorten", and Fr. écourter "cut short", that is, "shorten
with a sharp edge". In 13th-century Spanish the verb means specifically "cut":
for example, the five uses in the Poem of the Cid (lines 751, 767, 2423,
2728, 3652) are for cutting through helmets, waists and heads with a sword.
The semantic structure of "shorten" and the semantic structure of "strike" are
separate. Yet it happens regularly that words with a precise hyponymic
criterion in one part of the vocabulary can be adopted for use elsewhere, with
the same criterion under a different superordinate. It is possible that by Very
Early Medieval Spanish the normal use of CURTARE was still for "shorten",
but usually now specifically "with a sharp edge" (as EXCURTARE means in the
Merovingian Salic Law); and that eventually a need for a word with that
specific criterion under the superordinate "strike" led the word to override
structural boundaries and come to mean "cut", whether or not the cutting also
involved shortening the object referent. With the subsequent specialization of
tajar, the Spanish "cut" structure has come to be filled now as in Table 2.
SEMANTIC CHANGE 559
cortar
\tajar j talar | tallar j segar | (a)serrar j etc. | etc.
Table 2.
(The 'et cetera' in Table 2 include such words as afeitar "shave", amputar
"amputate", podar "prune", hender "split".)
Once Spanish cortar had come to have "cut" as its central literal meaning,
it could no longer be used to refer to shortening that did not involve a sharp
edge, e.g., shortening sail or debates. Another potential gap was emerging.
Derivational morphology came to the rescue again: the Spanish superordinate
for "shorten" has always been acortar. *ADCURTARE did not exist in Latin,
but there was nothing adventurous in this invention: many Old Spanish verbs
had forms both with and without an essentially meaningless prefix a- (cf. the
coexistence of serrar and aserrar mentioned above, or allegar and llegar
referred to in Wright 1987). In this way corto and its semantically related
verb acortar have both broken off semantically from cortar; thus "to shorten
sail" is acortar la vela, in which the sail remains uncut. Acortar is the only
one of the words in this paper to come early enough in the alphabet to be in the
ongoing Diccionario Histórico de la Lengua Española; one of its four 13th-
century attestations (Vol. I:522-524) probably involves shortening with a
sharp edge (of a wooden beam: Berceo, Vida de San Millán 2276), but the
other three do not (shortening life expectation and lawsuits, and limiting
damage in general).
Conclusion.
We have been looking at the data presented in Table 3. The rigidity of

these diagrams should not be taken too seriously; not everyone in the same
area at the same time need have the same detail in their lexical structures, and
words are used non-literally all the time. Even so, as a generalization, we see
the survival of a more or less consistent substructure intended to contain a
word meaning "strike" and a hyponym thereof with the specific criterion of
"successfully with a sharp edge"; this word, in turn, is superordinate to an
indeterminate number of hyponyms of its own. The structure is roughly
constant, though the words filling the slots have, at least in some cases,
moved. It looks as though in Spain, for example, over time some words went
out of use (METERE, CAEDERE) and also the number of hyponyms at the
bottom of this scale increased, for social rather than linguistic reasons
560 ROGER WRIGHT
Criteria: £ = with a sharp edge.

* = object being grass or corn.
+ = instrument being a saw.
@ = done carefully.
Table 3.
(education tends to involve progressively complicating, filling and lowering

the more specific end of the hyponymic scales). Newly required hyponyms
have sometimes been acquired from other languages, as talar from Germanic
and tallar from Italian, but often by specializing the criteria for the use of the
superordinate term, which has always been available to refer to these referents
anyway (by definition), as has happened with Sp. segar and Fr. couper. For
a while the word so specialized can uneasily remain available for referents
incompatible with its new literal sense, but it sounds pointlessly metaphorical,
and there is a search for a new literal superordinate. This can involve
generalization of another hyponym, as with the Late Latin (Early Romance)
SEMANTIC CHANGE 561
words TALEARE and COLAPHUS; or the adoption of a word that happens to

have the required criterion for use, from another substructure of the
vocabulary, as with cortar. Thus not only is semantic change part of a wider
process that also includes borrowing and affixation (cf. Wright 1985), it can
also be similar to the type of phonetic change describable in terms of drag-
chains. This is only one kind of semantic change in lexical items, of course;
and all I really want to point out now is that semantic change in several lexical
items at once can be studied rationally from a structural perspective.
REFERENCES
Corominas, Juan & José A. Pascual. 1980. Diccionario Crítico Etimológico

Castellano e Hispánico, Vol. II. Madrid: Gredos.
Diccionario Histórico de la Lengua Española. I: a-ala. 1972. Madrid: Real
Academia Española.
García, Erica C. 1985. "Quantity into quality: synchronic indeterminacy and
language change". Lingua 65.275-306.
Garcia, Erica C. 1986. "Cambios cuantitativos en la distribución de formas:
¿causa o síntoma de cambio semántico?". Papers of the 8th Conference
of the Lnternational Association of Hispanists, Vol. I, 557-566.
Providence, RI: Brown University Press.
Garcia, Erica C. 1989. "Reanalysing actualization and actualizing
reanalysis". This volume.
Lehrer, Adrienne. 1974. Semantic Fields and Lexical Structure. Amsterdam:
North-Holland.
Lyons, John. 1968. Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics. Cambridge:
Malkiel, Yakov. 1947. "Spanish cosecha and its congeners". Language
23.389-398.
Menéndez Pidal, Ramón. 1926. Orígenes del español. Madrid: Espasa-
Calpe.
Wright, Roger. 1982. Late Latin and Early Romance. Liverpool: Francis
Cairns.
Wright, Roger. 1985, "Indistinctive features (facial and semantic)". RPh
38.275-292.
Wright, Roger. 1987. "The study of semantic change in Early Romance (Late
Latin)". Papers from the 7th International Conference on Historical
Linguistics, ed. by Anna Giacalone Ramat, Onofrio Carruba & Giuliano
Bernini, 619-628. (= Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 48.)
Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Index of Names
A Baret, John 266, 272, 273

Aarsleff, Hans 400, 407 Basb0ll, Hans 232, 242
Adams, J.N. 176, 181, 188 Bately, Janet 226
Adelung, Johann Chr. 422 Bauche, Henri 523, 528
Agard, Frederik 330, 336 Baudrillard, Lucile 525, 528
Aitchison, Jean 361 Bauer, Brigitte 48
Allen, W. Sidney 58, 91 Bäuml, Franz H. 539,540
Altenberg, B. 497, 498 Bean, Marian C. 507-509,511,514
Alvar, Manuel 144, 147, 158 Beekes, R.S.P. 427, 434
Alvre, Paul 91 Benacchio, Rosanna 176, 177, 179-182,
Ampère, J.-J. 400, 405, 407 188
Andersen, Henning 2-8, 11, 14-20, 141, Benediktsson, Hreinn 21, 35
158, 232, 242, 353-355, 361, 403, 407 Bennett, P.A. 357, 361
Anderson, John M. 213, 214, 227, 258, Benskin, Michael 125, 126
262, 264 Benveniste, Émile 46, 48
Anderson, Stephen 342, 351 Berndt, Rolf 489, 498
Andrew, S.O. 506, 513, 514 Berretta, Monica 187, 188
Antinucci, Francesco 8 Bethurum, D. 227
Anttila, Raimo 56, 74, 91 Bichakjian, Bernard H. 39, 40, 46-49
d'Arbois de Jubainville, Henri 304 Bickerton, Derek 401, 404, 407
Archangeli, Diane 339, 347, 351 Birnbaum, Henrik 57, 58, 61, 79, 91, 92
Aristar, Anthony 536, 540 Böðvarsson, Árni 25, 350
Ariste, Paul 77, 91 Bohman, H. 122, 125
Arlotto, Anthony 544, 551 Boley, Jacqueline 311, 315, 324
Árnason, Kristján 21, 22, 31, 32, 35, 36 Booij, Geert E. 412, 424
Arngart, O.S.A. 112, 125 Borer, Hagit 402, 403, 407
Auroux, Sylvain 399, 407 Borowsky, Tony 342, 345, 351
Austerlitz, Robert 227 Borrell, André 519, 525, 528
Avalle, D'Arco Silvio 183, 185, 186, Bosworth, J. 209
188 Boulliette (Abbé) 521,528
Bourciez, Edouard 238, 242, 521, 528
B Bourciez, Jean 521, 528
Bacquet, P. 506, 514 Bradley, Henry 361
Bähr, D. 108, 125 Brandi, Alois 108, 112, 122, 125
Bammesberger, Alfred 432-434 Branford, Jean 140
Banti, Giorgio 176, 188 Breckenridge, Janet 74
564 INDEX OF NAMES
Brown, Penelope 175, 189 Crowley. Joseph 108, 125

Brown, William H., Jr. 510, 511, 514 Culioli, Antoine 211, 212, 227
Brugmann, Karl 58, 92 Curme, George O. 472-474, 479, 481-
Bruneau, Charles 395, 397 483, 486
Brunner, Karl 117
Brunot, Ferdinand 291, 301, 395, 397 D
Buffier, Claude (Abbé) 522, 528 Darby, H.C. 113, 125
Builles, Jean-Michel 519, 528 Davenport, Michael 125
Burzio, Luigi 463, 464, 475, 486 Decaux, Etienne 9, 11, 20
Buscha, Joachim 472, 475, 487 Dees, Anthonij 387, 388, 397
Bybee, Joan L. 547, 551 Delbrück, Bertold 445, 459
Byrne, L.S.R. 472. 486 Denison, David 507, 508, 514
Desclés, Jean Pierre 333, 336
C Desgranges, J.C.L.P. 521,529
Cameron, Kenneth 112, 125 Désirat. Claude 47, 49
Campbell, Alistair 107, 108, 117, 125, Deyhim, Guiti 519, 525, 529
505-508, 512, 514 Dieninghoff, Joseph 469, 470, 486
Campbell, Lyle 52, 56, 57, 62, 68, 92, Diez, Friedrich 400-402, 405, 407
94 Disterheft, Dorothy 356, 360, 361
Canale, William M. 4 Dobert. Antoine 523, 529
Carrete, X.C. 387, 397 Donahue, T.S. 112, 125
Carruba, Onofrio 319, 324 Dorel, Martine 330, 336
Cauquil, G. 248 Dowty, Davis 334, 336, 466
Cavenaile, Robert 183, 184 Dressier, Wolfgang 250, 251, 444-446,
Cavers, D. 112, 125 459
Celander, Hildig 24, 35 Drosdowski, Günter 472, 481, 486
Centineo, Giulia 466, 472-474, 483, 486 Dry, Helen 536, 540
Chantraine, Pierre 249, 251, 449, 459 Du Meril, Edélestand 400, 407
Chevallet, A. de 405, 407 Dumas, Louis 522, 529
Chomsky, Noam 47, 49, 95, 106, 405, Dunbar, Ronald W. 501, 514
406 Dupuis, Sophie 523, 529
Churchill, E.L. 472, 486 Durante, Marcello 184, 187, 188
Chvany, Catherine V. 531, 532, 540
Clements, George N. 339, 340, 351 E
Clemoes, P. 125 Earle, John 226, 505, 515
Coates, Jennifer 277, 286 Ek, K.-G. 122, 125
Cohen, Marcel 524, 528, 529 Ekwall, Eilert 112, 113, 115, 117, 123,
Collinge, N.E. 60, 92 125
Comrie, Bernard 328, 336, 539, 540 Ellis, A.J. 112, 117, 125
Contini, Michel 238, 242 Enkvist, Nils Erik 532, 535, 538, 540,
Corominas, Juan 556, 561 541
Coseriu, Eugenio 2, 8, 13, 14, 20 Ernout, Alfred 435, 441
Costa, R. 334, 336 Estienne, Robert 266-268, 272
Cotgrave, Randel 266, 268
Cowgill, Warren 432, 434, 435 F
Craigie, W.A. 361 Faarlund, Jan Terje 98, 106
ÍNDEX O F N A M E S 565
Fagan, Sarah M.B. 466,487 Green, John N. 181,188

Fauriel, Claude Charles 407 Greenbaum, Sidney 286, 325
von Feilitzen, O. 113, 115, 116, 117, Greenberg, Joseph H. 38, 47, 49, 315
125 Grevisse, Maurice 41, 42, 49
Fillmore, Charles 98, 106, 212, 227 Grimes, Joseph E. 531, 537, 541
Fischer, Olga 198, 209 Grimm, Jacob 1, 256, 264, 305-307
Fisiak, Jacek 112, 125, 126, 256, 261, Groussier, Marie-Line 211, 212, 215,
263 221,222,224, 227
Fleischer, Wolfgang 256, 263 Guðfinnsson, Björn 31, 33, 35, 36
Fleischman, Suzanne 41-45, 49, 531, Guentchéva, Zlatka 336
532, 540, 541 Guillaume, Gustave , 301, 377, 385
Foley, William A. 468, 475, 487 Guillaumin, J.Y. 248
Foulet, Lucien 389, 397 Guiter, Henri 406, 407
Fournier, Henri 247-249, 251 Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich 407
Franzén, Thomas 393, 397
Frei, Henri 524, 529 H
Friedrich, Johannes 309, 310, 314, 317, Haase, Adolphe 291, 301, 390, 394, 397
318, 320, 324, 459 Hahn, E. Adelaide 318, 324
Fuchs, Catherine 212, 227 Haider, Hubert 464, 466, 487
Haiman, John 251
G Hakulinen, Auli 74, 76, 85, 92
Gamillscheg, Ernst 265, 273 Hakulinen, Lauri 55, 67, 89, 92
Garcia, Erica C. 142, 143, 153, 158, Hall, Robert A., Jr. 330,336
159, 334, 336, 556, 561 Halldórsson, Halldór 28
Gawełko, Marek 415, 423, 424 H a m p , Eric P. 227, 543
Geeraerts, Dirk 191, 197, 209 Harman, Thomas 491, 498
Geerts, Guido 472, 487 Harmer, F.E. 226
Gehrt, B. 314, 318, 324 Harris, Alice C. 51, 52, 59, 92
Geisler, Hans 177-182, 188 Harris, Martin 176, 178, 181, 187, 188
Gendron, Jean-Denis 241, 242 Harris, Roy 407
Gérard, Josselyne 299, 301 Hartung, Wolfdietrich 497, 498
Gerritsen, Marinei 173 Haudry, Jean 444, 445, 456, 459
Giacalone Ramat, Anna 248, 249, 251 Hawkins, John A, 68, 92
Gili Gaya, S. 142, 151, 159 Healey, A. Di Paolo 209
Givón, Talmy 63, 92, 175, 181, 188, Heidolph, Karl Erich 472, 487
330, 336 Helbig, Gerhard 472, 475, 487
Godden, Malcolm 541 Henry, Albert 299, 301
Godefroy, Frédéric Eugène 265, 273, Heraeus, W. 183, 188
376 Heringer, H.J. 149, 159
Goebl, Hans 406, 407 Herman, József 178, 181, 188, 232, 237,
Gonda, Jan 444, 446, 450, 459 242
Goossens, L. 191, 209, 358, 359, 361 Hermann, Eduard 443, 459
Gorlach, Manfred 491, 492, 498 Herskovits, Annette 214, 227
Gougenheim, Georges 291, 301, 334, Herslund, Michael 232, 241, 242
336, 388-391, 397 Higgins, John 266, 268, 272, 273
Grammont, Maurice 523, 529 Hilmarsson, Jörundur 435, 441
566 INDEX OF NAMES
Hinderling, Robert 254, 255, 264 Jeffers, Robert J. 52, 56-58, 62, 71, 93
Hindret, Jean 521,523,529 Jespersen, Otto 37
Hjelmslev, Louis 2, 8, 13-15, 20, 223, Johnson, Mark 214, 228, 480, 487
227 Jokinen, Ulla 393, 394, 397
Hock, Hans Henrich 51, 52, 60, 62, 81, Jonge, Rob de 142, 153, 159
82, 86, 92, 180, 188, 544, 547, 548, Jordan, K. 117, 126
550, 551 J0rgensen, Peter 472, 483, 487
Hoekstra, Teun 464, 466, 479, 487 Joseph, Lionel S. 369, 373
Hoffmann, Karl 426, 432, 434, 435, 436 Jucquois, Guy 51, 57, 58, 93
Hoffner, H.A., Jr. 314, 315, 321, 324 Jülicher, Adolf 183, 189
Hofmann, J.B. 176, 179, 188 Junius, Hadrianus 268, 273
Hogg, Richard M. 108, 126
Holder, Wayne 276, 286 K
Holm, Catherine 241, 242 Kaisse, Ellen 176, 189
Holmqvist, Erik 489, 491, 498 Kalmár, Ivan 531, 541
Hopper, Paul J. 10, 20, 462, 466-469, Kastovsky, Dieter 126, 256, 261, 262,
475, 476, 481, 484, 485, 487, 531, 532, 264
537, 539, 541 Kayne, Richard S. 95, 106
Hordé, Tristan 47, 49 Keenan, Edward L. 69, 93
Houdebine, Anne-Marie 529 Keller, John E. 158
Householder, Fred W. 227 Keller, Madeleine 249, 251
Hualde, José 351 Keller, Rudi 149, 159
Huffmann, Alan 472, 487 Kemenade, Ans van 503, 513, 514
Huguet, Edmond 265, 267, 267, 268, Kern, J.H. 466, 468, 472, 485, 487
270,271,273,291,294 Kettunen, Lauri 63, 93
Humboldt, Wilhelm von 45, 401 Kieckers, Ernst 455, 459
Kiparsky, Paul 21, 36, 550, 551
I Klausenburger, Jürgen 38, 49
Ihalainen, Ossi 275, 286 Klavans, Judith 176, 177, 189
Ikola, Osmo 74, 76, 77, 92 Kleiber, Georges 388, 397
Imbs, Paul 43, 45, 49, 273 Klein, Ernest 215, 228
Inhelder, Barbai 214, 228 Klimov, Georgij A. 46, 49
Itkonen, Terho 92 Kluge, Friedrich 366, 373, 434, 435, 438
Ivanov, Vjaceslav V. 57, 61, 93 Kohonen, Viljo 508-511,514
Koivulehto, Jorma 435, 440, 441
J Koll, Hans-Georg 176, 180, 181, 183,
Jacobi, Hermann 452, 459 186, 189
Jacquemin, Denise 525, 529 Koopman, Willem 126
Jacquinod, Bernard 245, 251 Korhonen, Mikko 54-56, 66, 73, 77, 83,
Jaeggli, Oswaldo 403, 408 87, 89, 90, 93
Jakobson, Roman 21, 36, 37, 179, 188, Korte, J. 393, 395, 397
223, 228 Krahe, Hans 58, 93
Janhunen,Juha 55, 93 Krapp, George Philip 492, 495, 498
Jaquinod, Bernard 318, 324 Kristensson, G. 107, 112, 123, 124, 126
Jasanoff, Jay 426-428, 431-436, 439 Kühner, R, 314, 318, 324
INDEX OF NAMES 567
Kurban, N. 109, 126 Littré, Emile 517, 518, 529

Kuryłowicz, Jerzy 224, 228, 431, 543- Lloyd, Paul M. 401,408
551 Lommatzsch, Erhard 265, 273, 376, 397
Kytö, Merja 275, 276, 277, 286 Longacre, Robert E. 531, 532, 537,
539, 541
L Lühr, Rosemarie 426, 435, 436
Laanest, Arvo 89, 90, 93 Luick, K. 107, 117, 122, 126
Labov, William 22, 37, 532, 541 Luraghi, S. 315, 325
Ladefoged, Peter 349, 351 Lyons, John 553, 561
Lakoff, George 214, 228, 462, 466, 474,
476, 480, 487, 545, 551 M
Lambrecht, Knud 187, 189 Magnússon, Ásgeir Bl. 24, 25, 28, 36
Lane, A. 277 Maisenhelder, C. 512, 514
Langacker, Ronald W. 63, 93, 462, Mal'ceva, LM. 423, 424
487, 545, 551 Maling, Joan 105, 106
Lantier, R. 306 Malkiel, Yakov 330, 336, 556, 561
Lapesa, Rafael 144, 146, 159 Manczak, Witold 544, 547, 551
Laroche, Emmanuel 315, 324 Manoliu-Manea, Maria 332, 336, 472
Lass, Roger 21, 22, 36, 144, 159, 258, Marcantonio, Angela 182, 188
262, 264 Markey, Thomas L. 489, 498
Lausberg, Heinrich 232, 234, 236, 238, Marie, Jaap van 417, 424
240, 242 Marouzeau, Jean 176, 177, 189
Le Guin, Ursula K. 533, 541 Martin, Robert 291, 301, 389, 393, 394,
Le Page, Robert B. 406, 408 397
Léard, Jean-Marcel 290, 301 Martinet, André 37, 236, 237, 240, 242,
Lee, B.S. 126 518, 519, 524-526, 529
Leech, Geoffrey 286, 325 Martinon, Philippe 522, 529
Lefebvre, Anne 521, 525, 529 Mata Carriazo, Juan de 158
Lehmann, Christian 320, 325 Mawer, A. 126
Lehmann, Winfred P. 57, 176, 180, Mayrhofer, Manfred 435, 438
189, 425, 427, 435, 452, 459 McCarthy, John 342, 352
Lehrer, Adrienne 557, 561 Mcintosh, Angus 107, 109, 121, 122,
Leino, Pentti 74, 85, 92 126
Lenz, Rodolfo 142, 151, 159 Meech, S. 112, 126
Leonard, Anne-Marie 212, 227 Meillet, Antoine 37, 41, 45, 49, 81, 327,
Lepelley, René 344, 351 328, 337, 435, 441, 446, 459
Leumann, Manu 141, 159 Melchert, H.C. 322, 325
Levin, Juliette 342, 352 Ménard, Philippe 397
Lewis, George Cornwall 401, 408 Menéndez Pidal, Ramón 144, 146, 158,
Lightfoot, David W. 52, 57, 62, 70, 77, 159, 557, 561
78, 82, 93, 166, 173, 356, 357, 359, Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm 182, 189, 400,
361 402, 405, 408
Limburg, M.J. 313, 325 Michaelis, Hermann 517, 518, 522, 523,
Linde, P. 176, 189 529
Lindeman, Fredrik Otto 425, 427, 432, Miller, Th. 226
434-436, 438-441 Milner, Jean-Claude 299, 301
568 INDEX OF NAMES
Minard, Armand 445, 452, 459 van Oosten, Jeanne H. 467, 488, 548,
Minkova, Donka 507, 513, 515 551
Miranda, Rocky V. 52, 62, 63, 93 Orton, Harold 117, 122, 127
Mitchell, Bruce 499, 503, 506, 507, 509, Osgood, Charles E. 532, 542
511-513, 515, 536, 538, 541 Osthoff, Hermann 438
Mithun, Marianne 52, 56, 57, 62, 68, 92 Otten, Heinrich 313, 321, 325
Moignet, Gérard 299, 301, 388, 389, Oubouzar, E. 470, 487
393, 394, 397
Molinelli, Piera 176, 189 P
Molloy, Gerald 286 Page, R.I. 110, 127
Monedero Carrillo de Albornoz, C. Palmatier, Robert A. 510, 511, 515
146, 159 Palmer, Frank R. 355, 361
Monteil, Pierre 449, 459 Palsgrave, Jehan 266, 522, 529
Montreuil, Jean-Pierre 347, 352 Panhuis, Dirk 176, 179, 180, 189
Moody, Patricia A. 277, 286 Paris, Marie-Claude 212, 228
Moore, S. 112, 126 Pascual, José A. 561
Morris, Richard 226, 227 Passy, Paul 517, 518, 522, 523, 529
Morris-Jones, John 435, 437 Patañjali 449
Motsch, Wolfgang 261, 264 Paul, Hermann 472, 473, 474, 485, 487
Moulton, William G. 23, 36, 232, 242 Peer, Willie van 532, 542
Müller, Bodo 42, 49 Peirce, Charles S. 353, 354, 355, 361
Muller, Claude 300, 301 Perlmutter, David M. 463, 464, 487
Murray, J.A.H. 361 Peters, Martin 367, 374
Mussafia, Adolfo 181, 186, 187, 189 Piaget, Jean 214, 228
Picoche, Jacqueline 375, 385
N Pieper, Ursula 127
Naro, Anthony J. 142, 159 Pierrard, Michel 395, 397
Needham, G.I. 515 Pilch, Herbert 107, 127, 256, 264
Neu, Erich 309, 310, 311, 325 Pinault, Georges-Jean 429, 435
Neumann, E. 306 Platzack, Christer 95, 106
Nickel, Gerhard 536, 541 Plummer, Charles 505, 515
Niedermann, Max 366, 373 Poebel, Arno 40, 49
Nieuwenhuijsen, D. 143, 159 Pokorny, Julius P. 307, 308, 374, 430,
Norman, William M. 52, 56, 94 435, 438, 441
Nyrop, Kristoffer 240, 242, 521, 529 Pope, J.C. 226
Pope, Mildred 116, 127
O Popper, Karl 399, 408
Oftedal, Magne 235, 236, 243 Porzig, Walter 445, 459
Oinas, Felix 63, 64, 65, 94 Posner, Rebecca 337, 399, 404, 406,
Ojeda, Almerindo 331, 337 408
Okasha, E. 109, 111, 127 Postal, Paul M. 333,337
Ólafsson, Eggert 25, 26 Potte, Jean-Claude 519, 530
Olsen, Birgit Anette 366, 373, 374 Pottier, Bernard 144, 147, 158
Olsen, Marilyn A. 158 Pounder, Amanda 414, 417, 424
Ong, Walter J. 539, 541 Price, Glanville 289, 301
Onions, Charles T. 361 Pulleyblank, Douglas 339, 351
INDEX OF NAMES 569
Q S
Quemada, M. 266 Saareste, Anrus 76, 94
Quirk, Randolph 280, 286, 314, 325 Safir, Ken 404, 405, 409
Sagey, Elizabeth 339, 352
R de Sainliens, Claude 266-268, 270, 272,
Ramat, Paolo 176, 189, 443 273
Ramsden, H. 146, 147, 159, 181-185, Samuels, M. 125, 126
189 Sankoff, Gillian 175, 189
Rask, Rasmus Kristian 1 Sapir, Edward 2, 8, 13, 14, 19, 20, 22,
Rasmussen, Jens Elmegård 363, 367, 36,37,48,49,361,362
371, 374, 431, 432, 435, 436, 439 Saukkonen, Pauli 60, 61, 79, 85, 94
Raun, Alo 76, 94 de Saussure, Ferdinand 157, 407
Ravila, Paavo 89, 94 Sauvageot, Aurélien 43, 45, 49
Raynouard, François-Juste-Marie 400, Schein, Barry 342, 352
401, 405, 408 Schiffrin, Deborah 538, 542
Reaney, P.H. 113, 122, 127 Schindler, Jochem 436, 437
Reddy, Michael 480, 488 Schlegel, August Wilhelm 401, 409
Reill, Peter H. 401,402,408 Schlemilch, W. 117, 127
Reinhart, Tanya 531, 532, 542 Schmidely, Jack 151, 159
Renou, Louis 460 Schoch, Marianne 525, 530
Renzi, Lorenzo 176, 177, 179-182, 188 Schupbach, Richard D. 412, 415, 424
Rice, Sally 467, 468, 488 Seefranz-Montag, Ariane von 480, 488
Richardson, Malcolm 490, 498 Séguy, Jean 519, 530
Richter, Elise 176, 189 Seiler, Hansjakob 313, 319, 325
Rissanen, Matti 275, 276, 286 Seltén, B. 117, 122, 127
Rittaud-Hutinet, Chantal 525, 526, 530 Serjeantson, M.S. 122, 127
Rittel, Teodozja 4, 9, 10, 11, 20 Sezer, Engin 330, 336
Rivero, Maria-Luisa 187, 189 Shannon, Ann 510, 511, 515
Rizzi, Luigi 355, 361, 403, 404, 408, 409 Shannon, Thomas F. 466, 473, 475,
Roberts, LG. 355, 357, 361 480, 488
Rohlfs, Gerhard 233, 236, 238, 241, 243 Shaumyan, Sebastian 336
Romaine, Suzanne 275, 286, 357, 360, Shepherd, S.C. 358, 362
362, 538, 542 Shores, David L. 499, 508, 510, 515
Rosen, Carol G. 463, 488 Sievers, Eduard 107, 127, 429
Rosengren, Per 147, 159 Siewierska, Anna 334, 337
Rosetti, Alexandru 330, 337 Sigurôsson, Halldór Ármann 25, 28, 36
Rosset, Théodore 521, 522, 530 Sigurjónsdóttir, Sigríður 32, 36
Rossetti, Alexandru 138, 140 Simon, Péla 524, 530
Rousseau, André 443, 458, 460 Sismondi, J . C L. Simonde de 401, 405,
Rudzka, B. 191-194, 197,209 409
Ruipérez, Martín Sanchez 246, 249, Skeat, Walter W. 226
251 Smith, A.H. 107, 108, 127, 502, 511,
Rüster, Ch. 309, 325 515
Rynell, Alarik 539, 542 Smith, Henry Lee, Jr. 425, 436
Sneyders de Vogel, K. 391, 392, 397
570 INDEX OF NAMES
Snyder, L.L. 108, 113, 114, 127 Touret-Keller, Andrée 408

Soden, Wolfram von 325 Trabant, Jürgen 401,409
Soucek, V. 313, 319, 324, 325 Traugott, Elisabeth C. 175, 189, 538,
Soutkari, Pentti 80, 94 542
Spence, N.C.W. 349, 352 Trudgill, Peter 22
Starke, Günter 314, 317, 318, 325 Tuttle, Edward F. 241, 243, 472, 473,
Steele, S.M. 357, 362 488
Stein, Dieter 489, 493, 498
Stenton, F.M. 126 U
Steriade, Donca 340, 342, 352 Ultan, R. 313, 325
Sternemann, Reinhard 319, 324
Stickel, Gerhard 127 V
Stockwell, Robert P. 507, 513, 515 Van Valin, Robert D., Jr. 466, 468,
Stolze, M. 113, 116, 117, 127 473, 475, 487, 488
Straka, Georges 523, 524, 530 Vendryes, Joseph 41, 45, 46, 49, 305,
Sturluson, Snorri 305 328, 337
Sundby, Bertil 112, 127 Venezky, R.L. 209
Svartvik, Jan 286, 325 Vennemann, Theo 178, 180, 190, 506,
Svensson, Prikko Forsman 74, 77, 94 508, 513, 515
Sweet, Henry 226 Verner, Karl 365, 434
Szantyr, Anton 88 Veron, Jean 266, 272
Szwedek, Aleksander 126 Verschueren, Jef 191,209
Versey, G.R. 113, 125
T Viereck, Wolfgang 127
Tabouret-Keller, Andrée 406, 408 Vincent, Nigel 22, 35, 36, 51, 63, 94,
Tassara, Gilda 525, 526, 530 469, 475, 488
Ternes, Elmar 231, 236, 243 Vinogradov, V.V. 423, 424
Tesnière, Lucien 212, 228, 456 Virtaranta, Pertti 80, 94
Thorn, René 451 Vising, J. 116, 127
Thompson, Sandra A. 10, 20, 462, 466- Visser, F.Th. 362
469, 475, 476, 481, 484, 485, 487, 531, Voigt, Hans 306
532, 537, 539, 541 Vries, John de 304
Thorpe, Benjamin 226
Thurneysen, Rudolf 178, 181, 182, 189 W
Thurot, Charles 234, 235, 237, 243, Wackernagel, Jacob Debrunner, Adal
521-523, 530 bert 176-183, 186, 190, 247, 315, 321,
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid 277, 374
286 Wagner, Charles Ph. 152, 158, 159
Timberlake, Alan 15-17, 20, 74, 94, Wakelin, Martyn 112, 127
141, 142, 159 Wald, Benji 537, 542
Tobler, Adolf 6, 397 Waletzky, Joshua 532, 541
Toller, T.N. 209 Wallace, Stephen 532, 542
Tomlin, Russell S. 531, 542 Wallis, John 277
Toon, Thomas E. 108, 127 Walter, Henriette 236, 243, 290, 302,
Topolinska, Zuzanna 8, 9, 20 518, 519, 524-526, 529, 530
Touratier, Christian 328, 333, 337 Wanner, Dieter 181-183, 186, 190
INDEX OF NAMES 571
Warkentyne, Henry J. 127 Withgott, Margaret 342, 352

Warner, A. 358, 362 Wolfe, Susan J. 337
Warner, A.R. 52, 78, 94 Wolfson, Nessa 538, 542
Wartburg, Walther von 266, 273 Wrenn, Charles Leslie 226
Wârvik, Brita 531, 532, 535, 537, 541, Wright, Roger 553, 557, 559, 561
542 Wüllner, Franz 223, 228
Watkins, Calvert 94, 444, 460 Wunderli, Peter 289, 292, 302, 388-392,
Weber, Jean Jacques 531, 532, 542 397, 398
Weida, Gudrun 277, 286 Wurzel, Wolfgang Ulrich 414, 424
Weijnen, A. 166, 173 Wyld, Henry C. 112, 117, 122, 127,
Weinreich, Harald 37, 236, 243 128,491,498
Weinreich, Uriel 130-132, 140
Wekker, Herman Chr. 277, 286 Y
Wey, Francis 409 Yoshida, D. 312, 325
White Linker, Robert 158
Whitehall, Harold 112, 126 Z
Whorf, Benjamin Lee 213, 214, 220, Zachrisson, R.E. 113, 115, 116, 128
228 Zaenen, Annie 105, 106, 466, 488
Wilmet, Marc 291, 301, 389, 393, 394, Zieglschmidt, A.J. Friedrich 469, 488
397 Zwicky, Arnold M. 176, 190
Winter, Werner 51, 52, 57, 61, 62, 81, þórðardóttir, Sigríður 27, 36
82,94 þórólfsson, Bjõrn K. 24, 25, 36
Winters, Margaret E. 545, 546, 551 þráinsson, Höskuldur 31, 32, 36
Index of Languages
A Catalan 333, 556-558

Accadian 313, 321 Celtic 303-308, 365, 367, 368, 370, 371,
African 40 373, 437
Afrikaans 129-140 Central Eastern Norwegian 101
Afro-Asian 40 Central Scandinavian 101, 103-105
Alemannic 231-233 Centro-Meridional Italian 236, 238, 241
Albanian 365, 440 Cheremis 54, 73
Altaic 40 Classical Attic 247, 250
American English 137, 139, 140, 275- Classical French 234, 239
288 Classical Greek 245, 251
American Indian 40 Classical Latin 176, 181, 182, 548
Anglo-Frisian 258 Common Germanic 26, 433
Anglo-Norman 115-117, 207 Contemporary Polish 6
Arcadian Greek 427 Creole 137,139
Archaic Greek 251 Crimean Gothic 425, 437
Armenian 365-370, 373, 437 Czech 368, 369
Asturian 556
Attic 367 D
Avestan 366, 368, 371, 372, 426, 427, Danish 95, 232, 233, 436, 438, 441, 461
432, 436, 437, 441 Doric 372
Dravidian 40
B Dutch 105, 129, 131, 161-171, 173, 436,
Baltic 65, 66, 88, 364 438, 441, 461, 462, 464, 466, 469, 471-
Balto-Finnic 52-59, 63-77, 81-90 476, 476-484, 485, 500-507, 513
Balto-Finnic-Lapp 54, 73, 77, 82, 87
Balto-Slavic 71 E
Basque 240 Early American English 276, 281, 282
Biblical Gothic 437 Early French 547
Brazilian Portuguese 404 Early Middle English 124, 256, 261,
Breton 373, 437 358, 510
British English 275-288 Early Modern British English 275, 276
Bulgarian 440 Early Modern English 275-288, 357,
359, 361
C Early Modern Spanish 142-145, 150
Canadian French 405 Early Old English 208, 507
Castilian 556, 558 Early Old Spanish 143, 145, 150
574 INDEX OF LANGUAGES
Early Polish 6 Germanic 23, 26, 79, 80, 87-89, 231,

Early Romance 181, 556, 557, 560 233, 234, 236, 241, 242, 253-255, 257,
East Anglian 109, 497 258, 263, 303-308, 365, 367, 370, 371,
East Frisian 439 373, 425-441, 443, 461-488, 504, 506,
Eastern Cotentin 344, 345 547, 558, 560
Eastern Lapp 66 Gothic 23, 71, 79, 307, 363, 366, 368,
Eastern Romance 232, 239 369, 372, 373, 425-443, 447-449, 452-
Enets 54 458
English 21, 23, 35, 38, 39, 41, 43, 63, Greek 41, 176, 183, 245-251, 303, 306,
65, 71, 82, 96, 99, 105, 107-140, 166, 307, 314, 318, 363-373, 402, 404, 427,
173, 180, 191, 197, 198, 201, 202, 207, 429, 431, 437-441, 448, 449, 453-456
208, 211-231, 249, 253-264, 275-288,
306, 307, 349, 353-362, 366-369, 373, H
426, 427, 430-441, 461, 470, 473, 489- Haitian Creole 401
515, 531-542, 548, 553, 554, 556, 558 Hame 61
Erza Mordvin 66, 73 Hittite 71, 309-325, 365, 429, 437, 440,
Estonian 54, 58, 59, 63-65, 73, 76, 80, 448, 450, 452
84, 89, 90 Hungarian 54, 64, 88, 313
Eurajoki 79
I
F Icelandic 21-36, 95, 96, 102-105, 430,
Faroese 95, 103-105 431,438-441,461
Finnic 68, 70 Indo-European 39-42, 46, 47, 51, 57,
Finnish 15, 54, 58, 60-90, 427, 428, 433, 65, 71, 81, 176, 177, 182, 212, 215,
440, 441 220, 222, 223, 247, 249, 250, 253, 258,
Finno-Ugric 40, 51-94, 313 303, 304, 306, 313, 318, 321, 363-365,
French 37-44, 48, 65, 92, 115-117, 142, 370-373, 425-427, 429-433, 436-441,
143, 161, 178, 180, 181, 187, 207, 222, 443-460, 543, 547
234-239, 241, 242, 249, 265-268, 270, Indo-Iranian 71, 437, 441
271, 289-302, 329, 330, 333, 335, 339, Inkeri (Koprina) 80
341, 342, 344, 345-351, 375-378, 380, Insular Scandinavian 95
381, 387-398, 400, 404, 405, 423, 440, Insular Spanish 235, 236
461, 462, 469, 471-476, 490, 517-530, Ionic 247, 248
540, 546-548, 555-558, 560 Iranian 437
Frisian 439,441,461 Irish 71, 277, 307, 363, 366-369, 372,
373,427,431,436,438,439
G Island Norman 345, 350
Gallo-Romance 237, 239, 240, 242, 440 Italian 182, 187, 233-236, 238, 241, 332-
Gathic Avestan 426, 436 334, 404, 461-463, 466, 469, 471-476,
Gaulish 305, 367, 368, 429, 441 483,501,510,555-558,560
German 23, 71, 79, 173, 231-233, 249, Italic 45, 365, 370, 373
253-264, 307, 366-370, 373, 404, 405,
412, 419-423, 425, 426, 428-431, 434- J
441, 461, 462, 464, 466, 469-486, 500- Jersian 349, 351
504, 507, 513, 546
INDEX OF LANGUAGES 575
K Middle French 234, 235, 237, 240, 290,

Karelian 54, 65, 85, 90 298, 375, 378, 380, 381, 387, 388-395,
Kentish 107, 109, 110 405
Khanty 54 Middle High German 259, 260, 370,
Kodavaere Estonian 73 425,428,438-441,479
Komi 54 Middle Hittite 309, 317, 319, 321, 323
Middle Irish 307, 366, 367, 373, 427
L Middle Welsh 366
Lapp 54, 55, 66, 68, 71, 73, 77, 83, 87, Modern Dutch 161-165, 438, 480, 500,
89, 441 502, 504
Late Hittite 309, 321 Modern English 112, 201, 205, 256,
Late Latin 37, 45, 175, 181, 182, 548, 262, 280, 489, 501, 504, 510, 532-539
556, 557, 560 Modern Faroese 103
Late Middle English 124, 277, 357, 359, Modern Finnish 75
360 Modern French 92, 339, 341, 342, 347,
Late Old English 107-128, 207, 208, 376, 377, 387, 393, 395, 405, 546, 555
260, 261, 356, 358, 509 Modern German 422, 480, 500, 504
Late Old Spanish 145 Modern Greek 250, 251
Late West Saxon 109, 115 Modern High German 255, 256, 259,
Latin 37-48, 109, 113, 143, 147, 175- 260, 367
187, 232, 236, 238, 239, 250, 267, 268, Modern Icelandic 24, 26, 27, 29, 30,
294, 303, 306-308, 314, 327, 328, 330, 102
331, 333, 335, 363-373, 400-404, 425, Modern Irish 307, 368
429, 430, 437-441, 445, 448-450, 453, Modern Italian 510
470, 471, 490, 546, 548, 554-560 Modern Norwegian 439
Latvian 366, 439, 440 Modern Polish 5, 9
Laz 59 Modern Scandinavian 99
Lithuanian 367, 368, 369, 426, 432, 437, Modern Spanish 236, 510
438, 440 Modern Standard Finnish 86
Livonian 54, 58, 65, 73, 84 Modern Standard French 404, 405
Logudorian 236 Modern Standard Icelandic 28
Low Norman 344, 346, 347 Modern Standard Polish 10
Moksha Mordvin 66
M Mordvin 54, 66, 68, 73, 89
Mainland Scandinavian 95, 96, 99, 101
Mansi 54 N
Mari 54 Nenets 54
Maxo 59 New York American 139, 140
Medieval Spanish 558, 560 Ngansan 54
Mercian 107, 109, 110, 124 Nordic 101, 102, 105,257
Middle Breton 373 Norman 115, 116, 344, 346
Middle Dutch 161-173, 438, 441, 484- Norse 425, 430, 433, 434, 441
485 North Germanic 95, 307, 439
Middle English 207, 225, 256, 260-263, Northern Cotentin 344, 348
356-361, 489, 509, 510, 538, 539 Northern Estonian 63, 64
576 INDEX OF LANGUAGES
Northern French 347, 348 Old Swedish 425, 436, 438-440

Northern German 474 Ossetic 437
Northern Italian 404 Ostyak 54, 76
Northumbrian 107, 109 Ostyak Samoyed 54
Northwest Germanic 258, 427, 430
Norwegian 95, 96, 101, 439 P
Norwegian Lapp 73, 89 Parikkala 80
Permic 54, 73
O Pieksamaki 80
Ob-Ugric 54 Polish 2-8, 14-18
Occitan 555 Portuguese 9-11, 42, 237, 240, 241, 332,
Old Church Slavic 366, 367, 426, 431, 333. 404, 556-558
436-440 Proto-Balto-Finnic 53, 55, 58, 59, 65,
Old English 23, 107-117, 122-124, 166, 82, 85, 86
191, 197, 198, 202, 205, 207, 208, 211- Proto-Balto-Finnic-Lapp 66
230, 253-264, 356, 366-369, 373, 426, Proto-Celtic 431
427, 430-441. 499-515, 535-539 Proto-Finnish 59
Old English Anglian 116, 123 Proto-Finno-Ugric 55, 68, 81
Old Finnish 75-77 Proto-Germanic 27, 257, 258, 425-441
Old French 38, 207, 234-238, 270, 271, Proto-Indo-European 363-374, 426,
290-292, 345, 350, 375, 376, 387-395, 427, 429, 432. 436, 437
405, 540, 547, 548, 555 Proto-Indo-Iranian 364
Old Frisian 441 Proto-Lapp 66, 83
Old Greek 245-251 Proto-Nordic 24
Old High German 23, 79, 233, 253-258, Proto-Norse 425
366-369, 373, 425, 428-431, 434-441, Proto-Romance 181, 182
469, 470 Proto-Uralic 53, 54, 68, 81, 87, 88, 89,
Old Hittite 309-314. 317, 319-321 90
Old Hungarian 64 Provençal 234
Old Icelandic 24, 25, 30, 430, 431, 438-
441 Q
Old Indic 176 Quebec French 241
Old Irish 71, 363, 366-369, 372, 373,
431,436,438,439 R
Old Italian 182 Rheto-Romance 240
Old Lithuanian 432 Romance 37-49, 175-190, 231-243, 327-
Old Norse 71, 96-103. 115, 255, 307, 337, 370, 399-409, 440, 461-488, 547,
366-369, 373, 425-430, 436, 437 548, 553-561
Old Persian 372 Rumanian 239, 329-335, 400, 557, 558
Old Polish 3, 9, 11 Russian 15, 55, 65, 423, 441
Old Portuguese 556 Russian Church Slavic 367, 369
Old Prussian 367, 440
Old Saxon 23, 367, 427, 430, 436, 438- S
441 Samoyed 54
Old Spanish 37, 142-146, 150, 187, 240, Sanskrit 364-372, 425, 429-433, 436-
555-559 441,445
ÍNDEX OF LANGUAGES 577
Sardinian 233, 238 Turja Lapp 87

Savo 63 Tuscan 238
Scandinavian 21, 87, 95-106, 306
Scottish 277 U
Selkup 54 Udmurt 54
Semitic 313 Umbrian 366
Serbo-Croatian 430, 437 Upper Satakunta 63
Slavic 250, 364 Uralic 53, 54, 65, 68, 72, 88
Slovene 427 Ute 330
South African English 129-140
Southern Estonian 64 V
Southern French 347, 348 Vedic 41, 71, 303, 304, 427, 431-437,
Southern German 474 441-449, 452-454, 458
Southern Lapp 73, 87 Veps 54, 64, 65, 83, 84, 85
Spanish 37, 40, 42, 142-147, 150, 187, Vermland 61,79, 80
235-237, 240, 329-335, 347, 403, 404, Vogul 54
501,510,553-560 Volga-Balto-Finnic 54, 66, 73, 88
Standard English 261 Votic 54, 58, 59, 65, 76, 77, 80, 84, 90
Standard Estonian 89 Votyak 54, 76
Standard Finnish 63, 65, 79, 80, 83 Vulgar Latin 38, 232, 238, 401
Standard French 346-349
Standard German 474 W
Sumerian 40 Welsh 366, 368, 369, 373, 431, 437
Swabian 434 West Germanic 113, 254, 425, 433, 434,
Swedish 79, 80, 95, 233, 425, 436, 438- 513
441 West Saxon 107, 109, 115, 116
Swedish Lapp 73 Western Finnish 60, 79, 80
Swiss German 434 Western Romance 236-239
Swiss Sursilvan 404
Y
T Yenisey Samoyed 54
Tavgi 54 Yurak 54
Tocharian 365, 439-441
Topsy 148 Z
Zyrian 54, 73, 76

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Koerner e Andersen 1987 - Historical Linguistics 1987 Papers From The 8th International Conference On Historical Linguistics, Lille, August 31-September...

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HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS 1987

AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND

Series IV - CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY

Advisory Editorial Board

Henning Andersen (Los Angeles); Raimo Anttila (Los Angeles)

Henning Andersen and Konrad Koerner (eds)

Historical Linguistics 1987:

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY

International Conference on Historical Linguistics (8th : 1987 : Lille, France)

The 8th International Conference on Historical Linguistics was held in

Buffalo, New York, July 1989 Henning Andersen

Birgit Anette Olsen

Since the beginnings of modern historical linguistics - since the times of

0.1. The present paper is in essence a sequel to my contribution to the

0.2. I shall begin with an outline of my interpretation of the Polish

In the following section (Section 2) I then take up the chronological details

1. The direction of drift.

1.1. The Polish story. First view. My chosen example of drift is

1300s-1400s 1500s 1600s 1700s 1800s 1900s Exp.pr.

1500s 1600s 1700s 1800s 1900s

1.2. Quantity into quality? It is easy to see from the preceding

(1) Present of Preterite Conditional

been preserved in some dialects of Polish, but in others - including those on

instance of drift there is no such temporal relationship between the tendency

1.3. The Polish story. Second v i e w . Looking around for some

as if the participant markers have undergone a significant change from sentence

2. The structure of drift.

2.0. The structure of drift. In the preceding bird's-eye view of the

There is a remarkable regularity among these observations, which will be

2.1.1. The following observations concern specifically the development

More compatible Less compatible Point

Morphological present tense preterite 1

2 . 1 . 2 . Regarding the development of the conditional, Rittel makes a

2.2. The participant markers. In the development of the preterite

There is no guarantee, consequently, that the variables mentioned in Table

2 . 3 . 1 . The observations summarized in Table 3 document that the

2 . 3 . 2 . What this means on a general level is that there is more to be

and the final stage of a long-term development is generated by a multiplicity of

3. From synchrony to diachrony.

(deductively; cf. Andersen 1987:42, 48 and the example in Section 1.4

To understand these relations it would be useful to be able to compare the

3.2. Why drift has structure. A correlation between markedness

More compatible Less compatible

3.2.1. In the illustration of the direction of the Polish drift in Section

with different categories of person and tense, different kinds of clauses,

Andersen, Henning. 1972. "Diphthongization". Language 48.11-50.

Andersen, Henning. 1973. "Abductive and deductive change". Language

1. Teleology and sound change.

As a background for the following discussion I want to keep in mind a

concept of historical conspiracy and teleology, as long as we do not reduce it

2. The conspiracy for a stop in the rhyme.

The first three of these belong to something which I would call in

2 . 1 . F r i c a t i v e s after s o n o r a n t s . As can be seen from Table I, all

To describe the Old Icelandic situation, we have to write something like

(3) a. ry, 1γ > rg, lg: borg, volg (general),

2 . 3 . Fricatives before sonorants. Besides developing stops out

2 . 4 . Fricative clusters. We have seen that clusters of two voiced

Proto-Germanic Cluster Modern Icelandic

The following changes have affected clusters of fricatives in the history of

As already mentioned (Section 2.2), the pronunciation [vd], [yd] (and

2.5 The socio-historical effect. From the point of view of

Thus the socially defined variables are by no means predictable on

3. Loss of stop after nasal.

Standard Esto Livo- Proto-