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The article reviews the 2023 issue of the periodical "Le moyen français."

This contribution analyses the role French may have played as a model language in the development of the indirect passive (or recipient passive) in Middle English. It is based on diachronic corpus data showing that the construction appeared in Middle English predominantly with verbs borrowed from French and spread to native verbs only later. The fact that French did not have a recipient passive construction speaks against contact influence, whereas the data as well as the situation of close language contact between Old French and Middle English speak in favour of contact-induced change. The hypothesis of internal change will be contrasted with several explanations in a language contact scenario. The first one is syntactic and regards the type of dative case : English integrated the French structural dative into its native grammar, which so far only had an inherent dative. Passives with structural datives were prior to native constructions and may have triggered them. The transfer may have been facilitated by the reanalysis of certain bridge constructions (proclitics and clausal complements). The more conceptual second part discusses current psycholinguistic research in order to identify methods which help overcome the methodological deadlock that historical linguists are facing when they want to assess the validity of competing explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What would a history of medieval literature in French that is not focused on France and Paris look like? Taking as its starting point the key role played in the development of textual culture in French by geographical regions that are either at the periphery of French-speaking areas, or alternatively completely outside them, this article offers three case studies: first of a text composed in mid-twelfth century England; then of one from early thirteenth-century Flanders; and finally from late thirteenth-century Italy. What difference does it make if we do not read these texts, and the language in which they are written, in relation to French norms, but rather look at their cultural significance both at their point of production, and then in transmission? A picture emerges of a literary culture in French that is mobile and cosmopolitan, one that cannot be tied to the teleology of an emerging national identity, and one that is a bricolage of a range of influences that are moving towards France as well as being exported from it. French itself functions as a supralocal written language (even when it has specific local features) and therefore may function more like Latin than a local vernacular.

This paper investigates contact-induced changes in the argument structure of Middle English verbs on the model of Old French. 1 We study two issues: i) to what extent did the English system retain and integrate the argument structure of verbs copied from French? ii) did the argument structure of these copied verbs influence the argument structure of native verbs? Our study is based on empirical evidence from Middle English corpora as well as a full text analysis of the Ayenbite of Inwyt and focusses on a number of verbs governing a dative in French. In the first part of the paper we define the contact situation and relate it to Johanson's (2002) model of code copying. In the second part we comment on Allen's (1995) study of please and some other psych verbs and corroborate her assumptions that i) semantic similarity triggered change within the set of these verbs, and ii) this change has reflexes in the syntactic realisation of the dative argument as a prepositional phrase. We propose a method to identify contact-induced change beyond the verb class originally affected. More explicitly, based on further empirical evidence, we show that the argument structure of the native verb give , a transfer of possession verb, was also affected by these changes and that these effects are stronger in texts that are directly influenced by French. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the use of the word "sanglant" in Anglo-Norman dialect. She mentions its use as an adverb rather than an adjective meaning "covered in blood," the word's appearance in Anglo-Norman literature, and its descent to the English word "bloody."

Copyright of Études Françaises is the property of Presses de l'Universite de Montreal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

After his first edition of the Old French text Lai de l'Ombre in 1890, the Romance scholar Joseph Be'dier returned to the text in a revised edition in 1913. In the introduction to this edition, he claimed that he had become aware of a strange law: the great majority of stemmata proposed for Old French texts were bifurcating, i.e. they had two main branches. When he once more returned to this question in 1928, he claimed that of 110 stemmata he had encountered, 105 were bifurcating. Arrigo Castellani, another Romance scholar, revised this material in 1957, and came to somewhat lower numbers, but confirmed in general Be'dier's conclusion--of 86 stemmata, Castellani found that 71 were bifurcating. This article is an investigation into another vernacular tradition, the Old Norse one, i.e. Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian. The material presented here is based on the two major series published in Copenhagen, Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana and Editiones Arnamagnæanæ, and it comes very close to the findings of Castellani--of 89 stemmata, 74 turned out to be bifurcating. The two main hypotheses of Be'dier are evaluated, and the conclusion is that the most likely explanation for the preponderance of bifurcating stemmata is the force of dichotomy inherent in the procedure of the stemmatic recension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language change is generally considered to originate in the spoken mode before spreading to the written mode, although the latter provides all our available data for language change until recent times. While written mode representations of speech, such as fictional dialogue, can be used, their authenticity is hard to verify. This study addresses these issues by comparing the language of the Year Books, texts which attest to oral pleading in medieval courts, and include very extensive dialogue, with legal register written-mode origin texts, in the Parliament Rolls of Medieval England. Both sets of texts were written in Anglo-Norman, arose within a fairly homogenous speech community, and cover the same time period - late thirteenth century until c. 1350. It is shown that changes known to have occurred in later medieval French are instantiated at this time in the dialogic texts, but to a lesser degree or not at all in the written register texts. Features of morphology, lexical semantic extension, and discourse syntax in these sources indicate in each case that the innovation arose and spread first in the spoken origin source. Support from diachronic change is thus offered for a continuity assumption for the primacy of the spoken mode in present and past states of language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports an empirical study of the discourse-pragmatic functions of subject left dislocation (LD) in Old Occitan. Data come from the complete troubadour biographies, in which the most common manifestation of subject LD is a nominal subject + sentence adverb si + verb, as in "Bertrans de Born si fo uns castellans" [Bertran de Born was a nobleman]. Whereas previous accounts fail to integrate syntax with discourse-pragmatic function, these results reveal the importance of both in explaining the occurrence of subject LD. Using recent approaches to the clausal left periphery (e.g., Benincà 2006), I distinguish LD subjects from conventional (i.e., non-dislocated) pre-verbal subjects. Next, following Fleischman's (1991) analysis of si in Old French, I illustrate how subject LD structures the flow of information in discourse. In particular, subject LD marks a constituent as a discourse topic and can also introduce a new referent into the discourse and thereby mark it as topical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topic of this paper is the evolution of the discourse marker comme qui dirait from Old French to Modern French. At the beginning, the marker has the meaning of a hypothetical comparative si comme l'en diroit / comme + qui + diroit meaning comme si l'on disait 'as if one said'. In a second stage, the marker becomes a reformulative marker with a meaning similar to c'est-á-dire 'that is to say'. Finally, in a third stage, it becomes a polyphonic mitigation marker. The diachronic study of comme qui dirait explains its contemporary meaning and reveals its semantic features. In addition, a polyphonic analysis will allow us to understand the role of the speaker and of the enunciators in the enunciation of the marker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern French is a language very different from Latin and from Old French too, it has changed dramatically over the centuries -unlike many other Romance languages. Old French syntax is characterized by well-known features: optional null subject language, dominant but not required V2, mandatory direct object. Modern French has become very different: the subject is mandatory, V2 has been replaced by SV, direct object can be optional. Structuralism, Serial Typology, GU allowed to describe these changes, and tried to explain them. But some other approaches account for these and other changes, such as grammaticalization. Finally, we stress the importance of oral evidence. Oral has always been affirmed as a place of linguistic change. But for earlier ages the historian of languages is dependent on textual material and especially on written sources: to what extent do these documents reflect oral uses of native speakers? We assume that spoken language has left traces in written texts, and that linguists can have access to such data, by comparing intra-textual usage and variations between narrative and 'represented speech' passages, i.e. passages that are designated by the author as delivered orally by the characters; the presence in the same text of narrative and 'speech' allows contrasting them. This approach has shown that a large number of changes could have developed first in the oral use of language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Old French sentential negation (NEG) represents an important morphosyntactic change that has been investigated by a large number of scholars from different theoretical approaches. From the 12th to the 14th (and mainly in the 13th) century, there are two variants of this variable in competition: NEG with only ne (the older variant) and NEG with ne + pas/mie/point, etc. The research presented in this paper has been motivated by the wish to find relevant factors for this variation in Old French. In order to identify factors of influence on the variable NEG with or without pas, mie and point, we analyse two subcorpora containing two different text types. The choice of the tested factors is rooted both in variational linguistics and in previous studies on Old French negation, implying (extralinguistic) diasystematic factors like diatopic and diastratic ones as well as intralinguistic factors like transitivity of the verb, word order and clause type. Main findings are the probable relevance of clause type and the influence of socially definable (diastratic) groups. Beyond this, the results across the two different text type are predominantly similar, but we found differences as well. This leads us to plead in favour of the importance of considering the factor text type while working on diachronic corpora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Old and Middle French (12th-16th centuries), va ['goes'] + inf was used in narrations in the past. A similar usage seems to have reappeared and be spreading today. However, the old construction combined with past tenses whereas the new one is found only with forms anchored in present and future. We argue that the contemporary construction derives not from the old one, but from a metanarrative construction. On the basis of its future interpretation, va + inf aids the organization of the narration, announcing subsequent events through a hypernymic process. The periphrasis thus approaches a narrative value by projecting the time of events onto that of narration. With the disappearance of all deictic markers, the go-periphrases are no longer hypernyms: they appear on the same temporal line of events as the neighboring situations and are understood as fully completed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the etymology and usage of the related words stew, sty, and steward, particularly tracing their history in the "Oxford English Dictionary." It addresses differences in the words between verbs and nouns, derivation from Medieval French language, and the likelihood of a West Germanic origin.

The article looks at the evolution of the ethnonym Francois in the Middle Ages and its significance to Germanic peoples known as Franks in the context of their cross-cultural relations with Muslim, Byzantine and British people. The author analyzes chronicles of the First Crusade and examines the use of Francois as an exonym and an autonym, and its role in the development of the French identity.

The so-called Capsula eburnea (also known as Secreta Hippocratis, Analogius Hippocratis or Prognostica Democriti) is a late antique short treatise dealing with cutaneous eruptions as prognostic signs, which enjoyed wide popularity throughout the Middle Ages. In Europe, this collection of prognostic rules has come down to us in Old French, Middle English, Dutch, High and Low Geman versions. This study focuses on the reception of the text within both the High and the Low German language areas, where the Capsula eburnea was repeatedly translated, adapted and integrated into larger medical compendia, such as Ortolf von Baierland's Arzneibuch or the Düdeschen Arstedie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this article is to discuss word-order phenomena in Old French, Old Spanish, Old Portuguese, and Old Occitan from a comparative perspective. In particular, the following are examined: (i) the empirical evidence in order to assess the theoretical arguments for and against a verb-second analysis of the Old Romance languages; (ii) verb movement in Old Romance; and (iii) whether the changes in the word-order patterns in the history of the Romance languages can be captured as yet another instance of grammaticalisation. By means of a uniform methodology and statistical analysis of novel data, it is claimed that: ( a) Old Romance does not possess a Germanic V2; ( b) there is variation in terms of word order among Old Romance languages, which is shown to be linked to the individual history of the languages; ( c) V2 order is mostly an epiphenomenon of the discourse mechanisms and the nature of the left functional field in these languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper examines word order variation and change in Old French, in which subordinate clauses that immediately precede a main declarative can occur in at least two distinct syntactic positions with respect to the main clause. Data from a corpus of Old French texts from the 10th until the early 14th centuries show that most initial subordinates are situated outside the main clause proper, although some examples occur in the first position of the main clause. Adopting a richly articulated clausal left periphery (), the SceneSetting projection of FrameP is proposed as the default syntactic position for extra-clausal initial subordinates. Although Old French is considered a verb-second language, initial subordinates often yield sequences in which the finite verb of the main clause appears in third or higher position. Following Labelle (2007) and others, I argue that a complex left periphery accounts for descriptively non-V2 word orders, while upholding a V2 analysis for Old French. Finally, following , who examined the role of initial subordinates in the loss of V2 in Old French, I show that for most of the Old French period, the grammar of main declaratives that follow initial subordinates is characteristically V2. Only over the course of the 13th century does the subject–verb order become dominant. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Studies dealing with the linguistic situation that would have obtained in post-Conquest England have long concentrated their attention to a large extent on the contents of the many well-known surviving documents in French to be found there from lo66 onwards, but the present study aims to draw on the no less important evidence that may be taken from other texts that either make no claim to deal with language itself, or which illustrate the complexity of the mixture of languages that resulted from the Conquest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last 10-15 years, gerund (le gérondif) has been studied from almost all possible points of view, in other words, from morphological, syntactic, semantic and discourse perspectives. Nevertheless, investigators have not yet reached any agreement on the origin of this non-finite verb form of French, neither with regard to the existence of a connection with the Latin gerundium (gerundi [modus]), nor with regard to the presence of a common semantic representation with the other --ant form, the present participle. A certain consensus has been reached only regarding its status and its syntactic behaviour. However, the results of recent studies are not quite conclusive. In our opinion, it is not possible to interpret and describe how the French gerund functions in discourse if its mental representation in language is neglected. Our contribution aims at analyzing how the mental representation of the gerund ensures the production of so many effects within a text and how it works when language is represented in discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the French preposition en has a very flexible meaning, it is possible to distinguish two broad classes of senses: (i) the "localizing" ones, where en expresses, roughly, 'interiority' in several domains of experience, and (ii) the "qualifying" ones, where the use of en implies a qualification of the first element of the relation expressed by the preposition. The localizing senses were commonly used in old French, but the relation between the two classes of senses mentioned above has shifted and the qualifying sense is by far the most frequent one in contemporary French. We argue, however, (i) that this "qualifying" sense gets different interpretations according to the contexts in which the preposition occurs, and (ii) that in some of its uses the preposition is part of larger constructions, so that its interpretation in these constructions can no longer be related to some kind of basic meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Object–verb (OV) order in Old French exhibits many of the same characteristics as OV order in the West Germanic languages, especially in its occurrence with nonfinite verbs. I argue that Old French was typologically an OV language and show that recent antisymmetric analyses of West Germanic OV order are able to account for Old French OV order in periphrastic constructions. I propose an extension of these to account for OV order in infinitival clauses as well. In addition, the Old French data show that the concomitantly occurring instances of VO in this language must be due to the presence of grammars in competition, where an older OV grammar is being replaced by a newer VO one. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Language evolution is traditionally described in terms of family trees with ancestral languages splitting into descendent languages. However, it has long been recognized that language evolution also entails horizontal components, most commonly through lexical borrowing. For example, the English language was heavily influenced by Old Norse and Old French; eight per cent of its basic vocabulary is borrowed. Borrowing is a distinctly non-tree-like process—akin to horizontal gene transfer in genome evolution—that cannot be recovered by phylogenetic trees. Here, we infer the frequency of hidden borrowing among 2346 cognates (etymologically related words) of basic vocabulary distributed across 84 Indo-European languages. The dataset includes 124 (5%) known borrowings. Applying the uniformitarian principle to inventory dynamics in past and present basic vocabularies, we find that 1373 (61%) of the cognates have been affected by borrowing during their history. Our approach correctly identified 117 (94%) known borrowings. Reconstructed phylogenetic networks that capture both vertical and horizontal components of evolutionary history reveal that, on average, eight per cent of the words of basic vocabulary in each Indo-European language were involved in borrowing during evolution. Basic vocabulary is often assumed to be relatively resistant to borrowing. Our results indicate that the impact of borrowing is far more widespread than previously thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: What is the role of pragmatics in the evolution of grammatical paradigms? It is to maintain marked candidates that may become the default expression. This perspective is validated by the Jespersen cycle, where the standard expression of sentential negation is renewed as pragmatically marked negatives achieve default status. How status changes are effected, however, has still to be documented. This is what is achieved in this paper, which looks at the evolution of preverbal negative non in Old and Middle French. The negative, which categorically marks pragmatic activation () with finite verbs in Old French, loses this value when used with non-finite verbs in Middle French. This process is accompanied by competing semantic reanalyses of the distribution of infinitives negated in this way, and by the co-occurrence with a greater lexical variety of verbs. The absence of pragmatic contribution should lead the marker to take on the role of default, which is already fulfilled by a well-established ne …pas, pushing non into decline. Hard empirical evidence is provided, validating the assumed role of pragmatics in the Jespersen cycle, and thus the general view of pragmatics as supporting alternative candidates that may or may not achieve default status in the evolution of a grammatical paradigm. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A literary criticism is presented of the book "Mirouer des simples ames," or "Mirror of Simple Souls," by Marguerite Porete, in which the author discusses the theme of the meulequin, Old French for "a kind of veil." The author comments upon the portrayal of the Virgin Mary's virtuousness and the geographical specificity of the use of term meulequin in the 14th century. Also included is an analysis of late-medieval manuscripts of Porete's book between 1300 and 1530.

The article examines the treatise "Manner of Arming Knights for the Tourney," which was originally compiled by Franciscan theologian William Herbert. The author provides a line-by-line analysis of the treatise in order to decipher its relatively difficult armor- and weapons-related vocabulary. He also uses the treatise to show that armor used specifically for war and the two medieval types of tournaments, tourney and joust, was already developed in the early 14th century. Types of armor and arms discussed in the treatise include greaves, shirts of mail, and bascinets. Confusion with the vocabulary revolves around the presence of Latin, Middle English, and Anglo-Norman French terminology in the treatise.

The article presents history and criticism of medieval French literature, considering the works of the non-French authors Marco Polo and John Mandeville, each of whom wrote in French. Their choice of French is discussed in terms of the literary critic Jacques Derrida's writing on language and postcolonialism. Polo and Mandeville's works were travel writing dealing with the diversity of the world outside Europe. It is noted that each author wrote in a vernacular version of French, Polo in Franco-Italian and Mandeville in Anglo-Norman, and each work was first translated into standard Old French. The use of French by each men is attributed to the language's dominant role in the vernacular communication within Europe in their time.

Texts in medieval French and English often string together two or even three (quasi-)synonyms carrying a wide range of senses, a feature commonly regarded by modern scholars as stylistic rather than semantic. However, while for the modern reader the dictionary has become the accepted arbiter of form and meaning, the printing-press which made possible the dictionary came only in the late Middle Ages. In the absence of any such prescriptive authority, the synonyms in a medieval text often play a semantic role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The structure of early 12th century Old French main and embedded clauses is documented. It is argued that V2 main clauses are derived within a layered CP structure, where the verb moves to Fin and the clause-initial topic to the specifier of a discourse related head, which is shown to be low within CP. All types of embedded clauses have V2 constructions where a constituent distinct from the subject precedes the verb. These constructions are not the result of Stylistic Fronting, but of generalised V2. The existence of V3 embedded clauses is also discussed. It is proposed that embedded IP''s have the pronominal subject or clause initial constituent under the specifier of the highest inflectional head (bearing a [D] feature), a scrambled constituent within an FP projection, and the verb under T. The differences between early 12th c. Old French verse and 13th c. Old French prose are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The aim of this paper is to show that Old French makes great use of quirky subjects. Dubbed "impersonal constructions" in the traditional literature, such structures typically involve an empty subject position that a dative or accusative comes to fill. This, I show, very much resembles the operation called Stylistic Fronting which is clearly available in Old French. The hypothesis put forward is that Stylistically Fronted elements and oblique subjects target TopP+, a special Topic position above TP. Many examples are introduced showing that oblique preverbal elements are true subjects and that pro is thus not the subject of impersonal constructions in Old French. The paper also argues that in Old French, tense rather than agreement is responsible for the licensing of nominative case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of four Old French vernacularizations of the Song of Songs, problems of zoological identification and lexical choice are investigated and attention drawn to a number of rare terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the conflict between formal and functional principles in language change in analysis of the leveling of the vowel alternations that once characterized the present indicative verb stem of Old French (OF). I propose an account that readdresses the issue of the direction of change in the affected verbs and explains why certain forms were immune to the forces of analogy. Arguing against the current of traditional works in the historical morphology of French, I demonstrate that the unstressed stem had no privileged status in OF. Instead, the direction of leveling is constrained by phonology in such a way that leveling decreased morphological complexity but not at the expense of increasing phonological markedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the phonological, morphological and lexical traits of a number of vernacular glosses or le'azim, which were incorporated into the biblical and talmudic commentaries of Joseph Kara. Background on Kara; Analysis of the significance of the glosses in the context of the Old French language; Comparison of the glosses found in the commentaries of Kara and other Jewish scholars with other Old French texts; Description of the Old French case system.

Highlights the outcomes of a research project on the syntactic tagging of an old French text. Collection and encoding of historical texts for syntactic tagging; Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)-conformant version of `La Vie de Saint Louis,' by Jehan de Joinville; Use of the Penn-Helskinki (PH) coding scheme; Extension of the PH tagset to other types of texts and to other languages.

Focuses on the role of the French language in medieval England and the development of Middle English in the fifteenth century. Nature and scope of the use of Anglo-French; Significance of the language to the Italian ships in Southampton and English monks in Durham; Examples of commonly used French words in trading and commerce; Background on the spice trade in the twelfth century.

The article offers information on the translation of the Medieval book "De Regimine Principum," by Aegidius Romanus. It mentions that the Middle Age literature was originally written in Latin language and carefully translated into Old French language. In addition, it highlights several writers who have studied and attempted to translate the literary work to English language including David Fowler, Tony Edwards, Michael Seymour, and Ronald Waldron. Furthermore, the division of the "De Regimine" to three books is also mentioned.

The author discusses the literary works of Chrétien de Troyes. The author cites that de Troyes' works were written in 1160 to 1185, which were preserved in an Old French language, and notes his own version of the King Arthur's tales. The author highlights de Troyes' compositions including "Del roi Marc et d'Iseut la Blonde," "Remedia Amoris," "Metamorphoses," "Le chevalier à l'épée," and "La mule sans frein." The author elucidates the structures and styles of de Troyes' literature. Furthermore, the author also states de Tryoes' contribution to French literary history.

Examines the medieval French version of the New Testament Apocalypse. Details of the most striking feature of the illustrated French version; Transposition of the Vulgate text which portrays the characters, symbols, and deeds of the apocalyptic drama; Summary of the metrical Apocalypse texts and contexts marking off a dichotomy of poem types for use in studying the French version.

The article examines the translation techniques of individual Medieval translators. Observations on the theory and practice of translation, cultural enlargement of Medieval translators and how translation and text were produced are made. Translation of the Old French Bible and narrative techniques in old French are discussed.

The article compares the Old French and Occitan versions in the translations of an Arabic surgical treatise. The non-publication of the Old French texts and the three-time publication of the Occitan text is cited. The lexical interest of the translations, the use of Latinisms and the use, exploitation and development of medical terminology are discussed.

The article examines the old French translations of Medieval medical terminology. The discovery and publication of Anglo-Norman medical translations, the problems of studying medical texts and the process of translation and adaptation of text are discussed. A comparison of the Anglo-Norman, the Garrett Library manuscript and MS Oxford Bodleian Library is offered.

In 1961, Simon Belasco published a paper entitled "The Role of Transformation Grammar and Tagmemics in the Analysis of an Old French Text." He attempts to show in the paper that transformational analysis is "cumbersome" in the case of Old French. It is the aim of this article to contradict Belasco's arguments. The author seeks to present that Belasco's transformational sketch of Old French is called transformational quite erroneously. The author then presents another sketch of reasonable adequacy.

The article discusses the etymology of the English word salmagundi, which the "Oxford English Dictionary" traces back to the French word salmigondis. The author traces the word through references such as works by François Rabelais, a Middle English recipe, and the reference book "Middle English Dictionary." The word refers mainly to a spicy, fish-based sauce, sometimes made with leftovers. Descriptions of stews, broths, and sauces in literature are discussed. The classical Latin origins of the word are described, as well as the suffix -gondin, which the author argues could come from the Old French verb to season.