Abstract
In Old French, genitive structures both mirrored and differed from those found in Modern French. Prepositional genitives were found (i.e., la nièce au duc, la nièce du duc both ‘the duke’s niece’), but there were also structures without prepositions, the juxtaposition genitive, JG (cf. Arteaga D. On Old French genitive constructions. In: Amastae J, Goodall G, Montalbetti M, Phinney M (eds) Contemporary research in Romance linguistics. J. Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp 79–90, 1995; Arteaga D, Herschensohn J. A phase-based analysis of old French genitive constructions. In Colina S, Olarrea A, Carvalho AM (eds) Romance Linguistics 2009: selected papers from the 39th annual conference of the Linguistic symposium on the romance languages. J. Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, pp 285–300, 2010; Delfitto and Paradisi 2009) type la nièce duc or la/le duc nièce.). In an analysis focusing on the evolution of the genitive, we propose that the JG in Old French has directly inherited the same structure in Latin, although Latin had no definite article. In later OF, when case endings ceased to be pronounced, case had to be checked by a preposition. At that point, children no longer had the morphological cues (Lightfoot D. The development of language: acquisition, change, and evolution. Blackwell, Oxford, 1999) to assign a genitive meaning to the possessor, the JG was lost. The reason for the narrowing of the à genitives can be explained by the fact that dative à has always been limited to persons (Herslund M. Problèmes de syntaxe de l’ancien français. Compléments datifs et génitifs. Akademisk Forlag, Uppsala, 1980).
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Notes
- 1.
The following abbreviations are used : m = masculine, f = feminine, neut = neuter, sg = singular, pl = plural, nom = nominative, gen = genitive, dat = dative, obl = oblique, abl = ablative, imp = imperative, def = definite, spec = specific, 1-2-3 = first-second-third person.
- 2.
An anonymous reviewer notes that the JG is relatively rare and that our analysis is not based on a corpus. However, we have culled examples from scores of philologists, so that our analysis is based on empirical data. The relative rarity of JG does not exempt it from investigation; on the contrary, we find this construction sheds new light on the diachronic development of OF. Another anonymous reviewer, noting Kibler’s (1984) suggestion that the JG is limited to possessors represented by kinship, rank profession or “God,” indicates that “this could already represent a narrowing down of a previously more general construction.”
- 3.
This is contra D and P who argue that the genitive with à was normally used with indefinite articles and could not be iterated (p. 298).
- 4.
- 5.
Examples (17)–(19) are taken from Herslund (1980:84).
- 6.
Cited in Arteaga (1995).
- 7.
D and P claim that the DP that is possessed is always definite in the JG structure. However, counterexamples abound. See Herslund (1980) for discussion. As for the possessor, an anonymous reviewer confirms that there are isolated cases in which it may be indefinite. However, we note that it is always [+specific]. Proper names do not usually show determiners although they are [+spec], as Dieu in l’Hotel Dieu.
- 8.
An anonymous reviewer points out that this genitive was far less common in OF (Foulet 1928/1982:18; also Buridant 2000: 95). This is accounted for by our analysis because the structure contains a defective phase, which is necessarily marked, and perhaps less stable for that reason. See Section 3.2.3 for details.
- 9.
Contra D and P’s claim (p. 297) that “multiple instantiations are excluded.”
- 10.
- 11.
Kayne (1993:102) uses the symbol D/P “to represent a prepositional determiner de (comparable to a prepositional complementizer).”
- 12.
Furthermore, many of their claims, such as the lack of iteration of JG or genitive with à, the notion that à genitives are almost always indefinite, and their observation that the possessor in the JG is almost always masculine, can simply not be reconciled with the data, as there are counterexamples. Discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of this paper.
- 13.
An anonymous reviewer questions this notion, as s/he claims that a possessor may be generic. We have found no examples of generic JGs. However, articles do not appear in Old French generics. See A and H (2010) for discussion.
- 14.
An anonymous reviewer asks why the [uDef] feature of the upper N can’t probe down to enter into a checking relationship with the possessor DP, that the order could remain maisnie son père. This is explained by our analysis because the upper phase is defective and therefore cannot enter into a checking relationship with a lower D in situ, given the c-command requirement.
- 15.
- 16.
Most frequently the JG is [+def], but there are attested cases of [−def] [+spec].
- 17.
When dative verbs are construed with an object pronoun, it is invariably the dative that is used, except in North-Eastern and Anglo-Norman varieties, as pointed out by an anonymous reviewer.
- 18.
An anonymous reviewer notes that Anglo-Norman continued to have the JG even after the decline of the case system. Due to space limitations, we are unable to address dialectal variation in this paper.
- 19.
Although see Gamillscheg (1957:90) who argues that with abstract nouns, the definite article is present from the earliest texts when they refer to “concrete cases.” He cites three examples, in all of which the definite article has a possessive function. For example, Guardez, de nos ne turnez le curage (Roland 650) ‘Watch that you do not turn away from your courage. ‘
- 20.
In Mod FR either par la nature or par nature is found, the latter of which is a fixed expression.
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Arteaga, D., Herschensohn, J. (2013). A Diachronic View of Old French Genitive Constructions. In: Arteaga, D. (eds) Research on Old French: The State of the Art. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 88. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4768-5_2
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