Modelling language contact with diachronic crosslinguistic data

Transcription

1 Modelling language contact with diachronic crosslinguistic data Achim Stein Carola Trips Linguistic Evidence, Tübingen,

2 1 Introduction Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 The phenomenon 1.2 Verb second in some Germanic and Romance languages 1.3 Information structure 2 Language contact 2.1 The historical background 2.2 Some facts about Medieval French 2.3 Some facts about Medieval English 3.1 Corpora 3.2 Medieval French: periods and global data 3.3 Medieval English: periods and global data 3.4 Comparison 3.5 Evidence for language contact (issue #1) 3.6 Cleft sentences (issue #2) 4 Conclusion 2

3 1 Introduction 1.1 The phenomenon Object topicalisation and left dislocation Modern examples of topicalisation (1) and left-dislocation (2): (1) ModF: *Les haricots, je mange. PDE: Beans I eat. (2) ModF: Les haricots, je les mange. PDE: Beans, I eat them. Medieval examples of topicalisation. OF (3) and OE (4): (3) Treis escheles ad l emperere Carles. (Roland, ) three divisions has the-king Charles (4) Þæt hus hæfdon Romane to ðæm anum tacne geworht... that house had Romans to the one sign made The Romans had made that house to their sole sign. (Or_3: ) 3

4 1 Introduction 1.1 The phenomenon Left dislocation with topic continuity. OF: (5), ME: (6): (5) Ceste This bataille, battle veirement really la ferum (Roland,70.846) it [we]-will-fight (6) and slonked her in so hungerly that he lefte neyther flessh ne bone / nomore but a fewe fethers the smal fethers he slange them in wyth the flessh (REYNAR, ) the small feathers he swallowed them in with the flesh Left dislocation with contrastive focus. OF: (7), ME: (8): (7) Mais vos But your (8) and and barons barons vilonast (Béroul,1106ss) would mistreat of of on one þei they (CAPCHR, ) en in put put sa his oute out ballie realm his his S if eyne, eye, il he þe the les them oþir other trovout found þei they broke broke nes them his his bak back 4

5 1 Introduction 1.1 The phenomenon The development of these structures Kroch (1989, 214)... the loss of verb-second word order in French took place via the replacement of topicalization by left-dislocation. Phrasal accent forces preposed constituents to occur left-dislocated less subject-verb inversion more resumptive pronouns 5

6 1 Introduction 1.1 The phenomenon Questions Questions: 1. What kind of assumptions are necessary to interpret quantitative developments as language change? 2. What kind of information do we have to include to make statements about linguistic levels for which we have no direct evidence, like prosody? 3. What kind of indicators allow to distinguish between internal change and contact-induced change? 6

7 1 Introduction 1.2 Verb second in some Germanic and Romance languages Verb second OF OE OHG Language type SVO SOV SOV Verb final no yes yes V2 main cl. yes yes yes V2 subord. cl. yes (v. dicendi) yes (v. dicendi) yes (v. dicendi) XP-Spron-Vfin no yes yes (less restr. than OE) Null subjects yes yes (some persons) yes (some persons) subj. clitics no yes yes obj. clitics yes yes yes Loss of V2 yes (residual V2) yes (residual V2) no (full/true V2) Table 1: Comparison of some Germanic and Romance languages 7

8 1 Introduction 1.3 Information structure Information structure (Krifka, 2007) Focus Focus indicates the presence of alternatives that are relevant for the interpretation of linguistic expression. (Focus often correlates with new, important, etc., but can t be defined by these properties.) Topic constituent which identifies the entity [... ] under which the information expressed in the comment constituent should be stored in the C[ommon] G[round] content. (9) A: When did [Aristotle Onassis] Topic marry Jacqueline Kennedy? B: [He] Topic [married her [in 1968] Focus ] Comment 8

9 1 Introduction 1.3 Information structure Methodological problems For medieval language, it is difficult or impossible to verify necessary conditions for the felicitous use of non-canonical sentence structures, contrary to modern language (e.g. Birner and Ward 1998; Birner 2004). Even in modern language, these necessary conditions are not sufficient: the optionality can depend on text type, code (written vs spoken), individual preference, etc. Nevertheless, some discourse-related criteria (cf. Prince 1981, 1992) can be and have been applied to medieval language, as e.g. in Prévost (2003). 9

10 2 Language contact Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 The phenomenon 1.2 Verb second in some Germanic and Romance languages 1.3 Information structure 2 Language contact 2.1 The historical background 2.2 Some facts about Medieval French 2.3 Some facts about Medieval English 3.1 Corpora 3.2 Medieval French: periods and global data 3.3 Medieval English: periods and global data 3.4 Comparison 3.5 Evidence for language contact (issue #1) 3.6 Cleft sentences (issue #2) 4 Conclusion 10

11 2 Language contact 2.1 The historical background Norman Conquest: Multilingualism since 1066 Evidence: glosses, borrowings, didactic texts, translations, etc. Middle English ( ): Anglo-French had gained the role of an official language over Anglo-Latin Middle English was predominantly a spoken language 15th c.: Middle-English took over the role of the national language, both spoken and written 11

12 2 Language contact 2.1 The historical background Methodological consequences Include sources for multilingualism: glosses in dictionaries didactic texts (discussed in Hunt 1991), grammars of French (e.g. Palsgrave 1530) business writing, e.g. accounts, inventories: see the work by Wright (1995; 2003), and also Trotter (2000); Ingham (2010)) direct translations: e.g. Somme le roi (Laurent, 2008) Ayenbite of Inwyt (Morris, 1866) 12

13 2 Language contact 2.1 The historical background Palsgrave s description for English learners L esclaircissement de la langue françoyse: The hole reason of theyr accent is grounded chefely upon thre poyntes: fyrst, there is no worde of one syllable whiche with them hath any accent, or that they use to pause upon, [... ] they pronounce them nat distinctly a sonder as the latines do, but sounde them all under one voyce and tenour, and never rest nor pause upon any of them, except the commyng next unto a poynt be the cause therof; seconde, every worde of many syllables hath his accent upon the last syllable, but yet that nat withstandynge they use upon no suche worde to pause, except the commyng next unto a poynt be the causer therof: and this is one great thyng whiche inclineth the frenchemen so moche to pronounce that latin tong amysse, which contrary never gyve theyr accent on the last syllable. [... ] (quoted from the edition F. Génin, 1852, XXI) 13

14 2 Language contact 2.2 Some facts about Medieval French Old French (9th until early 14th c.) topic position for sentence-initial elements verb second sentences, mostly in main clauses null subjects two cases: cas sujet and cas régime two accent systems: phrasal and lexical clitic object pronouns (subject pronouns became clitics in later OF) Some controversial points: 1. How strict is V2 in OF? 2. What is the structural position of the topicalized element? 3. Does OF have sentence-initial focus elements? 14

15 2 Language contact 2.2 Some facts about Medieval French Old French: dislocation and topicalisation In OF, a dislocated element could be the focus: (10) Li nies Marsilie, il est venuz avant sur un mulet... the nephew of-marsilius, he is come forward on a mule Voici que s avance sur un mulet le neuveu de Marsilie. (Chanson de Roland, late 11c., quoted from Prévost 2003) The dislocated element is normally topic, exceptionally focus. Topicalised objects are unmarked in early OF. They are increasingly marked as focus towards the 13th c. 15

16 2 Language contact 2.3 Some facts about Medieval English Medieval English: verb second (11) Object-V fin -subject: Þæt hus hæfdon Romane to ðæm anum tacne geworht... that house had Romans to the one sign made The Romans had made that house to their sole sign. (Or_3: ) (12) Wh-V fin -subject: Hwæt sculon we þæs nu ma secgan? what shall we afterwards now more say What shall we afterwards say now more? (Bede_2: ) (13) Neg-V fin -subject: ne cræwþ se hana todæg ær þu me ætsæcst. neg crows the cock today before you me deny The rooster will not crow today until you deny me. (wsgosp,lk: ) 16

17 2 Language contact 2.3 Some facts about Medieval English Old English left dislocation Traugott (2007, 243): left-dislocated constructions involve discourseold and discourse-new referents. This is confirmed by our data, but topic dislocations (14) are much more frequent than focus dislocations (15): (14) ða fuglas þa we hie ne onweg flegdon. these birds then we them not away drove. (Alex: ) (15) & Perseuse and Perseus & Ilirice and Ilirians (Or_4: ) Mæacedonia Macedonia s cyninge king him wæron on fultume ealle Thraci him were in help all Tracians 17

18 Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 The phenomenon 1.2 Verb second in some Germanic and Romance languages 1.3 Information structure 2 Language contact 2.1 The historical background 2.2 Some facts about Medieval French 2.3 Some facts about Medieval English 3.1 Corpora 3.2 Medieval French: periods and global data 3.3 Medieval English: periods and global data 3.4 Comparison 3.5 Evidence for language contact (issue #1) 3.6 Cleft sentences (issue #2) 4 Conclusion 18

19 3.1 Corpora Empirical study Syntactically annotated corpora: YCOE (Taylor et al., 2003) for OE The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose PPCME2 (Kroch and Taylor, 2000) for ME The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English MCVF (Martineau, 2009) for Medieval French. Modéliser le changement: les voies du français (Ottawa) Additional sources: Penn corpora for EME, BME, Penn Treebank. Extraction and evaluation using CorpusSearch (UPenn), TIGERSearch (IMS, Stuttgart) and self-made scripts. 19

20 3.2 Medieval French: periods and global data Medieval French: variation across periods period approx. date (first text) approx. date (last text) sentences 12c 1080 (Roland) 1194 (Chièvres) c 1200 (Sermon sainte Agnes) 1306 (Joinville) c 1371 (Prise Alexandrie) 1405 (Froissart) c 1425 (Morchesne) 1491 (Commynes) Table 2: Definition of four periods in the GTRC-MCVF corpus Null subject Object-V2 Object-LD period f abs f rel f abs f rel f abs f rel 12c c c c total Table 3: OF null subject, V2, and left dislocation 20

21 3.2 Medieval French: periods and global data Medieval French: variation across periods Figure: OF null subject, object V2, and object left dislocation 21

22 3.3 Medieval English: periods and global data Medieval English: variation across periods period compilation date (first text) compilation date (last text) sentences OE before ME-m ME-m ME-m ME-m Table 4: Definition of periods in the OE/ME corpus Null subject Object-V2 Object-LD period f abs f rel f abs f rel f abs f rel OE ME-m ME-m ME-m ME-m total Table 5: OE/ME null subject, V2, and left dislocation 22

23 3.3 Medieval English: periods and global data Medieval English: variation across periods Figure: OE/ME null subject, object V2, and object left dislocation 23

24 3.3 Medieval English: periods and global data Written vs spoken speech In PDE, non-canonical constructions like LD are quite rare. Creswell (2004, 12) compares non-canonical word order in the Wall Street Journal and the (oral) Switchboard corpus. Dislocations are almost absent from written speech. They are about 500 times more frequent in spoken speech. In medieval corpora: Dislocation frequencies are similar to the oral Switchboard corpus. Indicator of spoken speech (in the sense of Biber 1988) Dislocation reflects the degree of orality in written texts. 24

25 3.4 Comparison Figure: English vs. French variation of object V2 and object left dislocation compared to Priestley (1955) 25

26 3.4 Comparison Interpretation: French object-v2 develops as predicted but our data for French LD match Priestley s only in OF. Priestley: in Middle French LD occurrences more than double. In our corpus, LD frequencies decrease steadily after Evaluation: Contra Kroch/Priestley, LD frequencies do not increase, which implies that the development of V2 and LD are not correlated. 26

27 3.4 Comparison Methodology revisited Two issues: 1. LD structures are syntactically heterogeneous. They include: heavy NPs (with modifying clauses): resumption can be motivated by distance. unmodified NPs (without modifying clauses): the resumptive pronoun is an indicator for topichood. 2. These diachronic studies (as well as our empirical study) tend to associate constructions with information values, e.g. topicalised element focus left-dislocated element topic 27

28 3.5 Evidence for language contact (issue #1) Types of left dislocation (OF/OE) (16) Ki mult te sert, malvais luer l en dunes. Who often you serves bad reward him for that (you) give (free relative) (17) Swa hwilc mon swa whosoever heofonum. heaven (18) Tuz lur amis all their friends sempres les always them (19) ðæt, that (20) Mes my me me timbreð builds (Mart-5-[Kotzor]:Jy15,A ) (free relative) qu il whom unt (they) have gebedhus, chapel i they there portet. (Roland, ) brought (NP+relative) (Roland, ) sele þu mede him on give you reward him in unt morz truvet, Ad un carner have dead found to a grave þæt ic eow secge, þæt ic secge eallum mannum... (ÆLet-6:112.42) that I you say that I say all men (NP+relative) escheles, tutes les guiereiz; (Roland, ) divisions, all them (you) will lead (unmodified) (21) ða fuglas þa we hie ne onweg flegdon (Alex: ) these birds then we them not away drove (unmodified) 28

29 3.5 Evidence for language contact (issue #1) Types of left dislocation (OF/OE) wh-clause heavy NP NP (CP-FRL) (CP-REL) (other) OE Traugott 5.8% OE 36.6% 53.5% 9.9% ME 28.3% 53.5% 18.2% OF 22.9% 27.5% 49.6% Table 7: Types of dislocated elements in English and French Traugott (2007): only 5.8% of OE dislocations are unmodified. Our data: >50% of OE/ME dislocated NPs are modified by a relative. In French, unmodified NPs are much more frequent. An indicator of language contact? In early ME: significant increase of unmodified NPs 29

30 3.5 Evidence for language contact (issue #1) Types of left dislocation (OF/OE) Figure: Types of dislocated elements: free wh-clause (CP-FRL), NPdependent relative clause (CP-REL), unmodified NPs (other) 30

31 3.6 Cleft sentences (issue #2) Diachrony and information structure How stable is topic/focus marking? Does a given construction (left dislocation or topicalisation) mark a constant information value (topic only or focus only)? OF topicalisation marks topic and focus It gradually develops towards a focus marker V2 loses ground to the (S)VO structures topicalisation becomes less frequent, and more marked. OF left-dislocation was a topic marker, but not exclusively. Decrease of V2: how was focus marking compensated? 31

32 3.6 Cleft sentences (issue #2) Development of French cleft sentences Cleft sentences? a good candidate: (real) clefts appear in the 13c., favoured by the loss of V2 cleft frequency increases in the 14c. (Marchello-Nizia, 1999; Combettes, 1999) Clefts (CP-CLF) Object-V2 Object-LD period f abs f rel f abs f rel f abs f rel 12c c c c Table 6: Cleft sentences (CP-CLF) in French 32

33 4 Conclusion Some answers to our questions 1. How to interpret quantitative developments as language change Topic and focus marking is constant over time. We assume that this is the case at least in spoken speech. We may assume that our corpora reflect spoken speech (high frequencies of left-dislocation in our texts) 2. How to make statements about linguistic levels for which we have no direct evidence, like prosody? meta-linguistic information (like Palsgrave s grammar) focus on phenomena at the syntax-prosody-interface 3. How to distinguish between internal change and contact-induced change? significant changes which are not compatible with internal changes (unmodified left-dislocated NPs in ME) focus on texts which clearly show multilingualism 33

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