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Changes in status and paradigms? On subject pronouns in medieval french[Note 1. I gratefully acknowledge the funding of this work through ...]
Author(s) -
Zimmermann Michael
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
transactions of the philological society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.333
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1467-968X
pISSN - 0079-1636
DOI - 10.1111/1467-968x.12112
Subject(s) - subject (documents) , clitic , linguistics , personal pronoun , subject pronoun , history , computer science , philosophy , library science
This paper addresses the debate on the morpho‐syntactic status of subject pronouns in the pre‐modern stages of the French language by reinvestigating this issue along with that of the number of paradigms of such elements. On the basis of a collection of the various evidence provided in the literature as well as hitherto ignored and novel empirical insights, the paper discusses the different views put forward and essentially argues that, in its medieval stages, French had two paradigms of, respectively, strong and phonologically clitic subject pronouns. From this finding as well as standard assumptions on the modern (standard) stage of the language the paper eventually concludes that, diachronically, French evinces continuity, rather than changes regarding the two issues under investigation.