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Probing the Syntax of a Problematic Particle: Old French ‘ si ’ Revisited
Author(s) -
Wolfe Sam
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.12123
Subject(s) - adverb , syntax , deixis , variation (astronomy) , grammaticalization , linguistics , history , physics , philosophy , noun , astrophysics
This article presents the findings of a corpus analysis of seven Old French texts to better understand the syntax of the particle si . It is argued that the texts display clear evidence of synchronic and diachronic variation, much of which has not been noted in the literature. A diachronic grammaticalisation pathway is proposed for si from a temporal deictic adverb to a Topic continuity marker and then to a FinP expletive which undergoes upwards reanalysis as a ForceP expletive.