Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-q6k6v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-11T22:17:02.774Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Changes in verb position in French negative infinitival clauses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Paul Hirschbühler  and
Marie Labelle
Paul Hirschbühler
Affiliation:
University of Ottawa
Marie Labelle
Affiliation:
Université du Québec à Montréal
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Since the 15th century, negative infinitives in French have undergone a change from ne V pas to ne pas V. This change takes place at different times, depending on the nature of the verb. Lexical verbs undergo the change between 1550 and 1750, modals (pouvoir, vouloir, devoir) essentially change between 1650 and 1900, and auxiliaries have been changing at a slow pace since 1650. We explore the idea that, for main verbs, the change in word order reflects a change in the position of pas, while the change in the position of modals and auxiliaries results from the fact that these verbs start assuming a position lower in the structure. Our analysis of the historically different evolution of each type of verb is based on their lexical properties and their distinct affinities with abstract Tense.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , July 1994 , pp. 149 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Belletti, A. (1990). Generalized verb movement. Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic structures. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, N.(1991). Some notes on economy of derivation and representation. In Freidin, R. (ed.), Principles and parameters in comparative grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 417–454.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N.(1992). A minimalist program for linguistic theory. MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics 1.Google Scholar
Damourette, J., & Pichon, E. (1930). Des mots à la pensée. Essai de grammaire de la langue française, Volume VI. Paris: d'Artrey.Google Scholar
de Kok, A. (1985). La place du pronom personnel régime conjoint en français: Une étude diachronique. Amsterdam: Rodopi.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dupuis, F., Lemieux, M., & Gosselin, D. (1992). Conséquences de la sous-spécification des traits de Agr dans l'identification de pro. Language Variation and Change 3:275–299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emonds, J. (1978). The verbal complex V′-V in French. Linguistic Inquiry 9:151–175.Google Scholar
Enç, M. (1987). Anchoring conditions for tense. Linguistic Inquiry 18:633–657.Google Scholar
Engver, K. (1972). Place de l'adverbe déterminant un infinitif dans la prose du français contemporain (Studia Romanica Upsaliensia 7). Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.Google Scholar
Galet, Y. (1971). L'évolution de l'ordre des mots dans la phrase française de 1600 à 1700. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Grevisse, M. (1986). Le bon usage. Grammaire française. Douzième édition refondue par André Goose. Editions Duculot, Paris-Louvain-La-Neuve.Google Scholar
Haegeman, L., & Zanuttini, R. (1991). Negative heads and the negative criterion. The Linguistic Review 8:233–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirschbühler, P., & Labelle, M. (1992). Le statut de (ne) pas en français contemporain. Recherches Linguistiques 22:31–58.Google Scholar
Joseph, J. (1989). Inflection and periphrastic structures in Romance. In Kirschner, Carl & DeCesaris, Janet (eds.), Studies in Romance Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 195–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kayne, R. S. (1980). Vers une solution d'un problème grammatical: *je l'ai voulu lire, j'ai tout voulu lire. Langue française 46:32–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kayne, R. S. (1989). Null subjects and clitic climbing. In Jaeggli, O. & Safir, K. (eds.), The null subject parameter. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 239–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kayne, R. S. (1990). Romance clitics and PRO. In Carter, J., Déchaine, R.-M., Philip, B., & Scherer, T. (eds.), Proceedings of NELS 20, volume 2. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Graduate Linguistic Students Association. 255–302.Google Scholar
Kayne, R. S. (1991). Romance clitics, verb movement, and PRO. Linguistic Inquiry 22:647–686.Google Scholar
Kempchinsky, P. (1992). Clausal complements and case theory in romance. Probus: 17–32.Google Scholar
Kroch, A. S. (1989). Reflexes of grammar in patterns of language change. Language Variation and Change 1:199–244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laenzlinger, C. (1990). Le déplacement des clitiques et l'analyse DP. Mémoire de recherche, Université de Genève, Faculté des lettres.Google Scholar
Luján, M. (1980). Clitic promotion and mood in Spanish verbal complements. Linguistics 18:381–484.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marchello-Nizia, C. (1979). Histoire de la langue française aux XVe et XVIe siècles. Paris: Sobodi.Google Scholar
Martin, R. and Wilmet, M. (1980). Manuel de français du moyen âge. Syntaxe du moyen français. Bordeaux: Sobodi.Google Scholar
Martineau, F. (1989). La montée du clitique en moyen français: une étude de la syntaxe des constructions infinitives. Doctoral dissertation, Université d'Ottawa.Google Scholar
Martineau, F. (1993). Movement of negative adverbs in French infinitival clauses. Journal of French Language Studies 3:191–209.Google Scholar
Muller, C. (1991). La négation en français. Geneva: Droz.Google Scholar
Pearce, E. (1990). An analysis of negated infinitives in Middle French. Wellington Working Papers in Linguistics 2:31–45.Google Scholar
Pearce, L. (1991). Tense and negation: Competing analyses in Middle French. In L. Dobrin, L. Nichols, & R. M. Rodriguez, Papers from the 27th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 1991. Part Two: The Parasession on Negation (pp. 219–232).Google Scholar
Pearce, L. (1993). Diachronic change and negation in French. To appear in Revista di Linguistica.Google Scholar
Picoche, J., & Marchello-Nizia, C. (1989). Histoire de la langue française. Paris: Nathan.Google Scholar
Pollock, J.-Y. (1989). Verb movement, universal grammar, and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20:365–424.Google Scholar
Pollock, J.-Y. (1993). Notes on clause structure. Manuscript, Université de Picardie, Amiens.Google Scholar
Raposo, E. (1987). Case theory and Infl-to-Comp: The inflected infinitive in European Portuguese. Linguistic Inquiry 18:85–110.Google Scholar
Rizzi, L. (1982). Issues in Italian syntax. Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, I. (1992, 11). Restructuring in Old French. Paper presented at the Second Diachronic Generative Syntax Workshop, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Roberts, I. (1993). Verbs and diachronic syntax. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.Google Scholar
Rochette, A. (1988). Réseau de corrélations: sujet nul, montée et placement des clitiques et le caractère nominal des infinitives. Revue québécoise de linguistique théorique et appliquée 7:175–192.Google Scholar
Stowell, T. (1982). On tense of infinitives. Linguistic Inquiry 13:561–570.Google Scholar
Terzi, A. (1992). PRO in finite clauses: A study of the inflectional heads of the Balkan languages. Doctoral dissertation, City University of New York.Google Scholar
Zanuttini, R. (1989, 04). The structure of negative clauses in Romance. Paper presented at the 12th GLOW conference, Utrecht.Google Scholar
Zanuttini, R. (1991). Syntactic properties of sentential negation: A comparative study of Romance languages. Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Zink, G. (1989). Morphologie du français médiéval. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar