Acceso usuarios
Pierre Larrivée
This work considers the question of borrowing in the field of syntax. The literature suggests that syntactic phenomena are the least susceptible to borrowing; syntactic borrowing occurs where the borrowed structure exists in the target language whose source language inflects certain modalities of realization; and where the target language is under sustained contact with the source language. These ideas are assessed by studying the verb in second position word order (V2) in Old French. A putative difference between V2 in Medieval Romance languages and that in Germanic languages lies in the resumptive constructions characterizing the latter. The resumption of a clause by a particle directly preceding the verb in second position is said to be absent from Romance languages (pace Meklenborg’s work). Is this construction found in varieties of French in contact with V2 Germanic languages such as Old English? Our corpus study shows that the resumptive construction is not attested in French outside a late 13th-century dialogical text from the Anglo-Norman region. This study supports the idea that syntax is impervious to borrowing outside of inflections given to existing constructions under conditions of sustained contact, suggesting that syntactic evolution can only be endogenous.
