17

Prepositional genitives in Romance and the issue of parallel development:

from Latin to Old French.

Chiara Gianollo - University of Stuttgart & Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz

17.1 Introduction

The fact that the Romance languages, since their earliest attestations, appear to be, from the

point of view of their syntactic type, much closer to one another than to their documented

common Latin ancestor is often cited as a most striking case of parallel development. As

such, it poses a serious challenge to non-directional theories of syntactic change (cf. the recent

discussion in Roberts 2007: 351-376, and Longobardi, this volume). In accounting for

syntactic change, a diachronic theory must be able to distinguish between three different

factors:

(1) a. interference

b. chance parallelism / convergent evolution

c. (chain-effects of) an inherited change

Phylogenetic models refer to (1.a) as borrowing, to (1.b) as homoplasy, and to (1.c) as

homology. (1.c) is best recognized when there is a direct transmission of a character

(parametric value) from one language to the other. However, for the syntactic domain, it has

often been proposed that (1.c) can also arise more indirectly, as the result of a chain of shifts,

and that consequently it is often difficult to empirically distinguish between (1.b) and (1.c).
That is, apparent cases of chance parallelism may in fact be due to a sequence of changes

brought about by an actually inherited grammatical property. The best known formulation of

the problem is represented by Sapir’s (1921: 172) notion of drift: ‘The momentum of the

more fundamental, the pre-dialectic, drift is often such that languages long disconnected will

pass through the same or strikingly similar phases’. Since Lightfoot (1979), theories of

linguistic change couched in the biolinguistic framework have discarded directional

explanations for syntactic change, on the basis of the fundamental assumption that the

mechanism of direct transmission through language acquisition is incompatible with ‘racial

memories’ of any sort. However, it has more recently been proposed that a better

understanding of the functioning of parametric systems can help derive long-term effects on a

principled basis (Roberts 2007: 340-357, Longobardi, this volume, Roberts, this volume).

In this chapter I will tackle the issue of parallel development and the problem of

distinguishing between (1.b) and (1.c) by focusing on the observed sequence of morpho-

syntactic changes affecting the realization of arguments of nominal heads (genitives) from

Latin to Romance. I will present data from a corpus search over Late Latin (3rd-4th cent. CE)

and Old French texts (11th-13th cent. CE), with the addition of some Middle French data (until

1600). The expression of adnominal arguments undergoes a deep restructuring from Latin to

the modern Romance languages: genitives, which are inflectionally encoded in Latin and

occur in a variety of configurations with respect to the head noun, come to be realized, in the

Western Romance varieties, uniquely by means of post-nominal prepositional phrases headed

by continuations of the originally ablative preposition dē. Such restructuring is commonly

considered to be a consequence of the general process of deflexion observed in the transition

from Latin to Romance. However, neither the substantial similarity of outcomes in the

Western Romance languages, nor the existence of intermediate stages with coexisting

inflectional and prepositional realizations, are exhaustively addressed by uniquely attributing

this change to morphological impoverishment.


 2

 I will argue that a careful exam of nominal syntax in late varieties of Latin can uncover the

ultimate syntactic cause of the observed similarity in the Western Romance outcomes. I will

also propose a syntactic analysis of Old French inflectional genitives (realized with the cas-

régime absolu), which is able to capture the diachronic link to the Latin genitive constructions

and to elucidate the succession of steps leading to the generalization of the prepositional

realization in the modern descendant. My explanation of the parallel development of

prepositional genitives in Romance will interpret it as a chain-effect of an original inherited

change (1.c), thus supporting the idea that a parametric model of syntactic variation combined

with some theoretical assumptions about the dynamics of change can lead us to choose in a

principled way among the competing hypotheses in (1.a-c).

In the following section, I will propose a parametric model for the syntax of genitives,

together with some of its diachronic implications. In section 17.3 I will discuss the Late Latin

situation, and in section 17.4 I will present the Old French data. Section 17.5 summarizes my

conclusions.

17.2 A parametric model for the syntax of adnominal genitive

The theoretical framework on which I base my syntactic analysis of genitive constructions

centers on the idea that genitive (i.e. the formal realization of adnominal arguments) is a

heterogeneous category from a syntactic point of view: genitive case-marked constituents

behave as structurally case-marked in some configurations, and as lexically case-marked in

others. Parametric variation exists with respect to the kind of configuration allowed in a

language, and more than one mechanism can be present. While many languages have

different morphological encodings for different configurations (e.g. English), in some

languages (e.g. Classical Latin) the same morphological realization can be given to structures

that originate from different sources.


 3

 In my analysis I adopt a parametric model, according to which the remarkable cross-

linguistic variation found in this domain can be reduced to three fundamental strategies of

adnominal argument realization:

(2) a. GovG: a non-iterating in situ genitive, realized via a government configuration in the

position of Merge and requiring adjacency to its head noun (cf. Shlonsky 2004);

b. AgrG: an Agree configuration, whereby genitives can be realized, according to the

restrictions imposed by the thematic hierarchy, in two different functional projections,

whose activation is subject to parametric choice (cf. Longobardi 2001);

c. ModG: a predicational structure, which can be analyzed as a reduced relative clause, by

means of which modifier-like genitives can be iterated without showing ordering

constraints (cf. analyses like Kayne 1994 and following, or Cinque 1994 for a parallel

configuration involving adjectives).

The model in (2) is very similar to the one adopted in the parametrization of DP-internal

syntax by Gianollo, Guardiano, and Longobardi (2008), with the addition of the government

configuration in (2.a). Some of the cross-linguistic data on which it is based are presented and

discussed in Longobardi (2001) and Gianollo (2005). The typology in (2) is particularly well

illustrated by Classical Greek, a language that displays all the options above, and that, despite

giving them the same morphological realization, requires different distributional contexts for

each (cf. Manolessou 2000, Guardiano 2003).

(3) a. αὐτὴ ἡ δύναμις τ ῆς πό λε ως (GovG; NG order)

autē hē dunamis tēs poleōs

itself the strength the:GEN city:GEN

‘the strength itself of the city’


 4

 (Thuc., II.41.2)

b. ἡ αἵρεσις τ ῆς πό λε ως (GovG; NG order)

hē hairesis tēs poleōs

the conquest the:GEN city:GEN

‘the conquest of the city’

(Thuc., II.58.2)

(4) a. ταῖς τ ῶν πο λε μ ικῶν μελέταις (AgrG; GN order)

tais tōn polemikōn meletais

the the:GEN military.exercises:GEN practice(pl)

‘the practice of military exercises’

(Thuc., II.39.1)

b. τὴν τ ο ῦ Λάχητ ο ς τ ῶν νε ῶν ἀρχὴν (AgrG; GGN order)

tēn tou Lachētos tōn neōn archēn

the the:GEN Laches:GEN the:GEN ships:GEN command

‘Laches’ command of the fleet’

(Thuc., III.115.6)

(5) a. ἐν τῇ γῇ τῇ Ἀθηναίων (ModG; NG order)

en tēi gēi tēi Athēnaiōn

in the:DAT land:DAT the:DAT Athenians:GEN

‘in the land of the Athenians’

(Thuc. II.57.1)

b. ἐν τῇ γῇ τῇ Ἀττικῇ (ModA; NA order)

en tēi gēi tēi Attikēi

in the:DAT land:DAT the:DAT Attic:DAT

‘in the Attic land’

(Thuc. II.57.1)

 5

The examples in (3-5) show that: (i) a post-N genitive adjacent to the noun can express the

subjective (3.a) and the objective (3.b) function (but see Shlonsky 2004 on cross-linguistic

and construction-specific restrictions); (ii) genitives can also be pre-N (4.a); two genitives can

co-occur in pre-N position, respecting the thematic hierarchy Agent > Theme (4.b); (iii) in

definite DPs, it is possible to see that there is a further post-N configuration in Classical

Greek, in which the genitive is preceded by the doubling of the matrix DP’s definite article

(5.a). The same phenomenon appears with post-N adjectives (5.b); determiner doubling is in

fact the only possibility to license post-N adjectives (cf. the discussion of determiner

spreading in Modern Greek in Alexiadou and Wilder 1998).

As seen in (3-5), the same morphological form can appear in different syntactic

configurations. This seems to be the case also for prepositional genitives cross-linguistically.

There is an ongoing debate with respect to their nature, motivated especially by the fact that

they are somehow ‘freer’ than their inflectional counterparts (can be iterated, can occur in

orders which do not respect the thematic hierarchy, can be non-adjacent to the head noun), but

at the same time are sensitive to structural constraints, such as possessivization, extraction,

and binding (cf. Giorgi and Longobardi 1991, Longobardi 2001, Androutsopoulou and

Español-Echevarría 2003 for a summary of the debate). It is plausible that this heterogeneity

may arise from a combination of licensing strategies. In 17.4.4 I will propose an analysis of

the Old French prepositional genitive, hinting however to some evidence suggesting that the

modern construction displays some crucially different properties.

In the Indo-European languages included in Gianollo, Guardiano, and Longobardi’s (2008)

sample, the configuration in ModG is always realized post-nominally (with all probability

harmonically with the post-N realization of relative clauses). Thus, in these languages a GN

order can only be analyzed as an AgrG configuration, in one of the two dedicated projections.

The fact that there are two distinct positions is indicated not only by the possibility of

 6

multiple occurrences (cf. 4.b), but also by the positioning with respect to adjectives. The two

projections for structural genitive licensing, tagged GenS and GenO, and their position with

respect to adjectives, are shown in (6), from Longobardi (2001: 597):

(6) [D [GenS [Num [H1 [S-or [M1 H2 [M2 H3 [Arg H4 [GenO [αP [S [O…N]]]]]]]]]]]]

In (6), the lexical layer containing the noun and its arguments is indicated with α. S-or

(Speaker- or Subject-oriented), M1 (Manner-1), M2 (Manner-2), Arg (Argumental) projections

refer to hierarchically ordered positions for adjectives. The positions tagged H1, H2, etc.,

represent the cross-linguistically attested targets of intermediate N(P)-movement (cf.

Bernstein 1993).

The possibility for the noun head or the NP to raise across functional projections brings us

to the next point, i.e. the structural ambiguity of the NG order. A linear string NG in a

language can result in principle from three different configurations: (i) a GovG; (ii) one of the

two positions where AgrG is licensed, in languages where N(P)-raising to higher projections

is present; (iii) a ModG. As we have already mentioned, distinguishing between the three is

not, to a large extent, a matter of morphology. While a prepositional realization is restricted to

types (2.a) and (c), an inflectional form is compatible with all types of licensing. The

interplay with other DP-internal parameters is, instead, revealing. In particular, adjectives

represent a crucial diagnostics for the syntax of genitives. Since the functional projections

hosting adjectives are situated in between the two AgrG positions, the relative order of noun,

adjective and genitive is a crucial cue for the activation of AgrG projections. Also, an order

N-A-G immediately rules out the possibility of analyzing the genitive construction as a

GovG, since the latter requires adjacency to the head noun.


 7

 I propose that the structural ambiguity of the NG sequence is primarily responsible for the

diachronic lability of post-N genitives. In the next sections, I will also argue that conditions

on structural economy play a role in the historical dynamics affecting these constructions.

The three basic types in (2) are listed in an order that mirrors their degree of syntactic

complexity, defined in terms of the interplay between the number of additional projections

that have to be generated and the movement operations necessary for licensing. Syntactic

complexity plays a crucial role in the process of reanalysis, in that learners’ choices are

guided by principles of structural economy in case of ambiguous input (cf. Roberts and

Roussou 2003, Van Gelderen 2004, and the discussion in Roberts 2007: 127 ff. and 226 ff.).

In the analysis of Late Latin genitive constructions that I will give in the next section, it will

be argued that the choice between two possible parametric interpretations of the NG string is

guided by such principles.

17.3 Late Latin

17.3.1 Corpus

My database for Late Latin (LL) is represented by a corpus of ca 80,000 words. It is,

therefore, much smaller than the database used for Old French (OF), for which a syntactically

parsed electronic corpus is available. The included texts date from the beginning of the 3rd

century CE (Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis) to the end of the 4th (Peregrinatio Egeriae and

the four gospels in the Vulgata translation). If it is true that a major part of the corpus is

represented by the gospels, which are translations from the Greek, their uniformity with

respect to the native texts observed in the domain of nominal syntax allows for their use as

legitimate representatives of a non-artificial variety of Latin (see Gianollo 2011 for arguments

in support of this position). I will also make reference to the results of a wider study on

 8

Classical Latin (CL), presented in Gianollo (2005, 2006). In general, the reader is referred to

these previous works for a fuller account of the Latin situation, which I will only be able to

summarize within the limits of this chapter.

17.3.2 Realization of adnominal arguments in Late Latin

Prepositional genitives in the Western Romance varieties are attested since the earliest

documents. They share the most fundamental syntactic characteristics (cf. Giorgi and

Longobardi 1991, Androutsopoulou and Español-Echevarría 2003) and the preposition di/de

introducing them can be formally traced back to a common Latin origin, the ablative

preposition dē. However, the genitive function of the prepositional phrase with dē does not

appear to be grammaticalized in any documented stage of the Latin language. As seen in

section 17.1, the question, therefore, is whether it is nonetheless possible to detect a

commonly inherited property accounting for such apparent parallel development.

The inflectional genitive realization was the only way of encoding real arguments within

the CL nominal phrase. This situation persists significantly also in the LL texts included in

my survey: the prepositional phrase with dē + ablative is still overwhelmingly found with its

typical directional use. Partitive or pseudo-partitive occurrences appear at a comparable rate

as that of earlier –especially pre-Classical– texts (cf. Molinelli 1996, Rosén 1999: 137-149,

Vincent 1999). The expression of real arguments with dē + ablative is extremely rare, and this

conclusion seems to hold also for later attestations (cf. Bonnet 1890: 607 f. on the few

examples found in Gregory of Tours, 6th cent., where the original ablative value of the

preposition is still clear, and Väänänen 1981 for an overview of documents from the 7th and

8th century).

However, despite the retention of the original inflectional system, LL shows an extremely

clear-cut shift in the distribution of genitive arguments. While in CL genitives occur


 9

indifferently and in even distribution in pre- or post-N position, in the LL texts included in my

sample genitives almost invariantly follow their head noun, with only a few exceptions, which

can be straightforwardly accounted for as idiomatic expressions (cf. Gianollo 2005: 157 ff.).

TABLE 17.1 Distribution of genitives in Late Latin

GENITIVES NG GN

Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis 101 (84.2%) 19 (15.8%)

Peregrinatio Egeriae 505 (93.5%) 35 (6.5%)

Evangelium sec. Matthaeum 576 (96.6%) 20 (3.4%)

Evangelium sec. Marcum 267 (96.4%) 10 (3.6%)

Evangelium sec. Lucam 572 (96.9%) 18 (3.1%)

Evangelium sec. Ioannem 315 (94%) 20 (6%)

A similar shift is not observable with adjectives, which instead occur in pre- and post-N

position, at a rate comparable to that of CL.

TABLE 17.2 Distribution of adjectives in Late Latin

ADJECTIVES NA AN

Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis 52 (50%) 53 (50%)

Peregrinatio Egeriae 283 (50%) 284 (50%)

Evangelium sec. Matthaeum 164 (74%) 58 (26%)

Evangelium sec. Marcum 90 (60%) 60 (40%)

Evangelium sec. Lucam 146 (73.4%) 53 (26.6%)


 10

 Evangelium sec. Ioannem 88 (68.8%) 40 (31.2%)

The major shift in the distribution of genitives, whose ultimate causes are admittedly

unclear (cf. Gianollo 2011), but do not seem to be reducible to concurrent morpho-syntactic

changes, results in a decisive loss in syntactic variation with respect to CL. Moreover, one of

the consequences of this shift is that it is no more possible to simultaneously express two

arguments of the same head noun. In my LL corpus there are no genuine instances of multiple

genitive realization within the same DP. The construction is generally rare also in CL, but the

examples show that it was possible to iterate the genitive structure both in pre- and post-N

position, and that, when both genitives were pre-N, the thematic hierarchy (subjective >

objective G) had to be strictly obeyed (cf. Table 17.3).

TABLE 17.3 Co-occurrence of genitives in Classical Latin (data in Gianollo 2005:73-78)

GNG = 18 GGN= 10 NGG= 9

S O O S S O O S S O O S
G NG =18 G NG =0 G G N=10 G G N=0 NG G =6 NG G =3

Multiple occurrences of ordered, pre-N genitives in CL were one of the crucial hints towards

the analysis of these constructions as realized in an AgrG configuration (cf. 2.b).

As for post-N genitives, the main pieces of evidence were represented by the possibility of

iteration and the possibility for other DP-internal elements, such as adjectives, to occur

between the head noun and the genitive. This excluded the GovG configuration, leading to an

analysis in terms of a predicative structure (ModG in 2.c).

In LL, the fact that genitives start to be consistently realized to the right of the head noun

leads to the generation of an ambiguous input for acquisition: the NG sequence becomes

strongly P-ambiguous, in Roberts’ (2007: 233) terms, in the sense that it may be analyzed by

 11

the learner according to different parametric values. As we have seen in section 17.1, three

possible parametric configurations can yield a NG order. In LL, however, the GovG

configuration is ruled out by the absence of the adjacency requirement: as in CL, adjectives

can intervene between the head noun and the genitive, as shown in (7).

(7) a. in novissimo autem die magno festivitatis

in last then day big festivity:GEN

‘in the last great day of festivity’ (Vulg. Joh. 7.37)

b. spatium immensum horti

space immense garden:GEN

‘the immense space of a garden’ (Passio 4.8)

In Gianollo (2005), Crisma and Gianollo (2006) it has been proposed that the primary

evidence available in LL is responsible for triggering the reanalysis of the post-N genitive

from type (2.c) to type (2.b). The CL parametric interpretation of the post-N genitive as a

ModG is now ruled out on the basis of (i) empirical evidence, consisting in the absence of

multiple occurrences, and (ii) a principle of structural economy, valuing the AgrG

configuration as less syntactically complex than the ModG one. The learner opts for the

generation of the least possible amount of structure; therefore, in absence of contrary

evidence, movement to a functional projection is preferred to the predicative option. Given

the existence of N-A-G sequences, as seen in (7), and of pre-N adjectives (cf. Table 17.2 and

7.a), the only position available is the lowest projection below ordered adjectives (GenO in 6).

The resulting structure for the DP in example (7.a) is shown in (8):

(8) [D [S-or novissimo [diei [M2 magno [festivitatisj [αPj [Ni]]]]]]]


 12

According to this proposal, the reanalysis of the genitive construction, due to the interaction

with adjectival syntax, is responsible for the birth of N(P)-raising, i.e. for the assumption on

the part of the learner of a movement operation which takes the noun to land in an

intermediate position in the functional layer.1

N(P)-raising is shared by all the Romance languages, and it is therefore highly significant

that, if the present reconstruction is correct, it is actually possible to trace back its origin to the

common LL stage. In the following section I will argue that precisely the inheritance of this

pan-Romance feature and of the post-N genitive will trigger the sequence of changes leading

to the system of genitive realization witnessed by Old French, and, ultimately, to the

emergence of prepositional genitives.

17.4 Old French

17.4.1 Corpus

For Old French (OF), and for the partial overview of Middle French (MF) data that I will

present, I have relied on the syntactically parsed electronic corpus MCVF edited by Martineau

(2008). I complemented the evidence offered by the MCVF corpus with another text in

verses, La Vie de Saint Alexis (11th cent., 4.636 words), which represents a particularly

archaic stage of the language. The MCVF texts included in my search are presented in Table

17.4 (shaded texts are in verses).2

TABLE 17.4 Old and Middle French texts from the MCVF corpus used in the study

Old French (until 1300) Date Number of words

La Chanson de Roland ca. 1100 29,338


 13

 Le Voyage de Saint Brendan 1120-1125 10,829

Leis Willelme 1150 4,026

Yvain / Le Chevalier au Lion 1177-1181 39,396

La Charte de Chièvres 1194 1,349

Aucassin et Nicolette 1190-1250 9,828

Pseudo-Turpin 1195-1205 4,136

La Conquête de Constantinople 1205 33,994

Queste del Saint Graal 1220-1225 108,678

Le Livre Roisin 1283 5,256

Middle French (until 1600)

Le XV Joyes du mariage 1375-1425 33,200

Chroniques, Froissart 1399-1410 216,520

Formulaire, Morchesne 1422-1427 11,062

Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles 1458-1467 147,229

Mémoires, Commynes 1489-1498 21,934

Lettres, Marguerite de Navarre 1521-1525 5,700

Later

Hurons, Gendron 1644 3,663

Annales, Morin 1659-1725 98,564

TOTAL 784,702

Some of the queries have been performed on the whole material. In other cases I concentrated

on La Chanson de Roland as representative of texts in verses, and on La Conquête de

Constantinople by Robert de Clari for prose.

17.4.2 Realization of adnominal arguments in Old French

OF displays three different constructions for the realization of adnominal arguments:


 14

(9) a. the cas-régime absolu (Foulet 1928): also called Juxtaposition Genitive in the literature,

e.g. Arteaga (1995), Delfitto and Paradisi (2009); inflectional realization in the oblique

form of the extant two-case declension (tagged BareG in what follows)

li filz [le roi d’Arragon]

the son the king of Aragon

‘the son of the king of Aragon’ (Charrete 5780)

b. the prepositional phrase introduced by de (tagged DeG in what follows)

la teste [d’Agolant]

the head of Agolant

‘Agolant’s head’ (Aspremont 10532)

c. the prepositional phrase introduced by a

la chambre [a la pucele]

the room to the girl

‘the girl’s room’ (Perceval 5753)

Type (9.c), which is marginally retained in Modern French, is restricted to the expression of

[+human] arguments, and is always rare in the texts examined. For the present purposes, I

will disregard this configuration, to concentrate on the relation between the cas-régime absolu

and the main representative of the prepositional construction, type (9.b).

In the most ancient text included in the survey, the Vie de Saint Alexis, the distribution of

the prepositional phrase introduced by de attests its full grammaticalization as the expression

 15

of adnominal arguments. However, prepositional genitives occur alongside inflectional

realizations of genitives in the cas-régime absolu. Table 17.5 shows that in the Vie de Saint

Alexis the number of occurrences of prepositional genitives only slightly exceeds that of

inflected ones.

TABLE 17.5 Prepositional vs. inflected genitives in the Vie de Saint Alexis

GENITIVES DE G BAREG

Saint Alexis 35 (53.8%) 30 (46.2%)

The grammaticalization of prepositional genitives, thus, cannot be mechanically linked to the

loss of the inflectional realization, and a long period of co-existence of the two constructions

has to be accounted for. As Figure 1 shows, the use of the cas-régime absolu decreases during

the 12th and 13th century, to disappear by the MF period, following the more general fate of

the two-case declension (on which see Schøsler 1973, 1984, Plank 1979, Reenen and Schøsler

2000). 3

FIGURE 17.1 The disappearance of the inflected genitive (column shading indicates the

transition from OF to MF)

!"#$%&'&#"()*&(*&+*#,&-*./(&
!"+$#
!"+!#
!"&)#
!")*#
!"'(#
!"'%#
!"%&#
!"!$#
!"!!#
3 1#

>= 59#
.3 0#

,- 3#
78 3#

/= 3<#

>/ #

<#
,- #
0/ <#
>> #
<< #
5; 0#

9- 9 #

7 #
C, B-7 #
@= 0>#

6 >#
0< 50

:= 3<
.3 03<
-5 3<

9:

6 00
A8 50

.3
/0 0
>
.6
2, /0
4 01/

/,
9: /5

90

9- ,?

5<
8,

,
3<

-,
.

6
,-

5.


 16

Already in OF an overt morphological distinction between the nominative (cas-sujet) and the

oblique (cas-régime) was consistently visible only in the masculine paradigm of nouns and

determiners, as shown in Table 17.6. Most feminine nouns had a unique form for both cases

and retained only the morphological marking for plural number. Only the few feminine nouns

that did not end in -e muet could mark the cas-sujet singular with an -s, borrowed from the

masculine paradigm; in addition to these, a handful of nouns retained a marked cas-sujet (e.g.

suer/seror ‘sister’, none/nonain ‘noon’, Eve/Evain ‘Eve’). In any case, for feminine nouns the

two-case distinction was restricted to the singular. Nonetheless, also feminine nouns were

allowed in the BareG configuration, although very rarely. This point will, in fact, turn out to

be important for the following discussion.

TABLE 17.6 Case declension in Old French

Nouns Definite article

M F M F

sg pl sg pl sg pl sg pl

Cas-sujet -s (-z) -Ø -Ø -s (-z) li li la les

Cas-régime -Ø -s (-z) -Ø -s (-z) le les la les

17.4.3 The properties of the cas-régime absolu

In this section, I will examine the syntactic behavior of the OF inflectional genitive

construction (type 9.a). In order to do so, I will start from the traditional description of the

cas-régime absolu given by Foulet (1928), and discuss it in light of the data coming from my

survey on the MCVF corpus.


 17

 Foulet (1928: 14-23) offers an analysis of the distribution of the inflectional construction,

which can be summarized in the following points:

(10) Typical semantic notions expressed

a. kinship, alliance, leadership

b. alienable and inalienable possession

Preferences

c. the complement is overwhelmingly singular

d. the complement is preferably a proper name

Requirements

e. the complement must be [+human]

f. it must play the role of subject/possessor

g. it must always be definite

h. it must immediately follow the head noun

To this points it should be added that, according to the data in the corpus, BareG is never

iterated, i.e. there can be no more than one BareG for DP.

Studies such as e.g. Palm (1977), Herslund (1980), Schøsler (1984), Arteaga (1995),

Delfitto and Paradisi (2009), have already confirmed the accuracy of Foulet’s description with

respect to points (10.a, b, e). I will rather comment on the remaining ones, which are of more

direct import to understand the syntactic configuration in which OF inflected genitives occur.4

Table 17.7 shows the distribution of inflected genitives in two representative OF texts,

according to (i) their order with respect to the head noun; (ii) the nature of the complement

with respect to the proper name/common noun distinction; (iii) the complement’s number. 5

TABLE 17.7 Distribution of inflected genitives in Old French


 18

BAREG NG GN Proper (sg) Common TOT

Roland 85 (+1) 4 50 40 (36 sg) 90

Constantinople 113 4 (+1) 24 94 (89 sg) 118

Table 17.7 largely confirms point (10.c), also in its not being an absolute restriction, since

plural complements are not impossible. Point (10.d), on the other hand, does not appear to

qualify as an accurate generalization, since common nouns may even represent the majority of

inflectional realizations in some texts.

It has been long noticed (e.g. Togeby 1974, Palm 1977, and more recently Delfitto and

Paradisi 2009) that also generalization (10.f) is incorrect: although there is a predominance of

possessive and subject-like relations, the cas-régime absolu can also have the function of an

objective genitive, as in (11):

(11) a. pur amur Alexis

for love Alexis

‘for the love towards Alexis’ (Saint Alexis 1529)

b. le servise Jhesucrist

the service Jesus

‘the service of/to Jesus’ (Queste 260)

In the corpus examined by Palm (1977), represented by literary texts of the second half of the

12th cent.-first quarter of the 13th cent. and partially overlapping with ours, over a total of

1395 BareG with singular nouns, 62 (4%) can be analyzed as objective genitives. The rate is

comparable to that observed among prepositional complement introduced by a (3%), and not

substantially different from that found among DeG (9%).


 19

Turning to the definiteness requirement in (10.g), our search over the corpus confirms the fact

that the BareG must always be definite. No examples occur of article-less inflectional genitive

DPs, apart from the cases where proper names, pronouns like celui, or definiteness-inducing

elements such as possessive adjectives or demonstratives are present. The only cases where

the complement can be indefinite are found after the noun mi ‘middle’ (e.g. par mi un val

herbus ‘across a grassy valley’, Roland 994). This construction, however, is better analyzed

as headed by a newly grammaticalized complex preposition en mi, par mi (Modern French

parmi), governing, as all other prepositions, the oblique case, which is therefore not a real

BareG anymore (cf. fn. 5; cf. also the fact that after mi the complement can also be [-human]).

Thus, it is possible to conclude that the inflectional genitive always needs a strong element in

D.

The definiteness requirement does not hold for the matrix DP, as is instead implied by

Delfitto and Paradisi’s (2009) treatment of the BareG construction. Although examples in the

corpus are rare in argument position (whereas in predicative position article-less DPs can

more freely occur), they show that DPs with an indefinite determiner can have a BareG

complement, as in (12).

(12) a. un’ymagene Apolin le felun

an image Apolin the traitor

‘an image of Apolin the traitor’ (Roland 3252)

b. uns serjans l’empereur

a servant the emperor

‘a servant of the emperor’ (Constantinople 1565)

Apparently, therefore, no agreement in definiteness features holds between the matrix and the

genitive DPs. This is a first, important hint toward the fact that a construct-state analysis for

 20

these constructions is not correct (since definiteness inheritance is a necessary property of

construct states, cf. Ritter 1991, Siloni 1997, Longobardi 1995, 1996). A second piece of

evidence against a construct-state analysis is represented by the fact that, as shown in (13),

adjectives may intervene between the determiner and the head noun in the matrix DP: the

N(P), therefore, cannot be argued to raise to the projection of D, as is commonly assumed for

Semitic (and marginal Romance) construct states (on the frequent confusion between

Romance construct states and the cas-régime absolu construction cf. Longobardi 1995: 307,

fn. 14, and references cited therein).

(13) a. a la grant feste Seint Michel del peril

to the solemn celebration Saint Michel of.the danger

‘to the solemn celebration of St. Michael, (patron) of the danger’ (Roland 125)

b. le grant orgoill Rollant

the great pride Roland

‘Roland’s great pride’ (Roland 1797)

c. le boen cuer sa dame

the good heart his lady

‘his lady’s good heart’ (Yvain 7066)

This last observation brings us to our last point, (10.h), relative to the position of BareG. As

seen in Table 17.7 above, the post-N order is overwhelmingly dominant (respectively in

95.5% and 96% of the cases). Foulet (1928: 18 f.) states that pre-N cas-régime absolu is

typically found with the name ‘God’. With other nouns, the order is almost always found in

the rhyming part of the verse. For the purposes of this paper, the pre-N inflected genitive will

be considered a relic and will be disregarded in the following discussion. In order to fully

confirm (10.h), also the requisite of immediate adjacency has to be checked against the data in

 21

the corpus. Foulet (1928: 17-18) states that a word appears between the head noun and the

inflected genitive only very seldom. The intervening element, judging from Foulet’s

examples, is never part of the DP, but results from independent sentence-level parameters,

governing the position of connectives and verbs, which are most often prosodically weak:

(14) a. Li feme aussi Mahiu l’Anstier

the wife also Mahiu the Anstier

‘also the wife of Mahiu l’Anstier’ (Le Jeu de la Feuillée 296)

b. Caÿn, qui freres fu Abel

Cain who brother was Abel

‘Cain, who was Abel’s brother’ (Le Vair Palefroi 882)

The query on the MCVF corpus and on the Vie de Saint Alexis confirms the adjacency

requirement. In particular, adjectives, the most likely candidates for DP-internal intervention,

never occur between a noun and a BareG.6 Since this aspect, as with LL, turns out to be

crucial for the diachronic interpretation, I will postpone a more thorough discussion of the

data to the following section, where I will propose my analysis for the structural configuration

in which BareG is licensed, and reconstruct its relation to the Late Latin inheritance.

To sum up this section, I propose in (15) below a modified version of (10), where some

generalizations are reframed or complemented according to my empirical findings (in italics):

(15) Typical semantic notions expressed

a. kinship, alliance, leadership

b. alienable and inalienable possession

Preferences

c. the complement is overwhelmingly singular, but there is no ban against plural DPs

 22

 d. the complement does not show a distinct preference for being a proper name

Requirements

e. the complement must be [+human]

f. it can express any argument of the head noun

g. it must always be definite, but there is no obligatory definiteness agreement with the

matrix DP

h. it must immediately follow the head noun

i. it can never be iterated

17.4.4 From Late Latin to Old French

In this section I will argue that OF inflected genitives are, in fact, a continuation of Latin from

a syntactic point of view. More precisely, I will propose that they represent the result of a

further reanalysis of the LL construction. I will further argue that OF prepositional

realizations (type 9.b) share the same structural source.

Some of the conditions in (15) suggest that the BareG construction represents the outcome

of the transmission of some fundamental parametric values relative to the nominal domain

from LL to OF. If it is impossible to straightforwardly derive the OF system from the CL one,

the hypothesis that the OF BareG inherits the characteristics of the intermediate LL stage

sheds light on a number of shared properties: (i) the fact that the noun raises to an

intermediate projection in the functional layer, landing in between the ordered adjectival

projections, (ii) the fact that a non-iterated, inflectional genitive, which is able to express any

thematic relation with the head noun, occurs in a post-N position. We may add to this the

observation that the residual pre-N instances of cas-régime absolu appear in a position that is

arguably the same of the residual pre-N genitives in LL, i.e. in the high AgrG projection,

immediately below D.

 23

 Despite these basic similarities, the OF construction displays an innovative structural

property with respect to the LL post-N genitive realized in the low AgrG projection, namely

strict adjacency with respect to the head noun. We have seen in (7) that this was not the case

in LL, as N-A-G sequences were possible. Therefore, to corroborate the hypothesis that the

cas-régime absolu continues the LL post-N genitive, a principled explanation has to be found

as to why the new requirement (15.h) would arise. In what follows, I will try to do so,

connecting the adjacency requirement to another peculiar feature of BareG, the definiteness

requirement on the complement (15.g), and establishing a structural parallelism with the DeG

configuration.

I ended the last section by discussing the respective positioning of BareG and adjectives. In

Table 17.8 I present an overview of the data obtained from the MCVF corpus, also with

respect to the DeG configuration.

TABLE 17.8 Co-occurrence of adjectives and genitives

Roland Constantinople Rest of corpus

A-N-BareG 3 2 12

N-A-BareG 0 0 2 (1?)

A-N-DeG 16 64 2153 (all de-PPs)

1290 (est. DeGen)7

N-A-DeG 1 0 165 (DeGen)

Adjectives can co-occur with the BareG construction (cf. also 13), but only if they precede the

head noun. The only safe example of adjective intervention in a DP hosting a BareG

configuration comes from a Middle French text, Froissart’s Chroniques, in a highly


 24

lexicalized expression (dou frere germain le duch de Bretagne ‘of the duke of Brittany’s

brother-german’, Froissart 10048).

The corpus study demonstrates that the requisite of adjacency imposed on such a

realization is also shared, until the Middle French period, by the prepositional genitive. This is

a noteworthy difference with respect to Modern French, where the intervention of an adjective

between the head noun and the prepositional genitive is perfectly grammatical (in 16.a the

adjective can only be post-N, while in 16.b it could also precede):

16. a. la voiture italienne de Marie

‘Mary’s Italian car’

b. le discours controversé du président

‘the president’s controversial speech’

The only example of a N-A-DeG sequence in Roland shows, in fact, a still strong ablatival

value of the de-PP, which may therefore not qualify as a proper argument:

(17) A colps pleners de lor espiez

with strokes great of/from their pikes

‘with great strokes of/from their pikes’ (Roland 3388)

The counterexamples found in the corpus are extremely rare in the OF period (4 to 7,

depending on the uncertain interpretation of the de-PP as a real argumental genitive or as an

adjunct in some cases). They slightly increase in the MF period, but the great majority of the

instances counted in Table 17.8 (104 out of 165, 63%) are attested in the latest text included

in the corpus, Morin’s Annales de l’Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal.


 25

 Also another fact observable in the corpus differentiates the DeG configuration from the

modern prepositional genitive: there are no instances in which DeG is iterated. In Modern

French, instead, it is possible to have multiple occurrences of prepositional genitives within

the same DP, as shown by the example in (18) (taken from Sportiche 1990; multiple orders

are possible):

(18) Le portrait d’Aristote de Rembrandt du Musée d’Orsay

The portrait of Aristotle of Rembrandt of the Musée d’Orsay

‘Aristotle’s portrait of Rembrandt in the Musée d’Orsay’

What is more, there are no instances in the corpus where DeG and BareG co-occur as

realizations of arguments of the same head noun. This hints toward the fact that they may

compete for the same position. The only difference between DeG and BareG observed in the

literature (e.g. Foulet 1928, Palm 1977) is that, especially in the older texts, de is preferably

used with animals, inanimate referents, or (human) kinds, and when the relation is that of an

objective genitive. However, these are only tendencies: the examples in (19) show that, since

the earliest stages of the language, DeG could express any thematic relation –respectively,

Possessor, Agent, Theme– with the noun:

(19) a. l’ honur del secle

the honor of.the century

‘the honor of the century’ (Saint Alexis 200)

b. cunseill d’orguill

counsel of pride

‘a counsel of pride’ (Roland 15.196)

c. de tut cest mund…jugedor


 26

 of all this world judges

‘judges of all this world’ (Saint Alexis 364)

My hypothesis is that, in fact, the DeG and the BareG realizations have a uniform structural

source. They are licensed in a configuration that inherits from Late Latin the post-N position,

its non-iterability, and the possibility of realizing any thematic role, thus the fundamental

syntactic cues. It is further reanalyzed in OF, however, due to changes in the morphological

cues.

The crucial morphological factor is deflexion. Jespersen (1918), Carstairs-McCarthy

(1987), Plank (1992) have shown that the morpho-syntactic development of the English

genitive was conditioned by the increased uniformity of the genitive exponent, i.e. by the

reduction of the declensional system to a unique genitive mark for all declensional classes.

The same change can be observed in OF, apart from lexical exceptions. Moreover, most

feminine nouns occur in the construction completely unmarked for case, and are in fact quite

rare. Adjectives display a strong tendency to lose case marking: there is a unique form for

feminine agreement and for masculine forms ending in -e; adjectives ending in a consonant

show many exceptions. In most instances with masculine nouns, the only unambiguously

case-marked element within the genitive constituent is the element in the Determiner position

(article, demonstrative, possessive adjective; cf. Palm 1977, Reenen and Schøsler 2000).

In this situation, OF case morphology is too weak to represent, in the process of language

acquisition, a cue to the movement of the genitive constituent to a higher agreement

projection: thus, the head noun’s extended projection loses its ability to license nominal

arguments in an AgrG configuration (type 2.b).8

Given the disappearance of the morphological cue, a further reanalysis takes place at this

stage, leading to the positional licensing of the genitive constituent in a government

configuration (type 2.a). A GovG configuration cannot be iterated (condition 15.i); it also

 27

requires strict adjacency between the head noun and the complement (condition 15.h), and

that is why the N-A-G sequence, probably already underrepresented in the primary data,

given the tendency of OF adjectives to occur prevalently in pre-N position (cf. Boucher 2002,

2004), becomes ungrammatical. The fact that in OF the post-N genitive is ‘frozen’ in place by

the licensing under government does not imply, however, that raising out of the lexical shell

is lost; rather, the whole NP complex reaches a higher position in the functional layer,

preserving the pan-Romance N(P)-raising parametric option.

In the spirit of the treatment of lexical case by Bayer, Bader, and Meng (2001), I assume

that the genitive complement takes the form of an outer KP, embedding a DP and acting as a

probe for the valuation of formal features of the complement. Both inflectional endings and

prepositions –or at least functional prepositions, with a particularly impoverished set of

lexical features, such as de, cf. Vincent (1999)– can act as exponents of K0. More specifically,

the requirement for K0 to be filled can be satisfied by means of various strategies:

(20) Move

a. proper names (N-to-D-to-K)

b. overt definite determiners

c. possessive adjectives

Merge

d. functional preposition de

The Merge option yields the DeG configuration, while the Move option results in BareG.

This derives the requirement in (15.g) that the constituent in the cas-régime absolu be always

definite, accounting in a principled way for Foulet’s (1928: 20) observation that the

complement in this configuration ‘représente toujours un individu spécifiquement désigné,

distinct de tous les autres individus’. The semantic properties of the construction, under this

 28

account, are only a by-product of the morphosyntactic requirement to fill K0. An overt

indefinite determiner is not able to satisfy such requirement because it is not in D0, but

originates in a lower functional projection (the cardinality projection CardP, according to

Lyons 1999).

The condition on K0 proposed for OF is reminiscent of a similar morphological

requirement holding for post-N genitives in Modern German, the so-called ‘genitive rule’ (cf.

Gallmann 1998, Lindauer 1998): according to it, a non-prepositional post-N genitive is only

possible if (i) represented by a proper name, or if (ii) there is at least one inflected form within

the DP (determiner, possessive pronoun or other inflected pronoun, adjective with strong

suffix). Further research is needed to assess whether the diachronic emergence of this

requirement can be linked to a reanalysis of the configuration for post-N genitives along the

lines proposed for OF.

The cas-régime absolu and the OF prepositional genitives have the same underlying

structure and coexist, since the earliest documents, and until the two-case declension

eventually disappears. The DeG configuration, being subject to no constraint relative to the

syntactic and semantic nature of its DP complement, is bound to become more frequent. The

eventual generalization of the non-ambiguous prepositional realization is very natural under

current assumptions on processing. It also complies with the ‘Merge-over-Move’ preference

driving grammaticalization processes (Roberts and Roussou 2003).

The mentioned increase in the occurrence of the N-A-G sequence after the Middle French

period signals that, at some point, the prepositional construction itself undergoes the

reanalysis which brings about the ‘modern’ characteristics of de-genitives, i.e. the possibility

of non-adjacency with the head noun and the possibility of multiple occurrences within the

same DP. In the proposed system, these properties are compatible with an analysis in terms of

a ModG configuration (type 2.c). This further diachronic step, which would attest once more


 29

to the lability of the post-N genitive, must however be investigated on a much broader textual

basis.

Once a substantial structural parallelism between inflectional and prepositional genitives is

established, the ultimate source of the prepositional construction can be traced back to the

crucial shift occurring in Late Latin, which unequivocally transmits to the daughter languages

genitives in the post-N position.

My account, although grounded into different assumptions about the nature of genitive

licensing, is in substantial agreement with the previous formal treatment of the cas-régime

absolu construction proposed by Arteaga (1995): the diachronic processes affecting this form

of genitive is ultimately due to the featural weakening of the functional projection licensing it,

in turn connected to morphological impoverishment.

Ultimately, if we assume, as is plausible, that similar conditions may have hold for the

other Western Medieval Romance varieties, the reconstruction proposed here accounts for the

parallel development of prepositional genitives in these languages, whose ancestor only had

an inflectional realization. Under the present assumptions, a diachronic process that is

traditionally interpreted as an instance of (1.b) turns out to be, instead, at least for OF, an

instance of (1.c), i.e. the chain-effect of an inherited change happening in LL.

17.5 Conclusion

In this chapter I have traced the history of genitive realization from Late Latin to Old French.

I have proposed that a bundle of parametric features, crucially comprising the realization of

genitives in a post-nominal Agree configuration and the operation of noun raising, is

transmitted from Late Latin to Old French and is responsible for the retention of the genitive

construction commonly referred to as cas-régime absolu. However, the Old French

construction displays some innovative structural properties with respect to the originating

 30

Latin construction, most notably strict adjacency to the head noun; moreover, it alternates

since the first texts with the prepositional expression of genitives. The existence of a mixed

system shows that the grammaticalization of prepositional genitives cannot be mechanically

linked to the loss of the inflectional realization, but also points to some restrictions that

prevented the inflectional genitive from being fully productive. I have argued that the ultimate

explanation for this state of affairs has to be sought in the interplay between morphology and

syntax.

The more general conclusion that can be drawn from my analysis is that post-nominal

genitive is diachronically labile because the space of parametric variation within genitive

syntax and the conspiracy with the values of other parameters allows, in principle, for three

different grammars for NG sequences. The Old French data seem to suggest that choosing

among the three in language acquisition may also be a matter of morphology, as deflexion

interacts to various degrees. In evaluating the salience of structural parallelisms for

comparative and genealogical purposes, the potential polymorphism of constructions such as

post-nominal genitives has to be carefully taken into account. Some parametric values are

more likely to change than others: in some cases their lability can be attributed to the fact that

they are subject to the implicational effect of superordinate parameters (Roberts 2007: 357),

but in other cases, like the one under exam here, the ambiguity of the trigger arising under

certain conditions may represent the decisive factor.

Primary sources

Vulgata

Nestle, Eberhard, Erwin Nestle, Barbara and Kurt Aland et al. (19943). Novum Testamentum

Graece et Latine, Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft.


 31

Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis

Van Beek, Cornelius (1936). Passio sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis. Nijmegen: Dekker &

Van de Vegt.

Bastiaensen, Antoon A. R. (1987). Acta Martyrum. Milano: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla.

Peregrinatio Egeriae

Heraeus, Wilhelm (1908) (1939). Silviae vel potius Aetheriae Peregrinatio ad Loca Sancta,

Heidelberg: Winter.

Prinz, Otto (1960). Itinerarium Egeriae, Heidelberg: Winter.

La Vie de Saint Alexis

Paris, Gaston (1872). La Vie de Saint Alexis. Paris: Franck.

Storey, Christopher (1968). La Vie de Saint Alexis, Texte du Manuscrit de Hildersheim (L).

Textes Littéraires Français 148. Genève: Droz.

Corpus MCVF

Martineau, France (2008). Corpus MCVF : Modéliser le changement: les voies du français. U.

Ottawa, http://www.voies.uottawa.ca/corpus_pg_fr.html

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1
For the treatment of CL post-N adjectives, see Gianollo (2005, 2006), where they are

analyzed as originating in a predicative configuration.

2
More information on chronology, authorship, provenance, and the edition followed for each

text is provided on the MCVF website. Some dates, which do not correspond to the scholarly

consensus, have been modified according to the Complément Bibliographique of the


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Dictionnaire Étymologique de l’Ancien Français (DEAF). I am grateful to an anonymous

reviewer for pointing out some inconsistencies to me.

3
The fact that Froissart in his Chroniques uses relatively many inflectional genitives, and in a

remarkably rich variety of syntactic and semantic contexts, could be interpreted as a sign of a

longer persistency of the construction in the Northern and Eastern dialects, especially Picard.

This would be consistent with the longer preservation, in such varieties, of the two-case

declension, due at least in part to the fact that in the Northern regions final -s disappears later

(cf. discussion in Schøsler 1973: 260 f., Reenen and Schøsler 2000). However, the Middle

French texts included in my search are too few and too scattered in time to allow for a safe

conclusion on this point. I thank Richard Ingham for suggesting this possibility to me.
4
In my system, the [+human] feature does not play a syntactically relevant role and, as such,

remains unexplained. Delfitto and Paradisi (2009) propose that it may be related to the

visibility of case morphology, necessary to obtain the cas-régime absolu configuration.

5
In the second and third column, the number in parenthesis indicates constructions which are

retrieved by the MCVF search, but which I have set apart in my analysis, in order to comply

with the criteria that I have adopted in my analysis of Latin. They are, respectively, a

construction with a gapped noun, and an instance of en-cliticization. On the other hand, in

order to favor the replicability of the query, I have kept in the total a number of structures

which are tagged as inflected genitives in the corpus, but which may not, in fact, represent

adnominal arguments: these are forms of cas-régime complementing the noun mi ‘middle’,

which however appears in most occurrences to form a complex preposition together with par

and en (e.g. en mi la pleine tere, Roland 3278).

6
The co-occurrence of adjectives and BareG is quite rare, as can be seen by the data

presented in Table 17.8. Therefore, as an anonymous reviewer notices, this conclusion is


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based on a limited number of examples, which will be hopefully expanded by future research

over a broader corpus.

7
In the case of the A-N-DeG combination, the automated query on the corpus retrieves all

immediately post-N PPs headed by de, without recognizing their function: thus, for instance,

also partitives and complements of quality and material are included. Due to the large number

of occurrences, I did not perform a case-by-case analysis for this combination; therefore I

offer in the table both the total number of de-PPs and an estimate of the number of argumental

genitive among them (60% of the total). The estimate is based on the case-by-case exam

performed on La Chanson de Roland (55% argumental genitives) and on La Conquête de

Constantinople (64%). It is admittedly stipulative, and should be corroborated by more

precise data in the future, especially with respect to the diachronic developments in the

functions of de-PPs.
8
Notice that here no isomorphism is necessarily assumed between syntactic structure and

morphological exponence. Rather, morphology is considered to be one of the expressions of a

certain parametric value, representing a surface cue to parameter setting during acquisition.

The impoverishment of such a cue can conspire in creating a situation of strong P-ambiguity,

thus triggering reanalysis (cf. the discussion in Anderson 2002 and Roberts 2007: 136 ff.). I

thank an anonymous reviewer for inviting me to make this point explicit.



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