Historical Morphology and Syntax

Abstract

Abstract French has undergone major upheavals in the domains of morphology and syntax. The main morphological changes are the loss of inflectional verbal and nominal richness, the regularization and simplification of paradigms, and a general tendency to systematize functional oppositions. The main syntactic changes have affected both the internal structure of noun and verb groups (with increasing contiguity and dependence between elements, resulting in a more tightly structured and hierarchical organization) and the clause, leading to a more rigid word order. The evolution is also characterized by the loss of null subjects and of the verb-second constraint, as well as by an increased use of subordinate clauses. Also notable are the increasing number of interrogative structures as well as the evolution of negation along a Jespersen’s cycle. Many of the changes started as early as Old French and most of them reached their endpoint by the seventeenth century.