Resumption in Medieval Romance: Reconsidering si

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter presents a new analysis of Medieval Romance si, focusing principally on data from Old Sicilian and Old French. Following a review and critique of existing proposals for the syntax of si, new data from two Sicilian texts and three Old French texts is provided so as to develop a synchronic and diachronic analysis. In terms of si’s syntax, it is proposed that multiple factors conspire to affect its distribution and the classes of constituents that it can resume; these include whether si itself is internally or externally merged in the left periphery, the precise height of the V2 bottleneck in the language in question, and whether Topics are internally or externally merged. In diachronic terms, the grammaticalization of si from Latin onwards is argued to be a paradigm case of upward grammaticalization.