Impersonal Se-Constructions and the Puzzle of Old French Subjects
(Anne Wolfsgruber, University of Salzburg)
Background: While Old French (henceforth OF) has been viewed as being at least partial
pro-drop for the last decades (cf. Adams 1987, Vance 1997 and others), it is recently argued
that this view must be nuanced in various ways (cf. e.g. Balon/Larrivée s.a., Zimmermann
2009, Offredi 2006 i.a.).
Some view OF as an asymmetric V2 language which causes the omission of referential
pronouns in main clauses to be possible (cf. Adams 1987). This partial pro-drop configuration
has been further weakened by the fact that OF seems to possess impersonal constructions with
expletives (OF. il) and without overt subjects, which is an unexpected behavior for a nullsubject language in the original sense (cf. Offredi 2006; Zimmermann 2009). Nonetheless, we
still find evidence that the omission of the pronoun il is preferred (54% ) in main clause
sentences and 15% of the subordinate clauses show an omission of il in Mort le Roi Artu,
which also seems to be a problem for a generalized V2 configuration. (cf. Offredi 2006: 5)).
In addition to that, Rinke/Meisel (2009) show that OF still shows V1 and V3 patterns, and
that subject-verb inversion looks a lot like inversion in other Romance null-subject languages.
Offredi (2006: 14-15) applies Roberts and Roussou’s (2002) interpretation of the EPP, which
leads her to think that the anti-symmetric V2 configuration (EPP if VT is situated in TP and
V2 if VT is situated in the CP domain) may be even seen as the only trigger of personal
pronoun omission and that XIIIth century OF has already lost its null-subject status
completely. However, these conclusions seem to be a bit premature since they stem from a
corpus analysis which comprised one literary text only.
Balon/Larrivée (s.a.: 1-2) show a more diverging picture according to which the null subject
begins to disappear in XIIIth century literary texts. They argue that the status of the null
subject varies according to the genre of the text and show by analyzing two legal texts that the
decline of the null subject had begun much earlier (their texts date from 1150 (25% null
subjects) and 1230 (1% null subjects) (cf. Balon/Larrivée s.a.: 6)).
These findings provide a rather diffuse picture of the OF syntactic characteristics. The
problems which have been neglected so far are those of the data situation. We mostly find
well documented genres and well translated texts at the center of these corpus studies. Mostly
only one dialect/scripta tradition is examined or theoretical assumptions are made upon one
text only. Furthermore, we are far away from integrating a more text tradition based view of
the status of OF, which could be of vital importance in order to explain language variation.
Additionally, in the view of what we know about language change, there must be a longer
period in which the partial pro-drop configuration and the “replace pro by weak subject
pronouns” stage co-exist (cf. Van Gelderen 2009: 179). Therefore, it is probably inadequate to
view OF (a term that covers almost six centuries) as either the one or the other.
A new aspect in the puzzle: in the recent past, a correlation between null-subject languages
and the functional range of reflexive constructions has been under scrutiny. Dobrovie-Sorin
(1998) following Cinque (1988) have observed that we find impersonal reflexive seconstructions (se being a reflexive clitic which is able to “absorb” nominative case in the
traditional generative view) in null-subject languages such as Italian, Spanish and European
Portuguese as opposed to so-called man-constructions in German, Modern French, etc. (cf.
Siewierska 2011). In the light of the unclear (non) null-subject status of OF, it might be worth
taking a closer look at the functional range of the reflexive constructions in OF.
Method and first results: A first quantitative corpus study comprising 22 OF texts
(approximately 900,000 words) (BFM corpus) dating from 1113 to 1415 (written in anglo-
normand or picard dialect) tried to shed new light on the existence of impersonal seconstructions in OF, a task initially driven by contradictory statements on the (non) existence
of this construction in the historical grammars of French in which only one example OF. Or
se cante ‘Now one sings’ (Aucassin et Nicolette ~1225) was cited repeatedly (cf.
Gamillscheg 1957; Salvi 2011; Jensen 1990; Nyrop 1979). The corpus study revealed seven
other instances of the impersonal se-construction. The construction was found in texts of
different genre: Comput by Philippe de Thaon (~1113), Eracle by Gautier d’Arras (~1176),
and Proverbes de Salemon by Sanson de Nantuil (mid-12th century). Interestingly, none of
the impersonal se-construction was found after 1225 so far.
The data seem to prove a correlation between the possibility of licensing null-subjects and the
existence of impersonal se-constructions and that this correlation may indeed reveal further
details on the actual pro-drop status of OF.
Further investigations: Another interesting aspect is that the reflexive clitic is frequently
found with intransitive (unergative and unaccusative) verbs in non-impersonal contexts
throughout the whole corpus. At present, the role of these reflexive constructions is still
unclear. Sometimes there is a nuanced change in meaning of the verb, but this cannot be
generalized. Can this be seen as a further surface phenomenon of accelerating typological
changes? In order to answer this question and to find more evidence for the correlation
between status and function of the impersonal se-construction and pro-drop characteristics, a
qualitative corpus study comprising 17 texts (champenois and ouest dialect (BFM corpus))
will be conducted.
Selected References ● Adams, Marianne (1987): “From Old French to the Theory of prodrop”. In: Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 5,1-32. ● Balon, Laurent/Larrivée, Pierre
s.a. “L’ancien français n’est déjà plus une langue à sujet nul – nouveau témoignage des textes
légeaux”.http://www.academia.edu/2241625/LAncien_francais_nest_deja_plus_une_langue_
a_sujet_nul ● Gamillscheg, Ernst (1957): Historische Französische Syntax. Tübingen:
Niemeyer. ● Jensen, Frede (1999): Old French and Comparative Gallo-Romance Syntax.
Tübingen: Niemeyer. ● Nyrop, Christopher (1979): Grammaire historique de la langue
française. Genève: Slatkine Reprints. ● Offredi, Frédérique (2006): L’ancien français du
XIIIe siècle est-il une langue pro-drop? Étude du corpus. In: Actes du congrès annuel de
l’Association canadienne de linguistique 2006, http://westernlinguistics.ca/Publications
/CLA2006/Offredi.pdf, 1-20. ● Rinke, Esther/Meisel, Jürgen M. (2009): “Subject-inversion
in Old French: Syntax and Information Structure.” In: Kaiser, Georg A./Remberger, EvaMaria: Proceedings of the Workshop “Null Subjects, Expletives, and Locative in Romance.”
Konstanz: Universität, Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft, 93-130. ● Salvi, Giampaolo (2011):
“Morphosyntactic Persistence”. In: Maiden, Martin/Smith, John Charles/Ledgeway, Adam
(eds.): The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages. Vol I, Cambridge: CUP, 318-381.
● Siewierska, Anna (2011): “Overlap and Complementarity in Reference Impersonals: ManConstructions vs. Third Person Plural-Impersonals in the Languages of Europe.” In:
Malchukov, Andrej/Siewierka, Anna (eds.): Impersonal Constructions. A Cross-Linguistic
Perspective. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, 57-89. ● Vance, Barbara S. (1997):
Syntactic Change in Medieval French. Verb-Second and Null Subjects. Dordrecht: Kluwer. ●
Van Gelderen, Elly (2009): Cyclical Change. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. ●
Zimmermann, Michael (2009): “On the Evolution of Expletive Subject Pronouns in Old
French.” In: Kaiser, Georg A./Remberger, Eva-Maria: Proceedings of the Workshop “Null
Subjects, Expletives, and Locative in Romance.” Konstanz: Universität, Fachbereich
Sprachwissenschaft, 63-92.