Linguistics Encyclopedia.pdf

Dat. portae ad porta à la porte
Abl. portā cum porta avec la porte
WORD ORDER, PREPOSITIONS, AND ARTICLES
As long as relationships within a sentence were signalled by case endings, the meaning of
the sentence was unambiguous. Compare the following Latin sentences:
Poeta puellam amat
Puellam poeta amat
‘The poet loves the girl’
Poeta amat puellam
Puellam amat poeta
With the loss of case endings such as the accusative marker [m], subject and object would
have become indistinguishable.
*Poeta puella amat
*Puella poeta amat
Fixed word order came into play, in which the subject preceded the verb and the object
followed:
Poeta ama puella
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This word order has persisted into the Romance languages, accompanied by the use of
articles, and in Spanish by a preposition a to indicate personalized objects:
French: Le poète aime la jeune fille
Spanish: El poeta ama a la muchacha
Italian: Il poeta ama la ragazza
More extensive use of prepositions also became an important factor in signalling subject,
object and verb relationships:
Latin: Puella rosam poetae in porta videt
French: La jeune fille voit la rose du poète à la porte
Spanish: La muchacha ve la rosa del poeta en la puerta.
The changing phonological conditions in the Latin of the Empire also had a profound
effect on verbal forms. For example, compare Latin and French:
Latin
Sing.
Old French French