Relativism and Universalism in Linguistics - Fachbereich 10 ...

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An Analysis of the V2 Structure of
Two Old French Texts of the 12 th Century
Hänsch, Alexandra Yvonne
University of Ottawa
ahans006@uottawa.ca
There are two main types of verb-second (V2) languages: asymmetrical and symmetrical.
Asymmetrical languages like German, Dutch, and Mainland Scandinavian have the V2
constraint in their main clauses but not in their embedded clauses, whereas symmetrical V2
languages like Yiddish and Icelandic are V2 in both their main and embedded clauses. In
main clauses, asymmetrical languages have the verb under C and any XP in SpecCP. The
subject inverts with the verb from the moment on any other XP is occupying the SpecCP
position (den Besten, 1989). Symmetrical V2 languages have been analyzed with the verb
under I and any other XP in SpecIP for main and for embedded clauses (Diesing, 1990).
The V2 type that Old French belongs to is still in debate. Dupuis and Lemieux (1995)
consider Old and Middle French as being symmetrical V2. Côté (1995) restricts the
symmetrical V2 character of Old French to the Early Old French period up to the 12 th century.
After the 12 th century, she classifies Old French as asymmetrical V2. On the other hand,
Adams (1987), Vance (1997) and Labelle (2006) claim Old French as being asymmetrical V2.
Kaiser (1998) even argued for Old French being non-V2.
Hirschbühler (1989) and Kaiser (1998) insist on the fact that an analysis of Old French syntax
needs to integrate regional and diachronic differences, which are indeed numerous in Old
French texts, to be able to offer adequate results.
Our analysis has the aim to bring light to the question of which type of V2 language Old
French belongs to. We are analysing the syntactic structure of the main and embedded clauses
of two different Old French dialects of the 12 th century: Le Voyage de Saint-Brandan, written
in Anglo-Norman, and Gormont et Isembart, written in the literary language of the centre of
France.
The present study tries to answer three research questions: Is the Old French of the 12 th
century an asymmetrical or a symmetrical V2 language? Are there syntactic differences in the
two dialects that have been analyzed for this research? If yes, is one of the two dialects more
advanced in the syntactical development than the other?
To answer these research questions, we have coded both of the texts with the help of the
program Excel. The coding categories are the following: the type of main clause, the type of
embedded clause, and the verb position (V1, V2, V3, >V3, verb final).
The results of our analysis suggest a symmetrical V2 structure for the Anglo-Norman text and
an asymmetrical V2 structure for the text written in the literary standard of the centre of
France. We claim that the dialect of the centre of France can be considered the more
innovative of the two dialects, because it seems to be syntactically at a more advanced stage
than the Anglo-Norman dialect.