Publication details
La place du sujet et sa détermination en ancien français
Title in English | Place of subject and its determination in Old French |
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Authors | |
Year of publication | 2013 |
Type | Article in Periodical |
Magazine / Source | Jazyk a kultúra |
MU Faculty or unit | |
Citation | |
Web | http://www.ff.unipo.sk/jak/aktualnecislo.html |
Field | Linguistics |
Keywords | subject; place of subject; omission of subject; subject inversion; determination; old French |
Description | In the paper we examine the word order and position of subject in French prose of the XIIIth century (Li Contes dou roi Coustant lEmpereur). The so-called “ free word order “in Old French is only relative. The declination’s system allows much more freedom, but different position of constituents of the sentence isn’t completely accidental, it is mostly governed by the principle of functional sentence perspective. Accented constituent appears at the beginning of the sentence and provokes subject-verb inversion. Null-subject, implicit, particularly by multiple predicates, is common. It is even missed in impersonal constructions. The subject-verb inversion, common in interrogative sentences and reporting clauses, is quite often after adverbs (si, lors ...), the conjunction et and after the adverbial of time. |