Information Structure and Word Order Change in Medieval French.

我的研究项目集中在中世纪和早期现代法语的信息结构（is）和词序变化之间的相互作用。我的研究主要集中在三个问题上：IS在推动句法变化方面的作用程度；句法变化在多大程度上推动了信息系统的变化和信息系统角色的表达，最后，文体变化在句法变化中的作用。通过我对中世纪和早期现代法语的研究，我的目标是加深我们对跨语言的句法变化的理解，以及我们对语言变化的更广泛的理解，以及很少被探索的因素，如IS，文本类型和诗文区分如何影响这些变化。以往对中世纪法语词序的研究很多，也很复杂。在20世纪80年代和90年代，Vance（1997）和Platzack（1995）等研究集中在古法语（OFr）中的动词秒（V2）及其在中古法语（MFr）时期的崩溃。近年来，随着Rizzi（1997）对左边缘的地图绘制方法的出现，焦点已经转移到对古法语（OFr）动词第二（V2）的描述上，详细说明了左边缘所占据的确切位置（Rouveret, 2004; Wolfe, 2018a； Labelle和Hirschbuhler， 2018）。在这些作品中，有几部关注的是IS的重要性（Steiner, 2014； Rinke和Meisel, 2009; larriv<s:1>, 2019），尽管他们的观点存在激烈争议。这些研究大多集中在is -句法关系的一个特定方面，并将其范围限制在OFr时期。例如，Zimmermann（2014）只关注代词主语，Labelle和Hirschbuhler（2018）只讨论动词第一和动词第二从句。由于13世纪前散文文本的罕见，在OFr研究中有一种利用诗歌数据进行句法分析的趋势。虽然这本质上没有问题，但这种区别往往没有得到解决，导致“文本类型和时间变量几乎合并”（Labelle & Hirschbuhler, 2018:266）。Simonenko、crabb<s:1>和pramovost（2018）的研究表明，一篇文章是韵文还是散文对其语法有实质性的影响。也就是说，这个问题开始在最近的研究中得到解决（即Labelle & Hirschbuhler， 2018年和larriv<s:1> 2019年）。通过批判性地参与每一个文本-讨论其背景，手稿历史，文本类型和方言-并考虑这些因素在文本之间的比较分析，可以获得更多的洞察力。至于我自己的方法，我将使用Base de franais msamdisamval语料库和MCVF语料库，从12世纪到17世纪的各种法语文本中收集数百个子句，希望通过使用大型数据集和更广泛的时间尺度来改进以前的工作。此外，由于一些后期数据缺乏可访问的语料库，我可能会选择单独的数字化文本来访问。然后，我将为IS关系标记这些条款，以Steiner（2014:91-95）在语料库上编码IS值的决策树为起点，因为它给我的印象是可用的最细粒度的方法，允许对IS有新的见解。本文将利用这些数据分析中世纪法语中词序和IS之间的关系，以及这种关系如何在历时上发生变化。我将研究可能发生在言语前和言语后的信息系统成分的种类，它们的顺序，以及这对历时语序变化的影响。我还会比较不同方言，文本类型，诗歌和散文的差异确保考虑到所有可能的差异原因，而不是假设历时因素是主要的。这项研究为中世纪和早期现代法语的语法- is接口以及历史语言学数据提供了一种新的方法，这可能对历史句法、浪漫语言学和一般历史语言学领域都有广泛的影响。

My research project is focused on the interplay between Information Structure (IS) and word order change in Medieval and Early Modern French. My research focuses on three issues: the extent to which IS has a role in driving syntactic change; the extent to which syntactic change drives change in IS and the expression of IS roles and finally, the role of stylistic variation in syntactic change. Through my study of Medieval and Early Modern French I aim to deepen our understanding of syntactic change cross-linguistically as well as our broader understanding of linguistic change and how less explored factors, such as IS, text-type and the verse-prose distinction affect these changes.Previous studies of Medieval French word order are many and complex. During the 1980s and 1990s studies, such as Vance (1997) and Platzack (1995) focused on Verb Second (V2) in Old French (OFr) and its collapse in the Middle French (MFr) period. In more recent years, with the advent of Rizzi's (1997) cartographic approach to the left periphery, focus has shifted to descriptions of Old French (OFr) Verb Second (V2), detailing the exact positions occupied in the left periphery (Rouveret, 2004; Wolfe, 2018a; Labelle and Hirschbuhler, 2018). Among these works, several focus on the importance of IS (Steiner, 2014; Rinke and Meisel, 2009; Larrivée, 2019), although their claims are heavily debated.Most of these studies focus on a specific aspect of the IS-syntax relationship and limit their scope to the OFr period. For example, Zimmermann (2014) focuses only on pronominal subjects and Labelle and Hirschbuhler (2018) only discuss verb first and verb second clauses. There is a tendency in studies of OFr to utilise verse data for syntactic analysis due to the rarity of pre-13th century prose texts. While this is not intrinsically problematic, the distinction often goes unaddressed, leading to "a near conflation of text genre and time variables" (Labelle & Hirschbuhler, 2018:266). Simonenko, Crabbé and Prévost (2018) have shown that whether a text is verse or prose exerts a substantial influence on its grammar in OFr. That said, this issue is beginning to be addressed in more recent research (namely Labelle & Hirschbuhler, 2018 and Larrivée 2019). By engaging critically with each text - discussing its background, manuscript history, text type and dialect - and considering these factors in the comparative analysis between texts, added insight can be gained. As for my own methodology, I will gather several hundred clauses from a variety of French texts ranging from the 12th to 17th centuries using the Base de Français Médiéval corpus and, for later texts, the MCVF corpus, hoping to improve on previous work by using a large dataset and a wider timescale. Additionally, due to the lack of accessible corpora for some later data, I may choose individual digitised texts to access instead. I shall then mark up these clauses for IS relations, taking as my starting point Steiner's (2014:91-95) decision tree for coding IS values on corpora, since it strikes me as the most fine-grained approach available, allowing for new insights into IS. Analyses will be conducted with these data on the relationship between word order and IS in Medieval French and how this shifts diachronically. I will look at the sorts of IS constituents which can occur preverbally and postverbally, their order, and implications of this for diachronic word order change. I will also compare differences across dialect, text-type, verse and prose making sure to take account of all possible reasons for variation, rather than assuming that the diachronic element is primary. This study represents a novel approach to the syntax-IS interface in Medieval and Early Modern French as well as to historical linguistics data which may have widespread implications for both the field of historical syntax, Romance linguistics and general historical linguistics.