Reflexive Marking in the History of French

本项目旨在研究法语回指系统的历时变化。它是围绕古法语和现代法语中反身代词的使用之间的显著差异而建立的。在前者中，重读反身代词soi广泛用于任何单一主语，例如devant soi voit ses enemies“他在自己面前看到他的敌人”，而在后者中，人称代词lui或elle通常用于指代从句的主语（句尾回指），除了一些不定代词主语，如on“one”或chacun“everyone”。这种变化可能产生的深远的理论影响没有得到重视，变化本身也没有得到充分的描述。除了提供对语言历史的描述性见解之外，对理论语言学中许多当前问题的详细调查也很重要。首先，回指系统的历时变化有望进一步加深我们对这些系统本身的理解，特别是对结合的理解。其次，拟议的研究与目前广泛讨论的特异性主题有非常特殊的关系，其原因将在下文解释。最后，对一个特定的语法变化实例的详细调查应该能更广泛地推进我们对语法变化的认识。这种变化在这里被放在反身标记的更广泛的背景下，目的是作为同一子句中论点的身份的语法表达。相关表达的范围包括状语代词，如il se lave ‘he washed ‘，重读代词，如Anne est fi<e:1> re d’elle ‘Anne为自己感到骄傲’，以及重读代词même，如un égoïste ne pense qu‘ <s:2> soi-même ’一个利己主义者只考虑自己’。

This project proposes to investigate diachronic change in the anaphoric system of French. It is built around a striking difference between the use of reflexive pronouns in Old French and Modern French. In the former, the stressed reflexive pronoun soi was widely available for any singular subject, e.g. devant soi voit ses enemis 'he sees his enemies in front of himself', whereas in the latter, the personal pronouns lui or elle are typically used for reference to the subject of the clause (clause-mate anaphora), except with some indefinite pronoun subjects such as on 'one' or chacun 'everyone'. The arguably far-reaching theoretical implications of this have not been appreciated, nor has the change itself been sufficiently charted.Apart from offering descriptive insights into the history of the language, a detailed investigation of this is important for a number of current issues in theoretical linguistics. Firstly, diachronic change in anaphoric systems promises to further our understanding of those systems themselves, in particular with respect to Binding. Secondly, the proposed research has a very particular bearing on the currently much-discussed topic of specificity, for reasons to be explained below. Finally, a detailed investigation of a particular instance of grammatical change should advance our knowledge of grammatical change more widely.This change is put here into the wider context of reflexive marking, intended as the grammatical expressions of identity of arguments within the same clause. The range of relevant expressions includes the clitic pronoun as in il se lave 'he washes', the stressed pronoun as in Anne est fière d'elle 'Anne is proud of herself', and the stressed pronoun with même as in un égoïste ne pense qu'à soi-même 'an egoist thinks only of themselves'.