Information Structure and Word Order Change in Medieval French.

我的研究项目是集中在信息结构（IS）和词序变化在中世纪和早期现代法语之间的相互作用。我的研究集中在三个问题：在何种程度上是有一个驱动句法变化的作用，在何种程度上句法变化驱动变化的IS和IS角色的表达，最后，文体变化在句法变化中的作用。通过对中世纪和早期现代法语的研究，我希望加深我们对句法变化的跨语言理解，以及我们对语言变化的更广泛理解，以及较少探索的因素如何影响这些变化，如IS，文本类型和诗句-散文的区别。20世纪80年代和90年代，万斯（1997）和普拉扎克（1995）等学者对古法语动词第二（V2）及其在中古法语中的消亡进行了研究。近年来，随着Rizzi（1997）对左边缘的制图方法的出现，重点已经转移到对古法语（OFr）动词第二（V2）的描述，详细描述了左边缘的确切位置（Rouveret，2004; Wolfe，2018 a; Labelle和Hirschbuhler，2018）。在这些著作中，有几部侧重于IS的重要性（Steiner，2014; Rinke and Meisel，2009; Larrivée，2019），尽管他们的观点存在很大争议。这些研究大多集中在IS-句法关系的特定方面，并将范围限制在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。由于世纪以前的散文文本非常稀少，因此，在对OFr的研究中，有一种倾向是利用诗歌数据进行句法分析。虽然这在本质上并没有问题，但这种区别往往得不到解决，导致“文本体裁和时间变量的近乎混淆”（Labelle & Hirschbuhler，2018：266）。Simonenko，Crabbé和Prévost（2018）已经表明，无论文本是诗歌还是散文，都会对其在OFr中的语法产生重大影响。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和Larrivée 2019）。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-并在文本之间的比较分析中考虑这些因素，可以获得更多的洞察力。至于我自己的方法，我将使用Base de Français Médiéval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，对于以后的文本，MCVF语料库，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，由于缺乏可访问的语料库，一些后来的数据，我可能会选择个别数字化的文本来访问。然后，我将标记IS关系的这些子句，将Steiner（2014：91-95）的决策树作为我在语料库上编码IS值的起点，因为它给我的印象是最细粒度的方法，允许对IS的新见解。将进行分析，这些数据之间的关系，词序和是在中世纪的法语，以及如何这种变化历时。我将研究在语前和语后出现的IS成分的种类，它们的顺序，以及这对历时语序变化的影响。我还将比较方言、文本类型、诗歌和散文之间的差异，确保考虑到所有可能的变化原因，而不是假设历时因素是主要的。这项研究代表了一种新的方法，在中世纪和早期现代法语的句法-IS接口，以及历史语言学数据，可能有广泛的影响，无论是在历史句法领域，浪漫语言学和一般的历史语言学。

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.