Clitic placement with infinitives in the diachrony of French

From enclisis to proclisis

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DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18148/hs/2025.v9i2-10.212

Keywords:

clitics, infinitives, old french, language change, clitic placement, verb placement

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the evolution of clitic placement with infinitives in French. Quantitative data taken from a corpus covering French from the mid-12th to the mid-19th century show that enclisis is found until the first half of the 14th century. From a formal standpoint, I provide evidence in favour of the hypothesis that this word order connects to V-movement of the infinitive to the IP-domain. I argue that this operation is driven by the richness of tense inflection, specifically the expression of the /r/ morpheme which is completely lost during the 14th century. The empirical picture further contributes to the debate on the locus of cliticisation, for which I propose a refined distinction between phonological and syntactic cliticisation. The last part of the paper presents evidence for a pronominal tripartition in Middle French, which shows a failed change. The article concludes on how morphophonology is a window to the acquisition of syntactic operations.

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Published

2025-02-04 — Updated on 2025-02-05

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