The present volume presents scholarly study into Old French as it is practiced today, in all of its forms, within a variety of theoretical frameworks, from Optimality Theory to Minimalism to Discourse Analysis. Many of the chapters are corpus-based, reflecting a new trend in the field, as more electronic corpora become available.

The chapters contribute to our understanding of both the synchronic state and diachronic evolution, not only of Old French, but of language in general. Its breadth is extensive in that contributors pursue research on a wide variety of topics in Old French focusing on the various subsystems of language.

All examples are carefully glossed and the relevant characteristics of Old French are clearly explained, which makes it uniquely accessible to non-specialists and linguists at all levels of training.

Inhalt

Introduction.- A Diachronic View of Old French Genitive Constructions.- Grammaticalization in Progress in Old French: Indefinite Aarticles.- Null Objects in Old French.- Compensatory Lengthening in Historical French: The Role of the Speaker.- Perception, Production and Markedness in Sound Change: French Velar Palatalization.- Evolution and Regrammation in the Mood System: Perspectives from Old, Middle, Renaissance and Modern French.- Analogy among French Sounds.- The Development of the Declension System.- The Diasystem and its Role in Generating Meaning: Diachronic Evidence from Old French.- Synchronic studies.- Crusaders' Old French.- The Use of the Future and Conditional in High Medieval Literature.- Old French Parataxis: Syntactic Variant or Stylistic Variation?- A Derivational Approach to Negative Polarity Item Licensing in Old French.- Theoretical Issues in Old French Inflectional Morpho(phono)logy.- Forms and Functions of Reported Discourse in Medieval French.- The Left-periphery in Old French.- Grammatical Meaning and the Old French Subjunctive.