Abstract
This contribution applies the theoretical concepts of iconicity, system congruity, and paradigmatic leveling to data from Old French nominal and verbal morpho(phono)logy. It is an attempt to revisit well-known (traditional) philological material and to offer a modern theoretical interpretation of the phenomena under consideration. It will be demonstrated that the combination of philological research and theoretical insights leads to the most complete understanding of the Old French data involved. Two areas of Old French inflectional morphology will be examined. First, the Old French case system is given a thorough analysis in terms of the concepts of iconicity and system congruity, parts of the theory of Natural Morphology. The loss of the Old French case system is attributed to a ‘heavy’ presence of counter-iconicity, which becomes apparent by means of the cube constellation representation of this system. Second, the Old French verbal system is shown to include both invariance and final consonant alternation (FCA), which make up its system congruity. It is argued that this account should be considered ‘concrete’ and ‘functional’, as opposed to ‘abstract’ and ‘formal’ in today’s linguistic theorizing. In the last section of this paper, considerations based on Ockham’s Razor will be incorporated into a discussion of this dichotomy.
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Notes
- 1.
There are also, of course, morphosyntactic factors involved, which led to a gradual loss of case inflection dating back to the Latin period.
- 2.
In Klausenburger (1990), I suggest that the 12 markedness connections for the Old French noun may have operated inside a cube constellation. If so, the ‘destructive’ impact of counter-iconicity on the overall system could be considered even more directly and transparently.
- 3.
- 4.
For the verb boire, the continuation of the Old French diphthong is not really a diphthong, but the glide plus vowel combination [wa]. In addition, the 1st and 2nd persons of the plural underwent the unusual change of rounding the root vowel to [y]. In the verb ‘come’, the palatal root of Old French has been lost, and the completion of the nasalization process has produced the nasal vowel vs. oral vowel plus nasal consonant alternation.
- 5.
This markedness approach between the present indicative (short root) and all the other tenses (long root) is reminiscent of the role of the velar insert in some Romance languages (cf. Klausenburger 1984), although different oppositions are actually involved.
- 6.
Although resemblance to history is acknowledged, analysts in generative phonology claim not to be swayed by such criteria: only synchronic factors are said to be involved in the formulation of the necessary phonological rules (cf. Herslund 1976:14).
- 7.
I am not aware of any study on Old French morphophonology within the most recent ‘incarnations’ of (abstract) phonological theory, such as non-linear phonology and optimality theory. It is well known, of course, that many traditional philological works on the language exist.
- 8.
Chatton’s Anti-Razor is thoroughly discussed in Maurer (1984).
- 9.
Regarding the application of Ockham’s Razor to linguistic theory, see Klausenburger (in preparation).
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Klausenburger, J. (2013). Theoretical Issues in Old French Inflectional Morpho(phono)logy. In: Arteaga, D. (eds) Research on Old French: The State of the Art. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 88. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4768-5_15
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