Journal article
Middle French: When? What? Why?
- Abstract:
- The so-called 'Middle French' period has been variously dated on the basis of a number of internal and external phenomena. This paper examines the linguistic criteria which have been adduced, concludes that there is no real discontinuity which serves to define 'Middle French', and, following Coseriu's work on synthetic and analytic exponence in Romance, as well as recent arguments of Lass concerning the nature of periodization, suggests that the value of the concept of 'Middle French' may be essentially typological rather than temporal - specifically, that it defines a variety of French which broadly conforms to the Romance morphosyntactic 'prototype', as represented by Spanish and Italian.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Authors
- Publisher:
- Elsevier
- Journal:
- Language Sciences More from this journal
- Volume:
- 24
- Issue:
- 3-4
- Pages:
- 423-445
- Publication date:
- 2002-03-15
- DOI:
- ISSN:
-
0388-0001
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Subjects:
- UUID:
-
uuid:b0d24841-eedb-4d76-9763-49967d8ea6c3
- Local pid:
-
ora:3710
- Deposit date:
-
2010-05-04
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Elsevier Science Ltd
- Copyright date:
- 2001
- Notes:
- The full-text of this article is not currently available in ORA, but you may be able to access the article via the publisher copy link on this record page. Citation: Smith, J. C. (2002). 'Middle French: When? What? Why?', Language Sciences 24(3-4), 423-445. [The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available at http://www.sciencedirect.com].
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