Project 12

Argument structure constructions in language contact: intransitive motion in Anglo-Norman

(Third Party Funds Group – Sub project)

Abstract:

Constructionist perspectives have been applied to phenomena of language contact and multilingualism only recently (e.g. Hilpert & Östman 2016, Boas & Höder 2018). A central idea here is the multilingual constructicon (instead of assuming separate systems for each language) which comprises both language-specific and language-unspecific constructions, as put forward, for instance, in Höder’s Diasystematic Construction Grammar (2018) in which contact-induced change is modelled as constructionalization, constructional change, and reorganization in the multilingual constructicon. 

The contact language to be investigated here is Anglo-Norman, i.e., the variety of French used in Britain from after the Norman Conquest to the early 15th century. Anglo-Norman developed several characteristics in which it differed from continental varieties of medieval French. Many of these features can be seen as effects of contact with Middle English, as is clearly visible at the phonological level. Anglo-Norman syntax, by contrast, has been argued to remain largely unaffected by language contact until the mid 14th century (Ingham 2012). This has been shown to be the case mostly for abstract syntactic phenomena such as V2, null subjects, or the clitic vs strong form distinction in object pronouns (Ingham 2012, 2010). Argument structure constructions, however, being more ‘meaningful’, might be expected to be more likely to change towards being less language-specific, particularly in a setting where many verbs are used in both languages anyway, and hence language-unspecific (cf. e.g. Durkin 2014 for the large scale borrowing of French lexis into Middle English). According to Schauwecker (2017), for instance, Anglo-Norman develops a resultative construction with legal speech act verbs, copied from Middle English (à la sentence someone to prison).

One of the aspects in which medieval English and medieval French differ with regard to argument structure is the expression of intransitive motion (Huber 2017, Schauwecker & Trips 2018): Middle English often combines directional prepositional phrases and adverbs (“satellite-framing”) with manner of motion verbs (e.g. ride into the forest) or even non-motion verbs (e.g. toil into the forest), whereas medieval French avoids such combinations. Initial research points towards an Anglicization of Anglo-Norman motion expressions: Huber (in press) shows that the non-motion verbs travailler ‘toil’ and labourer ‘toil’ are attested in motion uses in Anglo-Norman since the late 13th century and Schauwecker’s analysis of four selected manner verbs finds them combined with directional complements (PPs with à and sur) more frequently in 12th to 14th century Anglo-Norman material than in continental French (Schauwecker 2019: 60–61) (cf. also Schøsler (2008: 207) who suspects directional adverbs to be more frequent in Anglo-Norman than in continental medieval French, and cf. more generally the work of the DFG-project BASICS (Stein & Trips, 2015–2021)).

The aim of the project proposed here is to investigate motion constructions in Anglo-Norman in more detail, to find out to which degree these are influenced by contact with Middle English, and whether contact influence is felt earlier on the level of argument-structure-constructions than in more abstract syntactic characteristics of Anglo-Norman. This will be done by analyzing motion expressions in the Anglo-Norman textbase (c. 3 million words, various genres), the Anglo-Norman Yearbooks Corpus (c. 1.5 million words, narrative and dialogical sequences from court hearings) and perhaps the PROME database (c. 8 million words, trilingual parliament rolls) and other, not yet digitized Anglo-Norman texts (editions by the Anglo-Norman Text Society). The project addresses the following GRQs:

- NET3 In multilingual speakers, are the different languages represented in different networks or one multilingual network? In particular, are constructional changes towards the Middle English model predominantly found with verbs used in both languages (e.g. gallop/galoper, hasten/haster), and hence happening on the level of the verb, or are we dealing with changes on the more schematic level of the argument-structure-construction?

- USE4: How do the factors mentioned in USE1 and USE2 [here: multilingualism] result in language change at the community level at different timescales? Particularly [also related to USE3]: if the intransitive motion construction in Anglo-Norman is undergoing change to become more like the Middle English one, does this happen “sneakily” (De Smet 2012), i.e. first in more inconspicuous contexts (coordination with other motion verbs, perfect construction (resultative), reflexive pronoun)?