Information-structural evaluation

With respect to pragmatic considerations, the majority of the studies on “Stylistic Fronting” in Medieval French either do not address the question (Cardinaletti and Roberts 1990/2002, Labelle 2007, Salvesen 2011) or conclude that the fronted items do not exhibit a consistent informational role. Labelle and Hirschbühler (in press) state that the fronting can be due to different types of information: in both embedded and main clauses, it may correspond to (or be a part of) the information focus of the clause (40) (Labelle and Hirschbühler (in press, their (11)), or to already known background information (41) (ibid., their (16)).

(40) David cunfortad sa muiller Bethsabéé, ki deshaitéé fud David comforted his wife Bethsabée who suffering was

‘David comforted his wife Bethsabée, who was suffering’

(Quatre livre 80.3028)

(41) Si cururent par quinze jurs / Desque li venz tuz lur fud gurz So sailed for fifteen days Until the wind all them was weak Dunc s’ esmaient tuit li frere / Pur le vent qui falit ere.

then REFL.frighten all the brothers for the wind that stopped was

‘They sailed on during fifteen days until the wind calmed on them. Then, all the brothers got frightened because of the wind that had stopped blowing’

(Brendan, 36.125, v. 219-221)

Furthermore, they observe that in main clauses the fronted element may be strongly, i.e.

emphatically or contrastively, focalized as in (42) (Labelle and Hirschbühler in press, their (19)).

(42) car par le conseil Joseph avoit il recovree sa terre since through the advice Joseph had he recovered his land que Tholomers li toloit, et tolue li eust il se…

that Tholomers him took, and taken him had he if…

‘since through Joseph’s advice, he had recovered his land that Tholomers was taking from him, and he would have taken [it] from him if …

(Queste, 113.2974)

Hence, Labelle and Hirschbühler (in press) conclude that “Stylistic Fronting” is not associated with a specific informational role, and it is not resulting in defocalizing an element.

In contrast, the articles of Mathieu (2006, 2013) on Medieval French and the work of Fischer (2010, 2014) on different Old Romance languages claim that the stylistically fronted items are of information-structural relevance. Mathieu (2006, 2013), on the one hand, observes that the fronted elements in his data are textually given and share the semantics properties of appositives, i.e. they are said to represent non-presupposed asserted information, with the result that the focus corresponds to the remaining embedded material. He follows Buridant (2000) in stating that the O-V order appears to be preferred for secondary information, while the qui-V-O seems to be preferred for important information on the part of the whole sentence.

Accordingly, Mathieu (2006: 247-248) gives the following examples for new (43) and old (44) information.¹³⁴

(43) Si cort meintenant a une espee qui ert seur un lit and runs straight-away to a sword which is on a bed

‘He runs straight away to a sword that is left on a bed’

(La Mort le Roi Artu 86,10)

(44) A ces paroles vint leanz li chevaliers qui a l’assemblee devoit aller To these words came in the knight who at the.assembly must go

‘On these words, the knight who was supposed to go to the tournament came in.’ (La Mort le Roi Artu 12.22)

134 Note that, in contrast to what Mathieu (2006: 247) states, the indefiniteness of the relative antecedent cannot matter for the information status of the stylistically fronted element; compare example (43) to example (45) on the next page.

Hence, he takes the fronted items to be defocalized elements, having the same semantic status as asserted background topics. However, he does not explain the guiding principles of his information-structural analysis of the data. On the other hand, Fischer (2010, 2014), based on Fischer and Alexiadou (2001), states that the fronted items are generally emphasized, thus foregrounded or focalized, but that they have already been mentioned in previous discourse.

She suggests that this emphasis of stylistically fronted elements is special since their positive emphatic and, at the same time, given character does not permit an alternative reading, hence, is affecting truth conditions.¹³⁵ Fischer (2014) gives an insight in her information-structural guiding principles by providing a sample analysis of a fronted element. For (45) taken from Fischer (2010: 151), she first situates the sentences within the whole story by describing the context

(45) Une espee rasauda qui brisieei est ti en deus moitiez a sword sharp which broken is in two halves

‘a sharp sword that is broken into two halves’ (1238,13 conperc)

Next, she summarizes the relevant passages in the immediate context of (45): “[It] describes Gawain’s visit to a castle, where he is confronted with a dead knight lying on a bier. On the knight’s breast lies a sword which is broken in half.” (Fischer 2010: 151). Gawain fails the task to put the sword together again and when he “asks to be told the story of the sword […] the king tells him that he is not yet worthy of knowing the secrets […] since the sword that is broken in two halves has not yet been put together” (Fischer 2010: 151). As can be seen, the relative in (41) is pursued as in (46) (Fischer 2010: 151).

(46) … mais ne fu pas si rafaitiez

… but NEG was not so repaired

‘… but has not been repaired yet.’

Fischer’s (2010) pragmatic interpretation is based on her intuition: “in my interpretation, of the context […] brisiee is stylistically fronted to emphasise the fact that the sword is still broken.

The reader knows about the broken sword but here the ‘brokeness’ is emphasized again.”

(Fischer 2010: 151). Note that a contrastive reading of brisiee is imaginable, too. The participle

135 For the sake of completeness, note that this description is linked to the definition of verum focus sketched above.

is contrasted with the participle in the following relative clause rafaitiez hence yielding the two opposites ‘broken – repaired’.¹³⁶ Hence, although the results Fischer’s (2010) approach achieves are debatable, the general proceedings may be seized as a suggestion for further analyses, yet.

For Icelandic, the general claim is that the fronted elements are not of informational relevance (Maling 1980/1990, Holmberg 2006, among others). However, Hrafnbjargarson (2004) claims that the fronted element is focalized, while Sigurðsson (2010) observes that it is compatible with contrastive focus in certain contexts. For Romance languages, there are two further works which claim the information-structural relevance of “Stylistic Fronting”.¹³⁷ Franco (2012) suggests that for Old Florentine, in the absence of an overt subject, the fronted element is interpreted as Familiar Topic or “subject of predication”. Egerland (2011, 2013) takes fronting in Sardinian to be similar to Old Romance “Stylistic Fronting” and states that the fronted elements have narrow focus. Finally, Molnár (2010), who has a comparative approach on Scandinavian and Romance “Stylistic Fronting”, proposes to distinguish at least two different subtypes each having different discourse behaviour due to a different syntactic derivation. What she calls “Stylistic Inversion” is said to not necessarily bear emphasis and contrast, while

“Stylistic Fronting” does. She suggests that this could be a way to bring together the contrasting analyses in the field: for instance, Fischer (2010, 2014) and Mathieu (2006, 2013) for Old French who assume that the stylistically fronted elements have already been mentioned in the previous discourse.

To sum up the present discussion, it appears that the different findings as to the information-structural value of “Stylistic Fronting” are at odds. While some authors reject the idea of an information-structural value of the fronted elements, this is proposed by other authors. Yet, the latter accounts exhibit considerable disagreements.