3. Description and results
3.1 Structural properties
3.1.1 Relative clauses
3.1.1.3 Relative clause item
The present section takes a closer look at the distribution of relative clause items. Relative clause items (RCI) are understood to be the element which relativizes overtly the relative head, i.e. what is commonly called “relative pronoun”75. However, this term is not adequate in all cases; compare for instance the use of relative où, which corresponds to that of an adverb and not to a pronoun. Consequently, there are various other terms in the relevant literature as for instance “forme relative“ (Godard 1988; Kunstmann 1990), “Subordinator” respectively
“Relativpartikel” (Lehmann 1984), “terme QU-“ (Muller 1996), or more recently
“Relativkomplementierer” (Grewendorf and Weiß n.d.) or “relativer Ausdruck” (Holler 2013).
It was decided to use ‘relative clause item’ (RCI) as a neutral term.
In this corpus, all current French RCI are used. In the following, variation in gender, number or orthography is not specified. Instances of /lequel/ can therefore be les quieux, laquelle laquele etc. Furthermore, it was proceeded from the top to the bottom. The proportion of qui is of 34,8%
for the first and 38,5% for the second period. RCI que was used at a rate of 28,9% in the first and 24,3% in the second part of the corpus. The use of où increases slightly as well (9,9% vs.
12,6%), whereas /lequel/ decreases (8,5% vs. 6,8%). Dont is used more than twice as often in the second part compared to the first part (4,4% vs. 9,4%). Turning to RCI used in combination with prepositional phrases, PP/lequel/ represent 10,8% of the occurrences of the first and 7,9%
of the second period. Other combinations with qui, quoy or où are sporadic (cf. table 4 further down).
75 See for instance in grammars (Riegel et al. 2008), in linguistic textbooks (van Gelderen 2013) or in specific syntactic work on relative clauses (Touratier 1980).
By looking loser at the data containing fronted elements, one notes that qui represent the large majority of cases for both periods (67,2% vs. 63,0%). As well as for the overall data, que is the second most used RCI but its proportion decreases between the first and the second period (18,0% vs. 11,0%). The proportion of /lequel/ decreases, too, but to a smaller extent (13,1% vs.
11,0%) and in comparison to the overall data there is an uptick: its proportion is about 4,5%
higher in fronting contexts than in the overall data. Altogether, RCI that can take over the function of syntactic subject or object represent almost the absolute majority of the data of fronted elements for the first period. However, for the second period, a substantial rise of non- subject and non-object RCI such as dont, où and PP /lequel/ is observed, representing about 15% altogether compared to a single occurrence of PP /lequel/ for the first period. This rise is not due to inter-speaker variation, since there are only 3 occurrences produced by the same scribe.76
1357-1360 1423-1433
overall fronting overall fronting
qui 119 (34,8%) 41 (67,2%) 195 (38,5%) 46 (63,0%)
que 99 (28,9%) 11 (18,0%) 123 (24,3%) 8 (11,0%)
où 34 (9,9%) 0 6477 (12,6%) 4 (5,5%)
/lequel/ 29 (8,5%) 8 (13,1%) 34 (6,7%) 8 (11,0%)
dont 15 (4,4%) 0 47 (9,3%) 4 (5,5%)
PP /lequel/ 37 (10,8%) 1 (1,6%) 40 (7,9%) 3 (4,1%)
PP qui 6 (1,8%) 0 1 (0,2%) 0
PP quoy 2 (0,6%) 0 3 (0,6%) 0
PP où 1 (0,3%) 0 0 0
Sum 342 61 507 73
Table 4. Overview Relative clause item
A closer look is taken into these syntactic functions of RCI. The aim is not to do a precise typology of RCI in Medieval French, since this issue has been abundantly addressed.78 As relative clauses are considered to be the most favourable context of fronting with regard to subject extraction (Franco 2009), the focus here is on the function of RCI as subject. First there
76 In LDR 1424, 63 and 1433, 229, which are both signed by Chembaut.
77 One instance combined with dont was counted here since its value was clearly locative as illustrated by i.
i. combien que en soy retournant dont où il estoit (1424, 25) ‘how often he returned from where he was.’
78 For a detailed, general overview on the functions of Medieval French RCI, cf. Kunstmann (1990).
is a general survey of subject types in relative clauses and after that a detailed account of the relation between the subject and specific RCI based on the subset of fronting data is given.79
1357-1360 1423-1433
subject= RCI 141 (41,2%) 223 (44,0%)
subject=non-overt 19 (5,6%) 18 (3,6%)
pronoun 95 (27,8%) 179 (35,3%)
DP 68 (19,9%) 74 (14,7%)
expletive 8 (2,3%) 6 (1,2%)
NPi 8 (2,3%) 6 (1,2%)
DP+pronoun 2 (0,6%) 0
demonstrative 1 (0,3%) 1 (0,2%)
total 342 507
Table 5. Subjects in relative clauses
Comparing RCI to the different other types’ subjects used in this data, one notes that they represent the subject in the relative majority of the coded data (41,2% vs. 44%). There are few instances of non-overt realized subjects (5,6 vs. 3,6%). Taken together, about 47% of the occurrences in both periods imply contexts where the subject is not overtly realized by (pro-) nouns.
This distribution is convergent with the Accessibility Hierarchy established by Keenan and Comrie (1977), according to whom subjects are the most accessible to relativization. Recall their definition of Accessibility Hierarchy in (16):
(16) Accessibility Hierarchy
SU > DO > IO > OBL > GEN > OCOMP80
Being the most accessible does not mean that subject RCI represent the absolute majority of cases, but only a relative majority. Comparing the results of table 4 to the data presented in the previous table and taking into account the RCI other than qui, /lequel/ or que, there are about 27,8% occurrences for the first and 30,5% for the second period. These occurrences divide into
79 For the overall view on subjects used in relative clauses, see next section.
80 Cf. Keenan and Comrie (1977: 66). SU being ‘subject’, DO ‘direct object’, IO ‘indirect object’, OBL ‘oblique case’, GEN ‘genitive’ or ‘possessor’, OCOMP ‘object of comparison’
the functions of IO, OBL, or GEN cases. The remaining cases are by deduction cases of DO (31% vs. 25;5%).
For a more detailed look into the distribution of the subject per RCI in this data, the focus was laid on the occurrences including fronting. A multidimensional frequency distribution produced the following results (cf. table 6a and 6b).
Subject= RCI Subject=non-overt Subject = other81
qui 41 – –
que 4 4 3
/lequel/ 7 0 1
PP /lequel/ 0 0 1
Sum 52 4 5
Table 6a. Frequency of subject type in relation to RCI. 1357-1360
In both periods, qui is always used as the subject in the relative clause. Concerning /lequel/, there is only one instance per period where this RCI is not used as the subject of the relative clause. Que bears the subject four times for the first period but only once for the second period.
Together with the occurrences of non-overt realized subject (pro), there are 72,7% of cases including que and fronting for the first period, while, for the second period, they only represent one half of the data. Concerning the RCI dont, où and PP /lequel/, since any of them can function as a subject, the occurrences are distributed between non-overt realized subjects and (pro-) nominal subjects with a slight preference for the latter.
Subject = RCI Subject = non-overt Subject = other
qui 46 – –
que 1 3 4
/lequel/ 7 0 1
dont 0 2 2
où 0 1 3
PP /lequel/ 0 1 2
Sum 54 7 12
Table 6b. Frequency of subject type in relation to RCI. 1423-1433
81 For further details on other subject types, see next section.
A closer look at the whole issue shows: RCI bearing the subject function represent the absolute majority for both periods (85,2% vs. 74,0%), followed by RCI assuming the role of the direct object. Thus, on the one hand, it can be concluded that these results are likewise on a par with the Accessibility Hierarchy. However, on the other hand, there is a decrease of subject RCI from the first to the second period which might have an effect on the general evolution of fronting in relative clauses. Next, a closer look is taken at fronted elements in the context of relative clauses and the relation between the subject and the fronted element is addressed in more detail.