Summary

Recall the table given at the beginning of the present chapter. It represents an overview of the proportions of fronting per clause in comparison to the overall data.

1357-1360 1423-1433

total fronting total fronting

relative clauses 342 61 (17,8%) 507 73 (14,4%)

comparative clauses 117 27 (23,1%) 123 30 (24,4%)

other¹¹⁰ 75 75 55 55

total 534 164 (30,5%) 685 157 (23,1%)

Table 21. Sentences types. Data overview.

The findings on the overall evolution of fronting is confirmed since the proportion of fronting decreases by almost 7,5%. Additionally, the proportion of fronting with respect to the precise

108 One participle is used as adjunct.

109 Multiple references possible, see above.

110 As there are no overall data for other subordinate contexts, the calculation of percentages is not possible.

subordinate type is given. While the evolution for relative clauses decreases by 3,4%, the proportion of frontings in comparative clauses increases even slightly by 1,3% and therefore does not comply with the observed evolution.

Now, the realization of the subject in fronting contexts across the different clause types is compared, shown in table 22 as an overview.

1357-1360 1423-1433

RC CC Other RC CC Other

RCI 52 (85,2%) 0 0 54 (74,0%) 0 0

non-overt subjects 4 (6,6%) 9 (33,3%) 28 (37,3%) 7 (9,6%) 9 (30%) 21 (38,2%) (pro-)nominal 5 (8,2%) 18 (66,6%) 47 (62,7%) 12 (16,4%) 21 (70%) 34 (61,8%) Table 22. Proportion of the subject

In the majority of the cases the subject in relative clauses is represented by the RCI, i.e. qui.

There are few overtly realized subjects for the first period (8,2%), but this proportion doubles to 16,4% for the second period. In comparative and other subordinate clauses, the situation is different. The proportion of non-overtly realized subjects ranges between 30% and 38,2%.

While there is a decrease for comparative clauses by 3,3%, the proportion in other subordinate contexts remains almost the same. Hence, one can deduce that certain combinations of fronted elements and overt realized subjects are less frequent in some sentences than in others.

Table 23 represents the proportions of the position of the fronted element X and the subject S in relation to the finite verb V.

1357-1360 1423-1433

RC CC Other RC CC Other

XV 56 (91,8%) 9 (33,3%) 28 (37,3%) 61 (83,6%) 9 (30%) 21 (38,1%) XSV 5 (8,2%) 14 (51,9%) 37 (49,3%) 8 (11%) 18 (60%) 25 (45,5%)

SXV 0 2 (7,4%) 5 (6,7%) 4 (5,5%) 1 (3,3%) 2 (3,6%)

other 0 2 (7,4%) 5 (6,7%) 0 2 (6,7%) 7 (12,7%)

Table 23. Position of the fronted element X and the subject S in relation to the finite verb V

In comparison to the other more detailed tables presented before, this table was simplified.

Where possible, cases of multiple frontings were reduced to one of the basic configurations XV, XSV and SXV. Whenever multiple frontings could be assigned to both XSV and SXV as illustrated in (37), they were labelled as other.

(37) tant que d’une plaie que eux li firent en la teste par la mauvaisse garde du dit feu Robin combien que pour raison d’icelui cop ou plaie mort ou mehaing aucun ne s’en deust estre ensuy le dit feu Robin dedens trois sepmaines aprés le dit fait acoucha au lit assez tost aprés mort s’en est ensuie en la personne d’icellui

so much that of a wound that they made to his head because of the bad conduct of the said defunct Robin as much as because of the stroke or the injury no death or permanent damage should result the said defunct Robin within three weeks after the said event lay down and shortly after he deceased (1359,177) As mentioned before, the proportion of simple fronting XV can be deduced from the distribution of non-overtly realized subjects seen in the precedent table. For relative clauses, it is therefore not surprising that there are only few instances of combinations with overt subjects.

With regard to fronting constructions with overt subjects, the configurations of the type XSV are predominant in all three clause types. In comparative and other subordinated contexts SXV or combined configurations represent about 10 to 15% of the contexts involving fronting. The situation is different for relative clauses, since we do not have any occurrence of SXV or combined configurations for the first period, and four of SXV for the second period. With respect to the latter, the fronted element corresponds in all four cases to an adjunct.

This leads to the distribution of the syntactic function of the fronted element (cf. table 24).

1357-1360 1423-1433

RC CC Other RC CC Other

adjunct 37 (56,9%) 24 (75,8%) 62 (74,7%) 61 (82,4%) 33 (84,6%) 42 (67,7%)

verb 8 (12,3%) 2 (6,1%) 3 (3,6%) 0 2 (5,1%) 0

negation 3 (4,6%) 0 4 (4,8%) 1 (1,4%) 1 (2,6%) 9 (14,5%)

object 9 (13,8%) 4 (12,1%) 12 (14,5%) 8 (10,8%) 0 7 (11,3%) predicative

expression

8 (12,3%) 2 (6,1%) 2 (2,4%) 4 (5,4%) 3 (7,7%) 4 (6,5%)

Table 24. Syntactic function of the fronted element

There is a quite clear evolution for one category: adjuncts represent the majority of fronting across all clause types and for both periods. While for relative clauses there is an important increase by 25,5%, the increase for comparative clauses is less important (+8,8%). In other subordinated contexts, on the contrary, there is a decline by 7%. However, adjuncts still

represent the majority of frontings. Fronted non-finite verb forms are most frequent in relative contexts of the first period. They disappear almost completely for the second period. The distribution of negation evolves for other subordinated contexts, where there are almost 10%

more cases of fronted negation in the second period. In contrast, the fronting of objects decreases for all three contexts but unlike relative and other subordinate clauses, where the decline is rather small (about 3%), there are no instances of fronted object in comparative contexts for the second period. Since there are only few instances of fronted predicative expressions in comparative and other subordinated contexts, the rise from the first to the second period does not seem to be pertinent; however, in relative clauses, the number of fronted predicative expressions is reduced by half.

To sum up, as mentioned before, there are tendencies to treat comparative and relative clauses together as a subgroup of subordinate clauses since they behave similarly (Muller 1996 among others), and similarities seemed to be reflected in this data of the syntactic annotation of fronted elements in relative and comparative clauses, while other subordinate contexts behave differently. The results of the present summary depict a different picture. Relative and comparative clauses cannot be regrouped together in one single group, since there are too many divergences notably with regard to the evolution of the syntactic function displayed by the fronted element. In what follows, the separation of the three contexts established before is maintianed and similar and divergent behaviour are compared whenever possible.