Bound To Be? Bare and Partitive-Marked Noun Phrases in Romance Languages and the Emergence of Prominence-Conditioned Patterns

Abstract

denotation (Shift 4) figure 3.1 Grammaticalization of the “partitive article” in French Stages 1 and 2: The Latin ablative preposition de extends from spatial source marking to marking other source-like adjuncts (e.g., lineage, temporal meanings). Then, it is extended to denoting genuine partition of a contextually defined partition set. This process starts with objects of consumption verbs (‘drink’, ‘eat’) with which de extends from adjunct-marking to marking of argument. This state is inherited toOldRomance, includingOld Italian (4a) andOld French (5). (5) Old French Dunc so but drink.pst.3sg del of.the vini wine qui rel.sbj l’i=ad 3sg.acc=have.prs.3sg el the champ field trové find.ptcp ‘So he who found the wine in the field drank from it.’ (Guill1, 25, v. 524, 12th century, ms. 13th century Cédille, 2016; henceforth bfm) Stage 3: Once de-based morphemes extend to marking arguments, the pa extends beyond the class of consumption verbs at the expense of previously accepted bare noun contexts, e.g., in marking indefinite groups of individuals (aggregate plurals) (see example 2a). Stage 4: pas obligatorily mark substance-, kind-denoting nouns before abstract nouns in 16th century Middle French. Earlier variation in marking abstractdenoting nouns is observed in the 15th century. In line with this grammaticalization process, while genuine partitive phrases are specificity-restricted in that their partitioned whole must be specific, fullfledged pa marks non-specific plural indefinites before its extension to nonspecific, non-countable and abstract nouns.10 10 For a discussion of pamarked specific plural indefinites in French, see Ihsane, this volume. Hagay Schurr 9789004437500 Downloaded from Brill.com10/29/2020 06:05:27AM via free access