Quand la diachronie, l’acquisition et la dialectologie se parlent : Étude comparative des pronoms sujets en français et en occitan

Abstract

The combined points of view of dialectology, diachrony and language acquisition shed new light on the statuses of subject pronouns in Gallo-Romance. We carry out proven tests on new data from these three domains, in order to describe the morpho-syntactic behavior of these pronouns in Occitan, Medieval French and Modern French, and compare their statuses synchronically and diachronically. Subject clitics seem to have emerged as syntactic arguments as early as Old French, and are still syntactic arguments in standard Modern French. Concomitantly, clitics in oral Modern French behave as preverbal agreement markers, possibly since the 17th century, which points to possible diglossia in France. Northern Occitan subject clitics form incomplete and broadly variable paradigms, which reveal successive stages of their diachronie evolution. They currently behave as syntactic arguments, similarly to subject clitics in Old French.