Belgian Journal of Linguistics - Volume 33, Issue 1, 2019

This special issue explores the role of Latin in shaping the syntactic patterns of the European languages. Among the key issues examined are the identification of sources of syntactic change, whether internal or external, the chronologization of these changes, and their actualization. Authors have tackled such cutting-edge topics as the role of sociolinguistic motivation in syntactic change in the vernaculars, the complex role played by translators, and the syntactic creativity that may occur as a result of calquing. Several authors, conversely, question the role of Latin in influencing particular structures, and propose alternative explanations. It is hoped that the present special issue succeeds in filling some gaps in our understanding of the roofing effects of Latin, as we attempt to track down and interrogate the causes and effects of syntactic change in the languages of Europe.

This paper tackles the topic of Latin influence on Italo-Romance syntax by addressing the question how to combine the analysis of structural data with socio-historical reflections. It views the genre and discourse tradition of a given medieval text as governing the extent to which Latin is used as a model in this text. The paper proposes a methodology which incorporates consideration of the historical, cultural, and sociolinguistic context of language change, focusing on evidence from the development of present participles in Italo-Romance. The main conclusion is that, rather than talking about the general influence of Latin syntax on Italian, we should be examining the influence of particular Latin models on the syntax of different texts written in Italo-Romance varieties in a given historical period.

The aim of this article consists in studying participial constructions (PC) and gerundial constructions (GC), especially absolute PCs and GCs, within a corpus of Spanish translated and non-translated texts from the 16th century written by two Castilian writers who were prominent exponents of the Erasmian prose in this era. Close attention is paid to translated texts in order to determine the extent to which different types and subtypes of PCs and GCs match PCs and/or any kind of structures in the source text (ST). This approach allows to discuss whether or not a syntactic equivalence between ST and target text (TT) predominates in the corpus under study and, when it is the case, to determine to what extent and by means of which mechanisms TT diverges from ST. The analysis shows that the influence of the Latin model in the ST on the syntax of the Romance TT becomes stronger when it works ex negativo, i.e. Latin turns out to be more influential in non-translated texts or in indirect – or not literally – translated contexts.

This paper addresses the auxiliation/grammaticalization of amenazar (Spanish), dreigen (Dutch), threaten (English), against the background of the competition between the vernacular languages and Latin. It shows that the subjective reading of ‘threaten’, expressing a prediction on the basis of some kind of evidence, is a Latin calque, and that the syntactic creativity or syntactic elaboration starts from this calque. In the three cases, ‘threaten’ is combined with the semantics of ‘fall’, which indicates the roofing role of Latin. The paper shows that the pace of the constructional change from ‘threaten’ + np to ‘threaten’ + inf is different from one language to another. Spanish amenazar grammaticalizes into an auxiliary during the Renaissance of the 15th and 16th century. In the case of Dutch, by contrast, only in the Golden Age of the 17th century do writers start to use dreigen ‘threaten’ as an auxiliary. Finally, English develops the auxiliary one century later than the Dutch one. The chronological differences are explained on the basis of the cultural and linguistic elaborations typical of Golden centuries, which vary from one nation to another.

This paper examines the history of the Accusativus cum Infinitivo (henceforth: AcI) construction in some languages of Western Europe (the Romance and Germanic languages), and attempts to ascertain whether the AcI in the modern languages is modelled on the AcI of Latin or whether the form was simply inherited. In this paper, only those constructions which are formed with verbs of saying or thinking + infinitive are considered instances of true AcI constructions. Following Pountain (1998), we attempt to distinguish ‘hard’ vs ‘weak’, ‘total’ vs ‘partial’, ‘learnèd’ vs ‘non-learnèd’ Latinisms. In conclusion, we hypothesize that the construction is favoured by Latin models, but it is consistent with structural patterns already occurring in the languages involved.

This paper presents evidence in support of the claim that Latin played a significant role as a ‘roof language’ in the languages of western Europe. It focuses on the role that Latin played at three stages of the development of the perfects in western Europe: first, as a conduit of the ‘sacral stamp of Greek’ in bible translation and as influential in other ecclesiastical contexts; secondly, through the influence of scribal tradition and the establishment of the ‘Charlemagne Sprachbund’; and, finally, as a model for classicized syntactic style of the Late Middle and Early Modern period, as exemplified by the patterns of perfect use by the translators of Boethius, especially Chaucer and Elizabeth I. Several larger generalizations also emerge from this investigation: evidence is provided for the stratified nature of Latin syntactic influence across time and space, and the effect of this recurrent replication on the temporal-aspectual systems of the western European languages. Above all, this analysis underlines the essential role of calquing in superstrate-induced change, the structural patterns that are most frequently affected, and the social motivations that foster this type of innovation.

The paper is concerned with the origin and the development of the Accusative with Infinitive (AcI) construction in Slavic. Looking into the areal-typological, diachronic, and socio-typological parameters of the AcI construction, the author introduces new Slavic dialectal and comparative material and reconstructs the developmental cline of this construction along two parallel pathways of grammaticalization of the second accusative complement in Proto-Indo-European. The grammaticalization of infinitival complementation, typical primarily of those Slavic varieties which acquired secondary analytical features, is distinguished from the grammaticalization of participial complementation which is commonly attested in the history of low-contact Slavic languages and dialects like Southwest Ukrainian and some Polish dialects. Special emphasis is placed on the interaction between infinitival and participial grammaticalization in the history of Slavic standard and non-standard varieties, which allows the author to substantiate an initial switching between the two pathways as attested in Old Church Slavonic and early standard varieties of (West) Slavic.

Behaghel’s claim that verb finality in German dependent clauses (DCs) reflects Latin influence (1892, 1932) has been revived by Chirita (1997, 2003). According to Chirita, DC word order remains variable up to Early New High German, while in Latin, verb-finality is more frequent in DCs than main clauses (MCs); hence, she claims, German verb finality reflects Latin influence. This papers shows that the arguments for Latin influence are problematic and that the Modern German word order difference between MCs and DCs can be explained as the ultimate outcome of developments that started in early North and West Germanic. In the conclusion I briefly discuss similar developments in Western Romance and their implications for European contact linguistics.

This study investigates the potential influence of Latin syntax on the development of analytic verb forms in a well-defined and concrete instance of language contact, the Old French translation of a Latin Gospel. The data show that the formation of verb forms in the Old French was remarkably independent from the Latin original. While the Old French text closely follows the narrative of the Latin Gospel, its usage of compound verb forms is not dictated by the source text, as reflected e.g. in the quasi-omnipresence of the relative sequence finite verb + pp, which – with a few exceptions – all trace back to a different structure in the Latin text. Engels (VerenigdeStaten) Another important innovative difference in the Old French is the widespread use of aveir ‘have’ as an auxiliary, unknown in Latin. The article examines in detail the relation between the verbal forms in the two texts, showing that the translation is in line with of grammar. The usage of compound verb forms in the Old French Gospel is therefore autonomous rather than contact stimulated, let alone contact induced. The results challenge Blatt’s (1957) assumption identifying compound verb forms as a shared feature in European languages that should be ascribed to Latin influence.