Ce numéro spécial de la Revue canadienne de linguistique présente un ensemble d’études sur le français médiéval découlant d'un colloque qui a eu lieu à l'UQAM les 3 et 4 octobre 2014 sous le thème « L'utilisation des corpus (annotés) pour comprendre le changement linguistique ». Dans cette introduction, nous mettrons en évidence trois facteurs qui donnent à ce numéro son intérêt et son unité : les thèmes abordés, les approches linguistiques et sociolinguistiques et les modes d'utilisation des corpus.

This article examines English vowel perception by advanced Polish learners of English in a formal classroom setting (i.e., they learnt English as a foreign language in school while living in Poland). The stimuli included 11 English noncewords in bilabial (/bVb/), alveolar (/dVd/) and velar (/gVg/) contexts. The participants, 35 first-year English majors, were examined during the performance of three tasks with English vowels: a categorial discrimination oddity task, an L1 assimilation task (categorization and goodness rating) and a task involving rating the (dis-)similarities between pairs of English vowels. The results showed a variety of assimilation types according to the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) and the expected performance in a discrimination task. The more difficult it was to discriminate between two given vowels, the more similar these vowels were judged to be. Vowel contrasts involving height distinctions were easier to discriminate than vowel contrasts with tongue advancement distinctions. The results also revealed that the place of articulation of neighboring consonants had little effect on the perceptibility of the tested English vowels, unlike in the case of lower-proficiency learners. Unlike previous results for naïve listeners, the present results for advanced learners showed no adherence to the principles of the Natural Referent Vowel framework. Generally, the perception of English vowels by these Polish advanced learners of English conformed with PAM's predictions, but differed from vowel perception by naïve listeners and lower-proficiency learners.

Le coratin est un dialecte parlé dans la région des Pouilles où l'on observe un processus de réduction vocalique : toutes les voyelles atones se réduisent à schwa sauf /a/. Cependant, cette réduction n'a pas lieu lorsqu'elles sont adjacentes à une consonne qui partage de la mélodie comme la palatalité pour les voyelles antérieures et la vélarité ou la labialité pour les voyelles postérieures. On observe également que l'ATRité des voyelles moyennes alterne : /ε,ɔ/ tonique se réalisent [e,o] en position atone et /o,ɔ/ font surface en position atone par un [u] uniquement lorsque la consonne adjacente est vélaire. L'analyse de cette alternance sera basée sur une version de la Théorie des Eléments ainsi que sur des contraintes de licenciement qui définissent d'une part le choix particulier qu'une langue fait des possibilités combinatoires, et d'autre part participe à définir les propriétés des processus phonologiques de la langue.

The grammatical tradition has excluded lexical plurals from the category of collective nouns on the sole basis of their morphology (no discrepancy between singular form and so-called plural reference); but this criterion has led to hesitations, some linguists including, for instance, cattle or people. This study therefore considers other, semantic, criteria to establish more convincingly whether lexical plurals that denote pluralities of entities may be collective nouns. Relying on distinctions between meronymy and (non-taxonomic) hyperonymy, collectiveness and cohesion, and (a) crew (collective sense) / (several) crew (uninflected plural), it concludes that they are definitely not collective nouns, but aggregate nouns (or senses of nouns). Two sets are established. Some, mainly denoting humans, typically originate in the collective sense of the noun through a coercion mechanism; the others, mainly denoting objects, result from an operation of abstraction. For some of these, the notion of “hyperonyms of plural classes” is put forward.

Strong similarities observed between babbling and first words suggest a universal foundation of word production in children. The aim of this work was to evaluate the role of biomechanical constraints on babbling and first words production in two children acquiring Tashlhiyt, a Berber language spoken in Morocco. When considering isolated sounds and syllable types, our data provided evidence for a universal basis for early vocal patterns. The subjects produced more stops, more coronals and labials, vowels preferentially belonging to the lower left part of the vowel space, and open syllables. However, they only partially confirmed the existence of the preferred CV combinations generally observed in the early production of children learning various languages. The comparison between babbling and first words revealed a linguistic continuity between the two periods but also some increasing complexity and diversification in the words, which can be explained by an increase of articulatory capacities.

This paper examines a previously identified but so far imprecisely defined split in the historical phonology of Resígaro (Arawakan). I argue that this development was a simple case of allophonic redistribution or primary split, in which word-final allophones of *a merged with ɯ. However, comparative data offers no evidence for the existence of ɯ before the operation of the split in question. This apparent paradox can be resolved by the plausible hypothesis that ɯ entered the language via the massive influx of morphemes from Bora, an unrelated language of the Bora-Muinane family. Only after that were some contextual allophones of *a merged with ɯ. This is the first solidly justified case of loan phonology in Resígaro and it provides further support to the hypothesis that Bora influence on Resígaro is not a result of the language's obsolescent status.

This article is devoted to the emergence of a new paradigm in French and Romance: that of nominal determiners. Latin had no articles, and although possessives, demonstratives and indefinites could determine the noun, they could also be used as pronouns or adjectives, so that the morpho-syntactic category of nominal determiners did not exist as such. We first examine the diachronic evolution of French, where a far-reaching grammaticalization process took place. Syntagmatically, all determiners end up in the NP-initial position as the only available syntactic slot, contributing to the highly configurational NP pattern characteristic of Modern French. From a paradigmatic viewpoint, determiners no longer correspond to a syntactic function, but to a separate morpho-syntactic category. We also evaluate to what extent this evolution took place in two other Romance languages, Italian and Spanish. Through the analysis of this particular evolution, based on parallel corpora consisting of a Latin text and its translations in Old, Middle, and Modern French on the one hand, and in Spanish and Italian on the other, our study also provides evidence for more general mechanisms, analogy in particular, at work in the creation of new paradigms.

This article investigates variable future-time expression among native speakers of Hexagonal French who participated in informal conversations. The quantitative analysis is the first to examine the inflectional future, periphrastic future, and present indicative as separate forms within a single statistical model of French oral production. Results indicate that temporal distance and presence/absence of a temporal expression predict use of these verb forms. The second phase of the analysis focused on the use of the present indicative in future-time contexts. The examination of each instance of the present indicative shows that an immediate lexical temporal indicator is not necessary for this form to convey futurity and that future-time reference is often established at the discourse level and occasionally through apparent shared knowledge between the interlocutors. This investigation suggests the value of including the present indicative in the analysis of future-time reference in Hexagonal French in order to fully capture variation.

Old French (OF) determiners (D), which are optional, show a three-way split between definite (def), indefinite(indf), and expletive(expl) D. We develop a nano-syntactic analysis of these three paradigms, according to which the nominal spine is associated with a series of functional heads that include Number, Gender, D, and Kase. We test the predictions of the formal analysis with a quantitative analysis of corpus data from two 12th century Anglo-Norman texts – Le voyage de saint Brendan (B) and Lais de Marie de France (MdF) – which indicates that over a 60-year span, there are changes in the distribution of D. This presents itself in three ways. First, a decline in expletive D in MdF correlates with an increase in the use of D with masculine (m) non-count nouns (nNON-CT) Second, while B lacks an overt indefinite plural (pl) D, MdF has one in the form of des. Third, with count nouns(nCT), while feminine (f) nouns favour the absence of determiners in B, there is no gender effect in MdF. While the first two changes are predicted by the formal analysis, the third is not. More broadly, the results of our quantitative study provide a more nuanced picture of the factors that govern the distribution of D in OF: they confirm that – relative to conditioning the absence of D (D-drop) – definiteness, grammatical function, and number are stable factors, gender is not a stable factor, and word order does not play a significant role.

The goal of this study is to provide crosslinguistic data on the acquisition of phonetic complexity among children acquiring four different languages: Tunisian Arabic, Tashlhiyt Berber, English, and French. Using an adaptation of Jakielski's (2000) Index of Phonetic Complexity (IPC), we carried out an analysis to assess phonetic complexity of children's early vocabulary in the four languages. Four different samples from each language were analyzed: 50 words selected from an adult dictionary of each language, 50 words from child-directed speech, 50 words targeted by the child, and the child's actual pronunciations of those 50 words. Globally, we hypothesized that children's early productions would be shaped by universal articulatory constraints, but also by the language they are exposed to, depending on its phonological complexity. Our findings show that Arabic displays higher degrees of complexity compared to Berber, English and French, and that children acquiring Arabic target and produce more complex words than children learning Berber, English and French.

This article examines the various realizations of the Italian definite article and concludes, against all previous accounts of this phenomenon, that neither the singular nor the plural realizations constitute a case of allomorphy stricto sensu. Significantly extending Larsen's (1998) analysis, the paper argues that all of the realizations of the definite article, including the problematic [i] and [ʎi], share a single underlying representation. It is proposed that the definite article is associated with a template with separate sites for definiteness and φ-features. It is further argued that [ʎ] is not a primitive entity in Italian; rather, it emerges from a very specific configuration in which /i/ and /l/ are conjoined and followed by a second realized vowel /i/. The templatic and segmental decompositions yield a morphologically unified analysis in which all of the realizations of the definite article are based on a single lexical representation followed by the application of regular phonology.

This article investigates the loss of aboutness topics in preverbal position in the history of French, using a corpus-based research on preverbal accusative objects. A comparison of Old and Middle French with Modern French reveals that new-information focalization had disappeared by the 14th century, whereas aboutness topicalization had in turn vanished by the end of the 16th century, along with other marked constructions. Combined with the generative premise that independent pragmatic factors should not trigger syntactic change, the results of this study suggest the reanalysis of the grammar as V-to-I in Renaissance French is responsible for blocking the derivation of aboutness topicalization. An alternative proposal based on phase extension and on Relativized Minimality, in a version affecting some types of A′-movement, relates those two diachronic shifts. The article concludes with the idea that the study of marked constructions may be recast as offering diagnostics on broader syntactic changes.

La présente contribution porte sur tourner et virer, deux verbes attributifs (p. ex. elle a viré/tourné folle) qui ne sont pas encore reconnus pleinement par la tradition grammaticale normative ni dans les travaux des linguistes. Elle vise à établir le profil distributionnel / collocationnel de ces deux verbes qui semblent opérer dans le même domaine sémantico-fonctionnel, afin de mettre à nu les subtiles divergences au niveau de leur profil sémantique. Celles-ci sont rattachées à la sémantique de base du verbe lexical, laissant entrevoir dans ces emplois grammaticalisés des effets dus à la « persistance lexicale » (lexical persistence). Afin d'objectiver au maximum les profils distributionnels des deux verbes (et partant leur profil sémantique), les outils statistiques offerts par la méthode collostructionnelle (Stefanowitsch et Gries 2003; Gries et Stefanowitsch 2004) sont mis à profit. En outre, la combinaison de l'approche collocationnelle et de l'analyse morphosyntaxique amène à distinguer l'emploi proprement attributif des deux verbes d'un emploi directionnel abstrait homonymique (l'entreprise a viré solaire), qui est encore proche de la construction prépositionnelle (virer à / tourner à).

Some researchers have suggested that young children choose to say mainly words containing sounds they can produce and avoid words with sounds they find difficult to produce. This proposed pattern of ‘selection’ supports a hypothesis of dominance of phonological factors in words children choose to say. Based on longitudinal spontaneous data samples during their first 50 word period, word-based tokens produced by two English and two French monolingual children were analyzed. Token frequencies in spontaneously produced word targets (SW-T) were compared to children's actual productions (SW-A) of those target words to understand relationships between targets children choose to say and their patterns in actual productions, (i.e., to evaluate the presence of ‘selection’). Place of articulation (i.e., labial, coronal and dorsal) in initial word position within CV, CVC, and CVCV word forms was compared. Analysis of spontaneous output in daily interactions in children learning two languages with differing phonological systems enables a more general evaluation of issues related to the interface of phonological and lexical aspects during the earliest period of language acquisition.

Le présent article porte sur la structure interne des constructions causatives du français. Son argumentation se base sur deux idées essentielles : que l'interprétation de respectivement révélerait l'effet d'intervention dans les constructions bi-propositionnelles, et que la montée du quantifieur serait soumise à la minimalité et à la Condition d'impénétrabilité des phases. J'utiliserai ces deux phénomènes comme tests pour justifier d'une part la relation morpho-syntaxique entre le verbe causatif faire et le verbe causativisé, et d'autre part la dérivation de l'ordre VOS (verbe-objet-sujet) du complément de faire. Je compte démontrer que les constructions causatives du français sont analogues aux constructions ECM (Exceptional Case Marking), qui impliquent un TP défectif enchâssé; et que l'ordre VOS du complément de faire, dans la construction faire-à et dans la construction faire-par, impliquent deux dérivations différentes. Le premier est dérivé par Object Shift, tandis que le deuxième est dérivé par Smuggling.

In this article, we address relations between lexical and phonological development, with an emphasis on the notion of phonological contrast. We begin with an overview of the literature on word learning and on infant speech perception. Among other results, we report on studies showing that toddlers’ perceptual abilities do not correlate with the development of phonological contrasts within their lexicons. We then engage in a systematic comparison between the lexical development of two child learners of English and their acquisition of consonants in syllable onsets. We establish a developmental timeline for each child's onset consonant system, which we compare to the types of phonological contrasts that are present in their expressive vocabularies at each relevant milestone. Like the earlier studies, ours also fails to return tangible parallels between the two areas of development. The data instead suggest that patterns of phonological development are best described in terms of the segmental categories they involve, in relative independence from measures of contrastiveness within the learners’ lexicons.

Cet article examine l’évolution de la négation phrastique en ancien français dans une optique sociohistorique. En ancien français, la négation simple (ne + verbe) se voit de plus en plus concurrencée par la variante novatrice renforcée (ne + verbe + pas/mie/point). Partant de l'hypothèse que la répartition des variantes conservatrice et novatrice varie en partie selon le registre, leurs fréquences sont analysées dans l'oral représenté et dans le récit, deux registres distincts au sein d'un même texte. Dans certains textes, la distribution des variantes s'avère conditionnée par le registre, l'oral représenté contenant davantage de négation renforcée que le récit. En outre, les données laissent entrevoir un effet du sexe, l'oral représenté des hommes étant plus novateur quant à la négation que celui des femmes. Ces résultats indiqueraient que le choix de forme de négation possédait une valeur sociostylistique à l’époque en question.

In considering the cognitive notion of informativeness, variants of the Spanish first-person singular object a mí ‘to me’, ‘myself’ convey different meanings. These meanings are used to pursue communicative goals in discursive interactions. A qualitative examination of specific examples of first-person singular object a mí variants (omitted, preverbal, and postverbal) as well as a quantitative analysis of these variants across different socio-professional affiliations of speakers was conducted to ascertain how these variants contribute to the construction of communicative styles based on the cognitive dimension of subjectivity. This article demonstrates that these forms and their meanings are unevenly distributed across the socio-professional affiliations of speakers; thus, it may be concluded that variation of first-person singular object a mí shape different communicative styles.