In spite of recent and comprehensive work on the diachrony of French like the Grande grammaire historique du français (Marchello-Nizia et al. Reference Marchello-Nizia, Combettes, Sophie Prévost and Scheer2020), there is still little on offer in the way of theoretically updated accounts of the diachrony of French in a generative framework. With this book, Wolfe aims to fill this lacuna. Adopting a parametric Minimalist model and making particular use of cartographic theories of clausal structure, the author focuses mainly, although not exclusively, on the historical evolution of word order in the clausal syntax, investigating the position of the verb with respect to other constituents in main and embedded clauses.
The book contains seven chapters. After a short introduction, chapter 2 deals with grammatical change from Latin to French in general and (the shortcomings of) previous attempts to account for and explain this evolution. Chapters 3 to 6 constitute the bulk of the book and are devoted to the left periphery (chapter 3), verb placement and movement (chapter 4), the subject system (chapter 5), OV orders and the middle field (chapter 6). The exposition is in other words structured by topic, but in each of the individual chapters, the author adopts a diachronic approach by first considering the situation in Classical and Late Latin, then in Old French, Middle French, Renaissance French, Classical French and finally Modern French. This approach works well and makes the narrative easy to follow. In the final chapter, the major findings are summarized and interpreted in light of parametric theory. This constitutes an attempt to explain the diachronic changes highlighted in previous chapters as somehow interrelated parametrically, such that change in one part of the grammar, like verb movement, might have effects in other parts of the grammar such as the make-up of the left periphery or the behaviour of the discourse particle si.
While this book does not offer a wealth of new and previously undescribed data or texts, I believe it constitutes a valuable contribution to the diachronic literature on French. References to previous research are mostly exhaustive, which makes it an invaluable source to consult for researchers who wish to find more detailed information about different periods or phenomena. Whether the cartographic model adopted is truly explanatory remains an open question, but it is undeniably a rigid basis for description, and Wolfe uses this framework successfully to describe significant changes in word order and information structure over time that every researcher must be ready to tackle regardless of theoretical persuasion or the framework adopted. For instance, Wolfe argues that there is a major turning point around 1200. Before this time, preverbal foci are frequent, whereas later stages of Old French see an increasing preference for topical (old and discourse-activated) information in the prefield as well as a stricter linear V2 pattern. The author suggests that both facts can be captured by assuming an upwards reanalysis in verb movement around 1200, with the verb now targeting a very high position (ForceP) in the clause. The type of V3 permitted in late Old French is limited to initial scene-setting adverbial expressions or relatively unintegrated ‘hanging topics’, and according to Wolfe this is also exactly what we find preceding the particle si at this stage. This state of affairs changes during the Middle French period, where the locus of verb movement is again shifted to the lower projection FinP, such that V3 and V4 orders become more widespread, although inversion is not lost from the grammar until ‘the end of the 15th or beginning of the 16th century’ (p.128). This period also witnesses the rise of new interrogative structures based on the particle ‘est-ce que’ (reanalysed from a cleft) or the Clitic Left-Dislocation structure, marginal before this time.
Admittedly, one might at times have wished for the author to engage more with some of the previous research or alternative theories that have been proposed. For instance, one might raise the question whether the several changes that happen simultaneously around 1200 are only the result of diachronic change, as Wolfe seems to suggest, or if it might also be the case that the textual evidence from previous periods, being characterized almost exclusively by texts in verse, is less reliable as evidence of the actual vernacular. Furthermore, some of the links that Wolfe draws between Old French and Latin are not entirely convincing. For instance, Wolfe argues that Late Latin already featured evidence for generalized V-to-C movement. This argumentation relies heavily, although not exclusively, on a single analysis of a single text, the late fourth century Itinerarium Egeriae. Although this text and others of the same period show more VSO and SVO orders than Classical Latin, there is nothing near a consensus that this text features V-to-C movement, let alone generalized V-to-C in all declaratives. Indeed, quantitatively robust investigations of the evolution of sentential word order in Latin do not find evidence for V-to-C movement in declaratives in any period of documented Latinity (Danckaert Reference Danckaert2017).
This book requires some prior knowledge of modern generative theory. The main target group is clearly formal linguists. For this latter audience, Wolfe’s new contribution to the history of French is undeniable and will surely be of interest not only to Romanists, but also to any generative linguist interested in language change, word order and syntax in general. My overall impression is therefore that Wolfe achieves his ambition, stated in the introduction, of providing “a synthesis of the vast array of existing work on some of the most significant syntactic changes to have taken place from Latin to Modern French, whilst also developing a formal analysis of French’s syntactic evolution in light of recent developments in parametric theory” (p.2).
