Change of object expression in the history of French : verbs of helping and hindering / by Michelle Troberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Troberg, Michelle.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

French language--Study and teaching.

French language.

Language and languages.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (225 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Newcastle, Neb. : Cambridge Scholars Pub., c2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This comprehensive case study of a systematic shift in object expression provides valuable insight into the construal of certain two-place activity verbs in the history of French and how a change in the prepositional system can have dramatic effects on the way their object is realised.

This comprehensive case study of a systematic shift in object expression provides valuable insight into the construal of certain two-place activity verbs in the history of French and how a change in the prepositional system can have dramatic effects on the way their object is realised. - - The book focuses on nineteen verbs of helping and hindering whose single internal object shifts from indirect to direct object during the 15th and 16th centuries, describing how these verbs are distinguished from all other verbs in French taking indirect objects and answering why their indirect object was the target of change. Troberg draws on cross-linguistic facts and offers a richly detailed qualitative and quantitative examination of the data to show that contrary to previous approaches to the problem, the shift was not random or a result of low-level analogical changes, but rather that it was decisively systematic and thus unified. - - An important outcome of the study links the shift in object expression to other changes in the grammar at the end of the Middle French period. The author argues that the loss of the syntactically derived ocDPathocy meaning, available to simple prepositions in the earlier stages of French, entails not only the shift in object expression, but also the loss of a number of resultative secondary predicates at the same time. - -

Contents:

Intro

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

NOTES

INDEX.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from title page (ebrary, viewed August 15, 2013).

ISBN:

1-4438-5011-X

OCLC:

855505127