Typology and Morphosyntactic Categorization: from Latin to Modern French

This article outlines the major typological changes restructuring the grammar from Latin to French. A first parameter is the linear order of the constituents: whereas Latin is SOV, French is gradually moving towards a SVO order. Moreover, word order is becoming less flexible. A second parameter concerns the nature of morphological marking of syntactic relations. We consider especially the decline of suffix morphology with respect to both nouns (case, gender and number inflection) and verbs, as well as the shift from a system of "dependent-marking" towards a partial "head-marking" (Nichols 1986), with clitic pronouns attached to the verb expressing the syntactic function of the verb arguments. The third parameter is the tendency towards more hierarchical syntactic relationships and an increased degree of syntactic cohesion. It is shown how the shift towards more specialized grammatical categories, which is the central topic of this thematic issue, is linked to these typological changes. With respect to these different typological evolutions, French is compared not only to other Romance languages, but also to languages belonging to other language families.