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Romance Languages

French
Period 900 to about 1400
Daughter languages Middle French
Region Medieval France
Typology SVO inflectional syllable
Classification by family
Language codes
ISO 639-2 fro
ISO 639-3 fro
IETF fro
Sample
Text of Our Father

Li ours Perre

Li ki ies are ours Perre skies,
li seit seintefiez tuns nuns.
Avienget tuen the reigns.
Seit Feite kills the fly, so cum in heaven e in terra.
Nostre chaskejurnel dune paint nudes hoi,
E Pardun has the bare noz detested,
if cum naked pardununs has deturs noz,
I do bare in meines tenteisun,
meis issued bare wrong.
Issi seit.

change Consult the documentation of the model
Last lines of text in Old French of the Chanson de Roland , twelfth century (edition of Leon Gautier)

The concept of Old French includes all the Romance languages family of languages ol spoken in approximately the northern half of the current French territory since the ninth century until the fourteenth century or so.

Summary

/ / Origins and Lineage

It comes from the novel , a form of Vulgar Latin presence throughout Romania. It is followed, historically , the average French. These distinctions temporal state of the language , however, have been defined in a relatively arbitrary and recently by linguists. From the perspective of users, the outcome was little or not felt, because the Latin has evolved into the French way of continuous and progressive, without a cut is seen between different stages of this evolution, although the alteration in pronunciation may be the result of the contribution of non-Roman speakers, namely Celtic and Germanic.

Main article: Historical Phonetics.

The former French is the ancestor of the French spoken today. The emergence of a language unique to the territory , however, French is very late and we owe to several ancient languages d'oil which is the current language.

For example, it is estimated that on the eve of the French Revolution , three-quarters of French people spoke a dialect or another language.

Importance of Old French in the linguistic history

Language culture and literature, it is very well documented and can be a story with great accuracy (both lexically , morphologically , phonetically as syntactically ). The series of phonetic changes that led to this ancient language to modern language is known in sufficient detail for a string of Latin phonetics from and arriving in French can be provided century by century. The study of French and history can do without the knowledge of Old French. Besides, this material (and its phonetic aspect of history) is required to CAPES modern literature, to the aggregation of classical literature and grammar , contests that are happening in France to teach French language and literature.

Trends and status of the language

About changes in the language prior to the time of the Old French, see in particular Article Romance Languages.

Phonology

Was used here to describe the phonological features of words the system Bourciez or alphabet novels, widely used in phonological descriptions of the evolution of French. Consult System Bourciez for a description of this system and a table of correspondence with the API.

Vowel System

The classical Latin used ten phonemes vowel different, distributed in five short vowels (denoted A, E, I, O and U) and five equivalents Long (A, E, I, O and U). Indeed, in Latin, the length of the sound is phonological , it is appropriate to say two words may well be the only difference being the length of one of their vowels (venit "it comes" is different from venit "he came "Populu (m)" people "is different from Populu (m)" Poplar ").

One of the major changes in the evolution of Latin into French is the gradual disappearance of opposition length in favor of distinctions of timbre. The musical emphasis has gradually given way to a tonic accent , which was to alter slightly the aperture of vowels: the pronunciation of short vowels is slightly more open than that of long vowels. Accordingly, the timbre of the vowels is changed and the opposition stamp between two vowels becomes the criterion of differentiation (there are closed walk e open in milk, O sore in death). This upheaval vowel occurred during the Second , Third and Fourth Century , in the initial phase of the evolution of French, yet very close to the Vulgar Latin. Most developments are therefore common to several Romance languages.

The upheaval vowel is as follows:

  • E becomes E (nose, un) in the second century ;
  • E becomes E (sets of milk) when it is pronounced (tonic vowel), otherwise (atonic vowel) becomes E ( second century );
  • E i becomes the third century ;
  • i i remains, irrespective of length;
  • A and lose their opposition to length so that, from a phonological point of view, the former French knows that a;
  • O becomes O (water) in the second century ;
  • O becomes (body) when it is highlighted, otherwise it becomes O ( second century );
  • loses its characteristic length, u is (crazy, deaf);
  • O u becomes the fourth century.

The three diphthongs present in Latin Vulgar Latin, oe, ae and, respectively evolve to E ( first century ), E ( second century ) and (late fifth century ).

Towards a language oxytonique

In Latin, most words have a tonic accent (only certain grammatical words are not). This emphasis is usually placed on the penultimate syllable of the word (we say a word is pronounced as paroxytons) unless it is a monosyllable, in which case the emphasis is always on the only syllable of the word (Oxyton), or if it is a polysyllabic word whose penultimate syllable is short (that is to say a syllable whose vowel is short and not hampered by which would follow a consonant within the syllable), in which case the emphasis is on the penultimate syllable (accented).

Latin Syncope

From the first century , therefore, already in Vulgar Latin, one notices a amussement progressive post-tonic vowels of accented (syncope): CAL I cldus becomes becomes became According to Gaston Zink: "The age of the phenomenon that explains all the Romance languages have been marked (it., esp., Caldo, lardo, sordo ...). However, the Gallo-Roman North has experienced the most systematic deletions (and thus the maximum intensity accentual). Apart from a few learned words Amussement of internal pretonic

Pretonic internal vowels (that is to say dull, placed before the tonic but not in initial position), with the exception of a, disappear before the fourth century when they are not constrained: good I will , become If it is hampered by a consonant, the vowel will change to / e / (a schwa , that is to say an " e spent "not labialization , different from ours in th e tit or as in which will give the former French

When the internal pretonic is A, or, if it is impeded, it persists (int a minatre give or, if it is free, it becomes / e / to the seventh century (give

Final Vowels

The former French is a language similar to ours, except for some differences in writing, for example, in the poems in modern French, we have the right to change the final syllable to rhyme the words in Old French, you are entitled. Example: = celebrate feast There are no rules of spelling, and thus, for example, you could have written or feast feasted. The spelling rules were introduced by Italian humanists in the 18th century.

Morphology

On the morphology , the former French is still an inflected language (modern French is much more analytical ), but it already presents a great reduction in bending compared to Latin.

The system already knows the name of the two types (masculine / feminine) and two numbers (singular / plural) of modern French, but also retains a declination to two cases :

Some examples (names of type I and II were much more numerous):

Type I (female) Type II (male) Type III (mixed)
normal hybrid (Ia) normal hybrid (IIa) IIIa (masc. in-eor) IIIb (masc. in-one) IIIc (fem. in-ain) IIId (irregular masc. And fem.)
sg. About the lady the credit li walls father li li chanters li Lerre none of li cuens the sweat
regime the lady City the wall the father the chanteor the thief the Nonain storytelling the Seror
pl. About ladies the credit li wall father li li chanteor li thief nones li tale the Seror
regime ladies the credit walls fathers the chanteors thieves the Nonains tales the Seror

Formally distinguishing subject and complement, the declination bicasuelle allowed to use unambiguous word orders become impossible later: beste pride cuens li, li cuens pride if the beast and the beast li cuens pride mean all clear "Count hits the beast, "li cuens being explicitly marked as the subject.

The case meets function here on the subject, but it can also fill out the apostrophe or affixed to the subject.

Although this variation bicasuelle is alive in the literature, there are occasionally "faults" in the texts. The disintegration of the system is probably due to the phonetic form of endings that were confusing (the-s indicated on the case and the singular objective case plural), it was incomplete (from Old French, the feminine in-e from the 1 st declension Latin, simply oppose singular and plural) and to the amussement gradual final consonants in French (the final-s is silent now over). This disintegration has not been uniform across a broad movement from west to east, this system was abolished first in the Western dialects, then into the center with the Paris region to remain living in dialects of the East until the fifteenth century.

The lexicon of current French inherited from the old French regime generally the case, the most frequent in the speech. In some cases, however, it does matter that has been preserved (this is especially the names of persons because of their frequent use in cases like topic name): this is the case of son, sister, priest , ancestor, and many names. Both forms have survived side by side sometimes producing doublets, sometimes semantically differentiated thereafter: guy / boy friend / companion, sir / lord, shepherd / pastor, nun / nun, bitch / whore.

Variations dialect and literary language

The former French is a "branch" of Latin, which has led many others, such as modern Italian or Spanish modern. You'll notice several such similar words. Example: amare = to love in Italian - amare means to love in Latin.

The change in spelling according to region, meant that if we took two texts, for example, Brittany and Alsace, there would be a big difference in spelling but also a tricky pronunciation (it depends sometimes people). Over time, the former French has grown to become the French as we know it today. There is no defined literary language, we wrote as we heard at that time.

Writing

It would be an exaggeration to say that there is no "spelling" in old French-and you should indeed define what is meant by that. It is notable that each word has a spelling fixed and, from region to region, scribe line or scribe line, the same word is spelled many different ways. However, the medieval spellings were not due to chance.

Scribes used a deceptively simple principle: that note is what they heard as directly as possible through the Latin alphabet , quite inadequate because too few rich graphemes. Indeed, from the Vulgar Latin to Old French, many phonemes have evolved , creating new sounds for which no letter was provided.

Writing and spelling

Note: from now, transcription adopted is that of the API.

In addition, there was little diacritical real, most for signs of abbreviation (the diacritics used in French dating from the XVI century ), the elision was not reported by the apostrophe (in appearance XVI century ), writing, although bicameral , has not served before the fourteenth century the opposition between uppercase and lowercase letters (capital and serves as a graphic variant is therefore in the securities at the beginning to ). It was after we got used to capitalize the report by the beginning of some words felt important.

The punctuation is starting to look like ours that from the twelfth and thirteenth century. The uses are quite different (note especially the breath groups and meaning, but not necessarily in compliance with the syntax). Note the use of point to frame the letters used as numbers ("iii.." will read "3").

Moreover, medieval manuscripts are plotted in two or three families of characters of the Latin alphabet (in which there are countless variations), less and less legible from the Latin model (especially since the abbreviations the ligatures and contextual alternates abound): the uncial , the caroline minuscule and the Gothic. These "scripts" do not distinguish between i d (with no dot above ) or u of v (so-called " letters Ramists "this distinction dated XVI century and took two centuries to stabilize, particularly through , publishers Dutch), at least not in the same way that we (they are contextual variants: in Gothic, v is preferably used at the beginning of a word, u Moreover, whatever their value, Uses

Although the spelling may be very volatile (even one line to another in one manuscript) mainly due to the large number of ways found to circumvent the limits of the Latin alphabet, there are uses in orthographic Old French which are most often involve digraphs.

It is the will to respect the customs and the Latin etymology of the words (which reinforces the idea of medieval spelling) that explain the difficulties most often, they arise from the fact that a Latin letter, noted that while a single phoneme , came to note in many (but not rarely breaks the link with the Latin word by simply replacing the ambiguous letter by another) and, most importantly, there is no Letters to record new sounds appeared in Old French. For the first reason, one can cite the case of unambiguous notation Summary

We may retain the conventions of reading following the assumption that the spelling is normalized by a modern editor (use letters Ramists of umlaut, the acute accent, etc.).. We will follow for the rest of the conventions of French. It is understood that this is an approximation given as an indication for an acceptable, albeit imperfect reading:


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