The grammaticalization of SIC: On narrative particles in Romance and Scandinavian

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Abstract

The Old Romance continuations of Latin sic, such as Old French si and Old Italian sì, involve four different functions, all of which are referred to here as sic. The first one, which is closest to the original Latin usage, is that of a lexical adverbial, while the other three are functional elements introducing main clauses: the second sic follows elements preposed to the verb, the third one introduces clauses in a narrative sequence of events, while the fourth usage of sic has been described as a ‘weak consequential’ (Salvi 2002). In this article, it is shown that these instantiations of sic in Old Romance, and in particular the third one, are parallel to the grammaticalized usages of svá in Modern Scandinavian. Furthermore, it is argued that the distribution of these functional elements in Old Romance, here represented by French and Italian, as well as Modern Scandinavian, represented by Swedish, can be successfully accounted for in a theory of syntax that incorporates certain notions of ʼnarrative’, building on intuitions originating in Labov (1972) and subsequent work.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationContinuity and Variation in Germanic and Romance
PublisherOxford University Press
Pages350-369
Number of pages20
ISBN (Electronic)9780198841166
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Subject classification (UKÄ)

  • Specific Languages

Free keywords

  • Comp field
  • Narrative
  • Old french
  • Old italian
  • Speech time anchoring
  • Swedish

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