Download pdf
The Reanalysis of Old French Nouns’ Declension by Taking Classical Latin Nouns’ Declension as a Pattern
- 1 Sorbonne University
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
In some flexional languages, the nouns’ declension is a very important and difficult part to study. The noun’s root and the flexional endings are the two most essential elements in declension. By these two elements, all forms of nouns in declension can be known. In classical Latin, the singular nominative and the singular genitive of nouns are written together in the dictionary to let the learners know the information about the two elements of declension. Nevertheless, in an old French dictionary, these two elements can not be known. This paper will reanalyse the old French nouns’ declension by taking the classical Latin nouns’ declension as a pattern to find out the regularity of declension and these two elements of declension in old French. This research will be helpful to grasp the old French nouns’ declension and will help the learners understand better old French morphologically. Further, sufficiently understanding the declension of the old French nouns is helpful to read the manuscripts in old French. Moreover, this paper offers a new idea and thinking about compiling the old French dictionary in the part of noun.
Keywords
classical Latin, old French, declension, root of nouns, flexional ending
[1]. Householder Jr, F. W. (1947). A descriptive analysis of Latin declension. Word, 3(1-2), 48-58.
[2]. Oniga, R. (2014). Latin: a linguistic introduction. OUP Oxford.
[3]. Lindsay, W. M. (1895). A short historical Latin grammar. Clarendon Press.
[4]. Clackson, J. (2011). Classical Latin. A companion to the Latin language, 236-256.
[5]. Calabrese, A. (1998). Some remarks on the Latin case system and its development in Romance. AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE SERIES 4, 71-126.
[6]. Plank, F. (1979). The functional basis of case systems and declension classes: from Latin to Old French.
[7]. Kihm, A. (2012). Old French Declension from a “Word and Paradigm” Perspective and Default Syncretism.
[8]. Kihm, A. (2017). Old French declension. Defaults in morphological theory, 40-72.
[9]. Van Reenen, P., & SCHØSLER, L. (1988). Formation and evolution of the feminine and masculine nominative singular nouns in Old French la maison (s) and li charbons. Trends in Linguistics, 505.
[10]. Klausenburger, J. (1990). Geometry in morphology: The Old French case system. STUF-Language Typology and Universals, 43(1-4), 327-333.
[11]. Einhorn, E., & Einhorn, E. (1974). Old French: A concise handbook. Cambridge University Press.
[12]. Walker, D. C. (1987). Morphological features and markedness in the Old French noun declension. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique, 32(2), 143-197.
Cite this article
Li,W. (2023). The Reanalysis of Old French Nouns’ Declension by Taking Classical Latin Nouns’ Declension as a Pattern. Communications in Humanities Research,14,142-150.
Data availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.
Disclaimer/Publisher's Note
The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of EWA Publishing and/or the editor(s). EWA Publishing and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content.
About volume
Volume title: Proceedings of the International Conference on Global Politics and Socio-Humanities
© 2024 by the author(s). Licensee EWA Publishing, Oxford, UK. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. Authors who
publish this series agree to the following terms:
1. Authors retain copyright and grant the series right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this
series.
2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the series's published
version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial
publication in this series.
3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and
during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See
Open access policy for details).