Diachronie de la proclise et de l'enclise avec l'infinitif en français médiéval (12e-15e siècles)

Abstract

This paper presents a diachronic study of clitic placement with infinitives in Medieval French (dating from between the 12th and the 15th century). It particularly focuses on the phenomena of proclisis and enclisis. The evolution and disappearance of enclisis are contrasted with the frequency of use of proclisis, as well as with clitic climbing and strong pronouns. Examining data from a corpus of legal and epistolary texts mainly originating from Normandy, the pre-infinitival contexts of proclisis and enclisis are identified and their morphosyntactic properties are discussed. Besides providing evidence for the frequent usage of enclisis in Medieval French, the study shows that the 14th century was a transition period regarding the occurrence of clitics with infinitives and the Tobler- Mussafia effect, which remains active in infinitival contexts despite having disappeared from finite ones a century before.