Middle French language
| Middle French language * le moyen français | ||
|---|---|---|
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Spoken in |
Northern France and neighboring areas | |
| speaker | (extinct) | |
| Linguistic classification |
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| Official status | ||
| Official language in | (extinct) | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639 -1 |
- |
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| ISO 639 -2 |
frm |
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| ISO 639-3 |
frm |
|
Middle French , French le moyen français , is a historical section of the French language and was spoken from approximately 1340 to 1610. During this transition period:
- the French language clearly separated from those medieval Oïl languages , which are summarized as Old French .
- the literary development of French paved the way for the vocabulary and grammar of "classical French" spoken in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Language history
The most important change in Central French is the definitive disappearance of the declension system . Nominative (rectus) and accusative (obliquus) were no longer distinguished. Latin was still the language of education, science, administration, and law. That changed in 1539 with the edict of Villers-Cotterêts , in which Francis I declared French the only language for legal action. There was no uniform language in France: Occitan dialects were spoken in the south and dialect variants were also spoken in the north.
The French Italian campaigns and the presence of Italians at the French court brought the French language into contact with Italian humanism . Many words related to the military (alarme, cavalier, espion, infanterie, camp, canon, soldat) and art (arcade, architrave, balcon, corridor, sunnet) have been borrowed from Italian .
Only a few loanwords from Spanish (casque) and German (reître) as well as through the discovery of America (cacao, hamac, maïs) influenced Central French.
Due to the influence of the Anglo-Norman language , an old French dialect, on English , words of French origin found their way into the English language. In this way, words of Romance origin came back from English into French through war and trade relations.
Eventually, the meaning and usage of many Old French words changed.
The spelling and punctuation remained irregular. With the introduction of the printing press, uniform spelling became more important. Numerous proposals for orthographic guidelines, including by Jacques Peletier du Mans , who in 1550 developed a spelling system based on pronunciation and new diacritical marks, circulated.
During this time the first French grammars were published and in 1539 a French-Latin dictionary by Robert Estienne was published .
François Villon , Clément Marot , François Rabelais , Michel de Montaigne , Pierre de Ronsard and the Pléiade are considered Central French authors .
The affirmation and glorification of French culminated in the Deffence et illustration de la langue francoyse manifesto by Joachim du Bellay , who claimed that French was a valuable literary language.
The prominent position of classical texts led to many loan words from Latin and Greek . As a result, there were many neologisms .
Language structure
phonetics
Complete reduction of the old French diphthongs and triphthongs . Old French had 17 diphthongs (/ ie /, / ue /, / ei /, / ai /, / üi /, / oi /, / éu /, / eù /, / oú /, / où /, of which 5 nasal (/ ãi /, / eĩ /, / iɵ̃ /, / uɵ̃ /, / oɵ̃ /), 3 triphthongs (/ ieu /, / uou /, / eau /)). This complex system is reduced in central French. In the course of the 18th century, the New French inventory of sounds manifests itself. Even Middle French no longer has any diphthongs if one excludes cases such as miel , roi and puis , in which the first vowel is already semiconsonant. Reduction of the nasal sounds of Old French.
morphology
- The complete collapse of the old French two-casus system (opposition: casus rectus vs. casus obliquus (in principle: subject and non-subject)) represents the most striking change in the transition from old to central French. The collapse was partially preceded by a mixture of the cases. Only a few poets sometimes still use one or the other inflected form in their poems for reasons of rhyme. In the vernacular, however, these forms have not been used for a long time. As in all other Romance languages, the casus obliquus also prevails in Central French as the starting form for the Central French word.
- Introduction of a divisional article and indefinite plural article: des
- Deictic difference between these vs. that by appending -ci (orthographically also -cy or -la (still without an accent)) to the noun instead of using one's own demonstrative: cet homme-ci ("this man"), cet homme-la ("that man") . The ruling opposition in old French cel (<Latin ECCE ILLU, "that") vs. cest (<Latin ECCE ISTU, "that") is given up.
- Grammaticalization of the obligatory unstressed subject pronoun, although this can sometimes also appear in the second position in the sentence after the verb (cf. Tobler-Mussafia law ).
- Abstract nouns (e.g. Terre , Ciel ) and geographical terms are often used without an article. For example, one reads Gironde or Dordogne , where today the Gironde and the Dordogne should be.
- Dissolution of the 2nd old French adjective conjugation class. One now writes grande instead of grant
- Irregular plurals are reduced, sometimes the plural form is used as the exit for the singular form. Old French chapel (Sg.) "hat", chapeau's "hats", from which the singular form chapeau in Central French .
- Vowel alternation in verb stems are eliminated: amons > aimons (analogous to j'aime )
- Analogy in the 1st Ps. Sg. Of the verb conjugation. lat. CANTO> old French chant . In Central French one now uses chante ; -e is a generalized supporting vowel, analogous to Latin SUM> old French. sui , but medium French. suis analogous to forms like je lis .
- Old French was richer in article prepositions : en + les > ès , en + le > ou . Some of these are still present in Central French, for example Rabelais also uses the form ou , but possibly as archaism. Given the homophony of ou with ou (“or”) and où? (“Where?”) And the similarity to au (< a + le ), the contraction between en + le is finally abandoned.
syntax
- Fixation of the word order subject-verb-object through the complete breakdown of the two-cusflexion .
orthography
Return to Latinized spelling. In the old French word povre <Latin PAUPEREM the monophthonging of Latin AU> / o / was taken into account, in Central French one returns to the Latinized orthography: henceforth pauvre instead of old French . povre . One writes aultre <Latin. ALTEREM, although the 'l' has long been vocalized, sept <Latin. SEPTEM, although / p / has been silent for a long time, vingt <vlat. VIGINTU, although / g / has been silent for a long time, faict <Latin. FACTUM, although one no longer speaks / c / etc. This Latinization leads to a series of hyper-correctisms : one suddenly writes sçavoir for savoir <Latin. SAPERE, in the erroneous assumption , it would come from the Latin SCIRE 'to know'. The spelling of the final hardening is reversed and now writes verd instead of vert , grand instead of grant , tard instead of tart , sang instead of sanc . Some of these spellings remain in New French ( grand , tard , sang ), others are later reversed, as in the case of vert .
Text example
The following excerpt from François Rabelais' Pantagruel (1532) contrasts Middle French with New French.
| Middle French | New French |
|---|---|
| Ce ne sera Chose inutile ne oysifve, de vous remembrez la premiere source et origine dont nous est nay le bon Pantagruel: car je voy que tous Bons historiographes ainsi ont traicté leurs Chronicques, non seulement des Grecz, des Arabes et Ethnicques, mais aussi les auteurs de la Saincte Escripture, comme monsieigneur sainct Luc mesement, et sainct Matthieu. | Il ne sera pas inutile ni oiseux de vous remettre en mémoire la première source et origine d'où nous est né le bon Pantagruel: car je vois que tous les Bons historiographes ont ainsi organisé leurs chroniques, non seulment les Grecs, Arabes et païens, mais also les auteurs de l'Écriture Sainte, comme Monseigneur saint Luc surtout et saint Matthieu |