The pronominal-intransitive and its relationship to the transitive in medieval French and Provençal [thesis]

Although certain unevenness is seen to correspond to chronological and geographical differentiation, the competency of this study (which in the Provencal part is quite heavily weighted in favor of the 'classical period' but which includes serious coverage of French from the earliest texts to the close of the fifteenth century) as a whole provides abundant evidence of firm syntactic cohesion of medieval Gallo-Romance. It is essential that the use of the pronominal form in the expression of the reflexive (always used as a semantic terra), reciprocal and passive concepts be distinguished from the remainder of its functions, and the delicate matter of reflexive versus non-reflexive has been accorded particularly detailed investigation. Within the reflexive itself se occurs in varied functions. Although in only a limited number of verbs, there is indication of the existence of reflexive use even in the absence of all other transitive use, and also of the development of certain non-reflexive transitive use out of the reflexive. An exposition of the nature of non-transitive appearance in the various meaning segments is built upon documentation of individual verbs. One of the conclusions of this study is that not every pronominal occurrence is, by its representation, logically distinguished from every non-pronominal occurrence within the semantic area or even within the individual verb. Frequently, however, it is possible to perceive very definite patterns and the most nearly 'universal' of these is one which is exhibited primarily in the areas of physical process and motion (intransitive for the relative and merely mechanical, and pronominal for the bounded). On an entirely foreign plane are the manifestations of two tendencies which are universal and in no way tied to peculiarities of individual verbs ormeaningareas. One consists of insertion of se in reflection of various precise relationships of the verb to its surroundings, and it affects personal and impersonal, non-transitive and transitive. The other is an ellipsis of so which may occur on the basis of either situation or grammatical form. To proper interpretation of the non-transitive, an understanding of its relationship to the transitive is essential. The latter has been categorized according to the 'causative' and 'non-transitive extension' relationships and it has been demonstrated that certain manifestations regularly associated with non-transitive use appear occasionally in connection with the second transitive category.