French Language

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Medieval France

. Old French had its origin in the colloquial form of Latin brought to Gaul in the 2nd century B.C. as a consequence of the Roman occupation. With the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, Germanic groups in great numbers began to enter Gaul, among them the Franks, who settled most thickly in the north. The linguistic evolution of the earlier period, which had included many features shared throughout the empire, gave way to divergence and to the formation of the Romance tongues. The language spoken in Gaul during this period, called Gallo-Roman, gradually underwent considerable dialectal differentiation. By the mid-9th century, two main dialect groups could be found in Gaul: in an area roughly south of the Loire River were the dialects of the Langue d’oc, now called Provençal or Occitan; north of there were the dialects of the Langue d’oïl, the ancestor of modern French.

Stages in the development of the language from colloquial Latin through Middle French are:

By the Carolingian Renaissance (ca. 800), French and Latin were separate languages, though conscious reform rather than natural linguistic evolution may have shaped the Latin used at the time. In 813, the Council of Tours recommended that priests explain the word of God in the language of the people, that is, in the rusticam Romanam linguam. In 842, Charlemagne’s feuding grandsons paved the way for the division of his land by swearing the Oaths of Strasbourg. The oaths were recorded by another family member, the chronicler Nithard, and have subsequently become the event scholars cite to mark the beginning of the Early Old French period.

A Latin of record, religion, and learning persisted. In the spirit of the Council of Tours, however, inspirational literature began to appear in the vernacular. The earliest surviving example of a saint’s life, the Séquence de sainte Eulalie, dates from the 9th century.

In England, for more than two centuries after the Norman Conquest of 1066, French was the language spoken by the group of people surrounding the ruler. At first, their dialect must have reflected Norman usage, but nobles arriving later came from other parts of France. As in France itself, the use of French in imaginative works preceded by far its appearance in official documents, for which Latin was preferred. Although many words of French origin entered English, there is little evidence that French became the language of the people. English borrowings into French are rare before the 17th century.

Gallo-Roman and Early Old French. Of the numerous and complex phonological changes that occurred during the early centuries, perhaps the most sweeping were those caused by one or more of the following speech habits: word stress, palatalization, and, beginning in the Early Old French period, vowel nasalization. Along with a tendency to vocalize consonants or to eliminate them without trace, these forces, or their greater impact in Gaul than elsewhere, gave to Old French its distinctive character. They are responsible for the creation of new diphthongs and consonants, as well as for a dramatic loss of syllables. The following discussion offers examples of those changes. (Phonetic symbols employed are those of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Upper-case letters are used for Latin forms. An asterisk denotes an unattested form. Bracketing indicates unstable sounds that were lost early. The symbol < means “comes from, came from,” and > means “becomes, became.”)

Two general but highly significant alterations occurred in Vulgar Latin. The Classical Latin distinction in vowel quantity ceded to a system of vowel quality: long vowels closed, high vowels lowered, long and short A fell together, and the Classical Latin diphthongs simplified (except for AU, which was not reduced until the end of the Gallo-Roman period). The second important change was the replacement of the Classical Latin musical, or pitch, accent, by a stress, or tonic, accent. The syllable that received the tonic accent in Latin was retained in Old French, whereas other, weakly stressed syllables tended to be effaced. To that stress system, Germanic speech later contributed its own strong expiratory stress.

Vowels developed according to the degree of stress with which they were uttered. When the strongest degree of stress, called tonic stress, fell on one syllable of a word, other syllables were uttered more weakly. Vowels were altered in measure as they were found in tonic, countertonic (secondarily stressed), or atonic (unstressed) syllables. In most cases, the way in which they developed also depended upon their consonantal environment. Simply put, a group of two consonants (except where the second is an r or an 1) closes a syllable, “checking” or “blocking” a vowel preceding, but just one consonant leaves the syllable open and the vowel is said to be “free.”

Diphthongs were created when certain tonic free vowels “broke”: ę>ie (PED EM]>pied); (SOR OR]> suor); (ME>mei); (FLOR EM]>flour); later, ei> oi, uo>ue and ou>eu. By contrast, in tonic checked position and in syllables bearing secondary stress, the same vowels did not diphthongize.

Because final and intertonic syllables were unstressed, their vowels were especially vulnerable to effacement. Although final a remained in the form of /ә/ (as in Eng. about: PORTA>porte), most other word-final vowels were effaced (PORT[U]>port). Most vowels between tonic and countertonic syllables were eliminated (TAB[U]LA>table, DEB[I]TA>dette); here again, a could be more resistant: before an accented syllable a>/ә/ (ORNAMENTU>ornement), which could stand in hiatus with a following stressed vowel (ARMA[T]URA>armëure).

A distinguishing feature of French was the alteration of free a in a stressed syllable. In that environment, a was raised to , which later opened to ę in certain situations (MATR[EM]>mere, PORTAR[E]>porter).

Palatalization, the process by which sounds made with the tongue are altered as the middle or the front of the tongue is lifted toward the hard palate, began in colloquial Latin. The velar consonants k (spelled c) and g are a striking example. The palatalization of k and g in certain positions in Gallo-Roman resulted in the creation of four new consonants: the fricatives /ts/ (as in Eng. bits) and /dz/ (as in Eng. beds), and the affricates (as in Eng. church) and (as in Eng. judge): in CENT(EM), /k/(C)>/ts/; in CANTA(T), in GAMB(A), and so on. Similarly, in the groups kl and gl, the loss of the first element after a vowel produced another new consonant, the palatal liquid /λ/ (as in Ital. figlio). Palatalization also occurred when e or i before a, o, u became /j/ (as in Eng. yes) after a syllable bearing tonic stress; /j/ then palatalized the preceding consonant, as in the new VINEA>vigne (as in Mod. Fr.).

Palatalization affected vowels as well as consonants. It occurred independently in the raising of/u/ (as in Fr. ou) to /y/ (as in Fr. tu), but other instances were conditioned by environment and often led to the creation of diphthongs. One such instance is that of tonic free a preceded by /k/. In that position, a was raised and then diphthongized (CANEM>chien). When /k/ and g in certain positions were effaced, they left /j/ (spelled i), which then combined with a preceding vowel to form a diphthong, as PACARE>paiier.

Consonant vocalization (the opening of consonants into vowel sounds) resulted in the formation of new diphthongs, as happened when velarized in preconsonantal position began to vocalize in the 9th century: (ALBA>aube); (ILL[U]S>els>eus [eux]); (AUSCULTA[T]> escoute. A new triphthong, eau (BELL[U]S>beau), emerged from preconsonantal.

Consonants in a weak position (those at the end of a word or standing alone between vowels) tended to be eliminated. Final M had been lost in early colloquial Latin, and m and n, which became final later, likewise fell. Final t and d after a vowel were effaced early. The sounds p, b, v final either remained as [f] (*CAP[U]>chef) or were lost. When intervocalic consonants were lost, the number of syllables in a word was reduced, sometimes through an intermediate situation of vowel hiatus. Intervocalic p, t, k and b, d, g had already weakened in Vulgar Latin. In Gallo-Roman, p and b intervocalic were retained as v (FABA>feve, RIPA >rive), but before o and u they disappeared (TABON[EM]> taon), as did /k/ and g. Intervocalic t and d were effaced (MUTAR[E]>muer, VIDER[E]>vëoir).

Germanic speech habits, too, influenced the development of French. Whereas Latin h had already ceased to be pronounced (HABERE>aveir, avoir), the h in Germanic words was pronounced (haunitha>honte), and the Germanic bilabial w became gu or g: WERRA>guerre, WARDA>garde.

Nasalization, a phenomenon peculiar to French and Portuguese among the Romance languages, did not begin until the Early Old French period. In general, tonic vowels both free and blocked nasalized before the consonants m, n and but countertonic vowels nasalized only in some circumstances. The low vowel a nasalized first (as in tant), probably in the 10th century, followed by the mid-vowels and eventually the high vowels i and /y/ and the diphthongs ie, oi, ui, which nasalized toward the end of the 12th century. Nasal consonants also caused diphthongization of tonic free a to ai (which did not raise to e, therefore: MAN(UM)>main) and they prevented certain other developments.

French in the 12th Century. Evidence for Old French is contained in a large body of written material of many types, including literary works. Nevertheless, it is not easy to know with precision the exact pronunciation of Old French or the dates and geographical extension of linguistic phenomena. As against the hesitancies of Old French orthographic practice (the same phoneme in the same environment was often represented by different graphies), the rhyme and counting of syllables required by verse are a precious, if not infallible, aid in determining linguistic values.

The preponderance of dialects in the Old French period is a further complicating factor, making it impossible to talk about one Old French pronunciation. The main variants of the Langue d’oïl were Francien and, to its immediate east and much like it, Champenois; to the south were the dialects of Orléans, Bourbonnais, Nivernais, and Berry; others were Anglo-Norman, the dialect spoken in England after the Conquest, and Norman (northwest); Picard, Lotharingian, and Walloon (northeast); Burgundian and Franc-Comtois (southeast); the dialects of Anjou, Touraine, Maine, and Brittany (west); and those of Poitou and Saintonge (southwest). The dialects were marked by regionalisms and may not have been entirely mutually intelligible. Their corresponding written languages, called “scriptas,” were colored in varying degrees by dialectal traits but remained understood by speakers in other areas; the scriptas, therefore, were not faithful records of the dialects. The base of the scriptas was from the beginning Francien, the scripta of the Île-de-France region around Paris, and that was so mainly for political and geographical reasons. Modern French is derived from the Francien dialect. The following description of the Old French (Francien) sound system of the late 12th century nevertheless represents a reliable conjecture:

Consonant phonemes: probably twenty-one: /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/, /m/, /n/, /l/, /f/, /r/, /v/, /s/, /z/, and /h/ (in words of Germanic origin) and the new consonants /λ/, /ts/, /dz/, and In the 13th century, affricates reduced to their fricative element: /ts/>/s/, /dz/>/z/, and

Oral vowels: probably the high vowels /i/, /y/, /u/, and the mid-vowels /ę/, /ø/, and and the low vowel /a/. There was a sound longer than and one longer than Oral diphthongs: probably six, that is, /ei/ (in an open syllable, as rai-son); /oi/</ei/, /yi/ (nuit); /au/ (from vocalized (chief); /iø/ (Dieu); and the triphthong /eau/ (beaus). By the end of the 12th century, /ai/ had been reduced to /ę/ in a closed syllable, and /ou/>/u/. The diphthongs /ue/, /eu/, and the triphthong /ueu/ became /ø/, spelled eu or œ. There were two nasal monophthongs, /ã/ and /õ/, and two nasal diphthongs, /iẽ/ and /ẽi/.

In the 13th century, long free>/ø/ (flor>fleur), checked>/u/ (tor>tour). The first element of the diphthongs /ieu/, /oi/, and /yi/ consonantalized, becoming /jø/, /wę/, and /Чi/, respectively. The high vowels /i/ and /ø/ nasalized to and

The Francien scripta could employ varying spellings to render each of those phonemes, even in the same text, paragraph, or line. For example, the competing spellings ilg, lg, lli, or illi, could appear for the new /λ/. Regional scriptas, and dialectal differentiation, added to the variety of graphemes.

Twelfth-Century Morphology and Syntax. Classical Latin was a synthetic language, one in which flexions marked relationships between the parts of a sentence. Modern French, an analytic language, expresses those relationships through the use of particles (e.g., prepositions) and fixed word order. Accordingly, in the development of French the Latin cases, which had been reduced to just the nominative (replacing the Latin nominative and vocative) and oblique (replacing the Latin accusative, genitive, dative, and ablative), probably by the end of the Late Latin period, were gradually lost. The two-case system of the 12th century used -s or -z alone to mark both case and number in several classes of nouns:

Another class of nouns, both masc. and fem., had a nom. sg. form that was always shorter than its other forms (e.g., ber—baron, none—nonain). Adjectives in Old French tended to precede, not follow, nouns, and most agreed with them in gender and in number.

Among other parts of speech, the Old French system of articles (<[IL]LE) resembled the modern paradigm except for a masc. nom. sg. and pl. form, li. The definite article was used in general to individualize a substantive; it did not appear with abstract nouns. The indefinite article uns (<UN[U]S) was slower to appear. Old French demonstratives included forms for proximate (cist or cest; ceste) and distant (cil or cel; cele) reference. By the end of the 12th century, the proximate forms had become specialized as adjectives, but cil and cele functioned equally as pronouns and adjectives.

Certain Old French parts of speech had two sets of forms, tonic and atonic. Tonic forms were relatively more autonomous, appearing in stressed position in a phrase—after a preposition, for example. Atonic forms tended to precede stressed forms, such as verbs. Among personal pronouns, the first two oblique forms were represented by a stressed and unstressed series of forms that did not distinguish between direct and indirect objects: tonic: mei (moi), tei (toi), sei (soi); atonic: me, te, se. The system of possessives, too, was divided into tonic and atonic forms, and in the masc. obl. sg. forms mien (tonic) and mon (atonic) can be seen the origin of the modern French distinction between pronoun and adjective.

As for verb tenses, of the Latin indicative tense forms, active voice, only the present, imperfect, and the perfect persisted into Old French. A new future form was created from the infinitive+present indicative of HABERE (e.g., chanter+ai>chanterai) and a compound future perfect was developed (j’aurai chanté). A future-in-the-past that could also be used to describe hypothetical or contingent action, the “conditional,” was added, built on the infinitive +the imperfect endings of HABERE: chanter+oie, -ois, -oit, etc. The new compound form, the passé composé, had mainly present perfect meaning. Thus, in the 12th century Old French had five simple tenses of the indicative: present, imperfect, simple past (passé simple), future, and conditional. There were five compound tenses: present perfect, past perfect (formed in two ways, either with the imperfect or the simple past of the auxiliary), a future perfect, and a conditional perfect. The passé surcomposé did not begin to appear before the early 13th century.

There were three classes of Old French verbs: I: infinitive in -er and -ier, II: infinitive in -ir, present participle with -iss; and, III: infinitive in -ir, -re, -eir (>oir). The relatively more distinctive personal endings of verbs made expressed subjects less necessary than in the modern language.

The simple past presented weak and strong forms. Weak forms included all -er, -ier, most -ir, and many -re verbs. Of the four types of Classical Latin strong perfects, three survived, in altered form, into Old French. Because of the effects of stress, strong forms presented greater paradigmatic variation than weak forms. Syntactically, the simple past was primarily a narrative tense with punctive aspect, but it could also be used descriptively, especially in the earlier period when the imperfect was infrequent. Unlike the modern passé simple, the simple past was used in conversation.

Although the imperfect tense had competing dialectal endings in the 12th century, the predecessor of the modern form was common: vend-eie, vend-eies, vend-ei(e)t, vend-iiens, vend-iiez, vend-eient.

Of the Classical Latin subjunctive forms, only the present and pluperfect survived into French. The Latin pluperfect subjunctive became the Old French imperfect subjunctive, its endings not very different from the modern imperfect subjunctive.

Middle French. Significant vocalic changes of the Middle French period include the continued reduction of diphthongs to simple vowels (there are no diphthongs in modern French). The diphthong au reduced to and the triphthong eau reduced to very late in this period. Vowels in hiatus were reduced to just their stressed element (meïsmes>mesmes). Before a stressed syllable, was effaced (armëure>armure). In late Middle French, a process of denasalization began, affecting first the vowels that had been the last to nasalize. Other vowel changes occurred, but it was not until the late 16th century that the vowel system of modern French was in place.

The erosion of final consonants continued in Middle French, encouraged by a shift, evident even in the 12th century, from word to group stress, the pattern of modern French. Under that type of stress, groups of words are run together, making a phrase or locution into a unit. As words are linked, some of their final consonants weaken and disappear; that was the case for final plosives and fricatives before a consonant. Even final consonants preceded by another consonant (and thus supported) were generally effaced in this period. Final r weakened.

As for the case system, virtually all texts show traces of it, but none uses case systematically or coherently. The nominative inflection had yielded to the accusative with few exceptions.

Middle French literary practice took advantage of old and new forms, as well as of regionalisms. Although leveling of dialectal features in scriptas had begun early, radiating outward from the area around Paris, a common stock of forms, which included regional variants, nevertheless remained available to writers from all areas. Their use was not necessarily a true indication of the writer’s own dialect. Regionalisms like the Picard word-final reduction of -ié and -iée to -ie can be found at the rhyme in texts from many regions. The raising of a before or was an eastern trait that appeared broadly in literary texts in the form of -aige for -age and -aigne for -agne (as Bretaigne rhyming with enseigne, or couraige with sai je). In this period, it is not unusual to find rhymes between -eu and -ou (gracious, gracieux with nous), and -ui could rhyme either with -u or with -i, and both in the same text (huis with lassus, je vi with bui). Rhymes also attest the spread later in the period of such Parisian pronunciations as -ar for -er(as in the rhyme Robert with Lombart, found in the poetry of François Villon).

Word Order, Sentence Structure, Vocabulary. Word order in Old French was fairly flexible, owing in part to the two-case system. While the modern French order subject-verb-complement was common in both prose and poetry, another order, that of complement-verb-subject (+possible additional complement), was frequent, particularly in poetry and in main clauses. Thus, the sentence Ses barons fist li rois venir means “The king summoned his barons.” In Middle French, as use of the case system declined, word order tended to become more fixed.

Parataxis, or the placing together of clauses or phrases without explicit coordinating or subordinating words, was frequent in verse texts of the Old French period. In Middle French, parataxis became rare. On the other hand, the revival of classical studies and with it a taste for latinizing encouraged many writers of Middle French prose to imitate Latin periodic construction.

Although over the centuries French has borrowed vocabulary from other languages, Old French was overwhelmingly a language inherited from colloquial Latin. The Celtic spoken originally by the Gauls contributed words to French, as vassal, cheval. Low Latin, the written form of Latin which persisted throughout the Gallo-Roman and Old French periods, continued to provide words. Germanic words from many semantic groups passed into French, some in the Vulgar Latin period, others in Gallo-Roman: heaume, guise, garnir, blanc, choisir, fournir, danser, gage, guetter are but a few examples. In the Middle French period, the desire to latinize brought large-scale borrowing from Classical Latin. Borrowings from Italian became more numerous, reflecting Italy’s new cultural ascendancy.

Thelma S.Fenster

[See also: ANGLO-NORMAN LITERATURE; FRANCO-ITALIAN LITERATURE; LITURGICAL LANGUAGES; OCCITAN LANGUAGE; STRASBOURG, OATHS OF]

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