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It was known at the time as the '' Langue D'oïl '' to distinguish it from the '' Langue D'oc '', (also then called Provençal ) which bordered these areas to the south. pledges his Fealty to Charlemagne ; from a manuscript of a '' Chanson De Geste ''.]] GRAMMAR AND PHONOLOGY Historical influences Gaulish The ; Delamarre (2003 pp.389-90) lists 167. Latin was the common language of the western Roman world, and opened up a wider world to its speakers than Gaulish did, so it grew at the expense of Gaulish. Latin In one sense, Old French began when the Roman Empire conquered the territory it called Gaul during the conquests of Julius Caesar , which were substantially completed by 51 BC . The Romans introduced the Latin language into southern France starting in around 120 BC , when they occupied southern Gaul during the Punic Wars . Starting during the period when Plautus was writing, the common Latin of the Roman world, the phonological structure of Classical Latin began to change, yielding the Vulgar Latin that was the common spoken language of the western Roman world. This vulgar Latin began to vary strongly from the classical language in its Phonology ; spoken Latin, rather than the somewhat artificial Literary Language of classical Latin, was the ancestor of the Romance Languages including Old French. Some Gaulish words influenced Vulgar Latin and thus, not only Old French but also other Romance languages. For example classical Latin ''equus'' was replaced in common parlance by vulgar Latin ''caballus'', derived from Gaulish ''caballos'' (Delamare 2003 p.96) thus giving Modern French ''cheval'', Italian ''cavallo'' and (borrowed from French) English ''cavalry''. Frankish The Frankish Language had a large impact on the Vocabulary of Old French as a result of the Frankish conquest of much of the territory of modern France by the Franks during the Migration Period . The current and older names of the language, ''français'', derives from the name of the Franks. A number of other Germanic peoples, including the Burgundians , were active in the territory at that time; the Germanic Languages spoken by the Franks, Burgundians, and others were not written languages, and at this remove it is often difficult to identify from which specific Germanic source a given Germanic word in French is derived. Philologists such as Pope (1934) estimate that perhaps fifteen percent of the vocabulary of modern French derives from Germanic sources; this vocabulary includes a large number of common words like ''haïr'', "to hate"; ''bateau'', "boat", and ''hache'', "axe", all derive from Germanic sources. It has been suggested that the ''passé composé'' and other Compound Verb s used in French Conjugation are also the result of Germanic influences. It is important to distinguish however words which came from Germanic initially, via Frankish, and those that were introduced later, via the Normans in the 10th century. Earliest written Old French The earliest documents said to be in French are the Oaths Of Strasbourg , which are treaties and charters entered by king Charles The Bald in 842 . These documents are written in a mixture of vulgar Latin and early Romance, and it is hard to determine from the text we have how they were pronounced: Pro Deo amur et pro Christian poblo et nostro commun salvament, d’ist di en avant, in quant Deus savir et podir me dunat, si salvarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo, et in aiudha et in cadhuna cosa. . . :: (For the love of God and for the Christian people, and our common salvation, from this day forward, as God will give me the knowledge and the power, I will defend my brother Charles with my help in everything. . .) Beginning with the Capetian dynasty, which was begun by Hugh Capet in 987 , the culture of northern France began to develop, and its political ascendency over the southern areas of Aquitaine and Toulouse was slowly but firmly asserted. The current French language, however, did not begin to become the common speech of the entire nation of France until after the French Revolution . From Vulgar Latin to Old French One profound change that affected French, and every other Romance language, reordered the s, AE, OE, AU, and according to some, UI.1 What happened to Vulgar Latin is set forth in the table. Both the diphthongs AE and OE also fell in with /e/. AU was initially retained, and turned into /O/ after the original /O/ fell victim to further changes. Thus, the ten vowel system of Classical Latin, which relied on Phonemic Vowel Length was new-modelled into a system in which vowel length distinctions were suppressed and alterations of vowel quality became phonemic. Because of this change, the stress on accented syllables became much more pronounced in Vulgar Latin than in Classical Latin. This tended to cause unaccented syllables to become less distinct, while working further changes on the sounds of the accented syllables. Old French underwent more thorough alterations of its sound system than did the other Romance languages. Vowel breaking was something that occurred generally in Proto-Western-Romance (here, Proto-Romance), although with different results in each of the daughter languages; Latin FOCU(M) (originally "hearth") becomes Italian ''fuoco'', Spanish ''fuego'', French ''feu'' (all meaning "fire"). But in Old French the phenomenon went further than in any other Romance language; of the seven vowels inherited from Latin, only remained essentially unchanged. In stressed syllables:
During the Old French period, Latin became , the lip-rounded sound that is written 'u' in Modern French. In some contexts, became , still written ''oi'' in Modern French. During the early Old French period this sound was pronounced as the writing suggests, as . This sound developed variously in different varieties of Oïl language - most of the surviving languages maintain a pronunciation as /we/ - but literary French adopted a dialectal phonology /wa/. The doublet of ''français'' and ''François'' in modern French orthography demonstrates this mix of dialectal features. At some point during the Old French period, vowels with a following nasal Consonant began to be nasalized. While the process of losing the final nasal consonant took place after the Old French period, the nasal vowels that characterise modern French appeared during the period in question. Old French, along with Portuguese , exhibits the most thorough phonetic changes from Latin, as opposed to relatively conservative Romance languages like Spanish or Italian . As the example of ''pierre'' from PETRA(M) shows, many interior consonants were lost, swallowed up in the strong word stress accent. SOUND CHANGES FROM LATIN TO OLD FRENCH Through Proto-Western-Romance:
Through Proto-Gallo-Ibero-Romance:
Through Early Old French, in approximate order:
Through Old French, of c. 1100 AD:
Through Late Old French: c. 1250-1300 AD:
OLD FRENCH NOUNS
Singular: Nominative: li voisins (Latin ''ille vicinus'') Oblique: le voisin (Latin ''illum vicinum'') Plural: Nominative: li voisin (Latin ''illi vicini'') Oblique: les voisins (Latin ''illos vicinos'') In later Old French, these distinctions became moribund. When the distinctions were marked enough, sometimes both forms survived, with a Lexical difference: both ''li sire'' (nominative, Latin SENIOR) and ''le seigneur'' (oblique, Latin SENIORE(M)) survive in the vocabulary of later French as different ways to refer to a feudal Lord . As in most other Romance language, it was the oblique case form that usually survived to become the modern French form: ''l'enfant'' (the child) represents the old accusative; the OF nominative was ''li enfes''. But some modern French nouns perpetuate the old nominative; modern French ''soeur'' (OF ''suer'') represents the Latin nominative SÓROR; the OF oblique form ''seror'', from Latin accusative SORÓREM, no longer survives. As in Spanish and Italian, the neuter Gender was eliminated, and old neuter nouns became masculine. Some Latin neuter plurals were re-analysed as feminine singulars, though; for example, Latin GAUDIU(M) was more widely used in the plural form GAUDIA, which was taken for a singular in Vulgar Latin, and ultimately led to modern French ''la joie'', "joy" (feminine singular). Nouns were declined in the following declensions:
Class I is derived from the Latin first declension. Class II is derived from the Latin second declension. Class Ia mostly comes from feminine third-declension nouns in Latin. Class IIa generally stems from second-declension nouns ending in -er and from third-declension masculine nouns; note that in both cases, the Latin nominative singular did not end in -s, and this is preserved in Old French. Class III nouns show a separate form in the nominative singular that does not occur in any of the other forms. IIIa nouns ended in -ÁTOR, -ATÓREM in Latin, and preserve the stress shift; IIIb nouns likewise had a stress shift from -O to -ÓNEM. IIIc nouns are an Old French creation and have no clear Latin antecedent. IIId nouns represent various other types of third-declension Latin nouns with stress shift or irregular masculine singular (SÓROR, SORÓREM; ÍNFANS, INFÁNTEM; PRÉSBYTER, PRESBÝTEREM; SÉNIOR, SENIÓREM; CÓMES, CÓMITEM). OLD FRENCH VERBS
In Latin, certain verbs shifted the accented syllable based on the Latin accentual system, which depended on vowel length. Thus, the Latin verb ÁMO, "I love," stressed on the first syllable, changed to AMÁMUS, "we love." Because the Latin stressed syllable affected Old French vowels, this syllable shift created a large number of Strong Verb s in Old French. ÁMO yielded ''j'aim'', while AMÁMUS, moving the stress away from the first syllable, yielded ''nous amons''. There were at least 11 types of alternations; examples of these various types are ''j'aim, nous amons; j'achat, nous achetons; j'adois, nous adesons; je mein, nouns menons; j'achief, nous achevons; je conchi, nous concheons; je pris, nous proisons; je demeur, nous demourons; je muer, nous mourons; j'aprui, nous aproions''. In Modern French almost all of these verbs have been leveled, generally with the "weak" (unstressed) form predominating (but modern ''aimer/nous aimons'' is an exception). A few alternations remain, however, in what are now known as Irregular Verbs , such as ''je tiens, nous tenons'' or ''je meurs, nous mourons''. In general, Old French verbs show much less analogical reformation than in Modern French. The Old French first singular ''aim'', for example, comes directly from Latin AMO, while modern ''aime'' has an analogical -e added. The subjunctive forms ''j'aim, tu ains, il aint'' are direct preservations of Latin ''AMEM, AMES, AMET'', while the modern forms ''j'aime, tu aimes, il aime'' have been completely reformed on the basis of verbs in the other conjugations. The simple past also shows extensive analogical reformation and simplification in Modern French as compared with Old French. The Latin Pluperfect was preserved in very early Old French as a past tense with a value similar to a Preterite or Imperfect . E.g. (Cantilène de sainte Eulalie, 878 AD) 'avret' < HABUERAT, 'voldret' < VOLUERAT. ( Old Occitan also preserved this tense, with a Conditional value.) Example of regular ''-er'' verb Non-finite forms:
Auxiliary verb: ''avoir'' Example of regular ''-ir'' verb Non-finite forms:
Auxiliary verb: ''avoir'' Examples of the auxiliary verbs avoir (to have) Non-finite forms:
Auxiliary verb: ''avoir'' estre (to be) Non-finite forms:
auxiliary verb: ''avoir, earlier aveir'' VARIETIES OF LANGUAGE Since Old French did not consist of a single standard, competing administrative varieties were propagated by the provincial courts and chanceries. The French of Paris was one of a number of standards, including:
Languages derived from Old French This Oïl language is the ancestor of several languages spoken today, including:
OLD FRENCH LITERATURE ''Main Article at Medieval French Literature '' See also: Languages Of France , Anglo-Norman Literature 1In this article:
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