- Email: [email protected]
A comparative study of word order in old Spanish and old French prose works
DANIEL M. CRABB,A
Com@watizwStudy ofWord 0rder iln Old
Spanish and old French Prose Works. The Catholic University
of America Press, Washington, D.C., 1955, XVIII + 66 pp*, gr. 8O. Little had been written in the field of word order in Old Spanish; there was quite a good deal more in that field in Old French. Lerch, in the Handbwch der Qanienkunde (1932), refers mainly to the word order of Modern Spanish, which, for that matter, does not differ much from that of Old Spanish, and he sees the greater freedom of Spanish arisen to French as a relic of Latin. The author has now put two texts of parallel material side by side: Old Spanish and Old French translations of the book Samuel and the Book of Kings. The first was taken from Bib&a medieval romancenda @die-cristiana, ed. P. Jose Llamas (Madrid, 1950), the other, from Li qzwtre Zivres des Rois, ed. E. R. Curtius (Dresden, 191I). The author co&udes that the numerous Old Spanish sentences beginning with the conjunction “e” followed by the conjugated verb form can be traced back to the Hebrew waw-construction. That can be explained not only by the reverence of the Jewish translator for the Bible text, but also very certainly by the fact that it was possible in Old Spanish. Next the author compares an Old French and an Old Spanish text which can be traced back to an Arabic original of the ascension of Mohammed and agsin concludes that Old Spanish could be adjusted to the peculiarities of Semitic syntax. Then he compares a text from Crdrticas de 10s Reyes de Castilla (BAE tomo LXVI) with one from Joinville’s Histoire de Saint Louis, and one from Marco Polo’s travels in both languages, and finally two 15th Century texts, namely, El Corbacho by Alfonso Martinez de Toledo and the Cent now&es nowelles. He arrives at ?;he conclusion that Old French, in its evolution towards a so-called logical sentence-order (subject-predicate-object) takes a much quicker tempo than Old Spanish; indeed, the construction predicate-subject-object, predicate-objr;ct-subject and : bj&-predicate-subject still occur frequently in modern Spanish. -ie author places special emphasis on the fact that the inversions influenced by Semitic syntax still occur in later Oki Spanish works completely independent of Semitic texts, as well. Santpoorl
l
J.A. VAN PRAAG
Com@watizwStudy ofWord 0rder iln Old
Spanish and old French Prose Works. The Catholic University
of America Press, Washington, D.C., 1955, XVIII + 66 pp*, gr. 8O. Little had been written in the field of word order in Old Spanish; there was quite a good deal more in that field in Old French. Lerch, in the Handbwch der Qanienkunde (1932), refers mainly to the word order of Modern Spanish, which, for that matter, does not differ much from that of Old Spanish, and he sees the greater freedom of Spanish arisen to French as a relic of Latin. The author has now put two texts of parallel material side by side: Old Spanish and Old French translations of the book Samuel and the Book of Kings. The first was taken from Bib&a medieval romancenda @die-cristiana, ed. P. Jose Llamas (Madrid, 1950), the other, from Li qzwtre Zivres des Rois, ed. E. R. Curtius (Dresden, 191I). The author co&udes that the numerous Old Spanish sentences beginning with the conjunction “e” followed by the conjugated verb form can be traced back to the Hebrew waw-construction. That can be explained not only by the reverence of the Jewish translator for the Bible text, but also very certainly by the fact that it was possible in Old Spanish. Next the author compares an Old French and an Old Spanish text which can be traced back to an Arabic original of the ascension of Mohammed and agsin concludes that Old Spanish could be adjusted to the peculiarities of Semitic syntax. Then he compares a text from Crdrticas de 10s Reyes de Castilla (BAE tomo LXVI) with one from Joinville’s Histoire de Saint Louis, and one from Marco Polo’s travels in both languages, and finally two 15th Century texts, namely, El Corbacho by Alfonso Martinez de Toledo and the Cent now&es nowelles. He arrives at ?;he conclusion that Old French, in its evolution towards a so-called logical sentence-order (subject-predicate-object) takes a much quicker tempo than Old Spanish; indeed, the construction predicate-subject-object, predicate-objr;ct-subject and : bj&-predicate-subject still occur frequently in modern Spanish. -ie author places special emphasis on the fact that the inversions influenced by Semitic syntax still occur in later Oki Spanish works completely independent of Semitic texts, as well. Santpoorl
l
J.A. VAN PRAAG