Abstract
The anaphoric determiner ledit was introduced in vernacular prose texts by the end of the Ancient French period, and it became fairly frequent in Middle French. This article compares the contexts in which ledit is used to those of the different paradigms of the demonstrative in Middle French, and this in order to shed light on the sudden appearance and the relatively high frequency of this new determiner in Middle French prose texts. The semantic opposition between the different paradigms of the demonstratives in this period was less marked than in earlier periods, and this was the result of a process of grammaticalization that started around 1200 and, by the end of the 15th century, resulted in the demonstrative paradigm as we know it today. In this period of history, the anaphoric determiner ledit appeared in prose texts. An analysis of the contexts of its use shows that, whereas it was originally used to resolve ambiguous reference in contexts similar to those of the demonstratives, ledit gradually lost some of its original semantic value to end up as a marker of definiteness by the end of the 15th century.
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