Abstract
AbstractThis article presents the findings of a corpus analysis of seven Old French texts to better understand the syntax of the particle si. It is argued that the texts display clear evidence of synchronic and diachronic variation, much of which has not been noted in the literature. A diachronic grammaticalisation pathway is proposed for si from a temporal deictic adverb to a Topic continuity marker and then to a FinP expletive which undergoes upwards reanalysis as a ForceP expletive.
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