(f) Derivation.—Most of the Old French prefixes and suffixes are descendants of Latin ones, but a few are Teutonic (ard = hard), and some are later borrowings from Latin (arie, afterwards aire, from ārium). In Modern French many old affixes are hardly used for forming new words; the inherited ier (ārium) is yielding to the borrowed aire, the popular contre (contrā) to the learned anti (Greek), and the native ée (ātam) to the Italian ade. The suffixes of many words have been assimilated to more common ones; thus sengler (siṅgulārem) is now sanglier.
(g) Syntax.—Old French syntax, gradually changing from the 10th to the 14th century, has a character of its own, distinct from that of Modern French; though when compared with Latin syntax it appears decidedly modern.
(1) The general formal distinction between nominative and accusative is the chief feature which causes French syntax to resemble that of Latin and differ from that of the modern language; and as the distinction had to be replaced by a comparatively fixed word-order, a serious loss of freedom ensued. If the forms are modernized while the word-order is kept, the Old French l’archevesque ne puet flechir li reis Henris (Latin archiepiscopum nōn potest flectere rex Henricus) assumes a totally different meaning—l’archevêque ne peut fléchir le roi Henri. (2) The replacement of the nominative form of nouns by the accusative is itself a syntactical feature, though treated above under inflection. A more modern instance is exhibited by the personal pronouns, which, when not immediately the subject of a verb, occasionally take even in Old French, and regularly in the 16th century, the accusative form; the Old French je qui sui (ego qvī sum) becomes moi qui suis, though the older usage survives in the legal phrase je soussigné. . . . (3) The definite article is now required in many cases where Old French dispenses with it—jo cunquis Engleterre, suffrir mort (as Modern French avoir faim); Modern French l’Angleterre, la mort. (4) Old French had distinct pronouns for “this” and “that”—cest (ecce istum) and cel (ecce illum), with their cases. Both exist in the 16th century, but the present language employs cet as adjective, cel as substantive, in both meanings, marking the old distinction by affixing the adverbs ci and là—cet homme-ci, cet homme-là; celui-ci, celui-là. (5) In Old French, the verbal terminations being clear, the subject pronoun is usually not expressed—si ferai (sīc facere habeō), est durs (dūrus est), que feras (quid facere habēs)? In the 16th century the use of the pronoun is general, and is now universal, except in one or two impersonal phrases, as n’importe, peu s’en faut. (6) The present participle in Old French in its uninflected form coincided with the gerund (amant = amantem and amandō), and in the modern language has been replaced by the latter, except where it has become adjectival; the Old French complaingnans leur dolours (Latin plaṅgentēs) is now plaignant leurs douleurs (Latin plaṅgendō). The now extinct use of estre with the participle present for the simple verb is not uncommon in Old French down to the 16th century—sont disanz (sunt dīcentēs) = Modern French ils disent (as English they are saying). (7) In present Modern French the preterite participle when used with avoir to form verb-tenses is invariable, except when the object precedes (an exception now vanishing in the conversational language)—j’ai écrit les lettres, les lettres que j’ai écrites. In Old French down to the 16th century, formal concord was more common (though by no means necessary), partly because the object preceded the participle much oftener than now—ad la culur muée (habet colōrem mūtātam), ad faite sa venjance, les turs ad rendues. (8) The sentences just quoted will serve as specimens of the freedom of Old French word-order—the object standing either before verb and participle, between them, or after both. The predicative adjective can stand before or after the verb—halt sunt li pui (Latin podia), e tenebrus e grant. (9) In Old French ne (Early Old French nen, Latin nōn) suffices for the negation without pas (passum), point (puṅctum) or mie (mīcam, now obsolete), though these are frequently used—jo ne sui tis sire (je ne suis pas ton seigneur), autre feme nen ara (il n’aura pas autre femme). In principal sentences Modern French uses ne by itself only in certain cases—je ne puis marcher, je n’ai rien. The slight weight as a negation usually attached to ne has caused several originally positive words to take a negative meaning—rien (Latin rem) now meaning “nothing” as well as “something.” (10) In Old French interrogation was expressed with substantives as with pronouns by putting them after the verb—est Saul entre les prophètes? In Modern French the pronominal inversion (the substantive being prefixed) or a verbal periphrasis must be used—Saul est-il? or est-ce que Saul est?
(h) Summary.—Looking at the internal history of the French language as a whole, there is no such strongly marked division as exists between Old and Middle English, or even between Middle and Modern English. Some of the most important changes are quite modern, and are concealed by the traditional orthography; but, even making allowance for this, the difference between French of the 11th century and that of the 20th is less than that between English of the same dates. The most important change in itself and for its effects is probably that which is usually made the division between Old and Modern French, the loss of the formal distinction between nominative and accusative; next to this are perhaps the gradual loss of many final consonants, the still recent loss of the vowel of unaccented final syllables, and the extension of analogy in conjugation and declension. In its construction Old French is distinguished by a freedom strongly contrasting with the strictness of the modern language, and bears, as might be expected, a much stronger resemblance than the latter to the other Romanic dialects. In many features, indeed, both positive and negative, Modern French forms a class by itself, distinct in character from the other modern representatives of Latin.
IV. Bibliography.—The few works which treat of French philology as a whole are now in many respects antiquated, and the important discoveries of recent years, which have revolutionized our ideas of Old French phonology and dialectology, are scattered in various editions, periodicals, and separate treatises. For many things Diez’s Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen (4th edition—a reprint of the 3rd—Bonn, 1876–1877; French translation, Paris, 1872–1875) is still very valuable; Burguy’s Grammaire de la Langue d’Oïl (2nd edition—a reprint of the 1st—Berlin, 1869–1870) is useful only as a collection of examples. Schwan’s Grammatik des Altfranzösischen, as revised by Behrens in the 3rd edition (Leipzig, 1898; French translation, Leipzig and Paris, 1900), is by far the best old French grammar we possess. For the history of French language in general see F. Brunot, Histoire de la langue française des origines à 1900 (Paris, 1905, 1906, &c.). For the history of spelling, A. F. Didot, Observations sur l’orthographe ou ortografie française suivies d’une histoire de la réforme orthographique depuis le XVe siècle jusqu’à nos jours (2nd ed., Paris, 1868). For the history of French sounds: Ch. Thurot, De la prononciation française depuis le commencement du XVIe siècle, d’après les témoignages des grammairiens (2 vols., Paris, 1881–1883). For the history of syntax, apart from various grammatical works of a general character, much is to be gathered from Ad. Tobler’s Vermischte Beiträge zur französischen Grammatik (3 parts, 1886, 1894, 1899, parts i. and ii. in second editions, 1902, 1906). G. Paris’s edition of La Vie de S. Alexis (Paris, 1872) was the pioneer of, and retains an important place among, the recent original works on Old French. Darmesteter and Hatzfeld’s Le Seizième Siècle (Paris, 1878) contains the first good account of Early Modern French. Littré’s Dictionnaire de la langue française (4 vols., Paris, 1863–1869, and a Supplement, 1877); and Hatzfeld, Darmesteter and Thomas, Dict. général de la langue française, more condensed (2 vols., Paris, 1888–1900), contain much useful and often original information about the etymology and history of French words. For the etymology of many French (and also Provençal) words, reference must be made to Ant. Thomas’s Essais de philologie française (Paris, 1897) and Nouveaux essais de philologie française (Paris, 1904). But there is no French dictionary properly historical. A Dictionnaire historique de la langue française was begun by the Académie française (4 vols., 1859–1894), but it was, from the first, antiquated. It contains only one letter (A) and has not been continued. The leading periodicals now in existence are the Romania (Paris), founded (in 1872) and edited by P. Meyer and G. Paris (with Ant. Thomas since the death of G. Paris in 1903), and the Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie (Halle), founded (in 1877) and edited by G. Gröber. To these reference should be made for information as to the very numerous articles, treatises and editions by the many and often distinguished scholars who, especially in France and Germany, now prosecute the scientific study of the language. It may be well to mention that, Old French phonology especially being complicated, and as yet incompletely investigated, these publications, the views in which are of various degrees of value, require not mere acquiescent reading, but critical study. The dialects of France in their present state (patois) are now being scientifically investigated. The special works on the subject (dictionaries, grammars, &c.) cannot be fully indicated here; we must limit ourselves to the mention of Behren’s Bibliographie des patois gallo-romans (2nd ed., revised Berlin, 1893), and of Gilliéron and Edmont’s Atlas linguistique de la France (1902 et seq.), a huge publication planned to contain about 1800 maps. (H. N.; P. M.)
FRENCH LITERATURE. Origins.—The history of French
literature in the proper sense of the term can hardly be said to
extend farther back than the 11th century. The actual manuscripts which we possess are seldom of older date than the century
subsequent to this. But there is no doubt that by the end at
least of the 11th century the French language, as a completely
organized medium of literary expression, was in full, varied and
constant use. For many centuries previous to this, literature
had been composed in France, or by natives of that country,
using the term France in its full modern acceptation; but until
the 9th century, if not later, the written language of France, so
far as we know, was Latin; and despite the practice of not a few
literary historians, it does not seem reasonable to notice Latin
writings in a history of French literature. Such a history
properly busies itself only with the monuments of French itself
from the time when the so-called Lingua Romana Rustica
