The causal clauses of Gregory of Tours: on the verge of a new linguistic system

The Historia Francorum by Gregory of Tours takes on an entirely new dimension when viewed from a strictly linguistic perspective – or better yet, from a diachronic one. It is indeed an invaluable source for a study of syntax that is both formal and diachronic, such as the present work. This extraordinary medieval text stands at the crossroads between conservation and innovation, that is, between the Latin world and the Romance system; it is a text, in this sense, that sheds light not only on the structural behaviour but also on the linguistic evolution of adverbial clauses (ACs). It is precisely for this reason that the Historia has been chosen: because the radical and formidable transition toward the Romance languages, though unfolding over centuries, began as early as the VI AD to display the first undeniable shoots of modernity. Gregory’s Latin in particular, amidst Christian vocabulary and vernacular expressions, also reveals a syntax in full transformation. This has been observed above all through the analysis of causal clauses, which have served as the sample of investigation in an attempt to address questions concerning: (i) the positioning of ACs within the syntactic spine of the main clause to which they relate, and the placement of their subordinating conjunctions from the standpoint of internal syntax; (ii) the structural repercussions of their different surface arrangements (preposition, postposition, and interposition) and of their various semantic nuances (eventive, epistemic, illocutive, and mixed interpretations); (iii) the syntactic treatment of occurrences explicitly focused by a focus marker; (iv) the motivations, structural or otherwise, underlying the multifunctionality of certain ambiguous clauses. In attending to all these questions, the recent hypothesis of syntactic embedding as a gradual continuum has been adopted. Accordingly, causal clauses have been treated as either central or peripheral and, consistent with the so-called ‘concord effect’ (Endo and Haegeman 2019; Noda 1989), as depending on their core semantic components for their structural status. Reference has therefore been made to a broader and more nuanced conception of subordination, one that is not necessarily opposed to illocutionary force. By combining these theoretical premises with the empirical examination of Gregory of Tours’ magnum opus, the questions have given way to precise observations, and a proposal for a formal analysis has been advanced – a proposal that aims to be broad in scope and accounts for both the synchronic and diachronic properties of causal clauses, as well as of adverbial clauses more generally.