• Funding: FWF (P 30751-G30)

  • Project duration: June 2018 to October 2022

The FWF project "The Third Way" examines adverbs and adverbials in Romance languages that are formed according to the pattern "preposition + adjective" (P+A), such as it. di certo, sp. de seguro, fr. à la dure, port. de novo, rum. cu derept. The project is divided into a synchronic and a diachronic part, which are intended to trace and document the development of forms from Latin to the present-day varieties for the whole of Romania. To this end, the project not only draws on historical corpora, but also examines the spoken language in some of today's Romance varieties with the aim of diachronic reconstruction.

Project description

 

While research on Romance adverbs focuses primarily on mente adverbs and secondarily on adjectives used adverbially (e.g. fr. travailler dur 'to work hard'), handbooks, grammars and research papers neglect or even overlook prepositional phrases such as French à la dure 'the hard way' or Spanish de seguro 'surely, certainly'. Most linguistic studies on the pattern "preposition + adjective" (PA pattern) analyse them as adverbial locutions, i.e. as lexicalized phrases. From today's standard language perspective, this designation is justified. However, from a diachronic perspective, the focus is on the productivity of these patterns as an alternative to mente adverbs and adverbial adjectives. The project tackles this aspect. For example, Hummel (2012) found no fewer than 57 series in Old Spanish and Spanish of the Golden Age, such as continuo (adv.), continuamente, de continuo, a la continua.

The main hypothesis is that this pattern was a productive "third way" of expressing adverbial functions during the transition from Latin to Romance - the most relevant analytical solution (away from the well-known evolutionary path of Latin sola mente > solamente). It is particularly important to examine the interfaces between oral and written tradition more closely. The third path is divided into two paths: the path of typical spoken language patterns (e.g. French à la dure, Spanish a las buenas) and the path of typical written language patterns (e.g. Spanish de subito, de ordinario). These adverbial production patterns coexisted - roughly speaking - with adverbial adjectives and mente adverbs until the 17th century.

The analysis of PA patterns in the transition from Latin to Romansh at the interface between orality and written language is highly relevant for linguistic questions. From a theoretical point of view, the results will be decisive for the following aspects: (i) typological considerations, (ii) the interface between spoken and written language tradition, (iii) the influence of PA patterns on the diachrony of adverbs in general and (iv) the replacement of synthetic structures by analytical ones in the Latin-Romance transition.

To this end, the project formulates seven thematic areas. One concerns the diachrony of PA patterns in Latin. Although some authors regard this pattern as a Romance innovation, a random check shows that PA patterns were already present in Latin. Two topics concern the Latin-Romance transition, which is recorded using three methods: Diachrony according to existing written texts, the reconstruction of the oral tradition based on medieval usage and present-day non-standard varieties, and the analysis of translations from Latin into Romance languages. Two further topics deal with usage up to the end of the 16th century and from the 17th century to the present day. Initial analyses show that the linguistic purism of the 17th century and the resulting standardization marginalized PA patterns. From today's perspective, this results in the status of lexicalized remnants of earlier productive patterns.

The project team is currently conducting field research in various regions in collaboration with international partners in order to determine which variants of PA adverbials are used in Romance varieties on the basis of speaker surveys.

  • Spain (Andalusia: Granada): David Porcel Bueno (April and October 2019)

  • Mexico (Mexico DF): Martin Hummel, Rodrigo Flores and Miriam Reyes (November 2019 - February 2020)

  • Italy (Campania): Stefan Koch and Cesarina Vecchia (July/August 2020)

  • Canada (Quebec): Inka Wissner (spring 2022)

  • Brazil A (Rio de Janeiro): Martin Hummel, Priscilla Mouta and Deise Moraes (postponed due to Covid)

  • Brazil B (Salvador de Bahia): David Porcel Bueno and Javier Martín Salcedo (February and September 2020)

The project also benefits from the collaboration with the FWF project Open Access Database "Adjective-Adverb Interfaces in Romance", which provides data for corpus-based studies on prepositional adverbs in comparison to mente adverbs and short adverbs.