Old French Parataxis: Syntactic Variant or Stylistic Variation?

Abstract

The existence of paratactic constructions in Old French is a well-known fact, as in the following: Ço sent Rollantø la veüe ad perdue‘Roland feels (that) he has lost his sight’ (Chanson de Roland2297). These structures alternate with structures containing que: Ço sent Rollant que s’espee li tolt‘Roland feels that his sword has been taken from him’ (Chanson de Roland2284). Although traditional philologists note that different types of asyndetic subordinate clauses exist, they do not provide an explanation of how and why such structures alternate with those introduced by que. Moreover, a detailed analysis reveals that the distribution of paratactic constructions does not seem to be homogeneous across texts. This leads us to the following questions: are these constructions syntactic free variants of those introduced by que? Are they stylistically conditioned? The goal of this paper is to shed light on the role that paratactic constructions play in the Old French language system.