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This volume studies Old French as it is practiced today, in all of its forms, with topics ranging from corpus-based studies to theoretical approaches to Old French. It provides an insight into both diachronic and synchronic linguistics.

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The present volume presents scholarly study into Old French as it is practiced today, in all of its forms, within a variety of theoretical frameworks, from Optimality Theory to Minimalism to Discourse Analysis. Many of the chapters are corpus-based, reflecting a new trend in the field, as more electronic corpora become available.

The chapters contribute to our understanding of both the synchronic state and diachronic evolution, not only of Old French, but of language in general. Its breadth is extensive in that contributors pursue research on a wide variety of topics in Old French focusing on the various subsystems of language.
All examples are carefully glossed and the relevant characteristics of Old French are clearly explained, which makes it uniquely accessible to non-specialists and linguists at all levels of training. _

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Introduction, Deborah Arteaga .- A Diachronic View of Old French Genitive Constructions, Deborah Arteaga & Julia Herschensohn .- Grammaticalization in Progress in Old French: Indefinite Aarticles, Anne Carlier .- Null Objects in Old French, Bryan Donaldson .- Compensatory Lengthening in Historical French: The Role of the Speaker, Randall Gess .- Perception, Production and Markedness in Sound Change: French Velar Palatalization, Haike Jacobs & Janine Berns .- Evolution and Regrammation in the Mood System: Perspectives from Old, Middle, Renaissance and Modern French, Jan Lindschouw .- Analogy among French Sounds, Michael L. Mazzola .- The Development of the Declension System, Lene Sch›sler .- The Diasystem and its Role in Generating Meaning: Diachronic Evidence from Old French, Harald Völker .- Synchronic studies .- Crusaders´ Old French, Cyril Aslanov .- The Use of the Future and Conditional in High Medieval Literature, Igor Dreer .- Old French Parataxis: Syntactic Variant or Stylistic Variation? Julie Glikman& Thomas Verjans .- A Derivational Approach to Negative Polarity Item Licensing in Old French, Richard Ingham .- Theoretical Issues in Old French Inflectional Morpho(phono)logy, Jürgen Klausenburger .- Forms and Functions of Reported Discourse in Medieval French, Sophie Marnette .- The Left-periphery in Old French, Eric Mathieu .- Grammatical Meaning and the Old French Subjunctive, Margaret E. Winters

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From the reviews:
"The editor aims to provide insight into both diachronic and synchronic linguistics, not only of Old French, but of language in general. All examples are glossed and the relevant characteristics of Old French are clearly explained, in order to direct the book not only at linguists and graduate students who specialize in Old French, but also at linguists who conduct research in historical linguistics in other languages ... . This is a book that will be gratefully used by many scholars and researchers ... ." (Catharina Peersman, The Linguist List, September, 2013)

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