Origins of French partitive, pas, etc.




I'm learning French and I'm mystified by several syntactic features
of French that have no counterpart in any other language I know
(not that I know that many, but still), certainly not in any other
Romance language I know.

I am most intrigued by the French so-called "partitive article"
(J'ai bu DU vin. Literally "I drank OF THE wine."), as well as
the use in French of particles like "pas", "plus", "personne",
"rien", etc. in negative constructions (Elle ne supporte PAS le
brocoli), which has become essentially mandatory.

In particular, I would like to know WHY these peculiar constructs
arose in the first place.

It is my understanding that they were not present in ancient French
(say before the 10th c. AD). When exactly and, most importantly,
WHY did the speakers of French feel the need to use these novel
forms?

What prompts this particular line of inquiry is having read long
ago that the evolution of French phonology had necessitated
compensatory changes in other areas of spoken usage. The example
given at the time to illustrate this process was the inversion in
the order of use frequency of the synonyms "las" and "fatigue" (the
latter becoming the more frequently used over time), because the
growing phonetic similarity between "las" and the adverb of place
"la" had become a source of problematic ambiguities (e.g. The
sentence "Il est las" (He is tired) began to sound too much like
"Il est la" (He is here/there)).

I wonder if the origins of the partitive and the negative particles
like "pas" can be traced to similar compensations of phonetic
developments in the evolution of French.

I'm looking for some references on this subject, from the point of
view of the historical evolution of linguistic structures.

Needless to say, I'm not a linguist by any stretch (though I took
some linguistics in college and loved it). Therefore, I'd prefer
a reference aimed at the general public, but absent that, I'm ready
to plunge into the more technical stuff.

TIA!

kj

--
NOTE: In my address everything before the first period is backwards;
and the last period, and everything after it, should be discarded.
.

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