Van der Houwen, F. (2007) A Corpus-Based Study of Relative Pronouns in Spanish Essays between the 17th and 19th centuries. Selected proceedings of the 6th conference of the High Desert Linguistics Society: 221-233. (original) (raw)

A Corpus-Based Study of Relative Pronouns in Spanish Essays between the 17th and 19th centuries

This paper is a quantitative and qualitative study of the relative pronouns que (that), el cual (which), quien (who), and el que (the one that) in a corpus of ± 35,000 words of Spanish essays written between the 17 th and 19 th century. The study analyzes these relatives in four linguistic environments: 1) restrictive vs. nonrestrictive relative clauses, 2) animacy of the antecedent, 3) presence vs. absence of a preposition, and 4) grammatical function of the relative pronoun in its clause. The data support Arias Alvarez' (1994) claim that modern Spanish, unlike 16 th century Spanish, permits quien with an overt antecedent in contexts without prepositions. The study shows that quien has changed with regard to the animacy; whereas quien in the 16 th century is found with inanimate antecedents, this does not seem to occur in modern Spanish. Furthermore, there has been a change in frequency of especially que and quien [+animate] regarding the grammatical function each fulfills in its clause. Arias Alvarez' claim that que has remained stable is therefore not supported.

On the trail of grammaticalization in progress: hasel quebecome a compound relative pronoun in the history of Spanish prepositional relative clauses?

Probus, 2018

In this paper, we examine the grammatical status ofel quein Spanish prepositional relative clauses (el lugaren el quevivo) [the place where I live] from a variationist perspective of the theory of grammaticalization. At least from the nineteenth century onwards, several authors have defended the nature ofel queas a compound relative pronoun, even if these forms continue alternating today with others without the article [el lugaren quevivo], in contrast toel cual, a fully grammaticalized relative since the late fifteenth century.Based on a 3,200,000 word corpus of immediacy text (mainly private letters), we test the hypothesis ofel quebeing a case of grammaticalization in progress from a variationist point of view, examining in depth what happens inside the grammar and the socio-stylistic matrix in different periods of history, from 1700 to 1960. The idea underlying this approach is that the structure of changes as well as the grammaticalization in progress can be inferred from the c...

Traces of the past in a lenghty change still in progress: Persistence and generalization in prepositional relative clauses in Peninsular Spanish

The Routledge Handbook of Variationist Approaches to Spanish, 2021

The comparative sociolinguistic analysis adopted in this study enables us to compare the present stage of language with previous periods in history regarding a variation still active in the syntax of prepositional relative clauses in Spanish (el pueblo en (el) que nací ‘the town in which I was born’). The analysis of seven oral corpora of Peninsular Spanish shows that the art + que variant is by far the most frequent in such sentences, although the alternative form (Ø + que), much more common in the past, is still widely used. The comparative analysis with past times reveals that this change has been constrained by a complex mixture of linguistic and extralinguistic factor groups. Some show strong persistence over time, but others offer some signs of generalization and even change in the direction of the effect, both in the inner grammar and on the sociolectal axis.

Cortadora relative clauses: A comparative analysis between Spanish, Portuguese and French

Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics

This paper focuses on cortadora relative clausesor non-pronominal relative clauses -, a special type of relativization registered in Rio de la Plata Spanish varieties in which the preposition is deleted or 'chopped' ('cortada'). This phenomenon is an example of preposition optionality and, within the framework of generative grammar, it has been previously studied in Portuguese (both Brazilian and European) and in French. The main goal of this paper is to show that this syntactic-discursive phenomenon is comparable in all these three closely related Romance languages, following the works of Kato and Nunes relative clauses, only inherent prepositions (a, de, con, en, and por) can be deleted, and the relativized element occupies the topic position within a Topic Phrase. The data used for Spanish examples come from the Corpus oral de la lengua española en Montreal (COLEM).

Queísmo Variation | 2009 Hispanic Linguistics Symposium Conference Paper

Queísmo, the omission of de from constructions that introduce sentential complements with que, has been extensively studied in present-day varieties of Spanish. This study investigates the occurrence of queísmo in 17th and 15th century texts-Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's novels El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha and La Gitanilla, and Fernando de Roja's La Celestina. Multivariate analysis of verbal, adjectival and nominal constructions showing variable participation in queísmo, reveals that adjacency and grammatical person are the significant factors contributing to the observed variability. Specifically, it was found that adjacent constructions without intervening material e.g. V + (de) + que, and first and second person constructions favor queísmo. We present evidence from contemporary studies of dequeísmo, the grammatical mirror of queísmo, which explain the variable appearance of de in terms of its function as an evidential marker. The diachronic data from this study reveal long-standing variability and support a functional explanation of de as an evidential marker.

The Syntax of Relative Clauses in European Portuguese. Extending the Determiner Hypothesis of Relativizers to Relative que

Journal of Portuguese Linguistics

This paper discusses the syntax of relative clauses in European Portuguese (EP) by focussing on the status of the relativizer que in restrictive and appositive relative clauses. We propose a unified account of que in terms of a D-element and discuss the syntactic implications of this assumption for an adequate analysis of relative clauses in EP. We assume that relative que has properties of demonstrative and interrogative determiners. In restrictive object and subject relative clauses, que occurs as a transitive determiner [ DP que [ NP e]], which selects for a nominal complement, whereas in prepositional and appositive relative clauses, [ DP que] is an intransitive determiner parallel to an e-type pronoun. We discuss the position of restrictive relative clauses in the DP containing the modified noun, and propose that they are merged pre-nominally, in the same fashion as demonstratives.

Which que is which?: A squib on reduplicative que complementizers in Iberian Spanish embedded clauses

Indiana University Linguistics Club Working Papers

This paper aims to analyze optional secondary complementizers in Spanish embedded clauses. These optional complementizers, dubbed recomplementation , are common in informal registers, are restricted to specific types of predicates (Rathmann, 2012) and are not unique to Spanish but also other Iberian languages . Using data from clitic positions and the behavior of topics, foci and other dislocates in Iberian languages, this analysis posits that the left-periphery of embedded clauses in Spanish contain three possible projections (ForceP >TopicP>FinitenessP) each containing a head with their own instantiation of que 'that'. It will be shown that what is most commonly labeled recomplementation only refers to the optional reduplicated complementizer que in the head of TopicP while que a subordinating complementizer appears in the head of ForceP and, finally, que in the head of FinP has an exhortative or polarity function. The points addressed here are new contributions to the study of recomplementation. Finally, this paper discusses the implications for a more economical leftperiphery in both embedded and matrix clauses and calls for more experimental research to be done as such phenomena are below the level of speaker consciousness and prescriptively avoided.