Towards a constructionist account of Old Catalan la un a l'altre

Summary: The aim of this paper is to trace, in accordance with the assumptions of Construction Grammar, how Latin reiterated reciprocal clusters came to be subsumed under la un a l’altre in Old Catalan texts (13th to 14th century). The data for conducting the analysis were selected from Corpus Informatitzat del Català Antic, comprising 240 bipartite reciprocal constructions. The shift can be traced back to two diachronic mechanisms: the loss of the relics of binary quantification and the gradual advent of articles. By means of the formal apparatus of Construction Grammar, Old Catalan is demonstrated to have had three distinct, albeit lexically related, reciprocal form-meaning pairs. They are different in that in some of them un and altre have the status of anaphorically bound elements and represent two distinct c-structure nodes, whereas in others un and altre form a single constituent. Finally, rather than conveying reciprocity proper, in sentences where it appears alongside se, la un a l’altre gains a more subjective status. All these facts lend support to the hypothesis of a gradual entrenchment and an increasingly schematic character of the medieval reciprocal sequence. [Keywords: reciprocal constructions, continuous vs. split bipartite sequence, c-structure, form-meaning pairing, binding, subjectification

An empirical study

UIDB/03213/2020 UIDP/03213/2020The central topic of the paper is clitic-verb non-adjacency (interpolation) in Classical and early Modern European Portuguese (EP). Throughout that period, the negative marker não was the only expression likely to disrupt the continuity of clitic-verb sequences. The aims of the study are twofold. First, previous assumptions on the syntax of this pattern are matched against data retrieved from the texts stored in the Biblioteca Nacional Digital. The present analysis demonstrates, first, that clitic-verb adjacency and non-adjacency had divergent distributions depending on whether they occurred in obligatory proclisis contexts or in X-V-cl/X-cl-V variation ones. Whereas interpolation was the default choice in the former, clitic-verb adjacency was prevailing in the latter in the period under discussion. The second aim is to account for the overrepresentation, underpinned by corpus data, of 3rd person accusative pronouns in clauses with interpolation. In previous works, the origin of clitic-verb non-adjacency was couched either in semantic terms (the contribution of não to the meaning of the VP) or in terms of clitic movement and increasing constraints on the status of Neg (Neg and clitic are both assumed to be affixes). In the present paper, interpolation is shown to have had an interface nature, with phonological factors playing a central role. The discontinuity of clitic-Verb sequences is thought to have helped speakers to get rid of the affixal attachment of the o, a, os, as series to the preceding non-verbal sound material (nasal diphthongs in não, quem, ninguém, etc, coercing preverbal pronouns into taking a nasal onset quem no, não no, etc.). As a consequence, in present day standard EP, clitic-specific allomorphy has become earmarked for enclisis.publishersversionpublishe

Complicados senderos hacia la indefinitud: evidencia a partir de un libro de derecho consuetudinario de occitano antiguo

The central problem of this paper is the evolution of common nouns assumed to have turned into indefinite pronouns. The linguistic data have been retrieved from the Costuma d’Agen, a 13th-century Occitan Customary. The choice of this text is warranted by multiple relations obtaining between the architecture of legal codices and the presence of indefinite expressions. In this text, the contexts in which re (< Lat. acc. rem), ‘anything’ or ‘nothing’ occurs have been identified. This word is shown to be pervasive in Negative Concord (NC; under the scope of no(n), the expression of clausal negation), thereby meeting the requirements imposed upon negative polarity items (NPIs). Outside NC, re appears in conditional protases and temporal clauses introduced by ‘before’. Irrespective of the context in which it appears, Old Occitan re turns out to be fairly advanced on the grammaticalization scale: unlike its etymon, it no longer inflects for number, it does not take determiners and fails to function as a subject in the Costuma d’Agen. Comparative evidence from Gascon 13th century texts proves that, although the descendants of rem of that period occur in the same structural environments (all of them are, by then, free-choice items, FCIs), they do not evolve at the same pace as their Occitan cognate. In other words, even in neighboring linguistic zones, these expressions differ with respect to the degree of persistence of syntactic properties inherent to Latin common nouns. Finally, re is matched against other FCIs, such as hom or home ‘anybody’ or ‘nobody’ and autrui ‘someone else’ or ‘someone else’s’. Compared to re, the medieval developments of these items are far more diversified and retain more original features of their etymons. The difference is traced back to the greater conceptual salience of the animate domain.El problema central de este artículo es la evolución de los nombres comunes que se han convertido en pronombres indefinidos. Los datos lingüísticos han sido recuperados del Costuma d’Agen, un libro de derecho consuetudinario occitano del siglo xiii. La elección de este texto está justificada por las múltiples relaciones que existen entre la arquitectura de los códices legales y la presencia de expresiones indefinidas. En este texto se han identificado los contextos en los que aparece re (< lat. acus. rem) con valor de ‘algo’ o ‘nada’. Se muestra que esta palabra es omnipresente en la Concordancia Negativa (NC; bajo el ámbito de no(n), la expresión de la negación clausal), de modo que reúne las exigencias impuestas a los ítems de polaridad negativa (NPIs).  Fuera de NC, re aparece en prótasis condicionales y en cláusulas temporales introducidas por ‘antes’. Independientemente del contexto en que aparece, el antiguo occitano re resulta estar bastante avanzado en la escala de gramaticalización: a diferencia de su étimo, no flexiona para número, no lleva determinantes y no funciona como sujeto en el Costuma d’Agen. La evidencia comparativa con los textos gascones del siglo xiii demuestra que, aunque los descendientes de rem de ese periodo aparecen en los mismos contextos estructurales (todos son, por tanto, ítems de elección libre, FCIs), no evolucionan al mismo ritmo que su cognado occitano. En otras palabras, incluso en zonas lingüísticas vecinas, estas expresiones difieren con respecto al grado de persistencia de las propiedades sintácticas inherentes a los nombres comunes latinos. Finalmente, se compara re con otros FCIs, tales como hom o home ‘alguien’ o ‘nadie’ y autrui ‘otro’ o ‘de otro’. Comparados con re, los desarrollos medievales de estos elementos están mucho más diversificados y retienen más rasgos originales de sus étimos. La diferencia proviene de la mayor prominencia conceptual del dominio animado