The history of Spanish modal constructions has been widely discussed in the literature, focusing primarily on the semantic differences between the available alternatives. This paper offers an innovative analysis of the evolution of these constructions by adopting a diachronic variationist approach that takes into account a wider range of semantic, syntactic, morphological and stylistic factors that influence the choice between the competing modal periphrases during two key stages in the evolution of Spanish. The data is drawn from a diachronic corpus of personal correspondence, reflecting actual language usage during the respective periods as closely as possible. Particular attention is paid to the question of whether the influence of different factor groups remains stable over time or not, and it is shown that the most frequent form-context pairings are particularly resistant to innovation, which can be explained by cognitive entrenchment of the respective variant in specific linguistic environments.

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A synchronic survey of prepositional infinitive clauses reveals that the position of the subject depends heavily on the preposition heading the infinitival clause; however, equivalent prepositions in Spanish and Portuguese do not necessarily trigger a preference for the same word order. The differences can best be explained if the overt subject infinitive is analysed not as a single construction, but as a cover term for a series of related but independent constructions that are, diachronically, subject to different semantic, pragmatic and analogical pressures. Subsequent entrenchment of the most frequent patterns can eventually cause the subject to appear either in pre- or post-infinitival position by default. This process affects Spanish more than Portuguese, where the availability of an ‘inflected infinitive’ brings the syntax of infinitival clauses more into line with that of finite ones.

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