Oraciones completivas de sustantivo en español y portugués: ¿infinitivo u oración finita?

2017

BJL

Self Cite

This paper addresses the early variation in what has been called the [prep_que] variable in Spanish nominal complement clauses, i.e. the alternation between de que and que in examples such as enseñal (de) quelo estimo, Zulema, este anillo ofrezco (CORDE) ‘as a sign that I appreciate You, Zulema, I offer this ring’. By applying several subsequent quantitative analyses on corpus instances of the sequences N de que and N que, the locus of variation is restricted to such an extent that the variation can largely be accounted for. A collostructional analysis identifies 31 central nouns of the N de que complement clause construction. A diachronic cluster analysis delimits the temporal dimension of the variation to the 16th and 17th centuries. A distinctive collexeme analysis identifies nine nouns which are used in both constructional formats to a comparable degree: causa ‘cause’, duda ‘doubt’, esperanza ‘hope’, fe ‘faith’, opinión ‘opinion’, recelo ‘fear’, señal ‘sign(al)’, sospecha ‘suspicion’, and temor ‘fear’. Detailed contextual analysis of the use of these nine nouns by means of a mixed-effects logistic regression reveals that the use of the nouns with a determiner is correlated with the de que variant, and the use of the nouns as part of complex predicates, as in tener sospecha ‘have suspicion’, is associated with the que variant of the complement clause.

Accounting for syntactic variation in diachrony

2017

BJL

Self Cite

The development of the conditional caso construction in Spanish

Constructional Approaches to Language

2018

This paper analyzes the development of the abstract noun caso ‘case’ into a conditional marker in Spanish, as in (en) (el) caso (de) que llueva, no saldremos ‘(in) (the) case (of) that it rains, we’ll stay in.’ Building on diachronic corpus data I show that although the development of the conditional sense of caso in what I call the conditional caso construction can, in principle, be considered a textbook example of grammaticalization, in order to account for the formal variation which characterizes the construction as a whole, a construction grammar account might be preferable. Following Traugott & Trousdale (2013) I suggest that the development of the conditional caso construction can be seen as a case of constructionalization and subsequent constructional changes. From the perspective of Spanish caso the two approaches can be seen as complementary, rather than incommensurate, since they both highlight important aspects of the development of a new grammatical construction.

Inflecting an infinitive or a finite verb? The case of Portuguese nominal complement clauses

2017

Folia Linguistica