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Title:
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Grammaticalization of Spanish 'de': Reanalysis of '(de)queísmo' in Southern Cone dialects
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Author:
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Carlos del Moral
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Email:
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Degree Awarded:
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
, Deparment of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
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Degree Date:
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2004
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Sociolinguistics
Syntax
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Subject Language(s):
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Spanish
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Director(s):
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Andrea Golato
Rajeshwari Pandharipande
Anna Escobar
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Abstract:
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The present study proposes an account for (de)queísmo, i.e. the non-standard insertion and omission of the preposition 'de' in the head position of embedded tensed clauses. The research for this study focuses on quantitative and qualitative analyses of the variation of (de)queísmo from a sociohistorical perspective. This entails an analysis of gathered samples of dequeísmo across time by means of computerized corpora of Medieval,Golden Age, and Contemporary Spanish, and a fine-grained discourse analysis of (de)queísmo constructions in naturally-occurring speech data from three attested (de)queísta varieties of the Southern Cone of Latin America: Chilean, Rioplatense, and Cuyano Spanish.
The study shows that the extension of the use of the preposition 'de' from more concrete senses to a more abstract modal marker in (de)queísta clauses can be construed as characteristic of a grammaticalization porcess known as subjectification, i.e. the process whereby speakers/writers come over time to develop meanings for expressions that encode their perspectives and attitudes (Traugott and Dasher 2002:30). Evidence for this claim is provided by the evolution of (de)queísta clauses, which shows an increasing degree of subjectification, with a concomitant shift from a high to a low degree of the speaker's commitment with respect to the proposition. This claim is supported by the fact that across centuries there is an increase of (de)queísta clauses embedded by verbs of cognitive process; they appear in direct object position, which entails a closer sematinc relationship between the verb and the structure; and this is heightened by a concomitant increase across centuries of (de)queísta clauses with first person subject.
The findings of the study also suggest that dequeísmo and queísmo are variants of the same sociolinguistic variable in Southern Cone Spanish because both variants are regulated by the same linguistic factors, i.e. types of verbs, syntactic structures, grammatical person, and tense in the main clause. Secondly,(de)queísmo seems to constitute a change in progress because it is a stable, long-term variation that has persisted over many centuries. Thirdly, the variation between Southern Cone dialects in the use of (de)queísmo reflects different semantic nuances of 'de,' hence, different grammaticalization stages.
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