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The Development of the Indefinite Article in Medieval

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The Development of the Indefinite Article in Medieval 1 The Development of the Indefinite Article in Medieval and Golden-Age Spanish Julia Pozas Loyo Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen Mary, University of London January, 2010 2 Abstract Unitary cardinals are a common source for indefinite markers. This thesis is a quantitative diachronic study of the development of Spanish un, from its cardinal value to its use as an indefinite article. Based on a corpus comprising texts from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century, I present an analysis and chronology of the main changes undergone by un throughout this period, notably its increasing use as a marker of non-specific indefinites, and its further incorporation in generic noun phrases and predicates. Additionally, I demonstrate that the development of the plural indefinite deter- miner unos is, with a few restrictions, parallel to that of its singular counterpart, not only in its increasing frequency, but also in its introduction into new contexts. Furthermore, I present a comparison between un and alg´un in terms of specificity and conclude that although there are evident links between them, both being indefinite determiners derived from Latin unus¯ , they have always had different functional domains. Finally, I show that one of the consequences of the incorporation of un into generic contexts is the rise of the so-called impersonal uno, and explain that this event is crucial to explain the disappearance of another generic pronoun, omne, whose last examples are found in the sixteenth century, that is, precisely the moment where the first instances of impersonal uno occur. 3 To Fer 4 Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Ralph Penny, for his dedication and his constant support. His knowledge of Romance languages, his thought-provoking questions, and his attention to detail have been a constant source of inspiration and I am very grateful for having had the privilege of working with him. I am also deeply thankful to Chris Pountain for all he has taught me about historical linguistics, and for always taking time out of his busy schedule to help me. Further, I wish to thank Roger Wright and Kim Schulte for the corrections and suggestions they gave me on the final manuscript of this thesis. The funding for my PhD was provided by the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnolog´ıaand the Secretar´ıade Educaci´onP´ublica,whose support I gratefully acknowledge. During my years at Queen Mary, I benefited from a diverse academic com- munity that included both the Linguistics and the Hispanic Studies departments. I am very grateful to Alan Deyermond, David Adger, Jenny Cheshire, Patricia D'Allemand, Paul Elbourne, Omar Garc´ıa,Daniel Harbour, Rosa Vidal, and Jane Whetnall for their helpful comments at the Linguistics Postgraduate Discussion Group, the Hispanic Studies Departmental Research Seminar and the Medieval Hispanic Research Seminar. Outside Queen Mary, many people have, in one way or another, helped me during my PhD. Some have given me detailed feedback on my results, some have 5 patiently answered my questions about semantics, Latin, and much more. My warmest thanks to Ruth Kempson, Brenda Laca, Cristina Matute, Enrique Pato, and Bulmaro Reyes Coria. A special mention goes to Concepci´on Company who, ever since I was an undergraduate student in Mexico, has continued to support me in every way. Living in London has been the most wonderful experience, partly because it is an amazing city, but mostly because of the people with whom I had the luck to share it. To my fellow students and friends, Angela´ Dorado, Anja Kleeman, Chiara Carlo, Jen von Massow, Ollie Brownlow, Pilar C´aceres,Ruth Kircher, and Simone Bacchini, thanks for making Queen Mary such a fun place to work. Thanks also to Cristina Paoli, Emma Coates, Miriam Bouzouita, Nancy Kula, Lutz Marten, and all my friends from the Centre for Cold Matter at Imperial College. A million thanks to Nacho Salda~naand Noelia Diaz-Vicedo for their friendship and for all they have done to help me in these last months, while I was trying to finish a degree in England from across the channel. Talking about France, I cannot leave out the Guerriens, all eight of them, whose generosity and company have been essential in making our move to Paris a lot easier. Thanks also to my dear friend Ramsay for cheering me up during the hardest part of writing (yes, I finally finished this time!). Now, to my family. Thanks to Andrea and Julio for having found a way to be present in my life, even if at times we did not see each other for more than a year. Thanks as well for providing the last bit of motivation I needed to finish this up and fly back home to meet my beautiful niece In´es.To my parents, Aurora and Ricardo, thank you for your love, trust and encouragement, and for the immense support you have given me in every aspect of my life. And lastly, thank you Fer. I cannot begin to say how grateful I am for having you around, but am sure you already know that. This thesis is dedicated to you. 6 Contents 1 Introduction 15 1.1 Objective............................... 15 1.2 The Corpus.............................. 17 1.3 Structure of the Dissertation..................... 19 2 Grammaticalization 23 2.1 Antecedents.............................. 24 2.2 Characteristics and Implications................... 27 2.3 Mechanisms.............................. 32 2.3.1 Analogy and Reanalysis................... 32 2.3.2 Metaphor and Metonymy.................. 39 2.3.3 Other Mechanisms...................... 41 2.4 Parameters.............................. 42 2.5 Routinization and Frequency..................... 47 2.6 Unidirectionality........................... 50 2.7 Summary............................... 55 3 (In)definiteness and Specificity 58 3.1 Definiteness.............................. 59 3.1.1 Uniqueness.......................... 59 3.1.2 Familiarity........................... 61 CONTENTS 7 3.1.3 Hawkins's Location Theory................. 62 3.1.4 Extended Novelty-Familiarity-Condition.......... 67 3.2 Definiteness: The Typological Perspective............. 68 3.2.1 Markers of Definiteness.................... 68 3.2.2 Markers of Indefiniteness................... 70 3.3 Specificity............................... 73 3.4 The Role of Specificity in the Rise of the Indefinite Article.... 79 3.4.1 Giv´on'sReferentiality Scale................. 79 3.4.2 Macedonian.......................... 86 3.4.3 Italian............................. 88 3.4.4 English............................. 89 3.5 Summary............................... 90 4 The Article in the Spanish Grammatical Tradition 93 4.1 From the early grammars to the RAE grammar of 1931...... 94 4.1.1 Nebrija............................. 95 4.1.2 Correas............................ 95 4.1.3 San Pedro........................... 97 4.1.4 RAE (1771, 1854)....................... 98 4.1.5 Bello.............................. 99 4.1.6 Lenz and Gili y Gaya..................... 101 4.1.7 RAE (1931).......................... 102 4.2 On the grammatical status of un .................. 102 4.2.1 Alonso............................. 102 4.2.2 Seco, and Fern´andezRam´ırez................ 107 4.2.3 Alarcos............................ 109 4.2.4 Alcina & Blecua, and Mart´ınez............... 112 4.2.5 Lapesa............................. 115 CONTENTS 8 4.3 Summary............................... 119 5 Latin Antecedents and Romance Panorama 121 5.1 unus¯ .................................. 122 5.1.1 unus¯ in Latin......................... 122 5.1.2 unus¯ in Romance....................... 124 5.1.3 Plural unus¯ in Romance................... 130 5.2 Indefinite Pronouns.......................... 133 5.2.1 Latin Indefinites....................... 133 5.2.2 Romance Indefinites..................... 135 5.3 Distributives in Latin and Romance................. 137 5.4 Generic Pronouns........................... 139 5.4.1 homo ............................. 140 5.4.2 unus¯ .............................. 144 5.5 Summary............................... 145 6 The Conservative Uses of Un 146 6.1 Cardinal un .............................. 149 6.2 Un in Opposition to otro ....................... 154 6.2.1 Un N....otro N ........................ 154 6.2.2 El un N ............................ 155 6.3 Cada un N .............................. 162 6.4 Summary............................... 166 7 The Distribution of un(os): Syntactic Restrictions 168 7.1 Frequency of Use of the Indefinite Article.............. 169 7.2 The Form unos ............................ 174 7.3 Type of Noun............................. 183 7.3.1 BPs in Old Spanish...................... 183 CONTENTS 9 7.3.2 The Mass/Count Distinction................. 186 7.3.3 The Abstract/Concrete Distinction............. 194 7.3.4 Proper Names and Unique Reference Nouns........ 196 7.4 Syntactic Function and Word Order................. 202 7.4.1 Syntactic Function...................... 203 7.4.2 Word Order.......................... 211 7.5 The Indefinite Article in Predicates................. 214 7.6 Summary............................... 221 8 The Interpretation of un(os): Specificity and Genericity 224 8.1 Marks and Triggers of Specificity in Spanish............ 225 8.1.1 The Verb........................... 225 8.1.2 Opaque Contexts....................... 229 8.1.3 Descriptive Content of the NP................ 230 8.1.4 Cierto ............................. 232 8.1.5 Prenominal Adjectives.................... 236 8.1.6 Relative Clauses....................... 239 8.1.7 Differential Object Marking................
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