Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-gtxcr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T05:09:03.870Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

New insights into an old form: A variationist analysis of the pleonastic possessive in Guatemalan Spanish

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 July 2017

Martin Elsig
Martin Elsig*
Affiliation:
Goethe-University Frankfurt, Institut für Romanische Sprachen und Literaturen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Romance languages differ as regards the adjectival or article-like status of prenominal possessives. While in Italian, Portuguese, Catalan, and Old Spanish, they pattern like adjectives and co-occur with articles, and in French and Modern Spanish, they compete with the latter for the same structural position. The different distribution of possessives is claimed to reflect distinct stages on a grammaticalization cline (Alexiadou, 2004). This paper focuses on a variety of Central American Spanish where the Old Spanish co-occurrence of an (indefinite) article and a possessive in the prenominal domain has been maintained (as in una mi amiga ‘a my friend’). Based on a variationist study of interview data extracted from the Project for the Sociolinguistic Study of Spanish for Spain and America (PRESEEA) Guatemala corpus, I will argue that it is indeed the indefinite article that shows signs of retarded grammaticalization. Yet, rather than extending to the variety as a whole, this retardation is context-specific.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , July 2017 , pp. 157 - 186
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alexiadou, Artemis. (2004). On the development of possessive determiners: Consequences for DP structure. In Fuß, E. & Trips, C. (eds.), Diachronic clues to synchronic grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 31–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alexiadou, Artemis, Haegeman, Liliane, & Stavrou, Marita. (2007). Noun phrase in the Generative perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alfonso X. (1955). Primera crónica general de España, edited by Pidal, Ramón Menéndez. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
Alonso-Ovalle, Luis, & Menéndez-Benito, Paula. (2010). Modal indefinites. Natural Language Semantics 18(1):1–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anónimo. (1984). Calila e Dimna, edición de Juan Manuel Cacho Blecua y María Jesús Lacarra . Madrid: Castalia.Google Scholar
Anonymous. (1944–1945). Cantar de mio Cid. Texto, gramática y vocabulario. Vol. 3. Text. Paleographic edition by Pidal, Ramón Menéndez. Madrid: Espasa Calpe.Google Scholar
Antrim, Nancy Mae. (2001). Dialectal variation in Italian prenominal possessives. In Smith, K. A. & Nordquist, D. (eds.), Proceedings of the Third Annual High Desert Linguistics Society Conference, April 7–9, 2000 University of New Mexico. Vol. 3. Albuquerque: High Desert Linguistics Society. 75–84.Google Scholar
Benveniste, Émile. (1966). La naturaleza de los pronombres. In Benveniste, É. (ed.), Problemas de lingüística general. Vol. 1. México: Siglo XXI. 172–178.Google Scholar
Buenrostro, Cristina. (1998). Interferencias en el español de los chujes. In Pérez, J. Calvo & Jiménez, D. Jorques (eds.), Estudios de lengua y cultura amerindias II: Lenguas, literaturas y medios. Valencia: Universitat de Valencia. 145–158.Google Scholar
Cardinaletti, Anna. (1998). On the deficient/strong opposition in possessive systems. In Alexiadou, A. & Wilder, C. (eds.), Possessors, predicates, and movement in the determiner phrase. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 17–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. (2001). Derivation by phase. In Hale, K. L. & Kenstowicz, M. J. (eds.), Ken Hale: A life in language. Cambridge: MIT Press. 1–52.Google Scholar
Cifuentes Honrubia, José Luis. (2015). Construcciones posesivas en español. Leiden: Brill Rodopi.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Company Company, Concepción. (1995). Cantidad vs. cualidad en el contacto de lenguas. Una incursión metodológica en los posesivos ‘redundantes’ del español americano. Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 43(2):305–339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Company Company, Concepción. (2005). Frecuencia de uso y contacto lingüístico en sintaxis. Artículo indefinido+posesivo en el español americano. Spanish in Context 2(2):131–156.Google Scholar
Company Company, Concepción. (2009). Artículo+posesivo+sustantivo y estructuras afines. In Company Company, C. (ed.), Sintaxis histórica de la lengua española. Segunda parte: La frase nominal. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica y Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. 759–880.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. (1989). Language universals and linguistic typology: Syntax and morphology. 2nd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Coseriu, Eugenio. (1955/1973). Determinación y entorno: Dos problemas de una lingüística del hablar. In Coseriu, E. (ed.), Teoría del lenguaje y lingüística general. Madrid: Gredos. 282–323.Google Scholar
Costa Olid, Alberto. (1981). El posesivo en español. Sevilla: Publicaciones de la Universidad de Sevilla.Google Scholar
Díaz del Castillo, Bernal (1989). Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, edited by de Santamaría, Carmelo Sáenz, Madrid: Alianza.Google Scholar
Elsig, Martin. (2015). The (non-)grammaticalization of possession in Guatemalan Spanish. In Aboh, E. O., Schaeffer, J. C., & Sleeman, P. (eds.), Romance languages and linguistic theory 2013: Selected papers from “Going Romance” Amsterdam 2013. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 239–260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Enrique-Arias, Andrés. (2010). On language contact as an inhibitor of language change: The Spanish of Catalan bilinguals in Majorca. In Breitbarth, A., Lucas, C., Watts, S., & Willis, D. (eds.), Continuity and change in grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 97–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernández-Ordóñez, Inés. (2011). La lengua de Castilla y la formación del español. Madrid: Real Academia Española.Google Scholar
Garachana Camarero, Mar. (2009). Creación y generalización del artículo indefinido. In Company Company, C. (ed.), Sintaxis histórica de la lengua española: Segunda parte: La frase nominal. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica y Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. 387–464.Google Scholar
Gili Gaya, Samuel. (1943/1961). Curso superior de sintaxis española. Barcelona: Bibliograf.Google Scholar
Giorgi, Alessandra, & Longobardi, Giuseppe. (1991). The syntax of noun phrase. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Giusti, Giuliana. (2008). Agreement and concord in nominal expressions. In de Cat, C. und Demuth, K. (eds.), The Bantu–Romance connection: A comparative investigation of verbal agreement, DPs, and information structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 201–237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Givón, Talmy. (1978). Definiteness and referentiality. In Greenberg, J. H., Ferguson, C. A., & Moravcsik, E. (eds.), Universals of human language. Vol. 4. Syntax. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 291–330.Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. (1981). On the development of the numeral ‘one’ as an indefinite marker. Folia Linguistica Historica 15(2.1):35–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gómez Seibane, Sara. (2010). De nuevo sobre artículo+posesivo+sustantivo: Textos vizcaínos de los siglos XV–XVIII. Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 58(1):241–256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Granda, Germán. (2002). Retenciones morfosintácticas en el español del noroeste argentino. Modalidades y contexto casual. In Platero, C. Saralegui & Velarde, M. Casado (eds.), Pulchre, bene, recte: Estudios en homenaje al profesor Fernando González Ollé. Pamplona: Ediciones Universidad de Navarra (EUNSA). 357–386.Google Scholar
Harrell, Frank E. Jr. (2015). Regression modeling strategies: With applications to linear models, logistic and ordinal regression, and survival analysis. 2nd ed. New York: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. (1999). Explaining article-possessor complementarity: Economic motivation in noun phrase syntax. Language 75(2):227–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heine, Bernd. (1993). Auxiliaries: Cognitive forces and grammaticalization. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heine, Bernd. (1997). Cognitive foundations of grammar. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heine, Bernd, & Reh, Mechthild. (1984). Grammaticalization and reanalysis in African languages. Hamburg: Buske.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. (1991). On some principles of grammaticization. In Traugott, E. C. & Heine, B. (eds.), Approaches to grammaticalization. Vol. 1. Focus on theoretical and methodological issues. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 17–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huerta Flores, Norohella. (2009). Los posesivos. In Company Company, C. (ed.), Sintaxis histórica de la lengua española: Segunda parte: La frase nominal. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica y Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. 609–758.Google Scholar
Ihsane, Tabea. (2000). Three types of possessive modifiers. Generative Grammar in Geneva 1:21–54.Google Scholar
Kany, Charles. (1963). American-Spanish syntax. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Keniston, Hayward. (1937). The syntax of Castilian prose: The sixteenth century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kupisch, Tanja, & Rinke, Esther. (2011). The diachronic development of article-possessor complementarity in the history of Italian and Portuguese. In Siemund, P. (ed.), Linguistic universals and language variation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 92–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. (1972). Language in the inner city: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Lapesa, Rafael. (1942/1981). Historia de la lengua española. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
Lapesa, Rafael. (1973/1977). Un, una como artículo indefinido en español. Boletín de la Academia Nacional de Letras 5:5–33.Google Scholar
Leonetti Jungl, Manuel. (1988). Notas sobre sujetos genéricos indefinidos en español antiguo. In Ariza, M., Salvador, A., & Viudas, A. (eds.), Actas del I Congreso Internacional de Historia de la Lengua Española, Cáceres, 30 de marzo–4 de abril de 1987. Vol. 1. Madrid: Arco Libros. 495–500.Google Scholar
Lipski, John M. (1994). Latin American Spanish. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Lyons, Christopher. (1985). A possessive parameter. Sheffield Working Papers in Language and Linguistics 2:98–104.Google Scholar
Lyons, Christopher. (1986). The syntax of English genitive constructions. Journal of Linguistics 22(1):123–143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lyons, Christopher. (1999). Definiteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, Laura. (1978). Mayan influence in Guatemalan Spanish: A research outline and test case. In England, N. C. (ed.), Papers in Mayan linguistics. Columbia: University of Missouri. 106–126.Google Scholar
Martin, Laura. (1985). Una mi tacita de café: The indefinite article in Guatemalan Spanish. Hispania 68(2):383–387.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menéndez Pidal, Ramón. (1904/1940). Manual de gramática histórica española. Madrid: Espasa Calpe.Google Scholar
Moreno Fernández, Francisco. (2005). Corpus para el estudio del español en su variación geográfica y social: El corpus ‘PRESEEA’. Oralia 8:123–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moreno Fernández, Francisco. (2006). El español en su variación geográfica y social: Informe sobre el corpus “PRESEEA”. In Mancera, A. M. Cestero, Martos, I. Molina, & García, F. Paredes (eds.), Estudios sociolingüísticos del español de España y América. Madrid: Arco Libros. 15–31.Google Scholar
Napoli, Maria. (2013). When the indefinite article implies uniqueness: A case study from Old Italian. Folia Linguistica 47(1):183–236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nieuwenhuijsen, Dorien. (2007). Un amigo suyo se enfrenta con un su amigo: El uso de dos construcciones posesivas en dos periódicos de Guatemala y México. Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 55(2):321–350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palacios Alcaine, Azucena. (2004). Artículo indefinido+posesivo+nombre con valor discursivo en Centroamérica. Signo y Seña 13:185–214.Google Scholar
Pato Maldonado, Enrique. (2002). La estructura posesiva una mi amiga en el español de Guatemala. In Palacios, A. & García, A. I. (eds.), El indigenismo americano III: Actas de las Terceras Jornadas sobre Indigenismo Americano, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid 6, 7, 8 y 9 de marzo 2001. Valencia: Universitat de Valencia. 121–154.Google Scholar
Penny, Ralph. (2002). A history of the Spanish language. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pérez Saldanya, Manuel. (2009). “Si per la tua gràcia podia eu conservar ma vida” “If by your grace I could preserve my life”: Prenominal possessive constructions in Old Catalan. In Cufí, J. Rafel (ed.), Diachronic linguistics. Girona: Documenta Universitaria. 275–298.Google Scholar
van Peteghem, Marleen. (2012). Possessives and grammaticalization in Romance. Folia Linguistica 46(2):605–634.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poplack, Shana. (2011). Grammaticalization and linguistic variation. In Heine, B. & Narrog, H. (eds.), Handbook of grammaticalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 209–224.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana, & Torres Cacoullos, Rena. (2015). Linguistic emergence on the ground: A variationist paradigm. In MacWhinney, B. & O'Grady, W. (eds.), The handbook of language emergence. Malden: Blackwell. 267–291.Google Scholar
Pozas Loyo, Julia. (2012). El desarrollo del artículo indefinido en español medieval y clásico. Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 60(2):447–478.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
PRESEEA. (2014–2017). Corpus del Proyecto para el estudio sociolingüístico del español de España y de América. Alcalá de Henares: Universidad de Alcalá. Available at: http://preseea.linguas.net. Accessed May 30, 2016.Google Scholar
Ramsey, Marathon Montrose. (1894). A textbook of Modern Spanish. New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston.Google Scholar
Real Academia Española. (1973). Esbozo de una nueva gramática de la lengua española. Madrid: Espasa Calpe.Google Scholar
Rinke, Esther, & Elsig, Martin. (2010). Quantitative evidence and diachronic syntax. Lingua 120:2557–2568.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ritter, Elizabeth. (1995). On the syntactic category of pronouns and agreement. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 13:405–443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Ian G., & Roussou, Anna. (2003). Syntactic change: A minimalist approach to grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosemeyer, Malte, & Enrique-Arias, Andrés. (2016). A match made in heaven: Using parallel corpora and multinomial logistic regression to analyze the expression of possession in Old Spanish. Language Variation and Change 28:307–334.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sandoval, Lisandro. (1941). Semántica guatemalense o diccionario de guatemaltequismos: Tomo I. Guatemala: Tipografía Nacional.Google Scholar
Sankoff, David. (1988). Variable rules. In Ammon, U., Dittmar, N., & Mattheier, K. J. (eds.), Sociolinguistics: An international handbook of the science of language and society. Vol. 2. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 984–997.Google Scholar
Sankoff, David, Tagliamonte, Sali A., & Smith, Eric. (2005). Goldvarb X: A variable rule application for Macintosh and Windows. Toronto: Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto.Google Scholar
Sauer, Hans. (2004). Lexicalization and demotivation. In Booij, G., Lehmann, C., Mugdan, J., & Skopeteas, S. (eds.), Morphology: An international handbook on inflection and word-formation. Vol. 2. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 1625–1636.Google Scholar
Schröder, Christoph. (2006). Articles and article systems in some areas of Europe. In Bernini, G. & Schwartz, M. L. (eds.), Pragmatic organization of discourse in the languages of Europe. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 545–611.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seiler, Hansjakob. (1981). Possession as an operational dimension of language. Unpublished manuscript, Arbeiten des Kölner Universalien-Projekts (akup) 42, Universalienprojekt, Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, Universität zu Köln.Google Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, Carmen. (1998). On borrowing as a mechanism of syntactic change. In Schwegler, A., Tranel, B., & Uribe-Etxebarria, M. (eds.), Romance linguistics: Theoretical perspectives: Selected papers from the 27th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL XXVII), Irvine, 20–22 February, 1997. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 225–246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verdugo de Lima, Lucía, Chacón, Palma, María, Ana, de Rivera, Fong, Mayra, , & Acevedo-Halvick, Ana. (2007). PRESEEA Guatemala—Proyecto para el estudio sociolingüístico del español de las ciudades de Guatemala: Proyecto PRESEEA-Guatemala. Guatemala City: Intituto de Lingüística y Educación, Universidad Rafael Landívar.Google Scholar
Wood, Johanna. (2003). Definiteness and number: Determiner phrase and number phrase in the history of English . Ph.D. dissertation, Arizona State University.Google Scholar
Zribi-Hertz, Anne. (1999). Le système des possessifs en français standard moderne. Langue Française 122:7–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar