This paper analyses the relation between syntactic priming/persistence and individual preferences in the variation between the two forms of the Spanish past subjunctive (-ra vs -se). The analysis finds that the probability of repetition of one of these variants is governed by an interaction… read more
This paper examines a distinctive syntactic feature of (pre)classical Spanish: asyndetic complementation (without complementizer que ‘that’). While many authors regard this construction as a stylistic variant which eventually declined (i.a., Girón 2005), so far no exhaustive morphosyntactic… read more
This paper proposes a quantitative analysis of the opposition between the Old Spanish intransitive constructions aver (‘have’) + participle and ser (‘be’) + participle. It is misleading to characterise this opposition as auxiliary selection in a strict sense because aver and ser are not… read more
It is well known that Spanish futurizing morphology is frequently used not to express futurity, but instead to formulate a hypothesis, i.e. express epistemic modality. Although this is possible with both synthetic or periphrastic future marking, the synthetic future tense is more likely to… read more
Standard theories of focus expressed by cleft structures, for instance (Beaver & Clark 2008; Krifka 2007), assume that the motivation for the use of focus is discourse relevance: focus establishes an answer to the question under discussion (Roberts 2004: 216). This account, however, lacks a theory… read more
Auxiliary verbs are known to grammaticalize from lexical verbs, but how do lexical verbs acquire verbal complements to begin with? This article provides an account of the semantic and pragmatic basis of grammaticalization of the Spanish anterior (‘perfect’) [acabar + de + infinitive] from a… read more
This paper examines how the interplay of frequency and semantics may have influenced the directionality of the change of the compound tense auxiliary system in Spanish, taking the near-synonymous verbs tornar and volver (‘to return’) in the 16th century as examples. There is a significant contrast… read more