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This paper delves into the intriguing phenomenon of mesoclisis in Old Occitan. Mesoclisis, the insertion of an object clitic pronoun within the verbal form rather than before or after it, is explored particularly within the context of future and conditional tenses. While mesoclisis is evidenced in both the future and conditional tenses in Old Catalan and Old Spanish, in Occitan, it is exclusively observed in the future tense. Notably, all clitics may feature in this construction, with a higher prevalence observed in the first person singular, especially with class I verbs. Furthermore, there appears to be a lexicalized association with verbs of speech, likely due to discourse-related factors. This investigation not only sheds light on the differential grammaticalization between the future and conditional tenses but also unveils an intermediate stage in their grammatical evolution, bridging the gap between Catalan and French linguistic contexts.

This paper presents a diachronic analysis of instrumental postpositions in Cahita languages (…Tehueco, Yaqui and Mayo; Uto-Aztecan). Based on historical data from the beginning of the 17th century (Buelna 1890) and hypotheses about the possible bridging contexts (Heine 2002) that may have favored the grammaticalization processes at the origin of the instrumental morphemes, this study proposes that the origin has to be found in the possessive noun phrase, an origin different from those proposed by Dedrick & Casad (1999) and Haugen (2008). This historical reconstruction also brings to light the connections within the domain of postpositions between instrumental and causal meanings, as well as the connections between postpositions and non-subject nominalizers, since the same marker was used to encode these different functions, exhibiting an interesting polysemy. This paper aims to explain this polyfunctionality from a diachronic perspective, trying to clarify the grammaticalization paths that may have originated such syncretism.

This paper aims to comparatively present the means of expressing intensity in Romanian and Spanish from a predominantly synchronic perspective, without neglecting the importance of the diachronic study of language facts and the etymological clarifications, where needed. We have chosen to discuss only one aspect of the complex act of evaluation, more specifically, the means of rendering highest and lowest intensity, because of the complexity of this phenomenon which constantly expands its linguistic encoding forms.

This study describes the grammatical means of expressing conditional modality in Bulgarian and Romanian based on verbal categories with shared meanings and functions. We have in mind isomorphic constructions, basically expressing irrealis modality and named “conditionalis of a Balkan type”, represented by two types of isomorphic constructions containing markers of the future tense and the past imperfect tense: 1) future tense particle + imperfect of the main verb (vellepart. + Vimpf), ex. Bulg. ще четях; 2) clipped imperfective form of the verb “want”/“have” + infinitive of the main verb (velle/habeo impf + Vinf), ex. Bulg. щях да чета. The main problems discussed in the study are modality and temporality in the Balkan conditional; imperfect in the function of conditional; verb forms in the two parts of conditional sentences. The comprehensive analysis of the hypothetical modality in Bulgarian and Romanian makes it possible to reach conclusions on the following issues: 1) Romanian lacks the “Balkan type of conditional” (= futurum praeteriti): the Romanian conditional forms are not of the Romance type and the origin of their marker is not clear. 2) Romanian, however, has a „future in the past“, which is a non-grammaticalized paraphrase consisting of the imperfect of the auxiliary a avea ‘have’ + the subjunctive of the main verb: aveam să cânt; the deictic Romanian future am să cânt corresponds to the Balkan non-grammaticalized future of necessity (futurum necessitatis). 3) The Balkanisms of the verb system are more consistently present in Aromanian, center of the most intensive convergence among the Balkan languages.

In Mexican Spanish, ocupar (‘to occupy’) is often employed as a verb of need and necessity, with a similar use and denotation to those of necesitar (‘to need’). Despite it being widespread, very little has been written about this phenomenon. In this article, I provide a description of this novel meaning. This description is supported by a Twitter-based study on the distribution of the meanings of ocupar around three Mexican cities. The quantitative analysis of the data confirms the extensive use of ocupar as necesitar, although to varying extents; concretely, it was found to be most frequent in Monterrey. In qualitative terms, I demonstrate that ocupar as necesitar is more often used to express need (i.e., with a nominal complement) than modal necessity (i.e., as a semiauxiliary with a sentential complement). Lastly, I propose that the emergence of this meaning represents a case of ongoing grammaticalization, whose origin can be traced back to older meanings via semantic reanalysis

The starting hypothesis of the article is that the discursive operators of Spanish have not been enabled by grammaticalization processes identical to those of other grammatical components (such as verbal or nominal morphemes or prepositions and conjunctions), since there has been no reduction in the functional scope nor a total bleaching, so that its link with the original lexical items has not disappeared. The consequence is that markers are not integrated into paradigms as closed as grammatical paradigms and both their obsolescence and their renewal, therefore, follow similar patterns to what happens in the evolution of the lexicon. This hypothesis is tried to verify in the article by means of the examination of some discursive markers that, having been used diachronically in Spanish, have been abandoned in a relatively short time.

The notion of ‘grammaticalization’ — the embedding of once non- (or less-) grammatical phenomena into the grammar of a language — has enjoyed broad acceptance over the past 30 years as a new paradigm for describing and accounting for linguistic change. Despite its appeal, my contention is that there are some issues with ‘grammaticalization’ as it is conventionally described and discussed in the literature. My goal here is to explore what some of those problems are and to focus on what grammaticalization has to offer as a methodology for studying language change. Drawing on case studies from the history of English and the history of Greek, I reach a characterization of how much of grammatical change can legitimately be called “grammaticalization” and how much is something else. In this way, I work to achieve a sense of what grammaticalization is and what it is not.

Lan honetan -nez gero atzizki multzoaren garapena dugu aztergai, lehen testuetatik hasi eta gaurdaino. Denbora lokailuetatik sortu diren beste kausazko lokailu asko bezala, -nez gero batez ere mintza-ekintzak eta antzekoak justifikatzeko erabiltzen da. Hala ere, kausa neutroagoak adierazteko ere erabiltzen da. Gaztelaniaz ez bezala, menpeko perpausaren kokagunea ez da aldatu azken mendeotan eta funtzio informatiboan ere ez dugu aldakuntza handirik ikusten. Sumatzen dugun garapen nagusia da beharbada edukizko kausazko neutroetan maizago erabiltzeko joera. Oro har, -nez gero kausazko menderagailuak, gazt. ya que-rekin baino, antz handiagoa du fr. puisque eta ing. since lokailuekin. We examine the evolution of -nez gero as a causal connector. As expected of causal connectors of temporal origin, -nez gero clauses are mostly used to justify speech acts and similar situations. However, they are also used in more neutral thematic causal clauses. The most noticeable evolution in the last five centuries has been an increase in the frequency of its use in the latter type of causal clauses. Also contrary to the evolution of ya que in Spanish, we do not observe any diachronic tendency for the subordinate clause to move from the left to the right of the main clause or, regarding informative function, from non-assertive to assertive. In all this, the Basque subordinator resembles more Fr puisque and Eng since than the Spanish causal conjunctions of temporal origin.

In human communication, the ascertaining acts of speech are most often doubled by certain evaluative acts. Man is tempted, through his nature, to issue certain judgements of value with regards to everything that surrounds him and/or with regards to his own being. These are reflected in the linguistic structures in complete concordance with their degree of logical pithiness: some are more discretely formulated, such as implicit comparisons or intermediary graders, of detail for unquantifiable assessments, others are categorical formulations, placed at the beginning end of certain subjective or objective value axes. In the following, we shall present several logical-linguistic means of expressing highest intensity within two genealogically related languages – Romanian and Spanish.

Abstract. Pseudo-coordination, that is, sequences of a least two verbs of the form raise a number of problems that stem from the fact that they share properties with a wide range of different syntactic phenomena. As regards Sp. schema, in this paper I address the discussion of whether it qualifies as a verbal periphrasis or not. A number of arguments are provided that show that the relation between V1 and V2 is not that of auxiliarization. Likewise, it is argued that its meaning is not aspectual. Instead, a stance is taken in favour of the analysis that argue that it is discourse related. In addition to this, it is shown that Sp. pseudo-coordinatives are subject to a high variation. Namely, V1 verbs may be divided into two big classes: go-class verbs, highly grammaticalized and, take-class verbs, less grammaticalized and with an agentive meaning. In addition to this, va y lit. goes and functions as an adverb, similarly to puede que lit. can that, ‘maybe’.

The expression of emphatic negation in Romance languages is a phenomenon of syntactic microvariation in which the origin of postverbal negative markers (minimizers or quantifiers) constrains their syntactic behavior and the pragmatic interpretation of a sentence. The coexistence of many syntactic structures with minimizers in modern Asturian allows us to reconstruct the grammaticalization process these items have undergone in becoming quantifiers and postverbal negative markers. Although this process is similar to the one that has taken place in other languages, the results of grammaticalization are different, due to the grammatical constraints of each language.

In this article we claim that stone classifier-based numeral systems in a number of unrelated North-western South American language families/languages such as Kawapanan, Cholón-Hibito, Munichi, and, tentatively, Quingnam emerged due to calquing or loan translation (Weinreich 1963; Epps 2006, 2013). In addition, although the donor language remains unknown, we argue for this to be a case of a poorly attested grammaticalisation path of numeral classifiers and numerals, namely STONE>CLASSIFIER, as presented in Conklin (1981), for languages such as Gorontalo, Kam-Muang, White Tai and Western Austronesian languages (Conklin 1981, 233, 234; mentioned by Aikhenvald 2000, 446). Moreover, ethnohistorical and historical evidence (Reeve 1994, 125) suggests that pre-Hispanic societies in the Marañón-Huallaga area shared a salt-stone-based trading system, henceforth SBT. This is remarkable, since other adjacent language families, such as Quechua and Chicham, do not show such a pattern for the formation of their own numerals. We claim, tentatively, that these common trade networks may be the sociohistorical motivation for the diffusion of this calquing pattern in the area.

Creole morphosyntax has sometimes been regarded as "simpler" than corresponding structures in the lexifier language. It is rare for the range of functional elements in the lexifier language to be expanded in the respective creole language. One exceptional case is found in the Afro-Colombian creole language Palenquero , where the Spanish-derived complementizer/relativizer ke introducing restrictive relative clauses has been supplemented with lo ke. Spanish restrictive relative clauses can only be formed with que; Palenquero lo ke seems to be morphosyntactically more complex than its Spanish counterpart. At first glance Palenquero lo ke appears to be derived from the Spanish bimorphemic relative pronouns lo que 'that which' or los que 'those which' (or possibly Portuguese o que 'that which'), but the syntagmatic occurrences of Palenquero lo ke are different enough from the Spanish relative pronouns that supplementary or alternative patterns of evolution need to be sought.

In this paper, I take up the case of quotative evidentials and their (non-?)existence in Romance languages, in an attempt to illustrate the fact that the dialogue between typological linguistics and general linguistics is essential. I review briefly the case of grammaticalization from a typological point of view, and the category of evidentiality, before discussing the case of discourse markers specialized in the introduction of reported speech, in Romance languages.

This article deals with the different mechanisms of superlative forms used in the Primera parte of Alfonso X’s General estoria. Attention is paid to quantitative forms such as muy, bien, mucho, asaz, tan and además, showing which formulas appear most frequently, the constructions they take part in and the innovation they represented in their historical context. Complementing this is an analysis of other syntactic elements such as enteramente, verdaderamente, maravillosamente, and the paper also describes the incipient process of grammaticalization undergone by both types of expressions. Similarly, attention is also drawn to the absence of the morphological elative –ísimo, which is clear evidence of the efforts of Alfonso X’s Scriptorium to move away from the Latin sources and to make Castilian the vehicular language.

This paper investigates three main strategies used by Spanish teenagers to intensify their language, namely by suffixation and affixation of the base, and by recurring to the lexical intensifier mazo. For this purpose, all occurrences of these intensifiers in the Corpus Oral de Lenguaje Adolescente de Madrid (COLAm) are analyzed. Rather than describing the behavior of each individual category, this article aims at providing a better understanding of both the internal (morphosyntactic and semantic-pragmatic) and external (sociolinguistic) factors that determine the alternating use of the three strategies within the paradigm of intensifiers. The analysis also looks into the grammaticalization process that has given rise to the use of mazo as a highly frequent and versatile intensifier in teenage talk.

The term terrific, in line with the development of a number of evaluative adjectives over the course of the history of English, such as awesome, bare, brutal, massive and wicked, has come to express positive meanings where it originally conveyed negative ones. This kind of lexical semantic change, well-documented across languages, has been referred to in the literature as ‘(a)melioration’, ‘elevation’ or ‘improvement of meaning’ (cf. Culpeper 1997, among many others). The current paper employs a corpus methodology to trace the history of terrific, using three synchronic and diachronic corpora representing the two supranational varieties of the language, namely British English and American English. The sense development of the adjective is examined in light of parameters such as syntactic function (attributive vs. predicative use), principal collocations, and dialectal variation (British vs. American usage).

The paper accounts for the grammaticalization of uúch, (‘previously’, ‘long ago’) from a one-place predicate in Yukatek Maya meaning ‘to happen’, to a cognate adverbial in Lakandon Maya denoting ‘knowledge asymmetry’; a change from subjective ‘time’ to intersubjective ‘knowledge’. The paper proposes an analysis of uúch and the contrasting kuúch/ka’ch as operators of second-order stance, using a Jakobsonian model for analyzing verbal categories forwarded by Paul Kockelman (2004) to operationalize the notion of stance, as visible in Q’eqchi’ modals. Intersubjectification as a process of language change aligns with Kockelman’s original suggestion that first-order stances may be embedded to produce second-order stances, i.e. “stance about stance”.

A gramaticalização da frase “Que é feito de fulano?”, passando por “Que é de fulano?” resultou em “Que é de?”, seguida da contração entre a vogal do pronome e o verbo (que é > qué) “Qu’é de?” > “Quede?”, forma contracta empregada por Sá de Miranda, nascido em 1481 (trata-se, portanto, de forma já em uso na segunda metade do século XV) . Depois, esse quede adquire acento na última sílaba, provavelmente devido ao fato de ocorrer isolado, em fim de frase, na repetição enfática, onde recebe acento frasal (de intensidade três, contra a intensidade um, de vocábulo): “Quede o chapéu? Quedê?”. Por meio da retomada anafórica “Que é feito dele?”, reduzida para “Que é dele?”, resulta outra variante: quedele. Aparentemente, a variante cadê tem tido um uso mais corrente no Brasil, o que leva muita gente a afirmar que se trata de um brasileirismo. No entanto, as outras variantes – quede / quedê ou quedele / cadele – são empregadas em diferentes partes do país e algumas delas podem ser encontradas em textos do português europeu de diferentes épocas. The grammaticalization of the sentence “Que é feito de fulano?” became “Que é de fulano?” (“What about so-and-so?” “Where is so-and-so?”) and resulted in “Que é de?”, followed by the contraction of the pronoun’s vowel and the verb (que é > qué) “Qu’é de?” > “Quede?”, a contracted form used by Sá de Miranda, born in 1481 (it is, thus, a form currently used in the second half of the 15th century). Then, quede starts to be stressed in its last syllable, probably due to this being alone at the end of a sentence, in an emphatic repetition context, where it receives phrasal stress – whose intensity (3) is higher than that of a phonological word (1): “Quede o chapéu? Quedê?”. By the anaphora “Que é feito dele?” reduced to “Que é dele?”, which resulted in another variant: quedele. Apparently, the variant cadê has been more widely used in Brazil, what takes many people to claim it is a “brasileirismo” (a typical feature of Brazilian Portuguese). Nevertheless, the other variants – quede / quedê or quedele / cadele – are used in different parts of the country and some of them may also be found in European Portuguese texts of different centuries.

Concessive connectors are the focal point of grammaticalization processes, based on several types of lexical sources. In Catalan, «jatsia» (that) is the result of a grammaticalization process based on an aspectual temporary adverb (or phase adverb), which is comparable to the process that produced «encara que». The case of «encara que» has already been studied specifically by Pérez Saldanya & Salvador (1995), while Klesper (1930), Badia (1982) and Cuenca & Massip (2005) have focused on «jatsia» (that). The interest of the study of these processes is increased in the case of «jatsia»(that) by the polymorphism it shows and by the displacement it has experimented in its use, since it has gone from being of general use in the expression of concessivity to be practically out of use. This is especially due to the fact that this displacement is not restrictive to Catalan but common to other Romance languages,and because it can correlate directly with the generalization of encara que and the appearance of the causal ja que (or later «ja...ja...» in its distributive use). And also, because of the incidence that it had in the precepts of the period and in contemporary normative coding.

This article analyzes the historical process of the grammaticalization of aver/ter ‘to have’ in compound tenses, since Portuguese is somewhat isolated among Romance languages in this respect. Our research has shown that the change in auer/ter, from indicating possession to acting as auxiliaries, involved a process of recategorization similar to that seen with the verbs “go”, “come” and “have” in some languages, sharing with them a fundamental characteristic: the fact that in one phase of the transition constructions developed which were capable of being interpreted in both ways (expressing both result and time). Thus, as in those languages, the process of recategorizing involves an intermediate step of structural ambiguity whereby a given construction can be interpreted in two different ways. We will try to clarify the gradual process of reanalysis of ter in the medieval period, based on a corpus of original juridical sources (13th – 16th centuries) which we have transcribed, originating from a particularly important centre in medieval Portuguese culture, the monastery of Alcobaça (between Coimbra and Lisbon). The corpus consists of 153 original documents not only from the monastery but also from the outlying areas under its jurisdiction, dating from between 1289 and 1565.

SPEn la actualidad, no hay acuerdo entre los investigadores sobre el origen de los Marcadores del Discurso (MD). Algunos consideran que surgen por un proceso de gramaticalización, similar al que ha dado origen a los tiempos y aspectos verbales, a los afijos, etc., otros prefieren hablar de de(s)gramaticalización o de pragmaticalización, ya que el origen de los MD viola el principio de unidireccionalidad que consideran fundamental en el proceso de gramaticalización; unos afirman que el origen de los MD supone un proceso de lexicalización, otros que se debe a un tipo particular de gramaticalización: la subjetivización. Entre las propuestas más novedosas podemos citar los estudios que se ocupan de la vertiente sincrónica del cambio lingüístico, identificando el origen de algunos marcadores en procesos de préstamo y calco en situaciones de contacto de lenguas; y los que sugieren que clases de marcadores diferentes derivan de procesos de cambio también diferentes. En el presente trabajo presentaremos las diferentes posturas y analizaremos algunos ejemplos de marcadores del español encontrados en la bibliografía que parecen apuntar a la posibilidad de que el origen de los MD se deba a diferentes procesos de cambio diacrónicos y sincrónicos, a veces independientes, otras relacionados e interdependientes. Intentaremos, por último, comprender de qué forma los estudios sobre el origen de los MD pueden contribuir a una mejor comprensión de las características de esta categoría funcional.

From the analysis of prototypical cases of grammaticalization that were studied in a diachronic perspective and that have attested a persistence of formal features, this text discusses the thesis that the features that define the grammatical categories are hierarchically marked in the linguistic system. This way, it is assumed that there are features stronger than others, which could explain their persistence even in advanced stages of the process of grammaticalization, and it is proposed a hierarchy for such features into two levels, a macro one, taking as a parameter the stratum in which the categorical change takes place, and a micro one, for analyzing the features in each stratum.

In this paper, I focus on one type of grammatical change consisting of creating periphrastic junctures from nominal sources used in relative clause contexts. This is a periphrase production mechanism that has been increasing the unstable paradigm of junctures and helping delineate Portuguese language grammar. One construction resulting from this mechanism is (na) hora que, in relation to which I propose to investigate form, meaning and history. The central aim is to show the emergence of (na) hora que, a grammaticalization instance in course, in which it is possible to catch stages of the its gradual constitution process, concerning both the syntagmatic reorganization of items with consequent morphological losses, and the constitution of meanings, with the origin of polysemies, pointing to a directionality grounded on the increase of the cognitive complexity.

This article aims to characterize the Portuguese locution "por causa que"(“because that”), from theoretical-methodological proposals based on the functional paradigm of Grammaticalization. Firstly, hypotheses on "por causa que"appearance and an analysis of its status of conjunction are presented. Furthermore, the usage patterns of "por causa que" in spoken Portuguese are investigated using a semantic-cognitive approach (SWEETSER, 1991; TRAUGOTT; KÖNIG, 1991). The following analyses take into consideration not only the "por causa que"clause, but the whole clausal complex in which the conjunctive phrase is inserted – causal segment and effect segment –, aiming at presenting a specially discursive description of these constructions. Most of the results show many convergences between the constructions with "por causa que"and "porque"(because), which is considered to be the prototypical causal connector.

This paper presents a possible route for the grammaticalization of items ainda (still) and sempre (always), traditionally classified as adverbs of time in Portuguese language. We study how that items start their grammaticalization process. What we know is the unidirectionality of this change move these lexical items to a grammatical items. The sample of spoken language was extracted from 340 hours of recordings with speakers of standard Portuguese in the 70s by researchers on the project NURC-SP.

This work deals with the Italian particle fa ``ago'', which together with expressions of time measure localizes an event in a certain point preceding the moment of elocution. The aim is to show how the particle developed from Old Italian to present, assuming that fa was originally the 3rd person singular of the verb fare ``to make/to do''. Drawing on historical data, I suggest an analysis based on movement, arguing for a movement-driven grammaticalization process responsible for the origin of this particle/adposition. This process is interesting because, on the one hand it confirms the prediction of standard theoretical views on grammaticalization (Roberts and Rousseau 2003), so that the mechanism of grammaticalization is the gradual loss of movement, and on the other hand it challenges these views because the items moved leftward in the process are not targets of grammaticalization, suggesting a parasitic etiology of the process that turns light verbs into particles.

The present paper aims to explore, and address some issues concerning the Romance diachronic morphosyntax in the light of theoretical and methodological considerations on the grammaticalization and pragmaticalization phenomena, and the question of linguistic change. Building on the previous work concerning grammaticalization, we intend to reveal a pragma-linguistic scenario that accounts for the actual situation of the Romanian indefinite compounds. We consider this subject to be very particular, meaning that the historical development of these pro-forms is not a canonical case of grammaticalization or pragmaticalization.

Nigerian Pidgin (hereafter NP) has assumed elaborated roles and functions, gaining new grounds in different sociolinguistic domains as a result of its sustained social expansion process. One of the consequences of this increased dynamism of NP is the development of lexical items into grammatical markers which is an expected natural process. In this paper, we examine language-internal mechanisms that transform lexical items into morphosyntactic items either for semantic value, creativity, expressivity or routinization. Our basic argument is that grammaticalization in NP is not contact-induced but a language-internal phenomenon, which reveals that NP has both a synchronic and diachronic existence that are imperative in evolving its unique grammar.Como resultado de su proceso sostenido de expansión social, el pidgin nigeriano (en adelante NP) ha adoptado roles y funciones elaboradas, adquiriendo nuevos terrenos en diferentes ámbitos. Una de las consecuencias de este mayor dinamismo del NP es el desarrollo de unidades léxicas en los marcadores gramaticales, lo cual constituye un proceso natural esperado. En este trabajo, examinamos los mecanismos internos del lenguaje que transforman las unidades léxicas en unidades morfosintácticas, ya sea por su valor semántico, por su creatividad, por su expresividad o por su rutinización. Nuestro argumento básico es que la gramaticalización en NP no es inducida por el contacto, sino que se trata de un fenómeno interno de la lengua, lo que revela que el NP tiene una existencia tanto sincrónica como diacrónica, imprescindible en la evolución de su singular gramática.

Este artigo propõe-se a demonstrar que os pretéritos mais-que-perfeito simples e imperfeito do subjuntivo são formas que codificam várias funções em Língua Portuguesa. Parte-se da premissa de que não há relação categórica de um-para-um entre função e forma. Apresentamos, inicialmente, o princípio da iconicidade e os princípios de gramaticalização, com o propósito de, ao final deste artigo, mostrar que se aplicam aos dados sob análise. Na sequência, ilustramos a multifuncionalidade do pretérito mais-que-perfeito simples (em perspectiva diacrônica) e do pretérito imperfeito do subjuntivo (em perspectiva sincrônica), considerando-se como motivações para essa multifuncionalidade as categorias Tempo e Modalidade. Os resultados apontam a Modalidade, pela generalização do traço irrealis, como fator que desencadeia mudanças tanto de tempo como de ponto de referência. Os pretéritos sob análise migram de passado com ponto de referência passado ao futuro: o mais-que-perfeito simples passa a codificar projeção futura e o imperfeito do subjuntivo, a codificar situações menos referenciais e menos factuais.This paper aims at demonstrating that preterit forms such as the pluperfect and the imperfect subjuntive tenses are forms that encode various functions in Portuguese. It is assumed that there is no categorical one-to-one relationship between form and function. Initially, iconicity and grammaticalization principles are presented in order to show how they function in relation to the data under analysis. Next, we illustrate the multifunctionality of the pluperfect (in diachronic perspective) and the imperfect subjuntive tense (in synchronic perspective) considering Time and Modality as the motivation for such multifunctionality. The results point to the generalization of the irrealis feature modality as a factor that triggers changes in both time and reference point. The tenses under review migrate from past with past reference point to the future: the pluperfect form encodes projection and the imperfect subjunctive encodes less referential and factual situations.

As condições sob as quais a reanálise de ter ocorreu no sintagma verbal português são examinadas. A gramaticalização de ter é, então, vista como o resultado de processos nos quais vários níveis gramaticais se entrelaçam. Valoriza-se mais o caráter processual do fenômeno do que o seu resultado num sistema sincrônico.Dans cette étude sont examinées les conditions sous lesquelles la réanalyse du verbe ter est arrivée au syntagma verbal portugais. La grammaticalisation de ter est vue comme le résultat de processus dans lesqueles les différents niveaux grammaticaux se relient. Le caractère processuel du phénomène est plus valorisé que son résultat dans un système sincronique.

In Catalan the verbal periphrasis [ser `to be' + a `to' + infinitive] expresses the conative sense (also called futured past). Catalan grammars do not report this construction, probably because it is unusual. In fact, this verbal periphrasis is defective: in common language, the auxiliary is only used in certain tenses (e. g. imperfect past of subjunctive), but in some regions it is used in other tenses. In this paper we report on this construction and we try to explain its origin.

Este artigo apresenta análise para alguns usos da preposição 'de' na língua portuguesa do Brasil, a partir dos preceitos teóricos e esquemas desenvolvidos pela Gramática Cognitiva. Adota-se a hipótese de serem as preposições marcações linguísticas, cuja evolução pode ser pelo menos parcialmente mapeável por gramaticalização. Propõe-se que a preposição em análise tem um significado inicial de valor espacial e que se manifesta, por processos derivados, em categorias semânticas nomeadas como NO (Nominal de Origem), NP (Nominal de Parte) e NI (Nominal Intrínseca). Esta pesquisa serve-se de um corpus coletado em textos da internet.This paper aims to present an analysis on some occurrences of the Brazilian Portuguese preposition 'de', considering for that some theory principles and schema proposed by the Cognition Grammar. The hypothesis I assume is the following: prepositions are linguistic marks, whose evolution might be at least partially mapped through grammaticalization. What I intend to say is that the original spatial meaning of this preposition could reach other values after some derivative process, expressing semantic categories named as NO (Nominal of Origin), NP (Nominal of Part) and NI (Intrinsic Nominal). This research has used a corpus collected from internet files.

O principal objetivo deste artigo é responder aos comentários e críticas feitos por Petersen, no artigo A tripartição pronominal e o estatuto das proformas Ce, Ocê e Você, publicado nesta Revista, às nossas análises apresentadas em Vitral (1996) e Ramos (1997) que tomam a forma cê como um clítico e como uma das etapas de um processo de gramaticalização que teve como fonte a expressão Vossa Mercê.The main goal of this paper is to reply the critical analysis made by Petersen in her paper A tripartição pronominal e o estatuto das proformas Ce, Ocê e Você, published in this journal, concerning our analysis presented in Vitral (1996) and Ramos (1997) which take the form cê to be a clitic and one of the stages of a grammaticalization process that had as source the expression Vossa Mercê.

En el presente artículo se proponen dos objetivos: i) comprobar el grado de frecuencia de aparición del perfecto fuerte en el período correspondiente en las obras estudiadas y ii) analizar si los verbos que en la actualidad siguen manteniendo las formas fuertes del perfecto son los mismos que aquellos que sufren una fuerte gramaticalización plausible en expresiones idiomáticas o perífrasis verbales. Para ello, se expondrán los resultados del análisis de los cuatro fragmentos de obras medievales y se llegará a la conclusión de que la frecuencia de uso de las formas de perfecto de determinados verbos se mantiene con el paso del tiempo a pesar de su aparente irregularidad. Esto implicará, finalmente, la hipótesis de que cuanto más se usa una palabra, menos probabilidades parece haber de que esa palabra cambie.There aim of this paper is twofold: on the one hand, to determinate the frequency of Simple Past Tense forms in strong verbs is to analizes in written Spanish texts between XII and XIV century. On the other hand, to verify whether the verbs in Modern Spanish which keep on using strong forms in Simple Past Tense are the same verbs which undergo a strong process of gramaticalization in numerous idioms or verbal periphrasis. Thus, the main conclusion will take into account that the frequency of usage of the Simple Past Tense forms in some strong verbs remains the same in spite of being apparently irregular. This might allow us to think that the more frequently used a word is used, the fewer are the chances that that word changes.

The main goal of this paper is to show that the different verbal periphrasis in Spanish keep a non fortuitous order, which can be derived from the one proposed by the universal hierarchy of categories (Foley and Van Valin 1984; Bybee 1985; Hengeveld 1989 and 2004, among others). Firstly, we draw a parallelism with the adverbs studied by Cinque (1999), which helps determine the different sentence domains of the periphrasis. The passive voice periphrasis, the aspectual ones referred to the phases and the event quantification, and the ones of deontic modality are placed in the innermost layer, corresponding to the VP. The inflectional layer hosts the temporo-aspectual periphrasis whereas the complementizer layer, which connects the propositional content with the illocutionary force, contains the periphrasis of epistemic modality. Once the subtypes are identified, we analyse their cyclic application possibilities, their interaction with negation and with cleft construcctions. Finally, we comment on the semantic, syntactic and morphologycal consequences of the different levels of the grammaticalization of some auxiliaries.

This paper approaches the topic of Grammaticalization from a diachronic perspective, with particular emphasis on the development of some English modal auxiliaries. The first part contextualizes the topic within the filed of Cognitive Linguistics; the second, deals with a brief description of lexical and grammatical items. The third part of the paper provides some crucial information on the history of Grammaticalization. A final section outlines some of the mechanisms involved in the process of Grammaticalization together with the analysis of some English modal auxiliaries and the importance of it in when studying and understanding English as a foreign language.En éste articulo se hace una reseña de un perspectiva diacrónica a un tema llamado Gramaticalización, con particular énfasis en el desarrollo de algunos de los verbos auxiliares modales en Inglés. En la primera parte se contextualiza el tema en el campo de los estudios de la Lingüística Cognitiva y, en la segunda, se aborda la distinción entre categorías léxicas y categorías gramaticales en una breve descripción. En la tercera parte se entrega información acerca de la historia del proceso de gramaticalización. La sección final plantea algunos de los mecanismos que son parte del proceso de gramaticalización, junto con un análisis de algunos verbos auxiliares modales en inglés que resultan ser de suma importancia en el estudio y la comprensión del inglés como lengua extranjera.

This paper focuses on the grammaticalization of adnominal demonstratives towards simple determiners in Neo-Aramaic, a dialectal cluster belonging to the Semitic family. Scholars still do not agree about the presence of a definite article in NA and in Aramaic dialectology the systems of demonstratives and determiners have not yet received sufficient attention from a comparative point of view. New grammaticalized items seem not to act like traditional determiners since they encode, besides definiteness, a related though not totally overlapping feature: specificity.

Linguistic "themes". Agent figurative construction and its relationship with thematization. The aim of this work is to analyze agentivity in language, the processes through which language is grammaticalized in a text/discourse and, especially, its relationship with the complex phenomenon of thematicity. Taking Cognitive Linguistics and its ruling principles --iconicity, prominence and accessibility- as a theoretical and methodological framework, we shall demonstrate how significant correlations between thematic syntagms and agent arguments may be established. Besides, after observing, analyzing and interpreting such correlations we shall posit a set of conceptual features and some specific textual/discursive strategies that will allow us to expound the dynamics present between both themes and agents. Finally, by means of a gradient or scale, we shall establish an alternative way to assess noun syntagms within a text/discourse, thus proving that the higher the agentive value that may be assigned to each one of them, the higher their possibility of reaching textual/discursive traits of superior hierarchy, that is, they will have the possibility to have access to a higher status in the representational levels and, consequently, they will contribute in a greater degree to the construction of the conveyed meaning. (Spanish text).

This article deals with the Verb + Local Adverb constructions in Portuguese, which form a set relative few elements in that language, if it is compared with other languages, such as English (phrasal verbs) or German (trennbare Verben). Those constructions have their origin in a so-called adverbial projection of praefixed verbs and bring together in it a imagery which sometimes has translinguistical diffusion.

The syntactic rules of today's High German are generally thought to have crystallized during the 18th century. One can therefore expect that during that time the processes of grammaticalization had a particular influence on doubtful cases in the usage of language. The syntactic development varied from region to region and was accompanied by theoretical controversies. One of the controversial issues was word order. The debates focused primarily on the order in verbal complexes and on the possibility of extraposing simple components and dependent clauses. This paper is based on the assumption that the theoretical controversies in some way reflected the doubtful cases in the usage of language. In order to identify the actual variants, the theoretical controversies will be outlined first. Then the analysis will focus on whether and how these variants were used in a corpus of 18th century texts. The objective is to determine the language-internal, sociological, and geographical factors of the variants' usage and thus to model the situations in which the doubtful cases ocurred. In conclusion, the following issues will be discussed: the relationship between the doubtful cases and diachronic language developments, the language-external factors of the doubtful cases, and the approach of language theorists to doubtful cases.

The change process that occurs with the forms vossa mercê > você > cê, analysed in Vitral (1996) and Ramos (1997), is resumed in this paper which discusses the nature of semantic modification found in the literature on grammaticalization. We argue that the process above must be described as a loss of virtual reference (Milner, 1982) and not as a loss of semantic substance, which, on the other hand, is adequate to describe the expletive usage of the form você.