Cover not available
Article published In:
Diachronica
Vol. 34:1 (2017) ► pp.1–39

Competing modal periphrases in Spanish between the 16th and the 18th centuries

A diachronic variationist approach

| Universitat Jaume I (Castellón)
| Universitat Jaume I (Castellón)

The history of Spanish modal constructions has been widely discussed in the literature, focusing primarily on the semantic differences between the available alternatives. This paper offers an innovative analysis of the evolution of these constructions by adopting a diachronic variationist approach that takes into account a wider range of semantic, syntactic, morphological and stylistic factors that influence the choice between the competing modal periphrases during two key stages in the evolution of Spanish. The data is drawn from a diachronic corpus of personal correspondence, reflecting actual language usage during the respective periods as closely as possible. Particular attention is paid to the question of whether the influence of different factor groups remains stable over time or not, and it is shown that the most frequent form – context pairings are particularly resistant to innovation. This can be explained by cognitive entrenchment of the respective variant in specific linguistic environments.

Keywords: variationist linguistics, modal constructions, Spanish, epistolary corpus, communicative proximity (Nähesprache), frequency effects, cognitive entrenchment
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The origin and evolution of the periphrases with haber, tener and deber as auxiliary verb
  • 3.The corpus
  • 4.Distribution of the periphrases in the corpus
    • 4.1General observations
    • 4.2Semantic values
    • 4.3Distribution of the periphrases according to their semantic values
  • 5.Coding and methodology
    • Linguistic factors
    • Extralinguistic factors
  • 6.Results and analysis
    • 6.1Patterns of continuity
      • 6.1.1Type of deontic modality
      • 6.1.2Person and number
      • 6.1.3Tense/mood
      • 6.1.4Clausal polarity and type
      • 6.1.5Stylistic and register variation
      • 6.1.6Discourse factors: The priming effect
    • 6.2Diverging patterns of variation
      • 6.2.1Syntactic (im)personality
      • 6.2.2Agentivity
      • 6.2.3Assertiveness/intensification
      • 6.2.4Clause type
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 25 April 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.34.1.01bla
References (66)
Albelda, Marta
2007 La intensificación como categoría pragmática: Revisión y propuesta. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Balasch, Sonia
2008  Debe (de) ser: evolución de la variación. In Maurice Westmoreland & Juan A. Thomas (eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics, 109–119. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
2012 Revisión amplia de la variación deber (de) + infinitivo en la diacronía del español. In Emilio Montero (ed.), Actas del VIII Congreso Internacional de Historia de la Lengua Española, 607–620. Madrid: Arco Libros.Google Scholar
Beardsley, Wilfred A.
1921 Infinitive constructions in Old Spanish. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Bergs, Alexander
2005 Social network analysis and historical sociolinguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blas Arroyo, José Luis & Margarita Porcar
2014 De la función a la forma: La influencia del contexto variable en la selección de las perífrasis modales de infinitivo en el primer español clásico. Anuario de Lingüística Hispánica 301. 9–49.Google Scholar
2016 Patrones de variación y cambio en la sintaxis del Siglo de Oro: Un estudio variacionista de dos perífrasis modales en textos de inmediatez comunicativa. RILCE. Revista de Filología Hispánica 32(1). 47–81.Google Scholar
Blas Arroyo, José Luis & Javier Vellón
2014 The refuge of a dying variant within the grammar: Patterns of change and continuity in the Spanish verbal periphrasis haber de + infinitive in the past two centuries. Language Variation and Change 27(1). 89–116. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blas Arroyo, José Luis, Margarita Porcar & Javier Vellón
2013 Un hito clave en la evolución de las perífrasis modales de infinitivo: Análisis sociolingüístico de la alternancia haber de/tener que + infinitivo en textos de inmediatez comunicativa del siglo XIX. Revista de Historia de la Lengua Española 81. 29–62.Google Scholar
Brown, Roger & Albert Gilman
1960 The pronouns of power and solidarity. In Thomas A. Seboek (ed.), Style in language. 253–276. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan
1985 Morphology: A study between the relation of meaning and form. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2006 From usage to grammar: The mind’s response to repetition. Language 82(4). 711–733. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan & Paul Hopper
(eds.) 2001 Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan & Sandra Thompson
2000 Three frequency effects in syntax. In Matthew L. Juge & Jeri L. Moxley (eds.), Proceedings of the 23rd annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General session and parasession on pragmatics and grammatical structure (1997), 378–388. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Croft, William
2000 Explaining language change: An evolutionary approach. London: Longman.Google Scholar
2001 Radical construction grammar: Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Danilova, Oxana
2012 La hipérbole como recurso expresivo en las cartas privadas del siglo XVI. In Victoria Béguelin-Argimón & Gabriela Cordone (eds.), En pos de la palabra viva: Huellas de la oralidad en textos antiguos. Estudios en honor al profesor Rolf Eberenz 61, 195–215. Berne: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Eberenz, Rolf & Mariela de la Torre
2002 Conversaciones estrechamente vigiladas: Interacción coloquial y español oral en las actas inquisitoriales de los siglos XV a XVII. Lausanne: Centro de Estudios Hispánicos.Google Scholar
Elspass, Stephan
2012 The use of private letters and diaries in sociolinguistic investigation. In Juan M. Hernández-Campoy & Juan C. Conde-Silvestre (eds.), The handbook of historical sociolinguistics, 156–169. Malden, MA & Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fernández de Castro, Félix
1999 Las perífrasis verbales en el español actual. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
Garachana Camarero, Mar
1997 Acerca de los condicionamientos cognitivos y lingüísticos de la sustitución de ‘aver’ por ‘tener’. Anuario Galego de Filoloxia 241. 203–235.Google Scholar
Garachana Camarero, Mar & Malte Rosemeyer
2011 Rutinas léxicas en el cambio gramatical: El caso de las perífrasis deónticas e iterativas. Revista de Historia de la Lengua Española 61. 35–60.Google Scholar
García Fernández, Luis
(ed.) 2006 Diccionario de perífrasis verbales. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy
1979 On understanding grammar. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Gómez Manzano, Pilar
1992 Perífrasis verbales con infinitivo valores y usos en la lengua hablada. Madrid: UNED.Google Scholar
Gómez Torrego, Leonardo
1999 Los verbos auxiliares. Las perífrasis verbales de infinitivo. In Ignacio Bosque & Violeta Demonte (eds.), Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, 3223–3390. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.Google Scholar
Hernández Díaz, Axel
2006 Posesión y existencia. La competencia de haber y tener y haber existencial. In Concepción Company Company (ed.), Sintaxis histórica de la lengua española 11, 1055–1164. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica de España.Google Scholar
Hertzenberg, Mari Johanne
2012 The use and development of habere + infinitive in Latin: An LFG approach. In Ans M.C. van Kemenade & Nynke de Haas (eds.), Historical linguistics 2009: Selected papers from the 19th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Nijmegen, 10–14 August 2009, 373–398. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Keniston, Hayward
1937 Verbal aspect in Spanish. Hispania 191. 163–176. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koch, Peter & Wulf Oesterreicher
1985 Sprache der Nähe – Sprache der Distanz: Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im Spannungsfeld von Sprachtheorie und Sprachgeschichte. Romanistisches Jahrbuch 361. 15–43.Google Scholar
Labov, William
1972 Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
1994 Principles of Linguistic Change. Vol. 11. Internal Factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald
1987 Foundations of cognitive grammar. Vol. 11. Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Lapesa, Rafael
2000 Estudios de morfosintaxis histórica del español. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
López Izquierdo, Marta
2008 Las perífrasis modales de necesidad: Emergencia y renovación. In Concepción Company Company & José G. Moreno de Alba (eds.), Actas del VII Congreso Internacional de Historia de la Lengua Española 11, 789–806. Madrid: Arco Libros.Google Scholar
Martínez Díaz, Eva
2003 La frecuencia de uso de haber y tener en las estructuras perifrásticas de obligación: Algún fenómeno de variación en el español de Cataluña. Interlingüística 141. 681–694.Google Scholar
2008 La expresión de la modalidad de obligación en el Corpus del español conversacional de Barcelona y su área metropolitana (2001) . In Antonio Moreno Sandoval (ed.), El valor de la diversidad (meta)lingüística: Actas del VIII Congreso de Lingüística General. [URL] (accessed March 2, 2015).Google Scholar
Matsuda, Kenjiro
1993 Dissecting analogical leveling quantitatively: The case of the innovative potential suffix in Tokyo Japanese. Language Variation and Change 5(1). 213–234. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
NGRALE (Real Academia Española y Asociación de Academias de la Lengua)
2009 Nueva gramática de la lengua española. Madrid: Espasa.Google Scholar
Oesterreicher, Wulf
1996 Lo hablado en lo escrito: Reflexiones metodológicas y aproximación a una tipología. In Thomas Kotsch, Wulf Oesterreicher & Klaus Zimmermann (eds.), El español hablado y la cultura oral en España e Iberoamérica, 317–340. Madrid & Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert.Google Scholar
2004 Textos entre inmediatez y distancia comunicativas: El problema de lo hablado escrito en el Siglo de Oro. In Rafael Cano Aguilar (ed.), Historia de la lengua española, 729–769. Barcelona: Ariel.Google Scholar
Okulska, Urszula
2010 Performing the world of politics through the discourse of institutional correspondence in Late Middle and Early Modern England. In Urszula Okulska & Piort Cap (eds.), Perspectives in politics and discourse, 173–197. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Olbertz, Hella
1998 Verbal periphrases in a functional grammar of Spanish. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pereira-Scherre, Maria M. & Anthony J. Naro
1992 The serial effect on internal and external variables. Language Variation and Change 4(1). 1–13. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pickering, Martin J. & Victor S. Ferreira
2008 Structural priming: A critical review. Psychological Bulletin 134(3). 427–459. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Poplack, Shana
2001 Variability, frequency, and productivity in the irrealis domain of French. In Joan L. Bybee & Paul Hopper (eds), Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure, 405–428. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 Grammaticalization and linguistic variation. In Heiko Narrog & Bernd Heine (eds.), The Oxford handbook of grammaticalization, 209–224. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana & Sali Tagliamonte
2001 African American English in the diaspora: Tense and aspect. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Rosemeyer, Malte
2015 Entrenchment and discourse traditions in Spanish auxiliary selection. In Rolf Kailuweit & Malte Rosemeyer (eds.), Auxiliary selection revisited: Gradience and gradualness. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sankoff, David
1988 Sociolinguistics and syntactic variation. In Frederick Newmeyer (ed.), Linguistics: The Cambridge survey, 140–161. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schmid, Hans-Jörg
2012 Entrenchment, salience and basic levels. In Dirk Geeraerts & Hubert Cuyckens (eds.), The Oxford handbook of cognitive linguistics, 117–138. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Seifert, Eva
1930 ‘Haber’ y ‘tener’ como expresiones de la posesión en español. Revista de Filologóa Española 171. 345–389.Google Scholar
Sinner, Carsten
2003 Valores y usos de <haber (de) + infinitivo> y <tener que + infinitivo> en diferentes variedades del castellano. In Claus D. Pusch & Andreas Wesch (eds.), Verbalperiphrasen in den (ibero-)romanischen Sprachen. 193–206. Hamburg: Helmut Buske.Google Scholar
Stengaard, Birte
2003 Función y evolución de la construcción aver + preposición + infinitivo. In José L. Girón & José J. de Bustos (eds.), Actas del VI Congreso Internacional de Historia de la Lengua Española 11, 1147–1152. Madrid: Arco Libros.Google Scholar
Stoll, Eva
2002 La memoria de Juan Ruiz de Arce. Madrid & Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert.Google Scholar
Stoll, Eva & María N. Vázquez
2011 Alonso Borregán: La conquista del Perú. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A.
2006 Analysing sociolinguistic variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 Variationist sociolinguistics: Change, observation, interpretation. Malden/Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A., Mercedes Durham & Jennifer Smith
2014 Grammaticalization at an early stage: Future be going to in conservative British dialects. English Language and Linguistics 18(1). 75–108. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tarallo, F.
1989 Inside and outside relative clauses. In Ralph Fasold & Deborah Schiffrin (eds.), Language change and variation, 255–274. Washington: Georgetown University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Torres Cacoullos, Rena
2009 Variation and grammaticisation: The emergence of an aspectual opposition. In Stavroula Tsiplakou, Marilena Karyolemou & Pavlos Pavlou (eds.), Studies in language variation: European perspectives 21. 215–224. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Torres Cacoullos, Rena & James A. Walker
2009 The present of the English future: Grammatical variation and collocations in discourse. Language 851. 321–354. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Travis, Catherine
2007 Genre effects on subject expression in Spanish: Priming in narrative and conversation. Language Variation and Change 19(2). 101–135. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walker, James A.
2010 Variation in linguistic systems. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Yllera, Alicia
1980 Sintaxis histórica del verbo español: Las perífrasis medievales. Zaragoza: Universidad de Zaragoza.Google Scholar
Cited by (9)

Cited by 9 other publications

Brown, Esther L. & Javier Rivas
2024. Variant Choices of Future Time Reference in Galician: The Grammaticalization of [haber (de) + infinitive] as a Window to Diachronic Change. Languages 9:4 ► pp. 142 ff. DOI logo
Vellón Lahoz, Fco. Javier
2024. Perífrasis modales y variación. Moenia DOI logo
Amarelo, Daniel
2023. La variación ter que, haber (de/que) y deber y sus valores modales en el gallego oral contemporáneo: una aproximación basada en el uso. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 16:2 ► pp. 279 ff. DOI logo
Christensen, Tanya Karoli & Torben Juel Jensen
2022. Introduction: Analysing and Explaining Syntactic Variation. In Explanations in Sociosyntactic Variation, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Shadrova, Anna, Pia Linscheid, Julia Lukassek, Anke Lüdeling & Sarah Schneider
2021. A Challenge for Contrastive L1/L2 Corpus Studies: Large Inter- and Intra-Individual Variation Across Morphological, but Not Global Syntactic Categories in Task-Based Corpus Data of a Homogeneous L1 German Group. Frontiers in Psychology 12 DOI logo
Nkollo, Mikołaj & Alexandra Fiéis
2020. The não interpolation in Classical and early Modern European Portuguese and the mapping between syntactic and phonological structures: An empirical study . Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 13:1 ► pp. 115 ff. DOI logo
Requena, Pablo E.
2020. A Usage-Based Perspective on Spanish Variable Clitic Placement. Languages 5:3 ► pp. 33 ff. DOI logo
Kytö, Merja
2019. Register in historical linguistics. Register Studies 1:1 ► pp. 136 ff. DOI logo
Blas Arroyo, José Luis
2018. Comparative variationism for the study of language change: five centuries of competition amongst Spanish deontic periphrases. Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics 4:2 ► pp. 177 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.