Syntactic change in Portuguese and Spanish
Divergent and parallel patterns of linguistic splitting
This chapter describes two cases of divergent syntactic change between Portuguese and Spanish, namely clitic placement and post-nominal algum/alguno. While both changes feature instances of linguistic splitting from a former unity during the Middle Ages, they nevertheless exhibit different patterns of development, illustrating what the author calls the ‘inverted-Y’ and the ‘I’ patterns of change. Under the former, the two languages start diverging as soon as grammatical change is set in motion. Under the latter, the two languages show a similar/parallel path of change and eventually split apart when one of them goes a step further than the other. Clitic placement in the history of Spanish and Portuguese exemplifies the ‘inverted-Y’ pattern, post-nominal algum/alguno exemplifies the ‘I’ pattern of change.
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