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Portuguese-Spanish Interfaces: Diachrony, synchrony, and contact
Edited by Patrícia Amaral and Ana Maria Carvalho
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 1] 2014
► pp. 35–64

Syntactic change in Portuguese and Spanish

Divergent and parallel patterns of linguistic splitting

ORCID logo | University of Lisbon (CLUL | FLUL)

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.

Published online: 30 October 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.1.04mar
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