Cover not available
Part of
Studies in Historical Ibero-Romance Morpho-Syntax
Edited by Miriam Bouzouita, Ioanna Sitaridou and Enrique Pato
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 16] 2018
► pp. 249–274

Chapter 11
Si as a Q-particle in Old Spanish

| Universidad de Granada
| Universitat de les Illes Balears/Harvard University

This study examines the origin of Old Spanish direct interrogative si, a structure that has barely been described in the literature. An analysis of historical texts shows that it originates from the Classical Latin conditional conjunction si, which in Late Latin became a complementiser in embedded interrogatives and eventually a polar interrogative particle. This evolution is documented primarily in biblical translations. However, its continuation in Medieval Romance varieties proves that direct interrogative si was used in vernacular Latin. The evolution of direct interrogative si constitutes a case of insubordination (i.e. the conventionalised use in a main clause of a subordinate clause marker), a process that has not been considered in accounts of the historical origin of interrogative particles in grammaticalisation studies.

Keywords: Spanish, interrogative particle, Q-particle, Si , question, grammaticalisation, insubordination, Latin, conditional conjunction
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Interrogative constructions in Romance
  • 3.The evolution of interrogative structures: From Latin to Romance
  • 4.Interrogative si in the history of Spanish
  • 5.Interrogative si in Medieval Romance
  • 6.The grammaticalisation of Q-particles
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.16.11rod
References
Almeida, B.
(2013) Fenómenos sintácticos raros y edición de textos: El caso de la Segunda Parte de la General Estoria. Revista de Historia de la lengua Española , 8, 3–28.Google Scholar
Andersson, E.
(1994) Swedish. In E. Köning & J. van der Auwera (Eds.), The Germanic languages (pp. 271–312). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Arnaiz, A. R.
(1998) The main word order characteristics of Romance. In A. Siewierska (Ed.), Constituent order in the languages of Europe (pp. 47–73). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bencini, G.
(2003) Towards a diachronic typology of yes/no question constructions with particles. Proceedings of the thirty-ninth annual meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (pp. 604–621). Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Bertocchi, A., & Maraldi, M.
(2011) Conditionals and concessives. In P. Baldi & P. Cuzzolin (Eds.), New perspectives on historical Latin syntax 4. Complex sentences, grammaticalization, typology (pp. 661–864). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blaise, A.
(1954) Dictionnaire latin-français des auteurs chrétiens. Turnhout: Brepols.Google Scholar
(1955) Manuel du latin chrétien. Strasbourg: Le latin chrétien.Google Scholar
Blass, F., & Debrunner, A.
(1982) Grammatica del greco del Nuovo Testamento. F. Rehkopf (Ed.). Brescia: Paideia.Google Scholar
Bodelot, C.
(1987) L’interrogation indirecte en Latin: Syntaxe – valeur illocutoire – formes. Paris: Société pour l’information grammaticale.Google Scholar
(1990) Termes introducteurs et modes dans l’interrogation indirecte en latin de Plaute a Juvenal. Avignon: Aubanel.Google Scholar
Bouzouita, M.
(2008) The diachronic development of Spanish clitic placement. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation) King’s College, University of London, London, United Kingdom.Google Scholar
(2011) Future constructions in Medieval Spanish: Mesoclisis uncovered. In R. Kempson, E. Gregoromichelaki & C. Howes (Eds.), The dynamics of lexical interfaces (pp. 91–132). Stanford, CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
Brown, H. P., Joseph, B. D., & Wallace, R. E.
(2009) Questions and answers. In P. Baldi & P. Cuzzolin (Eds.), New perspectives on historical Latin syntax 1. Syntax of the sentence (pp. 489–530). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Buridant, C.
(2000) Grammaire nouvelle de l’ancien français. Strasbourg: Sedes.Google Scholar
Buscha, A.
(1976) Isolierte Nebensätze im dialogischen Text. Deutsch als Fremdsprache, 13, 274–279.Google Scholar
Clines, D. J. A.
(1993–2012) The dictionary of Classical Hebrew. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.Google Scholar
Dryer, M. S.
(2011) Polar Questions. In M. Haspelmath, M. S. Dryer, D. Gil & B. Comrie (Eds.), The world atlas of language structures online. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library. Retrieved from [URL]
Enrique-Arias, A.
(2006) Sobre el parentesco entre la Biblia de Alba y la Biblia de la Real Academia de la Historia ms. 87. Romance Philology, 59, 21–43. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2008) Apuntes para una caracterización de la morfosintaxis de los textos bíblicos medievales en castellano. In J. Kabatek (Ed.), Sintaxis histórica del español y cambio lingüístico: Nuevas perspectivas desde las tradiciones discursivas (pp. 109–125). Frankfurt & Madrid: Vervuert & Iberoamericana.Google Scholar
Enrique-Arias, A., & Burguera, J.
(2010) Variación y cambio en la formalización de la interrogación retórica en la historia del español. Presentation given at the XXVI Congreso Internacional de Linguistica y Filología Románicas , Universidad de Valencia, 6–11 September 2010.
Ernout, A., & Thomas, F.
(1953) Syntaxe latine. Paris: Klincksieck.Google Scholar
Escandell Vidal, M. V.
(1999) Los enunciados interrogativos. Aspectos semánticos y pragmáticos. In I. Bosque & V. Demonte (Eds.), Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española (pp. 3929–3991). Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.Google Scholar
Evans, N.
(2007) Insubordination and its uses. In I. Nikolaeva (Ed.), Finiteness: Theoretical and empirical foundations (pp. 366–431). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fava, E.
(1995) Il tipo interrogativo. In L. Renzi, G. Salvi & A. Cardinaletti (Eds.), Grande grammatical italiana di consultazione. Volume III. Tipi di frase, deissi, formazione delle parole (pp. 70–126). Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
García de Diego, V.
(1951) Gramática histórica española. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
Gordis, R.
(1933) A rhetorical use of interrogative sentences in biblical Hebrew. The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, 49(3), 212–217. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haiman, J.
(1978) Conditionals are topics. Language, 54, 512–540. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harris, A. C., & Campbell, L.
(1995) Historical syntax in cross-linguistic perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heine, B., & Kuteva, T.
(2002) World lexicon of grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Herman, J.
(1996) A propos du si interrogatif: Évolutions achevées et évolutions bloquées. In A. Bammesberger & F. Heberlein (Eds.), Akten des VIII. Internationalen Kolloquiums zur lateinischen Linguistik (pp. 296–307). Heidelberg: Winter.Google Scholar
Hofmann, J. B., & Szantyr, A.
(1965) Lateinische Syntax und Stylistk. München: C. H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung.Google Scholar
Jacobs, N. G., Prince, E. F., & van der Auwera, J.
(1994) Yiddish. In E. Köning & J. van der Auwera (Eds.), The Germanic languages (pp. 388–419). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jensen, F.
(1990) Old French and comparative Gallo-Romance syntax. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1994) Syntaxe de l’ancien occitan. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Köning, E., & Siemund, P.
(2007) Speech acts distinctions in grammar. In T. Shopen (Ed.), Language typology and syntactic description (Vol 1; pp. 276–324). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ledgeway, A.
(2012) From Latin to Romance. Morphosyntactic typology and change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lie, S.
(1992) Ka du sei?. Maal og Minne, 1, 62–77.Google Scholar
Löfsted, E.
(1911) Philologischer kommentar zur Peregrinatio Aetheriae. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell.Google Scholar
Maiden, M., & Robustelli, C.
(2007) A reference grammar of Modern Italian. London: Hodder Education.Google Scholar
Marchello-Nizia, Ch
(1985) Dire le vrai: L’adverbe “si” en français médiéval. Essai de linguistique historique. Genevè: Librairie Droz.Google Scholar
Mira Mateus, M. H., Brito, A. M., Duarte, I., & Hub Faria, I.
(2006) Gramática da língua portuguesa. Lisboa: Caminho.Google Scholar
Nyrop, K.
(1930) Grammaire historique de la langue française. Copenhague: Gyldendalske Boghandel.Google Scholar
Obenauer, H-G.
(2004) Nonstandard wh-questions and alternative checkers in Pagotto. In H. Lohnstein & S. Trissler (Eds.), Syntax and semantics of the Left Periphery, Interface explorations 9 (pp. 343–384). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ohori, T.
(2011) The grammaticalization of subordination. In H. Narrog & B. Heine (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of grammaticalization (pp. 636–645). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Payrató, L.
(2002) L’enunciació i la modalitat oracional. In J. Solà, M. -R. Lloret, J. Mascaró & M. Pérez Saldanya (Eds.), Gramàtica del català contemporani (pp. 1149–1220). Barcelona, Empúries.Google Scholar
Pérez Saldanya, M., & Hualde, J. I.
(2018) Recurrent processes in the evolution of concessive subordinators in Spanish and Catalan. In M. Bouzouita, I. Sitaridou & E. Pato (Eds.), Studies in historical Ibero-Romance morpho-syntax (pp. 223–248). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (in this volume) DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Posner, R.
(1995) Contact, social variants, parameter setting, and pragmatic function: An example from the history of French syntax. In J. Fisiak (Ed.), Linguistic change under contact conditions (pp. 217–236). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pueyo Mena, F. J., & Enrique-Arias, A.
(2013) Los romanceamientos castellanos de la Biblia Hebrea compuestos en la Edad Media: Manuscritos y traducciones. Sefarad, 73(1), 165–224. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Raukko, J., & Östman, J-A.
(1994) Pragmaattinen näkökulma itämeren kielialueeseen. Helsinki: University of Helsinki.Google Scholar
Real Academia Española/Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española
(2009) Nueva gramática de la lengua española. Madrid: Espasa.Google Scholar
Sachs, G.
(1948–1949) Fragmento de un estudio sobre la Biblia medieval romanceada . Romance Philology, 2, 217–228.Google Scholar
Sanchis Calvo, M. C.
(1991) El lenguaje de la Fazienda de Ultramar. Madrid: Real Academia Española.Google Scholar
Sephiha, H. V.
(1989) Ladinismes dans La Fazienda de Ultramar du XIIème siècle. In D. Tollet (Ed.), Politique et religion dans le judaïsme ancien et médiéval, interventions au colloque des 8 et 9 décembre 1987 (pp. 319–325). Paris: Desclée.Google Scholar
Siemund, P.
(2001) Interrogative constructions. In M. Haspelmath, E. König, W. Oesterreicher & W. Raible (Eds.), Language typology and language universals: An international handbook (Vol. 2; pp. 1010–1028). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Traugott, E. C.
(1985) Conditional markers. In J. Haiman (Ed.), Iconicity in syntax (pp. 289–307). Amsterdam: John Benjamin. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Väänänen, V.
(1981) Introduction au latin vulgaire, troisième édition revue et augmentée. Paris: Klincksieck.Google Scholar
Wheeler, M. W., Yates, A., & Dols, N.
(1999) Catalan: A comprehensive grammar. London: Routledge.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wright, R.
(2018) Studying Ibero-Romance before 1200. In M. Bouzouita, I. Sitaridou & E. Pato (Eds.), Studies in historical Ibero-Romance morpho-syntax (pp. 325–335). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (in this volume) DOI logoGoogle Scholar

Corpus

Amadís =Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, Amadís de Gaula, J. Manuel Cacho Blecua (Ed.) Madrid: Cátedra 1991.Google Scholar
Atalaya =Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, Atalaya de las crónicas, Ms. Egerton 287, J. B. Larkin (Ed.) ADMYTE-II 1999.Google Scholar
Bienandanzas Lope García de Salazar, Bienandanzas e fortunas, A. M. Marín Sánchez Ed. Retrieved from [URL]
BM =Enrique-Arias, A. (2008–2014) Biblia Medieval corpus. Retrieved from [URL]
Buen amor =Juan Ruiz, Libro de buen amor, A. Blecua (Ed.) Madrid: Cátedra 1992.Google Scholar
Cantigas =500 Cantigas d’amigo. R. Cohen (Ed.) Porto: Campo das letras 2003.Google Scholar
Catalan Bible=Bíblia del segle XIV: Primer i segon llibre dels Reis, J. Bruguera Talled, P. Casanellas & N. Calafell Sala (Eds.) Barcelona: Associació Bíblica de Catalunya/Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat 2011.Google Scholar
Celestina =Fernando de Rojas, La Celestina, D. S. Severin (Ed.) Madrid: Cátedra 1987.Google Scholar
Celos =Miguel de Cervantes, El gallardo español; La casa de los celos, F. Sevilla Arroyo, & A. Rey Hazas (Eds.) Madrid: Alianza 1997.Google Scholar
Cid =Cantar de mio Cid. Texto, gramática y vocabulario, Vol. 3: Texto , R. Ménedez Pidal (Ed.) Madrid: Espasa-Calpe 1980.Google Scholar
Corbacho =Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, El Corbacho, E. W. Naylor (Ed.) ADMYTE-II (ms. h-III-10) 1999.Google Scholar
Erec =Chrétien de Troyes, Érec et Énide. Paris: Flammarion 2009.Google Scholar
gei =Alfonso X, General estoria. Primera parte, P. Sánchez-Prieto Borja (Ed.) Madrid: Biblioteca Castro 2009.Google Scholar
Greek Septuaginta =Septuaginta, A. Rahlfs, & R. Hanhart (Eds.) Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft 2006.Google Scholar
Hebrew Bible =Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, K. Elliger, & W. Rudolph (Eds.) Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft 1997.Google Scholar
Isla=José Francisco de Isla, Historia del famoso predicador Fray Gerundio de Campazas, alias Zotes, J. Jurado (Ed.) Madrid: Gredos 1992.Google Scholar
Latin Vulgate =Biblia Sacra Vulgata, R. Weber, & R. Gryson (Eds.) Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft 1994.Google Scholar
Lazarillo =Lazarillo de Tormes, F. Rico (Ed.) Madrid: Real Academia Española 2011.Google Scholar
Liv.=Livy, with an English translation in fourteen volumes. VIII, books XXVIII-XXX, F. Gardner Moore (Ed.) London/Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1962.Google Scholar
Pathelin =Maistre Pierre Pathelin; farce du XVe siècle, R. T. Holbrook (Ed.) Paris: H. Champion 1924.Google Scholar
Perceval =Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval ou le Conte du graal. Paris: Flammarion 1997.Google Scholar
Peribáñez =Félix Lope de Vega, Peribañez y el comendador de Ocaña, D. McGrady (Ed.) Barcelona: Crítica 1997.Google Scholar
Pl. Amph.=Plautus, with an English translation by Paul Nixon in five volumes. I. Amphitryon, The comedy of asses, the pot of gold, the two bacchises, the captives. London/Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1966.Google Scholar
Pl. Trin.=Plautus, with an english translation by Paul Nixon in five volumes. V. Stichus. Three Bob Day, Truculentus, The tale of a travelling bag, fragments. London/Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1955.Google Scholar
Plácidas =El caballero Pláçidas (Ms. Esc. H-I-13), R. M. Walker (Ed.) Exeter: University of Exeter 1982.Google Scholar
Quijote =Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote de la Mancha, F. Rico (Ed.) Madrid: Instituto Cervantes/Crítica 1998.Google Scholar
Roman de la Rose =Jean Renart, Le Roman de la rose ou de Guillaume de Dole, F. Lecoy (Ed.) Paris: Champion 1979.Google Scholar
Regenta =Leopoldo Alas “Clarín”, La Regenta, G. Sobejano (Ed.) Madrid: Castalia 1981.Google Scholar
Ter., Eu.=Terence. I. The woman of Andros, the self-tormentor, the eunuch, J. Barsby (Ed.) London/Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2001.Google Scholar
Tert. Apol.=Tertulian. Apology. De spectaculis, T. R. Glover, & G. H. Rendall (Eds.) London/ Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1984.Google Scholar
Zalacaín =Pío Baroja, Zalacaín el aventurero. Madrid: Caro Raggio 1975.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Del Barrio de la Rosa, Florencio
2023. Preguntó (que) si qué quería: si como operador interrogativo en español vernáculo. Cuadernos de Lingüística Hispánica :42 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Enrique-Arias, Andrés
2020. Variación y cambio en la formalización de la interrogación retórica en la historia del español. Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 136:4 ► pp. 1085 ff. DOI logo
Pérez Saldanya, Manuel & José Ignacio Hualde
2018. Chapter 10. Recurrent processes in the evolution of concessive subordinators in Spanish and Catalan. In Studies in Historical Ibero-Romance Morpho-Syntax [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 16], ► pp. 223 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 april 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.