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Article published In:
Journal of Historical Linguistics
Vol. 7:3 (2017) ► pp.276–321

The diachrony of Spanish haber/hacer + time

A quantitative corpus-based approach to grammaticalization

| University of the Basque Country | University of Surrey

Using quantitative corpus evidence from different periods, the present article analyzes the emergence and diachronic development of the Spanish time constructions (clausal and adverbial) involving contemporary hacer ‘make’ and earlier haber ‘have’. The obtained data, as well as cross-linguistic evidence, suggest that the clausal construction must have been the source of the adverbial one. A proposal is presented that could explain that development. The data show, in addition, that the grammatical properties and usage patterns of the clausal and adverbial constructions were very similar until the 16th century but have been diverging ever since. This divergence coincides with an exponential increase in the textual raw frequency of the adverbial construction, where word order fixation, erosion of the inflectional morphology and a change in the possibilities for time adjunction among others are found to occur at around the same time. This points towards a desentencialization, loss of inner structure and grammaticalization of the adverbial construction in those periods.

Keywords: temporal hacer, Spanish, diachrony, grammaticalization, desententialization, corpus linguistics, categorization
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.In search of the origins
    • 2.1The origin of temporal haber
    • 2.2The durative and the punctual meanings
    • 2.3The clausal and the adverbial constructions
    • 2.4The origin of biclausal constructions
  • 3.In search of the diachronic developments
    • 3.1The emergence of the adverbial construction
    • 3.2Preliminary quantitative observations
    • 3.3Reanalysis of surface structure + syntactic back-formation
    • 3.4Discussion
  • 4.A corpus-based quantitative analysis of the diachronic changes in time constructions with haber and hacer
    • 4.1Methodology
    • 4.2Results
      • 4.2.1The replacement of haber by hacer
      • 4.2.2Durative and punctual meanings
      • 4.2.3Clausal and adverbial constructions
      • 4.2.4Word order of the phrase
      • 4.2.5Time adjuncts
      • 4.2.6Co-occurrence with a preposition
      • 4.2.7Negation
      • 4.2.8Preverbal vs. postverbal adverbial construction
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion and further research
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 26 January 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.15018.her
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