Enseñanzas del cambio fracasado: trayectoria y estela de una perífrasis fugaz (infinitivo + <em>tener</em>)

Abstract

Las estructuras con un infinitivo antepuesto al auxiliar tener constituyen un fenómeno de muy escasa frecuencia y corta vida en español (siglos XV–XVII). Se insertan, sin embargo, en un conjunto más amplio de construcciones que incluye al llamado "futuro analítico" (cantarlo he) y, en general, a las perífrasis en que el infinitivo asume la primera posición oracional merced a una focalización (fronting). Así, el estudio detallado de este fenómeno en apariencia marginal puede arrojar luz sobre el modo en que se produjo la pérdida simultánea de todas las estructuras mencionadas hacia 1660. Además, su historia muestra provechosamente el recorrido de un cambio por extensión sintáctica, proceso en el que parece desempeñar un papel crucial la analogía. Original recibido: 2015/05/31Dictamen enviado al autor: 2015/06/19Aceptado: 2015/06/20

Large Corpora and Historical Syntax: Consequences for the Study of Morphosyntactic Diffusion in the History of Spanish

“…The evolution of the use of this syntactic schema is shown in Figure 1 (cf. Octavio de Toledo y Huerta, 2016b) from which we can determine two main points: firstly, whilst this construction was in use (that is, from the middle of the 15th Century to around 1650), it saw sustained growth: see the thickest line on the graph which represents, as a percentage, the proportion with which all variants of the schema appear in a particular time period out of the total number of cases observed 8 ; and secondly, between the end of the fourteen hundreds and the middle of the 16th century there was a rapid increase in the use of variants involving no linking preposition and of those including a clitic (see the fine, continuous line and the large dashed line, respectively), thus becoming increasingly analogs to the so-called “analytic future” of the type cantarlo he “I will sing it,” literally “to sing it (I) have,” which obligatorily includes a clitic and has no linking preposition. Furthermore, and in concert with these formal changes, a distributional change also took place as the construction came to be more often found toward the beginning of main clauses, further converging with “analytic futures,” which are almost exclusively found in that position 9 .…”

“…The effects of co-evolution are also felt in the case of the periphrasis with fronted infinitive, for example, cantar(lo) tengo (see Figure 1 above): the curve shows how the presence of clitics within the schema grows significantly until the middle of the 16th century, which, as already stated, clearly indicates a convergence with the “analytic future” cantarlo he , a construction in which the clitic is obligatory. However, this tendency never reaches completion; instead, the curve levels off and even shows a clear decline in the 17th century, most probably due to the fact that the construction with tener departs from the model with haber (which was receding at great speed under the competence of the “synthetic” solution cantarelo “I will sing it”) and becomes attracted to analogous sequences using the auxiliaries deber “must, ought to,” poder “can, be able to” and querer “want to,” in which the clitic can be used but is not obligatory (Octavio de Toledo y Huerta, 2016b). In any case, what is important here is that the formulation of these hypotheses emerges directly from the comparison of evolutionary paths, whether they describe the coevolution of a whole network (Figure 4) or the syntactic properties of a single given phenomenon (Figure 1).…”

“…7Three hundred and sixty-seven cases were retrieved through an exhaustive search of CORDE; cf. Octavio de Toledo y Huerta (2016b).…”