Grammaticalization of spanish 'de': Reanalysis of (de)queismo in Southern Cone dialects (Argentina)

The present study proposes an account for (de) queismo, i.e. the non-standard insertion and omission of the preposition de 'of' in the head position of some embedded tensed clauses. The research for this study focuses on quantitative and qualitative analyses of the variation of (de) queismo from a sociohistorical perspective. This entails an analysis of gathered samples of dequeismo across time by means of computerized corpora of Medieval, Golden Age, and Contemporary Spanish, and a fine-grained discourse analysis of (de)queismo constructions in naturally-occurring speech data from three attested ( de)queista varieties of the Southern Cone of Latin America: Chilean, Rioplatense, and Cuyano Spanish.; The study shows that the extension of the use of the preposition de from more concrete senses to a more abstract modal marker in ( de)queista clauses can be construed as characteristic of a grammaticalization process known as subjectification, i.e. the process whereby speakers/writers come over time to develop meanings for expressions that encode their perspectives and attitudes (Traugott and Dasher 2002: 30). Evidence for this claim is provided by the evolution of (de) queista clauses, which shows an increasing degree of subjectification, with a concomitant shift from a high to a low degree of the speaker's commitment with respect to the proposition. This claim is supported by the fact that across centuries there is an increase of (de)queista clauses embedded by verbs of cognition; they appear in direct object position, which entails a closer semantic relationship between the verb and the structure; and, this is heightened by a concomitant increase across centuries of (de)queista clauses with first person subject.; The findings of the study also suggest that dequeismo and queismo are variants of the same sociolinguistic variable in Southern Cone Spanish because both variants are regulated by the same linguistic factors, i.e., types of verbs, syntactic structures, grammatical person, and tense in the main clause. Secondly, (de) queismo seems to constitute a change in progress because it is a stable, long-term variation that has persisted over many centuries. Thirdly, the variation between Southern Cone dialects in the use of (de) queismo reflects different semantic nuances of de ; hence, different grammaticalization stages.