Factorization in the grammar and syntactic change: A study in the categorial evolution of clitics in Spanish

This thesis investigates the evolution of unstressed pronouns in Spanish and draws conclusions on how best one can characterize and represent their grammatical properties in synchronic and diachronic terms. It illustrates the process of their grammaticalization by examining syntactic and phonological causation as well as semantic and discourse-pragmatic motivation. It shows that categorial changes affecting the pronominal and verbal clitics brought about the reorganization of the lexicon and the restructuring of clause structure. Furthermore, it argues that language change can be viewed as the consequence of a chain of re-analyses on the part of speaker-learner in such way that a greater uniformity is achieved in the representation of linguistic elements. It concludes that syntactic change originates in the phonological component of the grammar, i.e., that (morpho)phonological processes trigger the re-structuring of the categorial component of the grammar.;While this study is intended as a contribution to our knowledge of the syntax of Old and Modern Spanish clitics, it also has broader purposes: to offer new insights into the formal aspects of syntactic change and to contribute to the development of a general theory of language change.;The thesis is divided into three parts. Part I surveys issues in historical linguistics in the generative tradition. Part II describes the present and past of clitics. Chapter 2 introduces the major theoretical concepts of the Government-Binding Theory and discusses the syntactic and semantic properties of modern pronominal clitics in Spanish. Chapter 3 investigates the syntactic and categorial properties of Old Spanish Weak Pronouns, while Chapter 4 takes up problems concerning their placement. Part III, together with Chapter 3, constitutes the main result of the thesis. Chapter 5 studies in detail the restructuring of the clitic system. Chapter 6 proposes a principle and mechanisms of syntactic change.