A diachronic study of indirect object doubling in Spanish

This article addresses the question of the textual motivation of clitic doubling in Spanish with a case study of indirect object doubling in 18th, 19th and 20th century Argentinian Spanish. Doubling has been claimed to have originated with preposed and stressed topical NPs and to have increased in frequency until it was obligatory in those contexts. This is confirmed by our data. Both this development and the further ongoing spread of doubling have been ascribed mainly to topicality and high accessibility of the doubled indirect object. However, in our data indirect objects may also be doubled when they are not highly accessible, for instance, when they are coded by an indefinite NP that introduces a new discourse referent. To gain a more comprehensive insight into clitic doubling, we relate it to the interaction between the indirect and the direct object in terms of their accessibility marking. We observe that the gradual, ongoing spread of doubling to definite and indefinite indirect objects, which mark low accessibility, is strongest in contexts where the direct objects are marked for high accessibility, i.e., in contexts with the inverse distribution of the unmarked pattern according to which the accessibility of the indirect object is high and that of the direct object is low. We interpret this surprising finding in terms of informational prominence and degrees of communicative dynamism.

Publication year:2020

Accessibility:Open