En los albores de un cambio lingüístico: factores condicionantes y fases en la inserción del artículo en relativas oblicuas del siglo XVIII

Abstract

Based on a corpus of ego-documents (mainly private letters) from the 18th century, we offer the results of a variationist analysis about the insertion of the article in relative clauses headed by preposition («la casa en (la) que...»). The data show that, despite the remarkable vitality that still enjoys the form without the article (almost categorical in the Golden Age Spanish), several contexts begin to favor the diffusion of the innovative variant in that seminal period. As usual in early stages of language change, the explanatory hierarchy begins with structural factors, several among which are selected as significant by the regression analysis. Nevertheless, the selection of time as well as some distributions in the social and stylistic axes of variation allow us to guess the existence of various phases in this incipient change. The first one, developed throughout the first half of the century, is set up as a spontaneous change from below, at the request of the subaltern classes, the younger people, and the most spontaneous contexts. However, towards the end of the century, this change seems to have been stabilized and even reversed in some way, driven now by the privileged classes, who favor the return to the old variant.