The refuge of a dying variant within the grammar: Patterns of change and continuity in the Spanish verbal periphrasis haber de + infinitive over the past two centuries

Abstract

Based on a corpus of ego-documents (private letters, diaries, memoirs) from the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, this paper presents a variationist comparative study to determine the fate of the modal periphrasis haber de + infinitive in the history of modern Spanish. Detailed analysis of the envelope of variation enables us to show that, despite an abrupt decline in the selection of haber de relative to tener que, both 'to have to', grammatical environments that favor its use remain in the mid-20th century. Many of the factor groups and the hierarchy of constraints during this period are similar to those that operated in previous periods. Nevertheless, a generalized decrease in the explanatory power of these factor groups, as well as some divergent patterns within several of these groups are also observed, mainly as a result of the fact that haber de + infinitive is increasingly relegated to some restricted areas of the grammar and lexicon. Based on these results, some theoretical implications for changing rates and constraints in language change and grammaticalization are discussed.