Constelación de cambios en torno a la categoría objeto indirecto en el español del siglo XVIII

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to shed new light on several intertwined changes in the Spanish language which were especially active during the 18th century in the Viceroyalty of New Spain. After a diachronical analysis of the indirect object clitic doubling, it addresses its relationship with the loss of vosotros in favour of ustedes in the 18th century in New Spain and the significant activation of the prepositional marking of inanimate direct objects in that same century. Certain other connected innovations are also studied, such as the loss of number concordance in the dative clitic les, the functional extension of the preposition a to contexts other than object and the generalization of dative and accusative clitics to non-etymological and non-referential contexts. All these changes can be analyzed under Martinet’s concept of «chain of changes» and show the importance of 18th century Spanish as the seed of Modern Spanish.