A diachronic study of indirect object doubling in Argentinian Spanish

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article investigates the textual motivation of clitic doubling in Spanish with a case study of indirect object doubling in 18th, 19th and 20th century Argentinian Spanish. It is generally assumed that doubling originated with preposed and stressed NPs, and increased in frequency till it was obligatory in those contexts. This development and the further spread of doubling have been ascribed mainly to topicality and high accessibility of the 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, we relate doubling 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, in which the indirect object has high and the direct object low accessibility marking. We interpret this surprising finding in terms of informational prominence and degrees of communicative dynamism.