El auge del dequeísmo en el siglo XVIII o la desestabilización del sistema

Abstract

This paper provides evidence of the early presence of dequeism in the 18th century, and analyzes the possible causes for its apparition. The analysis is based on different corpuses and special attention has been paid to the influence that some specific linguistic and extralinguistic factors may have had in the apparition and expansion of the dequeism. Such factors as the source and type of texts are considered and we also evaluate the importance of some pragmatic/semantic conditioning, as the use of de como as an evidentiality marker, the use of non-past tenses, the expression of disagreement, or negative assessment, etc. It also evaluates the effect of some psycholinguistic factors, such as the repetition of some discourse structures, analogies, etc. This analysis shows that these motivations only seem to operate under some specific conditions, since dequeism is found only in texts with an essential communicative function and a minimal stylistic concern. The academic pressure in the 18th century is likely to have stopped these innovative attempts, which will be marginalized to some specific contexts and became clearly stigmatized variants. Dequeism, which could have emerged as an instance of linguistic change, is then reduced to a mere process resulting from linguistic variation.