Book Description

An excerpt from the INTRODUCTION. I. Definition of Title. The title of this work, Object-Pronouns in Dependent Clauses: A Study in Old Spanish Word-Order, is perhaps too inclusive. The investigation concerns itself only with the phenomenon which I shall call interpolation. Throughout this study, interpolation will be used to mean the interpolation, between an unstressed object-pronoun and its following governing verb, of another word or other words, not unstressed object-pronouns in similar construction. In Old Spanish this phenomenon is almost without exception confined to dependent clauses, i.e., clauses that begin with a subordinating conjunction, a relative pronoun, or a relative adverb with conjunctional force. II. Previous Notices Of Interpolation. Interpolation is merely mentioned by Diez, but with no attempt to determine the conditions of its occurrence. I find the next reference in Reinhardstoettner's Grammatik der portugiesischen Sprache (1878), s. 391.1 Paul Foerster, in his Spanische Sprachlehre (1880) merely distinguishes interpolation as of two sorts, the first with the negative particle, the second with other words.2 R. Thurneysen (Zeitschrift f. rom. Phil, xvi (1892), ss. 289-307, Zur Stellung des Verbums im Altfranzösischen) discusses the position of unstressed words and seeks to prove that the latter tend to become enclitic to the first stressed word of the sentence or clause. Incidentally he mentions interpolation in Old Spanish and Portuguese and raises the question whether the cases of it are archaisms or innovations. Emil Gessner (Zeitschr. , xvii (1893), ss. 1-54, Das spanische Personalpronomen) briefly notices the phenomenon without, however, defining the syntactical conditions of its occurrence. His notice is chiefly valuable for its chronological data with regard to the disappearance of interpolation in Spanish.4 S. Gräfenberg (Rom. Forsch., Vii (1893), s. 547) in the grammatical notes to his edition of Don Juan Manuel's Libro del Cavallero et del Escudero mentions the postposition of the particle non to the object-pronoun but does not notice any other variety of interpolation. Meyer-Lübke (Zeitschr. f. rom. Ph., xxi (1897), ss. 313334, Zur Stellung der tonlosen Objektspronomina im Romanischen) maintains with Thurneysen that unstressed object-pronouns were originally always enclitic and considers interpolation in Old Spanish and Portuguese to be a survival of Latin usage. He also attempts to define the syntactical categories in which interpolation usually occurs. In the Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen, in, s. 764, § 715, Meyer-Lübke sums up the argument of the Zeitichrift article but omits all reference to the syntactical categories....