Los pronombres interrogativos complejos del españolel quéylo qué

Abstract

AbstractThe neuter interrogative pronounsel quéandlo quéalternate withqué‘what’ in conversational Spanish in certain contexts and types of wh-questions (e.g., –No me lo puedo creer – ¿No te puedes creer qué/el qué/lo qué?). This paper describes geographical, register and social variation in the use ofel quéandlo quéand analyses the interpretive and distributional properties of these complex forms. Building on corpus data and speakers’ judgements, it is shown that the formel quéis common to all Spanish dialects and is used in all registers and at all social levels, whereaslo quéis only found in Spain, Argentina and Uruguay: in Spain and Argentina, this form belongs to lower class people with little education and speakers in rural areas; in Uruguay, it does not have a social bias and occurs in both formal and informal situations. It is also argued thatel quéandlo quéare used to indicate that the target of the question is identifiable in the context of utterance, and it is thus claimed thatelandloinel quéandlo quéare overt definiteness markers.