An analysis of morphosyntactic variation in the Old Spanish future and conditional

Abstract

Abstract The presence of two forms of the future and conditional paradigms in Old Spanish is well-attested. The analytic form, which was marked by a mesoclitic, was more syntactically restricted, while the synthetic form, which surfaced with either a proclitic or an enclitic, was essentially free to appear in any syntactic context. It is notable that the analytic form was only acceptable in contexts in which finite verbs obligatorily hosted enclitics. In this article, I test various morphosyntactic factors to determine the level of variation among the analytic and synthetic future and conditional forms across six centuries of Old Spanish. The factors of verb tense, preverbal constituent, and verb stem morphology significantly affect the emergence of mesoclisis or enclisis, as does the century during which the verb is produced; however, subject expression is not a significant factor.