Diachronic and Synchronic Analysis – the Case of the Indirect Object in Spanish

This review article deals with a monograph on the indirect object in Spanish. The book offers a many-faceted analysis of the indirect object, as it, on the one hand, gives a detailed diachronic analysis of what is known as clitic-doubled constructions and, on the other, a synchronic analysis of both predicative constructions with an indirect object and the relationship between the notion of perspective and the indirect object. The general impression is that the author has produced an impressive analytical work, which, however, is not easily accessible.


Introduction
In his Course in General Linguistics, Saussure made the well-known distinction between synchronic studies and diachronic studies.With this starting point, a study on linguistic objects may focus on either the principles which account for the structure of language (Saussure 1983: 99) or on linguistic changes that occur over time (Saussure 1983: 139).As Harder (2005: 24) notes, these two dimensions are intrinsically related, since you need to know the actual state of a language if you aim at performing a diachronic analysis of linguistic phenomena.
Estudio diacrónico y sincrónico del objeto indirecto en el español peninsular y de América (2006) ("A diachronic and synchronic study of Becerra Bascuñán, Silvia 2006: Estudio diacrónico y sincrónico del objeto indirecto en el español peninsular y de América.Etudes Romanes 57.University of Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. the indirect object in Peninsular Spanish and in Latin America") by Silvia Becerra Bascuñán (SBB) is a two-sided study in which the author provides an analysis of the evolution of the use of the dative pronoun in Spanish and an analysis of its actual state.The book is a revised version of her PhD thesis from 2002.
The questions asked in any investigation are determined by the theoretical setting in which one works.Although there is a myriad of theoretical frameworks, we venture to mark out two main theoretical fi elds: the generative paradigm and the functional paradigm, as suggested by Newmeyer (2000).The former seeks to uncover the formal relations mediating between grammatical elements abstracting away from semantics and pragmatics (Newmeyer 2000: 7) The latter, however, sees these properties as forming an intrinsic part of linguistic elements.It therefore takes the communicative situation into account, in the sense that it is this which determines the grammatical structures (Newmeyer 2000: 10).These characteristics are, as Newmeyer also notes, very broad as they embrace many and very distinct theories.The distinction serves, nevertheless, as an operational foundation for capturing essential characteristics of two important directions in linguistics.
SBB locates her book in the functional fi eld.On this basis, she specifi es the purpose of her book as providing an analysis of the evolution of the phenomenon known as clitic-doubled constructions in Spanish (SBB: 16).This purpose, however, cannot possibly apply to the whole book; it must necessarily be twofold as the second part of the book is a synchronic analysis.The author states at a later point that this second part aims at explaining the grammatical status of the indirect object within two functional frameworks.
After having made these general observations, the way is paved for scrutinizing the main points made by SBB.

Diachronic analysis
Before exploring the process of grammaticalization of clitic-doubled constructions in Spanish, this section starts out with a brief outline of problems pertaining to personal pronouns in Spanish.

Personal pronouns -the unstressed forms
The grammar of unstressed pronouns in Spanish is by no means a simple one.Two phenomena in particular have been subject to analysis among linguists, viz.what is known as leísmo, loísmo and laísmo and clitic-doubled constructions.
The former concerns the case system of the pronouns.Spanish unstressed pronouns are characterized as being proclitic forms which, apart from infl ecting for person, number and gender, infl ect for case.The pronouns, however, are not always used in consistency with the case system, as other parameters are also employed.A widespread system is the referential system, which takes countability as a parameter (Fernández-Ordóñez 1993).The pronominal system applied differs regionally and continentally.
A different peculiarity of the Spanish pronominal system is, as referred to above, 'clitic-doubled constructions'.According to Fernández Soriano (1999: 1246), a traditional defi nition of this phenomenon is as follows: "(…) el clítico aparece "a la vez que" otro elemento que guarda la misma relación con el verbo (…)" ("(…) the clitic appears "at the same time" as a different element which has the same relation with the verb (…)").This means that the object, either accusative or dative, appears twice, both as a pronominal phrase headed by a clitic and as a noun phrase, headed either by a noun or by a stressed pronoun.This is illustrated in (1) and ( 2): (1) El otro día le regalaron a mi mami un jamón de Teruel ("the other day they her gave my mummy a ham from Teruel") (2) A mí me parece muy razonable ("To me me it seems very reasonable") Both the direct and the indirect object may be doubled.In some cases, it is compulsory and in others it is facultative.
It is this phenomenon of the grammar of unstressed pronouns in Spanish that SBB sets out to unravel in her book.The phenomenon of leísmo, loísmo and laísmo is left out of account.She gives the following defi nition of clitic-doubled constructions: En concordancia con la relativa libertad del orden de los constituyentes de la oración, el OD/OI puede ocupar la posición preverbal, lo cual trae consigo la presencia de un átono representante de la fun-ción de la unidad antepuesta.En la posposición también se registra el mismo fenómeno, aún en los casos en que la referencia es clara ("In accordance with the relatively free word order at the level of the sentence, the DO/IO may occupy the preverbal position, which causes the presence of an unstressed representative of the preposed function.In the postposition the same phenomenon is also seen, also in the cases in which reference is univocal") (SBB: 28).
This defi nition corresponds largely to the defi nition provided above in being rather general.
As we shall see in the next section, SBB uses Andersen's theory of markedness and linguistic change, inspired in Coseriu, in her analysis of the evolution of the use of clitic-doubled constructions in Spanish.

Markedness, linguistic change and grammaticalization
Markedness is defi ned in different, but interrelated terms.In generative grammar, marked vs. unmarked corresponds to core language vs. periphery (Chomsky 1984: 8;1986: 147).Core language determines the parameters for Universal Grammar, whereas periphery accounts for irregularities; i.e. additional elements to the system (Chomsky 1986: 146-147).Peripheral elements are therefore marked.According to Chomsky, it is core language which is central to linguistic analysis.
According to Dik (1989: 38-41) and Hopper & Traugott (1993: 145), markedness is related to frequency; unmarked terms have a greater frequency than marked terms.To Andersen (2001), however, frequency concerns markedness only indirectly.Markedness is understood "as an intrinsic characteristic of linguistic oppositions, as values speakers impute to the terms of any and all oppositions in the process of grammar formation" (Andersen 2001: 51, ob. cit. SBB: 40).Terms, however, are not unmarked because they are frequent; it is the other way round: because unmarked terms have a wider usage, they occur more frequently than marked terms (Andersen 2001: 50).
Where Chomsky seeks to explain the central principles of our universal grammar, Andersen claims that 'markedness' is operational in studies on linguistic change because it allows systematic investigation of it.He accounts for this systematicity with a starting point in Hopper & Thompson's Transitivity Scale.It is a fundamental point of Hopper & Thompson that when features are paired, they are always from the same side of the scale.Along the same lines, Andersen argues that linguistic change occurs fi rstly in contexts with the same markedness value (Andersen 2001: 36); that is, unmarked elements change fi rstly in unmarked contexts, whereas marked elements change fi rstly in marked contexts.When these innovations cease to be new to language, they may spread to contexts with the opposite markedness value (Andersen 2001: 36).
As mentioned above, SBB bases her analysis of the evolution of clitic-doubled constructions on Andersen's theory of markedness.However, it seems to us that she refrains from providing an exact defi nition of markedness.This, however, may be due to the fact that Andersen does not clearly defi ne the notion himself.
In her analysis of the evolution of clitic-doubled constructions, SBB refers to Lehmann (1995) and Hopper & Traugott's (1993) characterization of grammaticalization (41-43).According to Lehmann, grammaticalization is a gradual process in which different phases of the fenomenon may be defi ned.More or less along the same lines, Hopper & Traugott (1993: 2;18) defi ne grammaticalization, as referring to the evolution of grammatical forms, either as a process in which linguistic elements evolve into being more grammatical, or as a lexical form developing into a grammatical form.Moreover, grammaticalization is characterized as a development with directionality.Directionality is manifest in that changes happen along a continuum moving from content to grammar.This view has been challenged by Newmeyer (2000: 263-275), who provides different counterexamples of upgrading.Newmeyer (2000: 228) lists a number of well-known processes of grammaticalization: • Lexical category to functional category • Functional category or pronoun to clitic • Clitic to affi x • Derivational affi x to infl ectional affi x He mentions furthermore that it sometimes is used about changes of syntactic constructions, e.g.developments of a particular ordering of syntactic elements into an obligatory ordering (Newmeyer 2000: 231).It seems obvious that the phenomenon that SBB submits to analysis should be characterized as a change of a syntactic construction although she only defi nes grammaticalization in terms of the processes listed above.
These are the theoretical guidelines that SBB sets up for her analysis of the evolution of the unstressed pronouns in Spanish.The analysis is based on a varied corpus of 2.338.928words.The corpus is composed so that it allows investigation of both geographical differences between Spanish used in Spain and in Latin America and of temporal differences, as it also covers a large span of time dating from the end of the 14 th century till the end of the 20 th century.Moreover, by implying different genres, the corpus aims at taking differences between registers into consideration.

Markedness, linguistic change, grammaticalization and clitic-doubled constructions in Spanish
SBB starts out by characterizing Spanish as a pro-drop language; i.e., it does not need an explicit subject because the verbal morpheme marks the grammatical subject.If an explicit subject is present, it has an emphatic effect.The relation between the grammatical subject and the explicit subject is in Dik's terminology called 'cross-reference' (SBB: 25).SBB transfers this analysis to the analysis of clitic-doubled constructions.She starts from the assumption that in such constructions, the pronominal object is analysed as a marker of cross-reference with the nominal indirect object.As in the case of the subject, the lexical object needs not be present (SBB: 177).These differ in that cross-reference of the subject is morphological, whereas in the case of the object, it is syntactic.SBB argues that both the indirect object and the direct object will eventually be grammaticalised as grammatical markers of cross-reference (SBB: 31).This evolution indicates that the verb will end up not only encoding the subject, but also other central functions.
The fi rst part of the book is dedicated to providing an analysis of the evolution of clitic-doubled constructions.The process is explained with a starting point in the notion of 'drift' as defi ned by Sapir (1921) and Andersen (1990) (SBB: 37).'Drift' is the denomination of long term processes of change which are characterized as having both direction and structure (SBB: 37).In the case of cross-reference of the indirect object, the direction and the structure are manifest in that the development starts in unmarked contexts and then spreads to marked contexts.The changes are gradually transferred to and accepted by new generations until they are fully integrated in language.
Originally, pronouns appearing in clitic-doubled constructions were analysed as being redundant as they have the same syntactic functions as the nominal object.Their semantic function was anaphoric, and doubling was only accepted in cases of emphasis, contrast or specifi cation (SBB: 28).
Gradually, over centuries, clitic-doubled constructions have become more and more widespread until reaching a reanalysis in terms of crossreference.Reanalysis applies to cases in which a linguistic phenomenon is generalized so that it appears in contexts in which it did not formerly occur, and new rules emerge (SBB: 39).
As mentioned above, SBB claims, in accordance with Andersen (2001), that this process starts in unmarked contexts.In the subject in case, these are (SBB: 77): • Contexts with a high degree of animacy, in accordance with the fol- The analysis shows that grammaticalization occurs in accordance with the following hierarchy: subject > indirect object > direct object.The indirect object is grammaticalised before the direct object because it shares the features of {+HUM} and {+ DEF} with the subject (SBB: 76).
Where the subject is fully grammaticalised, the object is still in the process, although clitic-doubled constructions are almost compulsory as regards the indirect object (SBB:70).
The analysis also shows that the evolution takes place more quickly when the object is preposed, in the 1 st and the 2 nd person, and when the object is pronominal rather than nominal (SBB: 70).SBB (97) states that the direct object does not exhibit the same degree of grammaticalization as the indirect object as it is only in contexts in which the direct object is preposed that doubling is compulsory.The indirect object, on the contrary, is grammaticalized to the extent that it may be regarded as a marker of a syntactic function just as the subject (146).
SBB (287) concludes that the evolution is more or less parallel in Spain and in Latin America, although it tends to be more pronounced in Latin America, and that it is determined by the same factors.She delineates the present state in Spain and Latin America as follows: Spain (SBB: 146): • 1 st, and 2 nd persons and the 3 rd person when the IO is pronominal, in all registers • Preposed object in conversational spoken language and in written language both colloquial and conversational Latin America (SBB: 176): • 1 st and 2 nd persons in all registers • 3 rd person in popular language both with lexical and pronominal IO • Preposed object in all persons in educated spoken language • Preposed object in all persons in academic prose (Mexico, Columbia and Argentina) • Preposed object in all persons in narrative prose in Chile The comparison with the subject turns out to be a fruitful one, and the evidence that SBB puts forward to sustain her assumptions is persuasive.

Preliminary refl ections
A relevant and reasonable concluding question to ask is how the analysis complies with the objectives established within the theoretical frame.First of all, the analogy drawn between the subject and the object is both original and operational.It seems to us that the diachronic analysis of the development of clitic-doubled constructions and its consequences for grammaticalization of the pronominal indirect and direct object is a valuable contribution.In fact, it appears to contribute more than the title of the book promises as it comprises not only thorough analyses of the development of the use of the pronominal indirect object, but also of the direct object.The basic assumptions are thoroughly sustained through a detailed analytical work.
Having said that, it may be objected that one has to watch one's step as it demands a lot of hard work by the reader to grasp all the parts of the analyses.On many occasions during the perusal of the book, the authors of this article would much have appreciated a greater use of examples; in fact, examples are not provided before page 46.As the book is written in Spanish, its audience must of course comprehend that language and be familiar with constructions of it, but due to the fact that it moves through different centuries and works on the basis of a varied set of parameters, it is our opinion that the explanation would have benefi ted from a greater use of illustrative examples.
As it is, the fi rst part of the book (chapters 2 and 3) appears very compact.We would furthermore argue that the great use of quotation adds to the complexity of the text.SBB (32) mentions on one occasion that quotations are provided with the aim of giving as precise an account as possible.This is of course a very sound argument, but quotation also has the effect of interrupting the fl uency of the text as in several places the reader needs to adapt to a different style, terminology and in many cases to a different language.
On these grounds, this assessment may have missed some points, but we hope to have done justice to the work in any case.

Synchrony
The second part of the book is a synchronic analysis and is divided into two parts, one of which is an analysis based on Valency Grammar, and the other an analysis resting on Functional Grammar.

The theoretical setting
The general approach to the functional analysis is established in a quote from Coseriu (1988Coseriu ( [1957]]) (SBB: 189) which presumably aims at establishing the general approach basic to the functional analysis.The essence of this is that language should fi rstly be conceived as a tool used to perform certain functions and secondarily as a system.
SBB employs two functional theories, both of which are part of what is called European functionalism, viz. the Adject Theory, developed in the realms of Valency Grammar by M. Herslund and F. Sørensen, and Functional Grammar (FG), conceived by S. Dik.
Dik's view on functionality is in accord with Coseriu as he states that "a natural language is an instrument of social interaction" (Dik 1988: 4).Therefore the rules and principles which govern the structure of language should not be explained independently, but by virtue of the way they function in communication.
Valency Grammar may be classifi ed as a functional theory because it is based on the idea that syntactic structures are formed on the basis of the semantics of linguistic expressions.

The indirect object in predicative constructions
In chapter 4, SBB carries out a valency-based analysis of predicative constructions.The corpus on which the analysis is based shows that the indirect object and the subject predicative may co-occur in constructions with copula verbs (ser and estar), predicative verbs (ir, salir and venir) and verbs which are said to have both a predicative and a copulative use (parecer).This is shown by the following examples: (3) Por muy habitual que nos sea.1 ("No matter how usual that it us is") (4) (…) éste me está chico.("(…) this me is small") (5) (...) A mí el campo me resulta aburrido.("To me the countryside me seems boring") The Adject Theory forms part of Valency Grammar, which was developed with a starting point in Tesnière, who originally borrowed the notion of valence from chemistry to account for the way verbs combine with specifi c constituents to form clauses.
Where traditional syntactic analysis divides sentences into their constituent parts without taking their semantic interrelations into account, Valency Grammar aims at establishing the valency arguments with which a verb may combine with a starting point in its lexicality.The situation established by the lexicality of the verb GIVE, for example, implies three participants: a giver, the thing that is given and a recipient.It may therefore combine with three arguments.Along the same lines, the verb SEND also implies three participants: a sender, a recipient and the destination of the act of sending.
Where traditional syntactic analysis applies the syntactic functions of subject, direct object, indirect object, subject predicative, object predicative and adverbial, Valency Grammar operates with three: subject, object and adject.The adject may be seen as a generalization over the last four syntactic functions. 2The motive for this generalization is that these functions are unable to co-appear in the same sentence.They are therefore taken to be different manifestations of the same syntactic functions.SBB (202) points out that, according to Herslund et al. (179), the different manifestations of the adject relation may be regarded as different metaphorical extensions of the semantic role of 'location'.
The object and the inaccusative subject are called the fundamental arguments because they are the functions which are most closely related to the verb due to the fact that they, together with the verb, create the meaning of the predicate.SBB illustrates this analogy by means of the following examples: It is the object that establishes the predicate, while the subject establishes the proposition because it governs the infl ection of the verb.
In sentences with an adject, two relations are established; one between the adject and the verb and another between the adject and the fundamental argument.The following fi gure from Herslund (1996: 46) illustrates these relations:

V O A
These relations cannot be explained in traditional syntactic analysis.
The following sentences exemplify different manifestations of the adject.It is a common feature of these examples that, apart from exhibiting a relation between the verb and the fundamental argument (in bold print), they also exhibit a relation between the latter and the adject (underlined).
Returning now to the subject in case, predicative constructions, we shall start out by saying that it is a basic premise of the theory of the adject that the copula verb is a full verb and, as already mentioned, that the subject predicative is subsumed by the adject.SBB (for example p. 193) shows that this theoretical assumption, however, is problematic when confronted with data in Spanish because this language allows structures with both a subject predicative and an indirect object as shown in examples (3) -( 5); in other words, it allows two manifestations of the same syntactic function, the adject.SBB, inspired by Nedergaard Thomsen (1996), suggests that the subject predicative be analysed as a semanticsyntactic whole, viz. a complex predicate, in which the copula verb (the Host Predicate) expresses aktionsart, whereas the subject predicative (the Co-Predicate) designates the content.
Nedergaard Thomsen (1996: 52)  To support the complex predicate analysis, SBB (222)(223) argues that the subject predicative appearing in constructions with an indirect object, contrary to constructions without an indirect object, does not allow pronominalisation.This is shown in examples ( 13) and ( 14): ( It may oppose one's linguistic intuition that necesario does not have the same syntactic function in the two sentences, but the syntactic test indicates that this is in fact the case.

The Indirect Object and Perspective
The chapter on Functional Grammar (FG) and the indirect object deals in particular with the notion of perspective.In more specifi c terms, it aims at discussing if and how the notion of perspective can be used in a functional analysis of the indirect object.SBB explains that the notion of perspective accounts for the fact that one state-of-affairs may be presented from different perspectives.It applies for example to the opposition between active and passive.FG is characterized as only operating with two syntactic functions, the subject and the object.These functions are not inherent in a language, but may be assigned to arguments if a certain state of affairs can be presented from different perspectives or vantage points, for example in the case of active and passive.In FG, the subject is only relevant in a language if this language allows a systematic alternation between the active and the passive; i.e., the ability to change vantage point.
If a state of affairs is presented from the vantage point of the patient, or of any other semantic function, it is this semantic function which fi lls in the object.SBB (257) quotes the following examples from Dik (1997: 247 f.) to illustrate subject and object alternation: The fact that Spanish allows an alternation between, on the one hand, a prepositional phrase introduced by para and, on the other, an indirect object conceived as a benefi ciary expressed by le and a prepositional phrase introduced by a, indicates that there is dative shift in Spanish.It is then the benefi ciary which is assigned the function of object.It is concluded that this object is an indirect object, and that it is a secondary vantage point expressed by cross-reference.
In conclusion, it is our impression that this chapter demands a great deal of previous knowledge about FG by the reader, and it is therefore not easily accessible.As an example, it lacks a characterization of the semantic and the pragmatic functions.Along the same lines, the illustration of the FG model (Dik: 1997: 60) is reproduced ( 254), but the content that the fi gure is supposed to depict is not explained to the reader.Put in another way, it may be argued that if the reader is supposed to be familiar with FG, the fi gure is unnecessary.
Lastly, it should be emphasised that the authors of this review hope to have presented the main analytical merits of this chapter in spite of the fact that it contains a lot of information and only its main points are assessed.

Concluding remarks
After having sketched the main points of SBB's study on the indirect object in Spanish and commented on specifi c parts of this study, we should like to conclude this article with some general remarks.
The fi rst thing observed is the great complexity of the book.In general, the book includes diverse aspects of the indirect object, viz.cliticdoubled constructions, predicative constructions, and the notion of perspective.Where the fi rst aspect concerns the development over time of a particular aspect of the indirect object, the last two aspects are theoryinternal analyses.In more specifi c terms, setting out from two functional theories, SBB seeks to analyse, on the one hand, how the appearance of the indirect object may fi t into Valency Grammar and, on the other, how the indirect object fi ts into FG's analysis of perspective.To this, it should be added that many parts of the book offer a myriad of details, theoretical as well as analytical.This thoroughness, however, may have the opposite effect to that intended as the reader is at risk of missing im-portant items of information.Furthermore, this could have been remedied by a greater illustration of concepts and constructions.
With respect to the theoretical parts of the book, it should be mentioned that the detail with which theories are explained throughout the book varies.As already mentioned, some concepts lack a precise explanation, such as for example markedness and perhaps grammaticalization.Moreover, where concepts from Valency Grammar are explained in detail, concepts from Functional Grammar (for example semantic roles) have not benefi ted from the same attention.As a result, it may seem diffi cult to establish the theoretical knowledge required of the reader.
It may seem that this article has placed an excessive emphasis on an evaluation of the explanatory qualities of the book.This, however, should be justifi ed by the fact that it contains many important results from which the reader can learn a lot.The results of the diachronic part of the book provide persuasive evidence for the evolution towards grammaticalization of the indirect object.In the synchronic part of the book, SBB not only provides sophisticated analyses within the frameworks already mentioned, but she also challenges these frameworks, in the case of the valency-based analysis, the result being a refi nement of this framework.
In conclusion, the authors of this article have both been challenged and greatly enlightened.