This research aims to identify and locate the several processes which led to the setting up of the Valencian demonstrative system, different from the main Catalan system. In the Late Middle Ages, the Catalan demonstratives built a system with three deictic terms, with a new intermediate ((aqu)eix, això, aquí), which developed a deictic use from its initial anaphoric function. However, over the early modern era, more alterations emerged in the demonstrative system. Some areas, like Valencia and Ribagorça, kept a three-term system with some modified forms, e.g. este or ahí), while the Catalan demonstrative system generally went to a reduced two-term structure. In general, Catalan gradually lost some demonstratives (such as ací, açò, and aqueix). As a result, the first and the second degree were merged (in aquí, això, and aquest). In this study, we are going to focus on the split of the Valencian three-term demonstrative system in contrast to the main two-term system. Therefore, we arranged a corpus formed of texts dated between the 16th century and the first half of the 19th century. Overall, we obtained 60183 occurrences of the first and second-degree demonstratives (ací, aquí, ahí, açò, això, (aqu)est, (aqu)eix...), in addition to the third-degree adverbial demonstratives (allí, allà) and some particles as the clitic hi or the pronoun ço. According to the results of the corpus, we have observed that the stigmatization of the aqu- forms in Valencian texts affects the adverb aquí before the determiners aquest and aqueix. The statistic test reveals that the reduction of the aqu- demonstratives are correlated, even if the effect size is weak. Instead, there is a strong correlation in Valencian texts between the decrease of aquí (and hi) and the establishment of ahí. On the other hand, we examined the Valencian simple determiners with a paragogic -e (este, eixe) and we detected that this ending produced confusion between masculine and feminine in several cases of other dialects (e.g. esta plat). In those texts, by contrast, we noticed a surprising boost of est from the 18th century, promoted by the scholar grammar, which even surpassed the occurrences of the reinforced demonstrative aquest. Therefore, besides the analysis, this work investigates the demonstratives in grammar tradition, their system in the Romance context, and their widespread function in order to offer a general vision of this phenomenon.
2022-10-18
