Construcciones causativas en el español medieval (review)

Reviews Alfonso Vega, Milagros. Construcciones causativas en el español medieval . Estructura y evolución. México, DF: U Nacional Autónoma de México - El Colegio de México, 1998. 258 pp. ISBN 968-36-7143-8 This monograph is the result of the continued efforts of the Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas of the Universidad Autónoma de México, and in particular Concepción Company, editor of the project Medievalia and rigorous researcher of Spanish diachronic syntax, to fill the void currently found in this area of Spanish historical grammar. The author of the monograph, Milagros Alfonso, in the first paragraph of her introduction correctly states that throughout most of the twentieth century linguistic studies have been predominantly synchronic in nature and that despite a recent renaissance of historical linguistics, "la sintaxis histórica del español sigue siendo un área aún poco explorada" (13). Within the general discipline of Spanish historical grammar, the subdivision of Spanish historical syntax has received far less attention than other areas. One needs only to consult any "historical grammar " of Spanish to witness the absence of diachronic syntactic studies and to see that most scholars since the nineteenth century have specialized in either historical phonology, morphology or etymology. Despite her opening remarks, however, Alfonso suddenly shifts gears and states, somewhat to this reviewer's dismay: "Debo aclarar, sin embargo, que este estudio es esencialmente un análisis sincrónico del comportamiento de las construcciones causativas ... en el español medieval. Y constituye, en menor medida, un análisis diacrònico" (17). In fact, only one of four chapters deals with the evolution of these constructions, and even here the result is more descriptive than explanatory (discussed in more detail below). As a synchronic description of these constructions in Medieval Spanish, this monograph is nevertheless excellent, and the author delivers exactly what is represented in its main title. All four chapters are written in a clear style, free of the unintelligiblejargon that pervades the great majority of synchronic analyses in contemporary linguistics, particularly in the area of syntax, because to her credit, Alfonso does not espouse any particular theoretical syntactic model (e.g., generative, etc.). Rather she proceeds with an eclectic, common-sense approach, utilizza corónica 29.2 (Spring, 2001): 275-78 276ReviewsLa corónica 29.2,2001 ing whatever tools of syntactic and semantic analysis become necessary to accomplish her goals. For example, Alfonso visits the phenomenon in question in other languages, both inside and out of the Romance family (e.g., French, Italian, English, Turkish, Georgian, Hungarian, Japanese, etc.), to support her analysis of the Spanish construction. Her corpus is limited, but probably sufficient for her purposes. It consists oftwo prose texts (one from a chronicle and one not) from each of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Alfonso focuses mainly on the infinitival causatives, such as me hizo llegar tarde (as opposed to those with finite subordinate verbs like me hizo que llegara tarde). Her primary concerns are to determine the distinctive qualities ofthese constructions taking into account both structural and semantic criteria, and to delimit the class or classes ofverbs that accept this type ofstructure. Capítulo Uno presents an overview of previous work on the subject and some theoretical considerations, such as whether these constructions are a verbal periphrasis , or whether they involve two sentences linked through a relationship of subordination (she adheres to the latter view), and what exactly constitutes an "infinitival causative construction". She defines this construction as follows: structurally, it must contain a verb that governs an infinitive, which may or may not be introduced by a preposition; and semantically, the governing verb causes, either directly or indirectly, or at least exerts its influence on, the execution of the action expressed by the subordinated infinitive. The following sentences exemplify this structure (31): fizo Oto otrossi matar luego a Pisón (Crónica General, 129, 33b) Destos me mandavan a mí comer ... (Celestina, 139, VII, 96) Por tu amistad, Sansón pagó lo que merecía, por creerse de quien tú le forcaste a dar la fe (Celestina, 267, 32) (E)I rey (...) hordenó defazer sus cortes (Pedro I, 155, 53a) Tengo por...