Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: In this paper we will describe the historical development of the Spanish doublet ante-antes (‘before’) and explore the question whether a process of exaptation is involved (cf. Lass 1990). We will argue that the final –s of antes, that originally marked the adverbial status of the word, in the course of time had become a kind of morphological ‘junk’ (cf. Lass 1990) and, subsequently, could be exploited in order to encode the semantic opposition between temporal meaning on the one hand, and adversative meaning on the other hand. However, based on quantitative data we will show that the incipient semantic redistribution over the course of the 16th century rather suddenly collapsed, leading to a differentiation between the prepositional ante and adverbial antes.
Source: Languages
Author: Dorien Nieuwenhuijsen
Institution: Utrecht University
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,689
OpenAlex ID: W2900517295