How historical Spanish changed the way it indicated "who did what to whom"

What is it about?

Languages have different ways of marking 'who does what to whom'. English relies on word order, but other languages can also use other methods of indicating such things. In a sentence like 'the cat chased the dog', we know the cat is doing the chasing and the dog is being chased due to the order. If we changed the word order, we would get a different interpretation. Other languages might use other methods, such as using a specific form for the one being chased and the chaser (case marking, see e.g. German). Some languages only sometimes mark such things, and other times rely on meanings. This is called 'differential object marking', where a language sometimes more explicitly marks an object, and sometimes does not do so. For example, in modern-day Spanish, one says 'veo la lámpara' (I see the lamp), but 'veo a la vecina' (I see 'to' the neighbor). This extra 'a' is roughly speaking used when the referent is human (although not always, refer to a Spanish grammar book for more details). The idea behind this is that words that look more like subjects (the ones doing things) are generally more humanlike and active. Objects, on the other hand, are the objects something is done to, and thus generally have less agency and are less active. In an example sentence like 'the man threw the rock', there is little confusion about who is doing what to whom, even if we could not rely on word order. But in a sentence like 'the cat chased the dog', it could just as well have been the cat doing the chasing, as well as the dog. In these cases languages like Spanish use extra marking. This developed historically in Spanish. At first, the marking was more ad hoc, whenever it felt useful. But at some point, it became part of the grammar. In this paper, we mapped out when in time and in what kind of phrases the marking became part of the grammar. This helps us understand how these kinds of changes in language work. From ad hoc forms to fully formed grammar rules.

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Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Studying the way languages work, helps us understand what is linguistically possible in the world, but also what is not. This in turn tells us something about how language works in the brain. These kinds of insights can help in different ways. They might be useful for language teaching, or they might help improve computer models of language. Besides these more long-term projects, most linguists just find these results interesting in themselves, because they tell us more about language in all its variety. The languages of the world are puzzling and interesting in their own right.