| dc.description.abstract | Unitary cardinals are a common source for indefinite markers. This thesis is a
quantitative diachronic study of the development of Spanish un, from its cardinal
value to its use as an indefi nite article. Based on a corpus comprising texts from
the thirteenth to the seventeenth century, I present an analysis and chronology of
the main changes undergone by un throughout this period, notably its increasing
use as a marker of non-speci c indefinites, and its further incorporation in generic
noun phrases and predicates.
Additionally, I demonstrate that the development of the plural indefinite determiner
unos is, with a few restrictions, parallel to that of its singular counterpart,
not only in its increasing frequency, but also in its introduction into new contexts.
Furthermore, I present a comparison between un and alg un in terms of speci city
and conclude that although there are evident links between them, both being
inde nite determiners derived from Latin unus, they have always had di erent
functional domains.
Finally, I show that one of the consequences of the incorporation of un into
generic contexts is the rise of the so-called impersonal uno, and explain that this
event is crucial to explain the disappearance of another generic pronoun, omne,
whose last examples are found in the sixteenth century, that is, precisely the
moment where the first instances of impersonal uno occur. | en_US |
