Els pronoms clítics de datiu plural en català antic. Evolució diacrònica i estat de la qüestió entre els segles XV i XVI

Resum

Dative plural clitic pronouns in Old and Contemporary Catalan show an almost unparalleled situation among the Romance languages, since a form syncretic with the accusative masculine plural pronoun los is adopted, which coexisted with the reflexes of the Latin genitive ĭllorum (lur, lurs i lus). Coromines's classic hypothesis considers that the origin of the dative plural pronoun los must be lur (or lor), which would have evolved into lurs, lus, and finally, los. However, my analysis of the data from the Corpus Informatitzat de Català Antic (CICA) shows that Coromines's hypothesis requires at least some clarification. The results of the analysis of the relative frequency of the several different variants of the dative plural pronouns lead to the conclusion that lur and los coexisted from the beginning. Thus, the dative plural pronoun los must be explained as a result of the evolution of the accusative masculine ĭllos in the context of a multicausal process which encouraged syncretism between dative and accusative pronouns.