Grammaticalization, modality, and contact: y así in two varieties of Spanish

Abstract

This paper proposes that the contact situation between Basque and Spanish has triggered (or accelerated) a linguistic innovation, in particular, the new values of y así. In European Spanish, this particle means vagueness, and expresses an attenuation of the propositional content. In Basque, edo particle may encode some contents of epistemic modality. Therefore, bilingual speakers would have transferred part of these contents to Spanish, which would have expanded the meaning of y así to express distance and attenuation of the illocutionary force of speech acts. The new values and some structural changes are part of the contact-induced grammaticalization process where pragmatic and conversational motivations of the speakers have a significant role.