Syntactic change in Portuguese and Spanish: divergent and parallel patterns of linguistic splitting

This chapter describes two cases of divergent syntactic change between Portuguese and Spanish, namely clitic placement and post-nominal algum/alguno. While both changes feature instances of linguistic splitting from a former unity during the Middle Ages, they nevertheless exhibit different patterns of development, illustrating what the author calls the ‘inverted-Y’ and the ‘I’ patterns of change. Under the former, the two languages start diverging as soon as grammatical change is set in motion. Under the latter, the two languages show a similar/parallel path of change and eventually split apart when one of them goes a step further than the other. Clitic placement in the history of Spanish and Portuguese exemplifies the ‘inverted-Y’ pattern, post-nominal algum/alguno exemplifies the ‘I’ pattern of change.