La minería que ustedes ejercen crea mayor fuerza de trabajo que las multinacionales ¿Cómo es esa figura?

The rise of OE demonstrative usage, which later on led to a certain change in the underlying grammar and the emergence of the article, was influenced by three processes on different levels, influencing each other in subtle ways. The following graph visually sums up what has been stated so far.

17 _{The author assumes that speakers differentiate between the subcategories common noun, proper noun and}

pronoun. Linguistic categories are a psycholinguistic reality, and although it is hard to pin down the exact cognitive processes on what is going on, categorization is not arbitrary and originates from semantic and syntactic features (cf. Aitchison 1998: 101). It has repeatedly been pointed out that especially syntactic features (position in certain syntactic slots) might even be more influential than semantic features when it comes to assigning categorical membership of certain words.

Figure 1: Multi-level frequency effects that trigger the rise of demonstrative usage in Old English

The first frequency effect takes place on the level of the definite noun phrase. The early high token frequency of the demonstrative has an influence on article emergence. As the demonstrative was already frequent in the beginning this might have favored an increase in frequency.

The second frequency effect can be found on another and more abstract level, namely on the level of the general NP (including definite and indefinite NPs). There seems to exists a general ‘X + N preference’ with common nouns. The speaker prefers to fill at least one slot before the head noun. This quite superficial tendency and pattern preference might lead the speaker to take the X + N pattern as an exemplary model. One takes in many different surface structures, abstracts what they have in common, namely one element before the common noun, and then, through a process of analogical reasoning, uses this pattern on the level of the definite NP. The rise in frequency triggers a process of reanalysis. This kind of reanalysis leads to an increased usage of the demonstrative. Semantic bleaching and phonetic reduction are a consequence of this increase.

On a third level of word class, the psychological supremacy of the common noun and the speakers’ awareness of preferred patterns might have pushed the process even further.

Level of definite NP:

early high token frequency ofdemonstrative

Level of the general NP (definite and indefinite) :

General preference for X+N with common nouns

Level of word class:

supremacy ofcommon noun

Effect: Rise of demonstrative usage and emergence of article frequency effect 1 analogical reasoning frequency effect 2 cognitive push frequency effect 3

This account is compatible with subsequent developments in Modern English. Two cataphoric structures from Modern English come to mind, where the article is used in a context “where what follows the lead noun, rather than what precedes it, enables us to pinpoint the reference uniquely” (Quirk et al. 1985[95]: 5.32). The article is obligatory even when it is redundant because the content fulfills the determinating function. Interestingly, NPs with a posthead relative clause which fulfills the function of making the NP definite, still have an article in the beginning. It’s the man

who killed John F. Kennedy, not *man who killed John F. Kennedy. This kind

of double marking would not be necessary in terms of definiteness or referentiality. Also in the second ill-formed phrase the speaker can make out the reference that is being talked about.

Something similar can be observed with of-genitive constructions. As we have seen the prehead genitive construction decreases and the post head of- construction mostly takes its place. Somehow, the demonstrative seems to step in for the genitive construction to fill the open slot in front of the noun. If one has a look at PDE noun phrases that include a post-head of genitive, one can see that it is incorrect to say something like *I met Queen of England. The article the has to occur before the noun: I met the Queen of England. Essentially this can not be the case due to definiteness marking. Of England on its own already defines the NP. The prehead article seems to be there just to fulfill the criteria X + N. In this position the article might simply act as a semantically empty but “unambiguous signal” that cognitively helps the speaker to anticipate a following noun helping with “construction in comprehension as well as production models” (Hawkins 2004: 87) and serves to facilitate online processing. In the case of England’s Queen no article is needed as well, because the X slot is sufficiently filled by the Genitive construction.

Moreover, it could be possible that this general X + N preference in NPs with common noun as head has led to the emergence of the indefinite article as well. We know that Old English had no indefinite article. Compared to definiteness indefiniteness was completely unmarked in Old English. The indefinite article a/an developed out of the numeral one. As many languages show, this is not really necessary, a language can do perfectly without indefiniteness marking. The indefinite article emerged as a consequence to the prior emergence of the definite article to fill the determiner slot in the emerged DP as well as the general X + N criterion. This tentative suggestion will have to be further investigated in future research.

Many questions remain. One of them is why one cannot observe the possibility to use an article before proper nouns in English. Why does the

assumed X + N preference not seem to count in the case of proper nouns? As could be seen such a structure was possible but not frequent in Old English. However, it decreased. *I like the Susi is considered grammatically incorrect in PDE.18 _{As has been pointed out in section 3.3, I believe that the speaker} differentiates between categories. Proper nouns are different from common nouns. As the proper noun is inherently definite on its own and has unique reference and proper nouns generally have “unique denotation” (Quirk et al. 1985[95]: 288), this semantic feature seems to block the use of an additional marker that restricts the scope of the reference, since with proper nouns the reference is already down to one. A constraint with this subcategory seems likely.

Another structure that needs to be explained are phrases like to school or

in hospital, where the sentence lacks a determiner as well. Again in German

or Dutch the same sentence uses a determiner here.