BHS, LXVI (1989)

Note
Spanish Clitics and Participles: A
Historical Perspective
A. K. BARRY
University of Michigan-Flint

A puzzling anomaly which exists in Modem Spanish grammar is the placement of clitic
object pronouns with respect to the present and past participles. As the examples in (1)
illustrate, the present participle (leyendo) may have the clitic attached, while the past
participle (leido) may not.
(1) (a) Lo estoy leyendo or Estoy leyendolo: 'I am reading it'
(b) Lo he leido (but not "He leidolo): 'I have read it'
On the face of it, there is no reason for this difference in syntactic behaviour with respect to
clitic pronouns. Both participles are non-finite verb forms and both occur in compound
verb phrases with an auxiliary verb: the present participle in the progressive and the past
participle in the perfect. If we also take into account that the infinitive, the other non-finite
verb form along with the participles, patterns like the present participle, as illustrated in (2),
(2) Lo quiero leer or Quiero leerlo: 'I want to read it'
then the past participle emerges as an exception to what would otherwise be a regular rule
of Modern Spanish: prepose clitic pronouns to finite verb forms and postpose them to non-
finite verb forms. If we look only at the synchronic facts, we can probably take this
observation no further. However, we can gain insight into the current situation if we look
at the development of the two participles over time. History shows us that these two verbal
forms are not so similar as they might appear to be and that there is a reasonable
explanation for the difference in their syntactic behaviour with respect to clitic pronouns.
An explanation emerges if we address the following questions: what grammatical functions
have the two participles fulfilled over time? what discourse roles have they played? how
have these functions changed and evolved? how does their evolution interact with changing
constraints on clitic placement? It is the purpose of this article to attempt to answer these
questions, with the ultimate goal of explaining the apparent syntactic anomaly illustrated
above.
The data for this study consist of thirty-two 10,OOO-word texts of narrative prose
spanning the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries. The works consulted are listed in
Appendix A, along with the abbreviations by which they are referred to in the text. The
analysis reflects only the language of written narrative prose, and there may well be
differences to be found in other forms of the language.
We may begin by looking at the grammatical functions performed by the two
participles in the course of the development of Spanish narrative prose. Appendix B gives
the complete statistical account. There are three basic functions filled by the present

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 264 BHS, LXVI (1989) A. K. BARRY

participle: the absolute, the progressive, and the appositive. (A fourth category is listed,
'preposition + participle', which sometimes is absolutive and sometimes appositive. These
examples are few and differ only in that the participle is preceded by a preposition, which
has no effect on the syntactic behaviour of the participle.) The absolute function is
exemplified in (3).
(3) E estando don Pelayo en aquella cueua, rogauan a Nuestro Sennor ... (PC):
'And don Pelayo being in that cave, they prayed to our Lord . . .'
In this case, the present participle has its own subject, distinct from any main clause noun
phrase. The appositive function is illustrated in (4).
(4) E porque la enganno diziendo que se casaria con ella . . . (GE): 'And because he
deceived her saying that he would marry her ...'
Here the present participle has as its implicit subject a noun phrase of the main clause and
carries no independent subject. The third function is as part of the progressive, as already
illustrated in (la). Finite verbs other than estar are found in this construction, among them
ir, uenir and andar.
The past participle is found with four different grammatical functions. Like the present
participle, it also occurs in an absolute construction, as illustrated in (5).
(5) ... mudada su acostumbrada condicion ... todo 10 mas del tiempo estaua sola
(AG): 'her usual condition having been changed ... all the rest of the time she
was alone'
Again, the absolute construction has its own subject, distinct from any main clause noun
phrase. The past participle also occurs with ser and estar, and occasionally with other
verbs, to express a passive action or resultant state, as in (6), and as an adjective modifying
a noun, as in (7).
(6) . . . acompafiaron su cadaver a la b6veda de San Roque, donde fue depositado
(MS): 'they accompanied his cadaver to the vault of San Roque, where it was
deposited'
(7) ... y esta una de vaca tan bien cocida y sazonada (LA): 'and this cow's hoof so
well cooked and seasoned'
Finally, the past participle occurs with tener or baber to express a compound perfect tense,
as in (8a) and (8b).1
(8) (a) E don Alvaro de Luna avia salido a la justa muy ricamente armado (AL):
'And don Alvaro de Luna had left for the joust very richly armed'
(b) ... e t6volos muy guardados e muy defendidos (UL): 'and he had them very
well guarded and very well defended'
When we begin to examine the grammatical functions of the two participles, we see a
difference between them which their traditional grammatical labels obscure: the present
participle is used exclusively as an active verb form, while the past participle primarily
expresses passive meaning. The only time the past participle expresses active meaning is
when it is .intransitive, as in (9),
(9) ... partidos de aqui y llegados a Guaniguanico ... (NA): 'having left here and
arrived at Guaniguanico ...'
or when it is used in a compound tense with habere Since most clitic pronouns are objects
and therefore occur with active, transitive verbs, we see that the opportunity for clitic
pronouns to occur with past participles in general is more limited than the opportunity for

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 SPANISH CLITICS AND PARTICIPLES 265
them to occur with present participles. This limitation is further confirmed by the statistical
count. We see in Appendix B that the past participle use with baber and tener combined
rarely reaches fifty per cent of the total uses of the past participle, and usually represents
closer to one-third the total use. I am suggesting, then, that frequency of occurrence over
time is one factor which helps to explain the resulting situation in Modem Spanish.
When we look at some of the other facts about the functions and distribution of the
participles over time, additional patterns emerge. We know that one of the conditions on
clitic position until relatively recently has been that clitic pronouns may not appear at the
beginning of a breath group, and this is one of the primary reasons that they often appear
attached to verbs, i.e., enclitically, rather than preceding them. 2 Enclisis is a way of
avoiding first-position clities. We might, then, gain some insight into clitic position with
participles if we examined the sentence positions in which particles have occurred over
time. Naturally, those which occur most frequently as active, transitive verb forms at the
beginning of a breath group will most readily encourage enclisis. This is precisely the case
for the present participle. Its principal function throughout the history of written Spanish is
as an appositive, occurring in its own breath group, modifying a noun, and without a
supporting finite verb. If a clitic pronoun should co-occur with the participle, the chances
are very good that it will be attached to the end of it, as exemplified in (10):
(10) ... e a los otros que yvan a orar hazianles muchas menguas piiblicamente,
echdndoles lodo e escupiendoles en los rostros, e ddndoles de grandes pufiadas
en las narizes ... (UL): 'and the others who went to pray they disgraced
publicly, throwing mud at them and spitting in their faces, and punching them
hard on the nose'
When the present participle is used as an absolute, it is frequently the case that its subject
follows it, again putting the participle at the beginning of the breath group and forcing clitic
attachment, as in (11):
(11) Pero guiandosse el por los mas poderosos de su hueste, uiniel ende mal (PC):
'But guiding himself by the most powerful of his army, evil consequently befell
him'
Thus, the only function of the present participle in which it co-occurs with a finite verb,
likely itself to attract a clitic pronoun, and in which it is not necessarily at the beginning of a
breath group, is the progressive. But we find that this construction occupies a fairly low
percentage of the use of the present participle overall. And so, given the occurrence of the
present participle in all its various grammatical constructions, we find that it most often
occurs, with little fluctuation over time, without an accompanying finite verb and
frequently at the beginning of a breath group. By the time the injunction against initial
clitics begins to lift, well into the eighteenth century, the pattern is already well-established
in the minds of language users: clitic. pronouns attach to present participles. It is not
surprising that they continue to be permitted to do so in Modem Spanish, even when a
finite verb is present.
A different picture emerges for the past participle. In its absolute and adjectival
functions, the participle conveys either a passive or an intransitive meaning, rarely
involving the use of a clitic pronounr' This is true as well for its use as a passive with an
auxiliary verb and for its use with tener in a quasi-eompound tense. The only use of the past
participle for which one would expect frequent involvement of clitic pronouns is in
conjunction with haber to express the perfect tenses. Asthe frequency count in Appendix B
reveals, this construction occupies a substantial use of the past participle, and increases as
tener ceases to carry this auxiliary function in later centuries. Yet, with some rare
exceptions, to be discussed below, clities never have become attached to past participles.

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 266 BHS, LXVI (1989) A. K. BARRY
One reason has to do with the fact that clities have always gravitated to finite verbs. If one is
present, it is likely that the clitic will attach to it, and past participles frequently occur in
construction with finite verbs. Another reason is that, unlike the present participle, the past
participle has rarely had the opportunity to occur at the beginning of a breath group at the
same time that a clitic pronoun might be present. Although the order of baber and the past
participle fluctuates, the dominant order early on is with haber preceding. Thus, from a
synchronic perspective it might appear that the participles pattern similarly, but a look at
the history of the entire range of their functions reveals two different patterns.
What I have attempted to demonstrate so far is that linguistic patterns become
established over a long period of time and that these patterns are determined by
grammatical function as well as by the frequency with which certain arrangements occur.
These, in tum, interact with certain conditions, such as the injunction against initial clities,
which are reflected in the patterns long after the conditions cease to have active force in the
grammar. Thus, what appears to be an exception from the point of view of synchrony
makes sense when viewed from a historical perspective.
We might still ask, however, why there has been no tendency to regularize this apparent
anomaly over time. Although there is never a ready answer to this kind of question, we
might consider another factor which has reinforced the differences between the two
participles and which would make it less likely that the enclisis rule of Modem Spanish
would generalize to past participles. This factor is discourse function. I argue elsewhere"
that the injunction against initial clities is not the only reason that clities sometimes follow
rather than precede verbs. It is proposed that in thirteenth-century Spanish another
condition operates to signal discourse function:
(12) A clitic pronoun precedes a finite verb unless the clause which contains it has a
foregrounding function, in which case the clitic is postverbaI.
This principle accounts for the large number of postverbal clities which cannot be
explained away by the constraint on first position. What is meant by foregrounding (I
derive the term from Hopperr' is that part of the narrative which relates the story as a
sequence of chronological events. Backgrounding, in contrast, is that part of the narrative
which provides supporting information, description, and other sorts of embellishment of
the main story line. Languages utilize various means to help listeners sort out foregrounded
from backgrounded material, to make the story itself 'stand out'. (12) is offered as one such
device for Old Spanish. As described in my article in Hispanic Review,6 all of the following
constitute backgrounding: a comment on an event, a comment to the reader, a larger
context for an event, and dialogue between characters. It is further noted that subordinate
clauses, negative statements, and questions virtually always provide background and never
have clities appended to verbs. Affirmative declarative main clauses may serve both
backgrounding and foregrounding functions, and it is here that one finds fluctuation in
clitic placement with respect to verbs.
If we examine the functions of the participles from this perspective, we find that the
present participle primarily serves a foregrounding function, while the past participle
performs a backgrounding role. Present participles represent activities which are simulta-
neous with and parallel to foregrounded main clauses, and they are often easily
paraphrased as main clauses. Notice (10), for example, in which each of the present
participles describes a specific act in the narrative, telling the reader what happened in
chronological sequence. Indeed, there is even an occasional example of a present participle
used as a main clause verb, as in (13):
(13) E la madre, llorando e dando grandes vozes, llamando justicia (RP): 'And the
mother, crying and yelling, calling for justice.'

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 SPANISH CLmCS AND PARTICIPLES 267
Given their foregrounding function, the principle given in (12) would funher encourage
enclisis on present participles.
The discourse function of past participles, on the other hand, is frequendy one of
relating background material. Absolutes relate events completed as a backdrop to the
foregrounded event. When the formal absolute construction begins to diminish in
frequency in later years, it is most often replaced by a subordinate clause with despues que,
taking a back seat to the event in the main clause. In those cases in which the past participle
combines with haber, where clities are most likely to occur, we find that they appear almost
exclusively in backgrounding roles. One of the two most common forms is the pluperfect,
which almost always occurs in a subordinate clause and, like the absolute, represents an
event completed prior to the time of the foregrounded event and off the track of the timeline
of the main events. The other is the present perfect, used exclusively in dialogue between
characters and comments addressed to the reader, both background material. Examples of
these two uses of the past participle are illustrated in (14a) and (14b):

(14) (a) EI rey avia temor de algunos de sus cavalleros, por 10 que les avia {echo . . .
(RP): 'The king was afraid of some of his men, because of what he had done
to them'
(b) y asi 10 has de imaginar como una bola ... (ES): 'and so you are to imagine
it as a ball ...'

The participle with haber simply is not used to convey the main events of the narrative, a
role left most often to the preterite and the imperfect tenses, as well as to the present
participle. .
I have attempted to show here that the discourse functions of the two participles
reinforce the grammatical factors which make clities attach to the end of one but not the
other. The foregrounding function of clitic postposition dissipates over time, although it is
still recognized as a mark of rhetorical or literary sryle." The injunction against initial clities
also disappears over time, beginning in the eighteenth century. But the influence of these
two conditions remains in the clitic-placement patterns for the participles, which now have
become fully grammaticalized; i.e, the verb form itself, independent of narrative function
or position in the sentence, determines whether enclisis can occur. These patterns seem
irregular from the point of view of modem syntax, but as has been pointed out repeatedly
by Talmy Giv6n 8 and others, a careful study of the history of certain grammatical patterns
can offer explanations not otherwise accessible to us.
As a final note, it will be useful to ponder some apparent exceptions to the analysis
proposed above. One kind of exception occurs twice in the data examined for this study,
one of which is given in (1S):

(1S) ... guarido me avedes e dddome avedes conorte al mi grant cuidado en que
estava (CZ): 'you have sheltered me and you have given me comfort in the
great pain that I was in'

Here, a past participle occurs at the beginning of a breath group and the ditic is attached to
it. 9 What this example and the one other like it may show is that there was an opportunity
for this pattern to regularize to all nonfinite verbs, that at one time there was no specific
injunction against attaching clities to past participles. But we also know that this pattern
never caught on, perhaps because of the factors militating against it which have been
described above.
The sentence in (16) illustrates another kind of exception to the patterns described
above:

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 268 BHS, LXVI (1989) A. K. BARRY
(16) non lo buscando ellos nin Ie [aziendo (GE): 'with them not looking for it nor
doing it for him'

Here it will be noticed that, contrary to all claims above, the clitic pronoun precedes the
present participle. In fact, this is the case for every negative present participle until the
sixteenth century, when clities begin to be attached even to negative present participles.
These constructions reinforce the idea that the discourse principle described in (12) is at
work in the earlier centuries, since negatives never have a foregrounding function.
(Foregrounding tells what happened, not what didn't happen.) At a time when grammati-
calization of clitic position has not yet taken place, the discourse principle requiring
backgrounded material to prepose clities is in full force, giving rise to the construction type
exemplified in (16). This, then, is not really an exception, but rather a natural consequence
of the constraints in the grammar operative at that time.
A third unexpected construction which appears even in Modern Spanish (see Ramsey,
99-100) is illustrated in (17):

(17) . . . y la noche pasada los indios habian dado en ellos y puestolos en

grandisimo trabajo (NA): 'and the night before the Indians had attacked them
and put them in very great trouble'

Here there is a past participle in a second conjunct without repetition of habere In this case,
in the absence of a finite verb, the clitic is attached to the past participle, the only time it is
permitted to do so. What this tells us is that when there is no alternative, clities can and will
attach to past participles; there is no absolute rule against it in the language. Rather, the
history of the grammatical and discourse functions of the past participle have limited the
opportunities to the point where a pattern of enclisis has not become grammaticalized.l?

APPENDIX A

13th Century: Calila e Dimna (CD); General Estoria (GE); Primera Cronica General de Espaiia, II (PC); La Gran
Conquista de Ultramar (UL)
14th Century: El Cavallero War (CZ); Don Alonso el Onceno (AO); Cronies del Rey don Pedro (RP) (LOpez de
Ayala); El Conde Lucanor (LU) (Don Juan Manuel)
15th Century: Claros Varones de Castilla (CL) (Fernando de Pulgar); Cronica de Don Alvaro de Luna (AL);
Viajes e Andan~ de Pero Tafur (PT); El Victorial.Cronica de don Pero Nino (PN) (Diez de
Games)
16th Century: Amadis de Gaula (AG); Historia de las Indias (HI) (Fray Bartolome de las Casas); Naufragios:
Cronica de Viaje (NA) (Cabeza de Vaca); Lazarillo de Tormes (LA)
17th Century: Historia General de Espaiia (HG) (juan de Mariana); Guzman de Alfarache (GU) (Mateo
Aleman); Don Quijote de la Mancha (DQ) (Cervantes); Historia de la Conquista de Mejico (CM)
(Antonio de Solis)
18th Century: Espaiia Sagrada (ES) (Enrique Florez); Torres Villaroel: Vida (1V); Los Gramaticos: Historia
Chinesca (HC) Uuan Pablo Forner); Historia del Famoso Predicador Fray Gerundio de Campazas
alias Zotes (CA) Uose Francisco de Isla)
19th Century: Historietas Nacionales (liN) (Pedro de Alarcon), El Doncel de Don Enrique el Doliente (ED)
(Mariano Jose de Larra); Memorias de un Setenton (MS) (Ramon de Mesonero Romanos);
Episodios Nacionales (EN) (Benito Perez Galdos)
20th Century: Zalacain el Aventurero (ZA) (Pio Baroja); Recuerdos de Ninez y de Mocedad (RN) (Miguel de
Unamuno); El Circe (CI) (juan Goytisolo); Historia Politica de la Espana Contemporanea (HP)
(Melchor Fernandez Almagro)

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 SPANISH CLmCS AND PARTICIPLES 269
APPENDIX B

PRESENT PARTICIPLE
Absolute Appositive Progressive Preposition + Participle
13th: CD 29 43 14 13
GE 25 58 12 4
PC 33 54 8 4
UL 18 70 12 0
14th: CZ 16 69 8 7
AO 31 54 11 4
RP 35 62 2 0
LU 19 56 22 3
15th: CL 10 89 1 0
AL 17 73 9 1
PT 4 88 7 1
PN 6 84 10 0
16th: AG 10 82 7 0
HI 5 83 11 1
NA 3 84 12 0
LA 6 82 10 2
17th: HG 0 99 1 0
GU 1 92 5 1
DQ 5 73 17 5
CM 9 80 10 1
18th: ES 6 67 15 11
1V 7 66 26 1
HC 6 75 18 0
CA 11 76 9 3
19th: HN 2 82 16 0
ED 4 86 10 0
MS 1 89 10 0
EN 1 86 13 0
20th: ZA 0 84 16 0
RN 0 85 15 0
CI 1 91 9 0
HP 1 87 12 0

PAST PARTICIPLE
Absolute Haberrrener Passive Adjective
13th: CD 0 22 66 12
GE 0 32 50 18
PC 0 20 64 16
UL 0 36 52 12
14th: CZ 0 27 51 22
AO 0 27 67 6
RP 1 24 47 28
LU 0 38 50 12
15th: 'CL 7 13 60 20
AL 2 38 50 11
PT 7 17 35 41
PN 2 20 58 21

"Numbers refer to percentage of total use of participle. Discrepancies in totals are due to rounding off.

(continued overleaf}

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 270 BHS, LXVI (1989) A. K. BARRY
APPENDIX B (crd)"

PAST PARTICIPLE
Absolute Haberffener Passive Adjective
16th: AG 3 29 41 28
HI 5 42 18 35
NA 14 46 20 19
LA 10 38 28 24
17th: HG 20 21 31 28
GU 1 40 30 29
DQ 6 46 16 32
CM 4 26 27 43
18th: ES 2 14 26 58
"IV 1 44 3 42
HC 4 45 16 35
CA 4 46 12 39
19th: HN 2 47 12 39
ED 2 47 10 41
MS 7 31 19 43
EN 1 37 14 48
20th: ZA 1 35 14 50
RN 4 41 8 48
CI 1 57 8 34
HP 6 12 14 68

"Numbers refer to percentage of total use of participle. Discrepancies in totals are due to rounding off.
f

NOTES

1 Tener+past participle and haber+past participle differ in a number of respects. In the tener construction,
the past participle is most readily interpreted as a passive form and it frequently, but not always, agrees with the
object of tener, With haber the past participle is an active form and is usually invariant, particularly in later
centuries. Because the meanings conveyed by the two constructions are so similar, and because the two
constructions seem to blend over time, I have included them in one category.
2 The notion of 'breath group' includes sentences, clauses, and phrases which are usually set off by commas
in writing. Some small function words, such as prepositions, are frequently not regarded as occupying first-
position in these breath groups, and so their presence does not affect the constraint on clitic placement. The
constraint is gradually relaxed over the centuries, so that in later centuries it is only sentence-initial position which
is off limits to clitic pronouns.
3 It may involve reflexive and indirect object pronouns, but not direct object ditic pronouns.
4 A. K. Barry, 'Clitic Pronoun Position in Thirteenth Century Spanish', Hispanic Review, LV (1987), No.2,
213-20.
5 P. Hopper, 'Aspect and Foregrounding in Discourse', Syntax and Semantics, Vol. XII, ed. T. Givan (New
York: Academic Press, 1979), 213-41.
6 Barry, 'Clitic Pronoun Position .. .'
7 M. M. Ramsey, A Textbook of Modern Spanish, rev. by R. K. Spalding (New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1962), 94.
8 T. Givan, On Understanding Grammar (New York: Academic Press, 1979).
9 It is conceivable that clitic postposition in dddome is nothing more than an editorial decision about word-
division which does not reflect a structure different from guarido me auedes in the first part of the sentence. Yet,
the written accent in dddome suggests that the writer is considering it as one word.
lOAn anonymous reader raises the interesting question of why Italian, contrary to Spanish, does postpose
clities to past participles (e.g, cedutogl'1.

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