L’evolució de les oracions exclamatives-qu de grau en català

What is it about?

In this article we consider the evolution of degree wh-exclamatives from Old Catalan to Modern and Contemporary Catalan. Two major changes can be identified which transformed these constructions from a general pattern common to most Romance languages without obligatory inversion nor a complementizer in the XVI century, to a less common one with obligatory inversion already in the XVIII century and a complementizer in the XIX century. To account for this process, we will defend that obligatory inversion is a general phenomenon related to the checking of [wh]/[focus] features, affecting also interrogatives and focus preposing, whereas the emergence of the complementizer is a result of the lexicalization of the exclamative Force head, and hence a specific and restricted phenomenon.

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Why is it important?

This is the first detailed description of the evolution of exclamative sentences in Catalan, particularly of the great shift from a general pattern common to most Romance languages in the XVI century, to a less common one with obligatory inversion already in the XVIII century and a complementizer in the XIX century.