Chapter 6 Loke in Judeo-Spanish
In: New Perspectives on Judeo-Spanish and the Linguistic History of the Sephardic JewsSearch for other papers by Olga Kellert in
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Abstract
This study deals with the lexicalization process of loke in later Judeo-Spanish, a complex form of the clitic pronoun lo ‘it’ and the complementizer que. After a look at the synchronic differences between this Judeo-Spanish form and the corresponding Modern Spanish lo que, the variation is examined from a diachronic perspective. The main hypothesis of the study is that loke was reanalyzed in Judeo-Spanish as an interrogative pronoun in the 19th century and was used from that period in a way similar to qué ‘what’. Thus, it started to be used in questions where Modern Spanish only allows qué and does not allow lo que. This process of lexicalization between the 15th and the 19th century is outlined in four steps. Complementing this diachronic analysis, an appendix provides a more formalized description of the data and discusses their theoretical implications.