As variantes gran e grande dentro da frase nominal

• Main Author: Paula Bouzas Rosende
• Format: Article
• Language: Catalan
• Published: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela 2009-01-01
• Series: Estudos de Linguistica Galega
• Online Access: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=305626315011

When placed before a noun, the adjective grande presents two different variants: there is the full form grande and the apocopated form gran. During the Middle Ages apocope occurred before a noun beginning with a consonant, whereas the full variant occurred before nouns beginning with a vowel. In modern Galician it does not seem to be possible to identify clear criteria explaining the two forms’ distribution. This essay analyzes the occurrence of these variants in different texts of modern and contemporary Galician in order to try to establish possible criteria. For this analysis two texts in the Tesouro Informatizado da Lingua Galega (TILG) were used. Even though there is a certain amount of phonetical conditioning (frequent alternation between the variants is observed before a vowel, whereas gran occurs more often before consonants), phonetic context does not determine the choice, which appears to follow the author’s personal preference; indeed, there are important differences regarding the use of these variants on the part of authors belonging to a single historical period.