El clítico femenino la/las en las expresiones lexicalizadas del español: nueva propuesta de análisis diacrónico

This paper deals with a set of idiomatic expressions in Spanish which typically display a non-referential feminine clitic la/las as a constituent (e.g. pasarla bien ‘to have a good time’). In opposition to the conventional mainstream theories, which account for the non-referential status of this clitic by the ellipsis of a previously existing feminine NP (e.g. cosa, ocasión), I will argue that this lexicalized feminine clitic la/las can be diachronically related to the Latin neuter plural demonstrative illa denoting abstract discourse referents, and thus its apparent non-referentiality should be viewed as a kind of global anaphor. On the basis of Ojeda (1993)’s Mereological Taxonomy of Kinds and the typological evidence reported by Espinal (2009), I will suggest that in these constructions the feminine clitic la/las expresses the so-called «conceptional neuterality» and is semantically equivalent to the neuter lo (e.g. pasarlo/la bien). Lastly, following Loporcaro’s work on the evolution of the Latin neuter in Romance languages (2018), I will defend that the Latin neuter plural demonstratives (ea, haec, ista, illa) survived into early Hispano-Romance and were preserved in lexicalized constructions due to high token frequency, as also evidenced by additional cross-linguistic data from other Romance languages.