More infinitive, less subjunctive: a diachronic perspective on the integration of Spanish aconsejar and recomendar into the causative category

This article explores, from a diachronic perspective, the rising usage of infinitive constructions at the expense of subjunctive forms in Spanish subordinate clauses governed by the verbs recomendar ‘to recommend’ and aconsejar ‘to advise’. Focusing on contexts of coreference between the indirect object of these verbs and the subject of the subordinate verb, the study analyzes 11,367 occurrences extracted from three major corpora (CDH, CREA, and CORPES), spanning from the 13th century to the present. The findings demonstrate a statistically significant increase in infinitive usage for both verbs, reflecting their ongoing integration into the collective speakers’ experience as causative predicates. The article argues that linguistic economy and analogy are key factors driving this syntactic change, and that the respective evolutionary processes of recomendar and aconsejar differ in chronology and speed according to each verb’s degree of diffusion.