From pinche de cocina to “te pinches amo”. A reanalysis chain in the history of Spanish

Abstract

In the Spanish language, the noun pinche has gathered new meanings and acquired new distributional patterns owing to specific contexts of use that have motivated a double refunctionalization. The purpose of this research is to illustrate the chain of reanalysis that pinche has gone though in the history of Spanish: first, from noun to adjective [El pinche de cocina > La pinche soledad (The kitchen assistant > Fucking loneliness)], and then from adjective to adverb [Tus pinches mentiras > Te pinches amo (Your fucking lies > I fucking love you)]. I will explain the obscure origin of the noun pinche as a way to understanding the underlying motivation which facilitated its first reanalysis. In the light of the results, I will describe the syntactic and semantic-pragmatic contexts that favored the refunctionalization of pinche. Finally, I will present evidence for a yet barely studied grammaticalization cline in the history of languages: the adjective > adverb cline.