Un caso atípico de gramaticalización (I): El valor epistémico del marcador "por cierto"

Abstract

The present paper belongs to a series of two articles devoted to the study of the Spanish discourse particle "por cierto". "Por cierto" undergoes two grammaticalisations, each one resulting in a different meaning of the particle: an epistemic meaning ('certainly') and a digression meaning ('by the way'). This first contribution will focus on the epistemic value, the oldest and less frequent in present-day Spanish. The aim of this research is twofold: on the one hand, the paper attempts to fill an empty slot in the diachronic description of "por cierto"; on the other hand, taking written corpora as its primary source, it aims to rethink some theoretical assumptions made by grammaticalisation studies, such as divergence or layering.