37.1977, Reviews: The (In)Transparency of Meaning Change and Variation: Olga Kellert (2026)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-1977. Wed Jun 03 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.1977, Reviews: The (In)Transparency of Meaning Change and Variation: Olga Kellert (2026)

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Date: 03-Jun-2026
From: Alicia Jay [alicia.jay at sorbonne-nouvelle.fr]
Subject: Historical Linguistics: Olga Kellert (2026)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/37-130

Title: The (In)Transparency of Meaning Change and Variation
Subtitle: A study of the indefinite cualquiera in European and
Argentinian Spanish
Series Title: Advances in Historical Linguistics
Publication Year: 2026

Publisher: Language Science Press
           http://langsci-press.org
Book URL: https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/538

Author(s): Olga Kellert

Reviewer: Alicia Jay

SUMMARY
Kellert’s monograph, The (in)Transparency of Meaning Change and
Variation, based on her habilitation thesis, contributes to a broader
inquiry that essentially boils down to “how transparent is meaning
change?” In this book, she addresses this question by providing an
in-depth case study on the Spanish modal indefinite “cualquiera” and
its various meanings, across time and varieties.
The (In)transparency of Meaning Change and Variation is organised into
six chapters and follows a coherent progression from the current state
of the research on “cualquiera” to corpus-based synchronic and
diachronic analyses.
The book opens with Chapter 1, “Introduction” (pp. 1-12), which
explains the reasons for the study within broader research on the
mechanisms underlying language change and variation. Kellert frames
the discussion in terms of two perspectives on language change:  the
compositional perspective, adopted especially by formal semanticists,
who believe that meaning change is “based on a compositional
reanalysis of the prior meaning into a new meaning” (p.1) and the
perspective according to which language change is not necessarily
compositional. She then explicitly states the aim of her book, namely
to test “the compositionality and the transparency principle in formal
diachronic semantics on meaning change and variation of the modal
indefinite cualquiera ‘Any’ in Argentinian and European Spanish” (p.
2). This study thus sets out to better understand how the different
meanings of “cualquiera”, both in European and Argentinian Spanish,
have evolved over time, and whether its more recent meanings can be
linked to the modal meaning “any”. She then introduces the reader to
the different readings of “cualquiera”, such as its evaluative and
free choice readings. Finally, she presents her corpus data and
methodology, and provides an outline of the book.
Chapter 2, “Current State of Research on “Cualquiera” (pp. 13-68)
provides a review of the existing literature on “cualquiera”. Kellert
builds upon previous research in order to present the different
syntactic and semantic functions of “cualquiera” in synchrony before
turning to the existing diachronic research.  In this overview,
Kellert highlights some shortcomings of previous research, notably the
lack of studies combining diachronic and synchronic data, as well as
the absence of strong statistical evidence of meaning change. This
enables her to convincingly argue for the need for her study, as she
aims, among other things, to analyse the evaluative meaning of
“calquieria” in predicative contexts, to determine whether all its
meanings are derived from a core meaning, and to trace the diachronic
development of its evaluative use.
Chapters 3 and 4 lay the foundations for the compositional analysis of
meaning change by characterising the different meanings of
“cualquiera” in modern European and Argentinian Spanish, respectively.
Chapter 3, “Evaluative Meaning of Postnominal Cualquiera in European
Spanish” (pp. 69-100) focuses on the syntactic environments of
postnominal “cualquiera” and the relation between syntax and meaning.
Among other things, her analyses show a correlation between
affirmative predicative contexts in indicative verbal mood and
evaluative readings of “cualquiera”.   Another highlight is the
hypothesis put forward by the author that the derogatory reading of
“cualquiera” in Argentinian Spanish, could be pragmatically derived
from its more neutral evaluative readings (common, ordinary).
Chapter 4, “Postnominal and Pronominal ‘Cualquiera’ in Argentinian
Spanish” (pp. 101-142) turns to the use of “cualquiera” in the
Argentinian variety. Among other things, of interest here is the
evaluative reading meaning “nonsense”, a development which is specific
to this variety. The author proposes an explanatory theory for the
development of this meaning. She argues that it developed through
reanalysis, which stands in contrast to the hypothesis of its
development by analogy with “cualunque” (from Lunfardo slang) (Rizzo
Salierno 2013). This analysis is supported by new data on Argentinian
Spanish. The final sections of the chapter contain a diachronic
analysis of the development of the evaluative meanings of “cualquiera”
in Argentinian Spanish, especially the “nonsense” reading. The author
subscribes to the view that meaning change is driven by pragmatic
inferencing, and she argues that the ‘nonsense’ reading is pragmatic
inference derived from the free choice interpretation. However, the
author acknowledges that the diachronic data on Argentinian Spanish is
too scarce to develop a strong case for this hypothesis.
Chapter 5, “Diachrony of QUALQUIER revisited” (pp.143-202) analyses
the diachronic evolution of QUALQUIER, which is the notation under
which the author regroups Old Spanish forms “qualquier, “qualquiere”,
“qualquiera” and “qual quier”, as well as the present-day Spanish
forms “cualquier” and “cualquiera”.  The main objective of the chapter
is to show the historical developments of the different meanings and
whether semantic meaning is related to morpho-syntactic structure.
First, the analysis demonstrates the process of grammaticalization,
and that QUALQUIER has undergone syntactic changes, notably the
increase in frequency of prenominal QUALQUIER. The author argues for
the reanalysis of the free relative clause “qual quier” into an
indefinite determiner (“cualquier N”) with a free choice item reading.
A second finding concerns the development of the post nominal modifier
“cualquiera”, related to the relative clause “qual quier”, and whose
evaluative meaning is related to the property function of relative
clauses.
Finally, the last chapter, “Overall Summary and Conclusions” (pp.
203-210) synthesises the main outcomes of the previous chapters and
summarises the two diachronic paths of development of “cualquiera”
that she has identified in Argentinian and European Spanish. The
author describes the result of the main objective of her book, which
was to evaluate the role of compositionality in the meaning change of
the modal indefinite, and highlights that compositionality is an
important part of her explanation of the reanalysis from the free
choice reading to the evaluative reading ‘common’, as it is due to the
negation of a free choice alternative that leads to the assertion of a
specific alternative.
EVALUATION
This book will naturally be of interest to scholars working on modal
indefinites and/or Ibero-Romance languages, but it will also appeal to
linguists working more generally on language change and variation and
to anyone interested in the mechanisms of language change. While
Kellert explicitly states that her study adopts a formal diachronic
semantics approach, the book is accessible to readers without a
background in formal theory, as it is not assumed that the reader is
familiar with the intricacies of this framework. Kellert carefully and
thoroughly explains her methodology and the terminology she uses. For
instance, in Chapter 2 she takes the reader through an introduction to
alternative semantics before delving deeper into the topic. In this
respect, the book is accessible to a wide readership.
The work achieves its objectives in that it fills a gap in the
literature on “cualquiera” by integrating both synchronic and
diachronic perspectives within the same study, as well as by providing
an analysis that is not just descriptive but grounded in corpora and
statistical evidence. Indeed, Kellert’s claims are consistently
supported by relevant extracts from corpora, as well as by a
comprehensive array of figures and tables. In this respect, however,
there is a slight technical issue that is worth mentioning. As the
book features many tables and figures, it would have been very useful
to provide a list of tables and figures in order to allow readers to
locate and consult specific ones more easily. A second minor issue
concerns the presence of several typographical errors in the book, for
example on pages 145, 152, 158, 190, and 198 among others, which are
worth correcting.
The use of data from various corpora such as the Corpus del Español
and the Corpus DIacronico del Español provides a robust empirical
foundation that is completed sporadically by qualitative insights that
the author obtained through the informal consultation of native
speakers. The author prefaces those judgements and explicitly
acknowledges any possible criticism by stating that these judgements
were used solely to corroborate her corpus-based findings.
Nevertheless, it might have been beneficial to integrate speaker data
more systematically and to bridge corpus and survey data by
incorporating a formalised survey.
Compositionality is a well-known issue in linguistics that has
received much attention. While it is a foundational claim in formal
semantics (Partee, Meulen & Wall 1990), it has also been challenged by
counterexamples such as idiomatic expressions and the role of context.
This book offers a meaningful contribution to the body of work on
compositionality, meaning change and formal semantics by exploring how
the meaning change of “cualquiera” fits a compositional analysis of
meaning change. It is in keeping with other volumes which tackle
meaning change with formal semantics such as Eckardt (2006).
REFERENCES
Eckardt, Regine. 2006. Meaning Change in Grammaticalization: An
Enquiry into Semantic Reanalysis. Oxford University Press.
Partee, Barbara H., Alice ter Meulen & Robert E. Wall. 1993.
Mathematical Methods in Linguistics. Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Rizzo Salierno, Melisa. 2013. El uso adjetivo de cualquiera. In Angela
L. Di Tullio (ed), Aproximaciones al estudio del español de la
Argentina, 23-31. Comahue: Universidad Nacional del Comahue.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Alicia Jay is a second-year PhD student at Bordeaux Montaigne
University. Her research interests include language variation and
change, grammaticalization and constructional approaches to language
change and variation. She teaches various courses on English grammar
and linguistics at university.



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