The medieval adverbs "suso" and "yuso": morphosyntax and disappearance

Abstract

The descriptive adverbs of place suso and yuso, which were inherited from Latin, disappeared during the 15th century. These adverbs were widely used in Mediaeval Castilian, either in the function of complements of verbs, or placed inside syntagmatic groups as complements of nouns and adverbs.

Four forms were created with the help of prepositions; some of these behaved like the "directional” series (de)suso ~ (arriba) / ayuso ~ (abajo), whereas other forms behaved like the "non-directionals” dessuso ~ (encima) / deyuso ~ (debajo). Two other expressions can also be mentioned, of similar semantic content, desuso / deyuso, which resulted from the amalgamation of the preposition de with the adverbs; these became the most widely used variants.

However, due to the inability of (de)suso to indicate direction, it started to be displaced by the "prospective” adverb arriba as early as in the 13th century; this adverb became consolidated in the 15th century. In addition, the non-directional dessuso ~ (encima) was displaced by ensomo, due to its low functional load, and, in turn, this latter form began to be replaced with encima in the 13th century. When the adverbs arriba and encima took hold in the system (in the 15th century), they triggered the replacement of their antonyms ayuso and deyuso with abajo / debajo respectively.

The morpho-syntactic behaviour of this complex diasystem of adverbial forms, as well as their disappearance is dealt with in this article.