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This work is a contribution to the understanding of some diachronic and synchronic aspects of the grammatical relation Indirect Object hitherto not studied: (i) grammaticalization (from the 12th to the 21st century) of cross reference –double representation– of indirect object in the light of the theory of 'drift' of Henning Andersen; (ii) revision of the conceptualization of grammatical relations within functional linguistics, on one hand of Simon Dik, on the other of Michael Herslund. The study is based on a corpus of texts (2 mill. running words) of Peninsular and American Spanish, dating from the end of the 19th to the beginnings of the 21st century. All kinds of genres – written as well as spoken – have been studied.

This book is intended as counter-evidence to the perception that Linguistics is a domain of dusty schoolroom grammar. It follows that linguistics can be characterised differently than as proponents of theoretical orientations who spend their brief breaks from their bone-dry work bashing each other over the head with their various favourite abstractions. The discipline may appear to outsiders as fragmented and - worse still - lacking in relevance to the real world outside its gates. This book demonstrates that Linguistics, in all its varied branches, can be entertaining as well as thought-provoking, and that its domain is indeed a coherent one despite all the internecine squabbling. In an unconventional way, Michael Fortescue introduces his subject as a kind of fable with a historical moral that professional linguists, as well as students, should enjoy as a useful commentary on the state of the discipline today. is a professor of Linguistics at the University of Copenhagen. He is the author of (London, 1998), and (Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 2001).