Les partícules de tractament 'don' i 'en' en català medieval

Abstract

In contrast to the other Romance languages, Catalan has formed two forms of address particles from Latin dominus/domina: 1. the form en/na, which emerged early and now functions as a personal article, and 2. the more unstable and later abandoned variant don/dona. The article examines the evidence for both variants in the medieval sources and assumes that the reason for the loss of the don variant is the fuzzy semantic demarcation from the competing forms en or, in certain contexts, mossèn. En and na are the forms that are generally accepted but will be reduced in the further development to the mere grammatical function of a personal article and tend to disappear completely in some regions.