The Evolution of "Puesto Que" in Cervantes' Prose

Puesto que as a concessive conjunction equivalent to aunque is documented from the fourteenth century, and was usual y dominante hasta hacia 1600.' There is no record of puesto que in its most common modern usage of causal conjunction in the sixteenth century,2 although there are seventeenth-century citations from Ruiz de Alarc6n,3 G6ngora4 and Calder6n.5 Since the causal use is almost diametrically opposed to the concessive use, the latter has become increasingly rare as the former has become standard. The question immediately arises as to whether this process of lessening use of the concessive puesto que is at work in the writings of Cervantes, whose productive period coincides with the introduction of the causal acception. The answer to this question is to be found in a comparison of the use of concessive puesto que with that of aunque, with which it was then interchangeable. With the indicative

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