This is a study of locatives derived from Latin UBI and UNDE in the Spanish chronicles Atalaya de las crónicas, by Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, dating from the fifteenth century. The system derived from UBI and UNDE is composed of adverbs, relative pronouns and conjunctions and DONDE and DO are their most frequent forms. Besides the description of locatives, we analyse the grammaticalization and the emergence of the conjunction DONDE. These items are basically concrete locatives and tend to become more abstract and expand their meanings. They can even change their grammatical function, acquiring more grammaticality. This process of abstratization favoured a reanalysis of the relative pronoun in conjunction, which could be understood from the observation of what we call ambiguous items, set in contexts that allows a double interpretation.
XVth century Spanish; grammaticalization of conjunctions; locatives; donde
