“Clases de palabras y categorías gramaticales” (1932): renovación de la tradición gramatical escolar en unas conferencias inéditas de Amado Alonso

Within the vast grammatical and linguistic production of Amado Alonso, few jobs are dedicated specifically to reflect on the characterization of the parts of speech. The most widespread work on the subject is his Gramática castellana in two volumes, written in collaboration with Pedro Henríquez Ureña between 1938 and 1939. However, a survey of Alonso’s personal file at Harvard University shows the presence of an unpublished text: the typed version of the course "Clases de palabras y categorías gramaticales", which was delivered by Alonso between 5 July and 23 August 1932 at the Colegio Libre de Estudios Superiores in Buenos Aires. These unpublished conferences are a significant finding for several reasons. First, as they evidence a theoretical reflection that leads Alonso himself to collaborate with a decisive reform in the national schools’ curricula (definitely conducted in 1936). Secondly, because in these conferences Alonso assumes the necessity to return to the thought of Andrés Bello and adopts a syntactic-functional criterion in order to distinguish word classes or parts of speech. Finally, these unpublished conferences are of great significance since they allow reconstructing the foundations of the grammatical doctrine developed by Alonso in his grammar.