ABSTRACT
This chapter adds to the debate regarding the dative clitic we find in leísta dialects of Spanish, argued to be either one and the same as the regular dative clitic, or different from the dative clitic we find in standard Spanish (“one le or two les hypothesis”). Drawing on data that instantiate the defective/singular le instead of the agreeing plural les—i.e., “le-for-les,” we argue that these data offer support to the claim that there are two different les, accusative and dative le, and that “le-for-les” is only possible with the dative le. Apparent leísta counterexamples are shown to follow from the dative nature of the clitic, indicating that the idea of two different les is empirically superior.
