Towards a constructional approach to discourse-level phenomena : the case of the Spanish interpersonal epistemic stance construction

This study contributes to a better understanding of how constructional models can be applied to discourse-level phenomena, and constitute a valuable complementation to previous grammaticalization accounts of pragmatic markers. The case study that is presented concerns the recent development of the interpersonal epistemic stance construction in Spanish. The central argument is that the expanding use of sabes as a pragmatic marker can best be fully understood by taking into account the composite network of related expressions which Spanish speakers have at their disposal when performing a particular speech act. The diachronic analysis is documented with spoken corpus examples collected in recent decades, and is mainly informed by frequency data measuring the productivity, as well as formal properties of the construction and its instances

On the cross-linguistic equivalence of sentir(e) in Romance languages: a contrastive study in semantics

Recent linguistic studies on perception have focused mainly on verbs referring to the dominant visual and auditory modalities, (e.g. English see/look and hear/listen) and have largely ignored the minor verbs. The present paper seeks to fill this gap by comparing the complex semantics of the cognate verbs sentir(e) in three Romance languages, namely Spanish, French and Italian. Because the objective study of semantics is a problematic issue, we pay special attention to methodological problems and opt for a combined corpus approach involving both a translation corpus and comparable data. Evidence from both corpora indicates that, notwithstanding the fact that the rich polysemy of the three verbs partly coincides, each individual verb has undergone semantic specializations differentiating the morphological cognates

Acusativo y dativo en la construcción factitiva: hacia un replanteamiento en términos multifactoriales

Most investigations of Romance factitive constructions study the causative verb hacer (‘to make’) and pay little attention to related verbs such as dejar (‘to let’). This article seeks to fill up this gap by contrasting the syntax of positive and negative causation, and particularly focuses on the case marking of the causee. The analysis of a Spanish corpus allows us to examine previous accounts of case marking, namely the hypothesis of incorporation and the related ‘Stratal Uniqueness Law’, and the theory of direct vs. indirect causation. The second part is dedicated to the question whether the cognitive-semantic characteristics of the causation models have any effect on its syntax. Finally, a multifactorial analysis, taking into account the degree of dynamicity of the constituents and the accusative or dative case of the causee, demonstrates that variation of pattern mainly depends on the rich polysemy of the main verbs

The polysemy of the Spanish verb sentir: a behavioral profile analysis

This study investigates the intricate polysemy of the Spanish perception verb sentir (‘feel’) which, analogous to the more-studied visual perception verbs ver (‘see’) and mirar (‘look’), also displays an ample gamut of semantic uses in various syntactic environments. The investigation is based on a corpus-based behavioral profile (BP) analysis. Besides its methodological merits as a quantitative, systematic and verifiable approach to the study of meaning and to polysemy in particular, the BP analysis offers qualitative usage-based evidence for cognitive linguistic theorizing. With regard to the polysemy of sentir, the following questions were addressed: (1) What is the prototype of each cluster of senses? (2) How are the different senses structured: how many senses should be distinguished – i.e. which senses cluster together and which senses should be kept separately? (3) Which senses are more related to each other and which are highly distinguishable? (4) What morphosyntactic variables make them more or less distinguishable? The results show that two significant meaning clusters can be distinguished, which coincide with the division between the middle voice uses (sentirse) and the other uses (sentir). Within these clusters, a number of meaningful subclusters emerge, which seem to coincide largely with the more general semantic categories of physical, cognitive and emotional perception

Mazo (de) y otros recursos de intensificación en el lenguaje juvenil madrileño : factores lingüísticos y sociales

This paper investigates three main strategies used by Spanish teenagers to intensify their language, namely by suffixation and affixation of the base, and by recurring to the lexical intensifier mazo. For this purpose, all occurrences of these intensifiers in the Corpus Oral de Lenguaje Adolescente de Madrid (COLAm) are analyzed. Rather than describing the behavior of each individual category, this article aims at providing a better understanding of both the internal (morphosyntactic and semantic-pragmatic) and external (sociolinguistic) factors that determine the alternating use of the three strategies within the paradigm of intensifiers. The analysis also looks into the grammaticalization process that has given rise to the use of mazo as a highly frequent and versatile intensifier in teenage talk

Dejar: entre verbo causativo y verbo de control

It is generally known that the morphosyntactic marking of the causee in the causative factitive construction is rather complex. Moreover, most investigations of the factitive focus on the causative verb hacer (‘to do’), which serves as a model for the construction in general, and linguists have paid little attention to related verbs such as dejar (‘to let’). This study, based on a detailed corpus analysis, seeks to fill up this gap by centering on the syntax-semantics interface in the factitive expressing negative causation with dejar. A multifactorial analysis, taking into account both the polysemy of the main verb as well as the semantic characteristics of the main constituents of the construction, shows that the same parameters influence on (a) the choice between an infinitive complement or a que-clause, (b) the position of the nominal causee and (c) the accusative or dative case of the pronominal causee