Abstract
AbstractWe respond to Rodríguez Arrizabalaga’s recent claim that Spanish shows genuine cases of strong resultative constructions, e.g.Juan apuñaló a Tomás hasta la muerte‘John stabbed Tom to death’, argued to be equivalent to the English construction with the PPto death. This claim is theoretically relevant as it challenges the verb-framed behavior of Spanish with respect to Talmy’s typology. Adopting a constructivist view of argument structure, we argue that Spanishhasta la muerteand Englishto deathconstructions of this type involve two completely distinct syntactic configurations, and that only the Englishto deathPP can be regarded as a resultative phrase. We claim that the SpanishhastaPP is syntactically computed as an adjunct external to the argument structure of the predicate and provides a boundary to the predicate it merges with. We thus show that the Spanish construction withhasta la muertefully conforms to the class of Talmy’s verb-framed languages in that this type of construction is expected to be fully available and productive in this class of languages.
Highlights
An important typological distinction among languages relates to the expression of directed motion events
Adopting a constructivist view of argument structure, we argue that Spanish hasta la muerte and English to death constructions of this type involve two completely distinct syntactic configurations, and that only the English to death PP can be regarded as a resultative phrase
After introducing our constructivist view of resultative constructions and the syntactic account of Talmy’s typology deriving from it, we have shown that RA’s Construction Grammar’s account of Spanish resultative constructions is not accurate in that it is not able to correctly predict what verbs are allowed to participate in these constructions
Summary
An important typological distinction among languages relates to the expression of directed motion events (cf. Jonas ran into the house). According to this classification, if Spanish hasta la muerte-type constructions were true cases of resultative constructions, as RA claims, they would fall under the strong resultative-type classification as proposed by Washio (1997) since in this type of resultative constructions, the verbs encode manners of action (e.g. golpear ‘beat’, apedrear ‘stone’, torturar ‘torture’, acuchillar ‘stab’ etc.) – as in the English to death-type resultatives (7) – and crucially the meaning of the verb and that of the adjunct clause expressing the result state of death are understood not to be mutually related insofar as death need not follow from an event of beating, stoning or torturing.. In (16) the thanks are created by smiling and in (17) the metal becomes flat by hammering (see Acedo-Matellán and Mateu 2014; Embick 2004; Harley 2005; Mateu 2012; Mateu and Acedo-Matellán 2012; McIntyre 2004)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
