Antiphrasis-Based Comparative Constructional Idioms in Spanish

Carmen Mellado Blanco

doi:10.3844/jssp.2015.111.127

Abstract

Abstract: The aim of this study is to show the character of the antiphrasis-based comparative structures in Spanish [SUBJ^sub [anaph]^ V^sub TENER^ de S1 como/lo que yo de S2] and [SUBJ^sub [anaph]^ V^sub [COGN]^ de S1 como/lo que yo de S2], respectively with the referential meaning 'not to be S1' and 'to not know/understand absolutely anything about S1' and the pragmatic meaning disagreement/criticism. These schemata in Spanish have not been studied previously, either from the perspective of phraseology (in terms of their character as idiomatic schemata) or that of Construction Grammar (looking at their value as idioms). Hence, this study has a double aim: on the one hand to fill a gap in Spanish phraseological research, exploring in detail the value of these structures in terms of schematicity and as and on the other to establish a unifying bridge between Spanish phraseology and Construction Grammar. For the study a corpus has been compiled of 435 occurrences of the construction [SUBJ^sub [anaph]^ V^sub TENER^ de S1 como/lo que yo de S2] and 240 occurrences of the construction [SUBJ^sub [anaph]^ V^sub [COGN]^ de S1 como/lo que yo de S2], these drawn either from the CREA corpus or from the Internet/Google using the Webcorp tool.Keywords: Constructional Grammar, Spanish Comparative Idioms, Antiphrasis, Constructional IdiomsIntroductionConstructional Idioms: DefinitionFor the present study1 we take as a starting point Goldberg's (2006: 215) definition of constructions as learned pairings of form with semantic and discourse function, including morphemes or words, filled and fully general phrasal patterns. Thus, with the sentence Diner: Waiter, what's this fly doing in my soup?, according to Kay and Fillmore (1999), the underlying construction is [What's X doing Y?].Within constructions, we will focus on the partially filled phrasal patterns, or constructional idioms, to use the terminology of Taylor (2014: 11), who defines them as patterns (of varying degrees of productivity and schematicity) for the formation of expressions, but whose syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and even phonological properties cannot be derived from general principles, whether universal or language-specific (see also Dobrovol'skij, 2011; 2012; Mellado Blanco, 2015a; 2015b). According to Fischer (2006), are pairs of form and content, whose meaning sich nicht aus den Bedeutungen seiner Teile ergibt, that is, is not the result of the sum of the meanings of the two constituents (cf Staffeldt, 2011: 132; Stathi, 2011: 149). Some examples from Spanish are:* [DET[EL] S1/ADJ1sg de DET[LOS] N1/ADJ1pl]: el templo de los templos (Eng. the temple of temples, i.e., a very important temple from the point of view of the speaker)* [TODO DET[UNO] N]: toda una obra, todo un detalle (Eng. all a work, all a detail, i.e., a very important work/detail to the speaker)* [N1 con N1]: puerta con puerta, pared con pared (Eng. door with door, wall with wall, i.e., cheek by jowel)* [no SER de V[INF]/N]: No soy de comer mucho (Eng. I'm not of eating much, i.e., I'm not one for eating much)* [Y venga a V[INF]]: Y venga a comer/hablar/... (Eng. And come to eat/speak/..., i.e., he/she eats/speaks/... again and again)* [ir de ADJ[POSITIV]]: ir de guaperas/pijo/... (Eng. to go around beautiful/brattish/..., i.e., to boast to be very beautiful/brattish/...)The term constructional idiom (Taylor, 2014) is to a greater or lesser degree the same phenomenon as the German terms modellierte Bildungen (Cernyseva, 1975), phraseologisierte Muster (Eckert, 1979), Phraseoschablonen (Fleischer, 1997: 130-134, Donalies, 2009), typische grammatisch-stilistische Konstruktionen, idiomatische Konstruktionsmuster (Finkbeiner, 2008: 218), Modellbildungen (Burger, 2010: 45), syntaktische Pragungen (Feilke, 1994), semantisch-strukturelle Modelle (Dobrovol'skij, 1988; Hundt, 2005), syntaktische Ausdrucksmodelle mit primar pragmatischer Pragung: Topik-Muster (Feilke, 1996: 242) and the English terms lexically open idioms (Fillmore et al. …

Highlights

Constructional Idioms: DefinitionFor the present study1 we take as a starting point Goldberg’s (2006: 215) definition of “constructions” as “learned pairings of form with semantic and discourse function, including morphemes or words, idioms, partially lexically filled and fully general phrasal patterns”
During the process of writing our dictionary Idiomatik Deutsch-Spanisch (Schemann et al, 2013), which contains more than 35,000 multi-word lexical units, we found some comparative idioms in German that had as an equivalent in Spanish not a comparative idiom but a constructional idiom
It can happen that the same prototype is used to intensify different qualities, in which case the comparatum undergoes a clear process of desemanticisation. This phenomenon can be observed in the lexemes astronauta and cura in the constructional idiom [SUBJ[anaph] VTENER de S1 como/lo que yo de S2]

Summary

Introduction

For the present study we take as a starting point Goldberg’s (2006: 215) definition of “constructions” as “learned pairings of form with semantic and discourse function, including morphemes or words, idioms, partially lexically filled and fully general phrasal patterns”. With the sentence “Diner: Waiter, what's this fly doing in my soup?”, according to Kay and Fillmore (1999), the underlying construction is [What's X doing Y?]. We will focus on the “partially lexically filled phrasal patterns”, or “constructional idioms”, to use the terminology of Taylor (2014: 11), who defines them as “patterns

This study emerged as part of the research project FFI201345769-P

Conclusion

Findings

Funding Information