Grammatical patterns in Spanish: verbs of existence and appearance

Abstract

In this paper,22 The research presented in this paper was carried out in the framework of the competitive national project ‘Las categorías de verbo y adverbio en el DAELE’ (reference HUM2006–06982), awarded by the Spanish Dirección General de Enseñanza Superior e Investigación Científica, and directed by Dr Paz Battaner Arias at the Pompeu Fabra University. I describe the grammatical patterns of a set of Spanish verbs that are frequently used in specialised discourse to provide structure, organise information in the text and function as connectors. The verbs selected for the study are the following unaccusative verbs of existence and appearance: ocurrir (‘occur’), suceder (‘happen/take place’), existir (‘exist’), aparecer (‘appear’) and resultar (‘turn out’). The grammatical and lexico-graphical description of these verbs is compared with the results provided by consulting the Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual (CREA) database of the Real Academia Española in three thematic fields: Science and Technology, Economics and Finance, and Law. The results of the research highlight three specific patterns of use for the unaccusative verbs of existence and appearance studied in specialised texts, placing particular emphasis on the constructions that contribute to the texture of discourse. I propose that these patterns should be incorporated into dictionaries of use (‘codifiers’) as lexicographical data that may enrich the information given about these words, whose meanings are clearly diffuse.