The birth of a new resultative construction in Spanish: A corpus-based description

Abstract

Abstract The Spanish prepositional phrase hasta la muerte ‘to death’, in addition to its emphatic and intensifying function (e.g. Hay que animar al equipo hasta la muerte ‘The team must be supported wholeheartedly (lit. to death)’), over the last few years developed a resultative function (e.g. Las mujeres fueron torturadas hasta la muerte ‘The women were tortured to death’; Lo apedrearon hasta la muerte ‘They stoned him to death’), equivalent to the one displayed by the English resultatives dead and to death (e.g. He shot the president dead; He stabbed the president to death). Until recently, however, the construction containing the prepositional resultative hasta la muerte was considered ungrammatical, a literal calque from English. Its attested presence in the Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual, albeit at low frequency levels, and its frequent occurrence nowadays in the Spanish mass media, clearly show that this construction is now making its way into the Spanish language