The Dutch change-of-state copulawordenand its Spanish counterparts

Abstract

By means of a contrastive corpus analysis we will examine the different translation possibilities in Spanish for the Dutch change-of-state copulaworden. Unlike English or French, Spanish does not have a single verb to translate the Dutch copulaworden, but instead displays a whole range of possibilities to express change. In the present study, we will focus on the three Spanish predicates that – in our corpus – are most frequently used to translate the attributive construction withworden, viz. A semi-copula, a lexical verb and a simple copula (serorestar ‘to be’). Our data will reveal that the selection of an appropriate translation of worden is not random. On the contrary, a different translation category corresponds to a different conceptualization of the process of change. A variety of contextual, formal and semantic factors can help explain the preference for one translation possibility over the other.