Abstract
Cuán, qué tan, and cómo de are used to modify adverbs and adjectives in interrogatives. They are also used in embedded clauses along with lo que. Instances of these expressions were extracted from the Corpus del Español. In interrogatives, qué tan was the most frequent. The idea that cuán is archaic or limited to literary usage is not supported by these data. Cómo de is extremely infrequent except in Peninsular Spanish. In embedded clauses the frequency of these expressions appear in this order of frequency: lo que > qué tan > cuán > cómo de. 
 In an experiment speakers from Spain, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela were shown 28 test sentences that contained different adverbial interrogatives. Their task was to choose the expression they preferred. These results correlate highly with the production data from the corpus. Choice of adverbial was moderated by gender and age as well.
Highlights
How are adjectives and adverbs modified in an interrogative or in an embedded clause in Spanish? In contemporary usage there are three interrogative adverbials that may serve this function: cuán, qué tan, and cómo de.1(1)¿Cuán frágil le parece su propia existencia? ‘How fragile does his own existence seem to him?’(2)¿Qué tan frecuentemente debo cambiar las cuerdas? ‘How often should I change the strings?’(3)¿Cómo de contaminada está su mente? ‘How polluted is his mind?’ã David Ellingson Eddington
It is more likely that speakers in countries such as Spain and Cuba, which are on the low end, may prefer alternative ways of constructing interrogatives that do not involve cuán, qué tan, or cómo de
There are a number of ways that Spanish speakers have at their disposal to quantify an adjective or adverb. In direct questions they may choose qué tan, cómo de, or cuán, (e.g. ¿Qué tan / cuán / cómo de / importante es ‘How important is it?’). In embedded clauses these are joined by lo+adj./adv.+que (e.g. No sabía / qué tan / cuán / cómo de / importante era; No sabía lo importante que era ‘He didn’t know how important it was’)
Summary
How are adjectives and adverbs modified in an interrogative or in an embedded clause in Spanish? In contemporary usage there are three interrogative adverbials that may serve this function: cuán, qué tan, and cómo de.. In their work on quanifiers, Octavio de Toledo y Huerta and Sánchez López (2009) specify qué tan, cuán, and cómo de as the quantifiers that precede adjectives and adverbs in interrogatives and exclamations. As far as their geographical distribution and prestige are concerned, Bello (1847/1859:306) notes the use of both cuán and qué tan in the Americas in the 19th century, but a hundred years later, Bollinger (1946:167) expresses a nagging sense that Latin Americans find qué tan as not proper for educated speech. They were given different ways of expressing the same question He found that, in general, most speakers disliked cuán and preferred to nominalize the adjective. At the same time it examines the role that individual factors such as gender and age play in the variation
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