Spanish Constructions Research Articles

Rising datives: tomar ‘take’ expressions with nouns of ‘emotion’ and constructional network reconfiguration in Spanish

Abstract This diachronic, corpus-based study examines Spanish constructions formed with the verb tomar ‘take’ and nouns of ‘emotion’, including endogenous nouns with a target participant (e.g. cariño ‘affection’), exogenous nouns with a source or cause participant (e.g. tristeza ‘sadness’), and hybrid nouns allowing both options (e.g. miedo ‘fear’). Such constructions involve three different inchoative (‘begin to feel’) subschemas. The first one, the Prepositional-Stimulus subschema (e.g. tomar tristeza de algo ‘grow sad over something’), included exogenous and hybrid nouns and predominated in the Middle Ages, but disappeared by the 1800s. The other two subschemas, formed with endogenous and hybrid nouns, have survived until today. They include the Prepositional-Goal subschema (e.g. tomar cariño por alguien ‘grow fond of someone’), the most frequent of the two in the Middle Ages, and the Dative-Goal subschema (e.g. tomarle cariño a alguien ‘grow fond of someone’, lit. ‘take fondness to someone’), which presumably arose through analogy in the 1400s and subsequently marginalized its prepositional counterpart, becoming the default realization in present-day Spanish. Using the framework of Diachronic Construction Grammar, these changes are analyzed as involving the reconfiguration of a broader network of inchoative light verb constructions with nouns of emotion in Spanish.

More than tough luck

Abstract Applied Cognitive Linguistics (ACL, henceforth) offers a vision of language closely tied to our experiences and views of the world, showing great promise for foreign language teaching and learning. Building upon this meaning-centered perspective, this paper discusses an interventional, quasi-experimental study assessing the effectiveness of incorporating animated images into materials for teaching comparative constructions in L2 Spanish. Conducted in three phases with varying participation rates (69 students in the first, 18 in the second, and 27 in the third), the study faced numerous factors that hindered data collection process and thereby influenced the results. Although the findings were not statistically significant, they suggest a slight improvement in post-test performance in both the experimental and comparison groups. While the potential of ACL in second language teaching and learning is undeniable, so are the challenges faced in L2 classrooms. This underscores the need for further empirical research to bridge the gap between theoretical principles and their practical implementation in real classroom settings.

A study on adjunct control construction in Spanish

A study on adjunct control construction in Spanish

Control in Romanian and Se constructions

In this paper, we account for different patterns found in complement clauses of se constructions in Romanian and Spanish. In Romanian, a se construction cannot host an infinitival complement, an apparently controlled clause, whereas in Spanish a se construction can. However, when an additional se is added to the complement clause (a “double se construction”), the Romanian structure becomes grammatical, while the Spanish equivalent becomes ungrammatical. The Romanian patterns have been previously argued in Giurgea & Cotfas (2021) to be cases of control, with a failed agreement relation forcing the obligatory presence of se in the complement. We propose an alternative based on two major differences found in Romanian and Spanish. First, in se constructions, Spec, Voice is saturated by the external argument in Spanish, but it is unsaturated in Romanian. We argue that this prevents the external argument in Romanian from acting as a controller. Second, Romanian infinitival clauses appear to share properties with finite clauses, in contrast to Spanish. We argue that the grammatical Romanian double se construction is not an instance of control and suggest that it is the finite nature of the infinitival complement that allows for a double se construction.

A Formal Approach to Spanish ‘Genitive’ Pronouns in Non-Nominal Domains

This paper examines the distribution of ‘genitive’ pronouns in non-nominal domains in Spanish. These pronouns can alternate with constructions headed by the item de ‘of’ and a pronoun or other Determiner Phrases (DPs). In general Spanish, this alternation between a synthetic (nuestro ‘our’) and an analytic (de nosotros ‘of us’) option is found in the nominal domain. However, when looking at variation, this alternation appears in adverbial, verbal, and adjectival domains too. We discuss this phenomenon from a neo-constructionist approach, which assumes the late insertion of phonological exponents. We propose that the analytic and the synthetic options have almost the same syntactic structure, the only difference being the nature of the nominalizer’s φ-features. When the nominalizer values its φ-features, it can be lexicalized alone, and the ‘genitive’ pronoun lexicalizes the rest of the structure, including the introducer p/Place. Otherwise, when the nominalizer cannot (or needs not to) value its features, a ‘non-genitive’ pronoun lexicalizes the pronominal structure, and the head p/Place is lexicalized by the item de. Our proposal explains the complementary distribution between agreement/nominal morphology and the item de observed in many Spanish constructions. Different consequences are advantageously deduced.

Developing L2 learners’ metaphoric competence: a case study of figurative motion constructions

AbstractThis study compares two instruction methods (cognitive and traditional) for teaching complex metaphorical motion constructions in Spanish and developing A2+ learners’ metaphoric competence in the L2. The cognitive instruction combined insights from the Conceptual Metaphor Theory with multimodal content and cognitive parameters, whereas the traditional package followed a communicative and formalist approach to language based on most current L2 textbooks. A group of 33 university students from a North American-based College participated in the experiment. Assessment tests were designed inspired by cognitive linguistics tenets and measured learners’ general metaphor comprehension (Task 1) and original production (Task 2), as well as performance in the comprehension (Task 3) and production (Task 4) of change-of-state constructions, thus breaking with the pervading assessment typology for empirical studies in applied cognitive linguistics. The cognitive methodology proved to be significantly more beneficial for all four tasks. Although students who received a traditional instruction improved over time, those from the cognitive group showed statistically higher performance in metaphoric competence and in the comprehension and production of the target constructions. These findings clearly suggest that a cognitive-based instruction, when followed by a consistent assessment, is an effective approach to teaching and learning difficult constructions in the L2.

Introducing expressives through equations. Implications for the theory of nominal predication in Romance

This paper offers a new theory of binominal constructions in Spanish(e.g., el idiota de Andrés ‘That idiot Andrés’, una mierda de departamento ‘a shitof an apartment’). I use what I call Potts’ Criterion as a way to detect whether or nota given term has predicative force at the truth-conditional level. The observation isthat epithets do not have such a predicative import in binominal constructions of therelevant type, a clear indication that these binominals do not involve predicationalunderlying structures of the type proposed in Den Dikken (2006) and most, if notall, mainstream approaches to binominals in Romance. I then propose that thesyntactic and semantic connection between epithets/expressives and their relatedDPs/NPs is a particular type of equation between those DPs/NPs and an underlyingindexical term, denoting in individuals or in properties depending on the relevantconstruction.

Like a Virus. Similes for a Pandemic

ABSTRACT The Covid-19 pandemic has had a great impact on the life of every inhabitant of the planet. During 2020 and 2021 a significant amount of work on how the pandemic is being conceptualized and communicated has been done. Most work has focused on the role of metaphor in the construal of specific cognitive frames. In this paper, we turn to a similar but different conceptualization mechanism, i.e. simile. Drawing from recent socio-cognitive and discursive empirical approaches to similes, this paper focuses on “target is like source” constructions in English and Spanish containing (corona)virus either as target or source of the simile. The analysis is based on 200 examples found in the digital media during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020. First, the constructions, conceptualizations and mappings are analyzed. Second, the relevant discourse features (genre type, relation to subjectivity, text location and structuring properties) are described. Finally, the cross-linguistic English-Spanish analysis shows that, despite the many coincidences in both datasets, there are different tendencies as for the use of culture-specific mappings and the genres where the similes occur in. The study aims at testing to what extent the general features characterizing similes also hold in the case of (corona)virus, both as source and as target. The corpus analysis contributes, in addition, to the emerging line of research on the use of figuration in the communication of the pandemic, as well as to the study of the discursive dimensions of similes in real settings.

Los «posesivos enfáticos» en dos sociolectos del español europeo

AbstractThe «emphatic» possession has been traditionally related to American Spanish, specially, surfacing in language-contact situations. Taking this for granted, the present paper explores the sociolinguistic and dialectal distribution of this possessive construction in European Spanish and attempts to characterize it both semantically and syntactically. This paper analyzes over 20,000 tokens of possessive pronouns. Data are extracted from two corpus representative of the spoken varieties of urban and rural European Spanish. The analysis confirms the colloquial-familiar character of this syntactic construction and supports that the so-called «redundant» possessive acts as an index of type-shifting from a sortal to a relational noun.

Grammatical Coding and the Discursive Construction of Participants: Spanish Passives in Written Press News Discourse

AbstractThis paper presents a comparative analysis of two Spanish constructions that are usually characterised as passive, namely the periphrastic or attributive passive – formed with the verb ser ‘be’ plus a participle – and the reflexive passive – formed with third‐person reflexive clitic se. An isomorphic functional approach is adopted whereby the inherent syntactic‐semantic features of each construction are considered to be at the basis of their discourse‐pragmatic uses. Using a corpus of local written news pieces from the Peninsular town of Salamanca, the grammatical expression of both the initiators and the endpoints of events in each construction is quantitatively and qualitatively analysed, paying special attention to their variable encoding and placement within the clause and the semantic correlates of formal variation. While attributive passives are used to predicate transitive events of topical endpoints, reflexive passives often conceptualise events as thetic, reducing transitivity and defocusing initiators. These meanings are projected onto the discourse‐pragmatic domain by favouring different interpretations of the role of human participants, particularly with respect to their involvement in events amenable to negative judgements. This supports the hypothesis that the syntax and semantics of each grammatical construction are undetachable from its communicative potential in specific contexts.

Uncertainty as a disambiguating factor for conditional, temporal, and habitual constructions: evidence from Spanish

Abstract The present work analyzes conditional constructions in Spanish that are polysemous between different conditional and non-conditional readings and whose meaning arises pragmatically. This article shows that the feature of uncertainty can help us identify potential conditional constructions, and distinguish constructions that are disguised as conditional, but that do not behave as such. Thus, factual protases are not considered “true” conditionals as their behavior is more akin to causal clauses. I argue that including uncertainty as a determining factor of conditionality can allow us to disambiguate between causal, temporal, and habitual clauses that can also yield a conditional meaning and vice versa. I also provide four tests that can allow us to disambiguate between conditionality, temporality, and habituality.

The effects of age and experience with input in the acquisition of clitic climbing in heritage and L2 Spanish

Aims and objectives: This study examines the role of age of first exposure and experience with input in the syntax of English–Spanish bilinguals. More specifically, I examine the production of clitic climbing constructions in Spanish (e.g., lo quiero ver “[I] want to see it” [Kayne; Rizzi]). Design/methodology: I compare two experimental groups of heritage speakers of Spanish ( n = 16) and L2 Spanish learners ( n = 17) from the United States (matched in proficiency) against a group of native Spanish speakers from Mexico ( n = 20). A sentence completion task was employed to elicit proclitic sentences across four verbal conditions: two in which clitic climbing is possible but with a higher or lower probability of occurrence, and two in which proclitic placement is agrammatical. Data and analysis: Results show a strong tendency to avoid clitic climbing constructions across all testing conditions. Two logistic regression analyses report no differences across all groups, who only favored the proclisis in highly grammaticalized verbs; proficiency among the experimental groups was a predictor in the production of these sentences. Findings/conclusions: A different time of onset of first exposure to the second language and a different experience with linguistic input (heritage language acquisition vs L2 acquisition) do not appear to affect the production of complex proclitic sentences in Spanish. Originality: Previous studies have employed a few selected periphrastic conditions to elicit clitic climbing constructions among English–Spanish bilinguals. This study further expands the range of verbal matrices employed in the four testing conditions and uses a more controlled testing environment. Significance: This study adds adult bilingual data to the ongoing debate on whether an early exposure to the second language results in advantages in the morphosyntactic domain.

Completive todo in Rioplatense Spanish

In Spanish, the element todo 'all' agrees in gender and number with the noun it quantifies over (todas las ventanas 'all.f.pl the.f.pl windows.f.pl'). In this article I discuss a novel construction in Rioplatense Spanish, restricted to existentials and possessives, in which todo agrees in gender and number with a given nominal in the structure but is neither syntactically nor semantically related to it (e.g. Hay toda agua en el baño (have.prs all.f.sg water.f.sg in the bathroom) 'There's water over the whole bathroom floor'). I argue that the syntax and the interpretation of this construction can be explained only if todo 'all' is understood to be modifying a silent element (in the sense of Kayne 2004). In particular, I propose that todo is the modifier of a PP headed by the silent preposition WITH, and that the nominal that agrees with todo is the complement of this silent P. This analysis sheds light on the structure of existential sentences and supports the view put forth in Levinson 2011, contra Freeze 1992, that a single underlying structure for possessive structures cannot be maintained.

MOTT, BRIAN (UB): Postmodificación de frases preposicionales en inglés y español (con referencia especial a postmodificadores locativos)

Las frases preposicionales constituyen el tipo más frecuente de posmodificación en todos los registros del inglés (Biber et a. 1999: 634). En el español, las expresiones locativas suelen incorporar un pronombre relativo y un verbo (the books [which are] on the table > los libros que están encima de la mesa), o bien expresarse mediante una frase introducida por la preposición de (los libros de encima de la mesa). Wonder (1979) sostiene que el español permite el uso de preposiciones que no sean de en las frases locativas en el caso de “situaciones ‘activas’” (el aterrizaje en pleno campo) frente a “situaciones estáticas” (*el sofá en la sala), y también si la frase puede tener una función adverbial antes que, o además de, una interpretación adjetiva (el ruido en la calle), sobre todo si dicha frase encierra la idea de una posición alternativa para un objeto, o bien un contraste con otro objeto similar (el sofá en la sala contigua). El presente estudio pretende examinar este argumento y, además, explorar la posmodificación preposicional en español de un modo más general, a la par que propone una explicación sobre la elección de estructura en español que se basa en el criterio de la densidad léxica.

Insubordinate hypothetical manner constructions in French and Spanish: A pilot study

This paper presents a pilot study of insubordinate hypothetical manner constructions (‘as if’) in French (comme si) and Spanish (como si). On the basis of the theoretical framework provided by Evans (2007) and Olguín-Martínez (2021), we analyse data from both written and spoken corpora and we propose a four-way constructional typology that establishes the different meanings such constructions can express and the discourse functions they can serve, and links these to patterns of tense-aspect-mood marking. Thus, we move beyond previous findings and add three more construction types to Brinton’s (2014) denial of an assumption type: a nuanced agreement type that serves the discourse function of expressing partial agreement with some preceding discourse; a discursive elaboration or reformulation type in which the speaker fully agrees with the preceding discourse and only reformulates or adds new information to it; and a scalar evaluation type, which belongs to the evaluative-attitudinal domain and shows distinct formal characteristics (only type found to show indicative mood + present tense TAM marking in Spanish).

Insubordination and lectal variation: Geographic and discursive variation of subjunctive complement constructions in Spanish

This study aims to document the variation of a minor imperative construction in five varieties of Spanish and four discursive genres, and to represent this variation by proposing a constructional network that recognizes different degrees of abstraction in the form of schemas and subschemas. Our data comes from five varieties of Spanish (Argentinian, Caribbean, Chilean, Mexican and Peninsular) and four different genres: two spoken (conversations and interviews) and two written (novels and news reports). The results show that this minor imperative construction is tightly associated with spontaneous conversation and particularly with the Peninsular variety. In addition, not all specific usage types/subschemas are evenly distributed across varieties, as some of them seem to be almost exclusively found in Spain. We argue that some of these differences may be motivated by the opposition between distancing cultures and rapprochement cultures.

Se out of control

Within the framework of a uniform theory of the so-called se constructions in Spanish, I propose to explain a control ban that has received almost no attention in the previous bibliography. Specifically, as long as a subject control sentence has an impersonal SE as controller, the subordinate infinitive clause cannot contain any other instance of the clitic SE, other than the so-called spurious SE. The source of this restriction follows, as I will argue, from a legibility problem at LF produced, specifically, by a failed attempt to apply Agree between PRO and the embedded SE, which, as we shall see, acts as a probe for A-movement. If the explanation that I offer is correct, it also follows a series of theoretical conclusions that directly affect the way in which we must conceive of the design of Agree in the syntax and its effect at the LF interface. In particular, the system tolerates certain Agree failures (Preminger 2014) as long as it does not affect legibility in the semantics. Indeed, the theory of SE constructions that I assume here derives the distinction between paradigmatic and non-paradigmatic SE as the result of successful or unsuccessful Agree applications, respectively. The limit of this tolerance to failed applications of Agree must be found in the type of semantic object that can be deduced at LF. This limit is illustrated with the aforementioned restriction in control and impersonal SE contexts that motivates the present study.

Poly-predicative conditional constructions in Catalan (in comparaison with Spanish and French)

By poly-predicative conditional constructions we mean complex sentences that contain at least three simple sentences, each representing either a condition or a consequence. Poly-predicative sentences can in addition contain other simple sentences that represent neither condition, nor consequence. Poly-predicative constructions that, apart from one condition and one consequence, also include other simple sentences, are not classified here as poly-predicative conditional constructions. While poly-predicative constructions in general have already been in the focus of researches attention, this article seems to address them on Catalan material for the first time. The purpose of this article is an analysis of syntactic relations in poly-predicative conditional constructions. Its objectives include their comparison in Catalan, Spanish, and French, identification of the main types of these constructions, and an analysis of their characteristics. Since the use of tenses and moods in the constructions addressed coincides with that in prototypical bi-predicative conditional constructions, we do not examine it here. The methods, used in this study, included: sampling during corpus collection, classification, description, comparison, transformational analysis and synthesis. The study is based on Catalan texts and their translations into Spanish and French. The findings of the study include: 1) Poly-predicative conditional constructions with several condition and/or consequence clauses are possible. Condition and consequence clauses can occupy different positions in poly-predicative conditional constructions; 2) In contrast to Catalan and Spanish, French admits the replacement of the conditional conjunction si by que; 3) Prototypical conditional and poly-predicative constructions are invariably characterized by subordination relations, with coordination parataxis possible as well. In addition, more complex syntactic structures are possible like, e. g., parallel co-coordination; 4) A prototypical conditional construction being a complex sentence, this limits possible syntactic types of poly-predicative conditional constructions. They cannot be structured as a string of simple sentences connected by coordination or subordination. Consecutive subordination of three or more subordinate sentences is not characteristic of conditional constructions; 5) The study identified a similarity between poly-predicative conditional constructions in Catalan, Spanish, and French. The present research is a contribution into the syntax of Romance languages.

Modelling incipient probabilistic grammar change in real time: the grammaticalisation of possessive pronouns in European Spanish locative adverbial constructions

AbstractThe present paper provides a methodological case study on how underlying incipient grammar change might be discerned even when frequencies of the incoming variant are apparently marginal and stable. Analysing the spread of tonic possessive pronouns in complements of locative adverbial constructions in European Spanish from a probabilistic perspective, more than 11,000 locative constructions from 1900 to 2004 were compiled, and probabilistic grammar change was operationalised as an interactive function between language-internal predictors and real time. The results reveal that numerous intralinguistic factors have been and are active in constraining the variation, with the innovation spreading significantly in spite of apparent stability in frequency. Crucially, the findings demonstrate that, even in a relatively standardised written language where the innovation has a considerably low frequency, the innovation grammaticalises along the same pathway as in colloquial vernaculars where the incoming variant is employed much more frequently.

De Spaanse inchoatiefconstructie in beeld. Clusteranalyse als antwoord op het quasi-synonymie vraagstuk

This study about the productivity and the near-synonymy of the inchoative construction in Peninsular Spanish reveals that at least 25 verbs can enter the auxiliary slot. These auxiliaries are recruited from six semantic domains: (1) superlexical inherent inchoative verbs, (2) put verbs, (3) throw verbs, (4) movement verbs, (5) manual manipulation verbs and (6) verbs of destruction. This study confirms that a hierarchical cluster analysis is suited to investigate the near-synonymy of semantically related verbs as it unfolds interesting clusters for the inchoative auxiliaries. Concretely, the hierarchical cluster analysis divides the auxiliaries into three clusters. A first one with the superlexical auxiliaries (comenzar, empezar and iniciar), a second cluster with the put verbs (meter and poner) and a third cluster with the less grammaticalized and more lexicalized auxiliaries echarse and romper.