Part of
Corpus-based Approaches to Construction GrammarEdited by Jiyoung Yoon and Stefan Th. Gries
[Constructional Approaches to Language 19] 2016
► pp. 145–164
Edited by Jiyoung Yoon and Stefan Th. Gries
[Constructional Approaches to Language 19] 2016
► pp. 145–164
A corpus-based study of infinitival and sentential complement constructions in Spanish
This corpus-based study examines Spanish infinitival and sentential complement
constructions. 561 infinitival and 795 sentential complements retrieved
from the AnCora corpus were subjected to a Distinctive Collexeme Analysis
(Gries and Stefanowitsch, 2004) that identified the verbs distinctively associated
with either complementation. The results suggest that the two are in fact distinct
constructions (Goldberg, 1995, 2006): the infinitival construction attracts verbs
denoting desire, whereas the sentential construction attracts verbs denoting
communication and mental activity. The results furthermore lend credence
to usage-based constructionist approaches: verbs fall on a continuum of
constructional preferences from which consistent semantic groups emerge. We
close with a brief discussion of how grammaticalization processes may account
for the constructional preferences of specific verbs.
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Wiliński, Jarosław
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2018. Taming iconicity in the Spanish and Italian translations of Shakespeare’sSonnets. English Text Construction 11:1 ► pp. 105 ff.
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