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Constructions in Spanish
Edited by Inga Hennecke and Evelyn Wiesinger
[Constructional Approaches to Language 34] 2023
► pp. 78–102

Chapter 4
A constructional approach to causative support verbs in Spanish

| National Autonomous University of Mexico
| National Autonomous University of Mexico
Complex predicates formed with a semantically bleached verb and a predicating nominal (take a walk) have posed a challenge to grammatical theories. One must explain how the two elements integrate into a semantic and syntactic unit, without losing sight of the lexical constraints the so-called support or light verb constructions are subjected to (*give a jog). In this work, centered on a family of Spanish phrases featuring an emotional state noun and associated with a causative meaning (cf. dar miedo ‘to frighten’, lit. ‘to give fear’), we adopt Goldberg’s (1995, 2006) analysis of “argument structure constructions”, introducing necessary adjustments to fit the composite nature of the predicate, and we show how Cognitive Construction Grammar offers a particularly well-suited model to handle linguistic expressions that combine regular syntactic properties with lexical idiosyncrasies.
Keywords: causation, Cognitive Construction Grammar, emotion nouns, Spanish, support verbs
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Support verb constructions in previous accounts
  • 3.Constructionist approaches to support verbs
  • 4.The caused emotion construction
    • 4.1Definition
    • 4.2Integration of the predicative noun with the construction
    • 4.3Introduction of the support verb
    • 4.4Collocational restrictions
    • 4.5Conventional pairs of form and meaning
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 18 July 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.34.04jim
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