Cover not available
Part of
Constructions in Spanish
Edited by Inga Hennecke and Evelyn Wiesinger
[Constructional Approaches to Language 34] 2023
► pp. 280–308

Chapter 11
From he aquí to aquí está

A case of constructional substitution and syntactic regularization

| University of Marburg
This study provides a construction grammar account in line with Lakoff (1987) and Goldberg (2006) of two types of deictic-presentative constructions in Spanish, [he aquí NP] and [aquí está NP]. Following up on Lakoff’s (1987, pp. 462–585) seminal analysis of English there-constructions and drawing on the findings of Bergen & Plauché (e.g. 2005) on French voilà-constructions, it will be shown how the formal properties of both structures are not only linked to the same function but also motivated by it. This synchronic constructional analysis is meant to lay the groundwork for a subsequent diachronic account of the historical origins of these constructions, that is, their constructionalization from Indo-European and Semitic deictic particles (he aquí NP) and from presentational adverb-verb-subject constructions (aquí está NP). It will be argued that the substitution of he aquí-constructions by aquí está-constructions can be described in terms of syntactic regularization. Depending on the matter in question, this study relies on both qualitative and quantitative analyses of corpus data.
Keywords: deixis, idealized cognitive models, presentative constructions, constructionalization, syntactic regularization
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous accounts
  • 3.Synchronic constructional analysis
    • 3.1Functional properties: The pointing-out ICM
    • 3.2Formal properties
      • 3.2.1[He aquí NP]
      • 3.2.2[Aquí está/viene NP]
  • 4.Historical and constructional origins
    • 4.1He aquí constructions
    • 4.2Aquí está constructions
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 18 July 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.34.11tac
References (76)
References
Ascoli, G. I. (1886–1888). Di un filone italico, diverso dal romano, che si avverta nel campo neolatino. Lettera a Napoleone Caix. Archivio Glottologico Italiano, 10, 1–17.Google Scholar
Bello, A. (⁵1860). Gramática de la lengua castellana, destinada al uso de los americanos. Valparaíso: Imprenta y Librería del Mercurio de Santos Tornero.Google Scholar
Bentley, D., & Ciconte, F. M. (2016). Copular and existential constructions. In A. Ledgeway & M. Maiden (Eds.), Oxford Guides to the World’s Languages. The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages (pp. 847–859). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bergen, B. K., & Plauché, M. C. (2001). Voilà voilà: Extensions of Deictic Constructions in French. In A. Cienki, B. Luka, & M. Smith (Eds.), Conceptual and Discourse Factors in Linguistic Structure (pp. 45–62). Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
(2005). The convergent evolution of radial constructions. French and English deictics and existentials. Cognitive Linguistics, 16(1), 1–42, DOI logo [20/12/2022].
Boas, H. C. (2013). Cognitive Construction Grammar. In T. Hoffmann & G. Trousdale (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar (pp. 233–254). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bonilla y San Martín, A. (Ed.) (1907). Libros de Caballerías. Primera parte. Ciclo artúrico, ciclo carolingio. Alicante: Bailly, Bailliere.Google Scholar
Boye, K., & Harder, P. (2012). A usage-based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization. Language, 88(1), 1–44, DOI logo [20/12/2022].
Brockelmann, C. (1908). Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der semitischen Sprachen. Bd. 1: Laut- und Formenlehre. Berlin: Reuther & Reichard.Google Scholar
Brugmann, K. (1911). Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen. Bd. 2: Lehre von den Wortformen und ihrem Gebrauch. Teil 2: Zahlwörter, die drei Nominalgenera. Strasbourg: Trübner.Google Scholar
Campbell, J. (2002). Reference and Consciousness. Oxford: Clarendon Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
CdE=Davies, M. (2002–). Corpus del Español: 100 million words, 1200s–1900s, [URL] [20/12/2022].
Clark, E. V. (1978). From gesture to word: On the natural history of deixis in language acquisition. In J. S. Bruner & A. Garton (Eds.), Human Growth and Development (pp. 85–120). Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Coromines, J., & Pascual, J. A. (1991–1997). Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
Corriente, F., Pereira, C., & Vicente, Á. (2019). Dictionnaire des emprunts ibéro-romans. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coseriu, E. (1996). El sistema verbal románico. Compilación y redacción por Hansbert Bertsch. Traducción de Carlos Opazo Velásquez. Madrid: Siglo XXI editores. [First published in German in 1976: Das romanische Verbalsystem. Herausgegeben und bearbeitet von Hansbert Bertsch. Narr.]Google Scholar
Croft, W. (2001). Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic Theory in Typological Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Mulder, W., & Brisard, F. (2006). L’imparfait marqueur de réalité virtuelle. Cahiers De Praxématique, 47, 97–124, DOI logo [20/12/2022].
Diessel, H. (1999). Demonstratives. Form, Function and Grammaticalization. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2006). Demonstratives, joint attention, and the emergence of grammar. Cognitive Linguistics, 17(4), 463–489. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2013). Where does language come from? Some reflections on the role of deictic gesture and demonstratives in the evolution of language. Language and Cognition, 5(2–3), 239–249. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Diez, F. ([1853] ⁵1887). Etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Sprachen. Bonn: Marcus.Google Scholar
Enrique-Arias, A., & Camargo Fernández, L. (2015). Problemas en torno a la caracterización de un marcador del discurso en español medieval: el caso de he. In M. Borreguero Zuloaga & S. Gómez-Jordana Ferary (Eds.), Les marqueurs du discours dans les langues romanes : une approche contrastive (pp. 323–331). Limoges: Lambert-Lucas.Google Scholar
Fernández Soriano, O. (1993). Sobre el orden de palabras en español. Dicenda, 11, 113–152.Google Scholar
Fillmore, C. J. (1982). Towards a descriptive framework for spatial deixis. In R. J. Jarvella & W. Klein (Eds.), Speech, Place, and Action: Studies in Deixis and Related Topics (pp. 31–59). New York: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
(1999). Inversion and constructional inheritance. In G. Webelhuth, J. -P. Koenig, & A. Kathol (Eds.), Lexical and Constructional Aspects of Linguistic Explanation (pp. 113–128). Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Ford, J. D. M. (1903). Old Spanish Etymologies. Old Spanish afe, fe, etc. Modern Philology, 1, 49–55. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, A. E. (1995). Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
(2006). Constructions at Work. The Nature of Generalization in Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
(2013). Constructionist Approaches. In T. Hoffmann & G. Trousdale (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar (pp. 15–31). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gries, S. Th. (2013). Data in Construction Grammar. In T. Hoffmann & G. Trousdale (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar (pp. 93–108). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hatcher, A. G. (1956). Theme and Underlying Question. Two Studies of Spanish Word Order. New York: Linguistic Circle of New York.Google Scholar
Hofmann, J. B., & Szantyr, A. (1965). Lateinische Syntax und Stilistik. Lateinische Grammatik von Leumann-Hofmann-Szantyr: Vol. 2. München: C.H. Beck.Google Scholar
Koch, P. (2012). Location, existence, and possession: A constructional-typological exploration. Linguistics, 50, 533–603. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Laca, B. (1994). ¿Existen los verbos presentativos? In Verbo e estruturas frásicas. Actas do IV Colóquio Internacional de Linguística Hispânica (Leipzig, 22–25 de Novembro de 1993) (pp. 141–152). Faculdade de Letras do Porto.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. (1977). Linguistic Gestalts. In W. A. Beach, S. E. Fox & S. Philosoph (Eds.), Papers from the Thirteenth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (pp. 236–287). Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
(1987). Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lambrecht, K. (1987). On the status of SVO sentences in French discourse. In R. Tomlin (Ed.), Coherence and Grounding in Discourse (pp. 217–262). Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1994). Information Structure and Sentence Form. Topic, Focus and the Mental Representations of Discourse Referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Langacker, R. W. (2008). Cognitive Grammar. A Basic Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
López Ferrero, C. (2008). Comportamiento sintáctico y discursivo de verbos inacusativos de existencia y aparición: implicaciones lexicográficas. In I. Olza Moreno, M. Casado Velarde, & R. González Ruiz (Eds.), Actas del XXXVII Simposio Internacional de la Sociedad Española de Lingüística (pp. 445–454). Pamplona: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra.Google Scholar
Malkiel, Y. (1982). Between Monogenesis and Polygenesis. In J. P. Maher, A. R. Bomhard, & E. F. K. Koerner (Eds.), Papers from the Third International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Hamburg, August 22–26 1977 (pp. 235–272). Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logo [20/12/2022].
Mendikoetxea, A. (1999). Construcciones inacusativas y pasivas. In I. Bosque & V. Demonte (Eds.), Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española Vol. 2 (pp. 1575–1629). Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.Google Scholar
Menéndez Pidal, R. (1911). Cantar de Mio Cid. Texto, gramática y vocabulario. Tercera parte: vocabulario. Madrid: Bailly-Baillière.Google Scholar
Meyer-Lübke, W. (1890–1902). Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen. Leipzig: Reisland.Google Scholar
(1911). Romanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch. Heidelberg: Winter.Google Scholar
(³1936 [1911–1920]). Romanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch. Heidelberg: Winter.Google Scholar
Miguel Aparicio, E. d. (1992). El aspecto en la sintaxis del español: perfectividad e impersonalidad. Madrid: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.Google Scholar
Neumann-Holzschuh, I. (1997). Die Satzgliedanordnung im Spanischen. Eine diachrone Analyse. Tübingen: Niemeyer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Perlmutter, D. M. (1978). Impersonal passives and the Unaccusative Hypothesis. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 38, 157–189. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pietsch, K. (1904). The Spanish Particle he. Modern Philology, 2(2), 197–224. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1904b). Spanish he (he aquí). Modern Language Notes, 19(2), 62. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Plauché, M. C., & Bergen, B. K. (2000). Markedness and the evolution of binary spatial deictics: French voilà and voici. In S. Chang, L. Liaw, & J. Ruppenhofer (Eds.), General Session and Parasession on Loan Word Phenomena. Proceedings of the Twenty Fifth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, February 12–15, 1999 (pp. 238–249). Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Ridruejo, E. (2007). Problemas metodológicos en pragmática histórica. In D. Trotter (Ed.), Actes du XXIVe Congres International de Linguistique et de Philologie Romanes. Tome III (pp. 533–552). Tübingen: Niemeyer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Riegel, M., Pellat, J. C., & Rioul, R. (2009). Grammaire méthodique du français (7th ed.). Paris: PUF.Google Scholar
Sasse, H. J. (1987). The Thetic/Categorical Distinction Revisited. Linguistics, 25, 511–580. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, C. (1982). Subject-expression and placement in Mexican-American Spanish. In J. Amastae & L. Elías-Olivares (Eds.), Varieties and Variations of Spanish in the United States (pp. 93–120). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Silva-Villar, L. (2001). Verbless Derivations in Historical Syntax: A Case Study of Northwestern Iberian Languages. In J. Gutiérrez-Rexach & L. Silva-Villar (Eds.), Current Issues in Spanish Syntax and Semantics (pp. 309–346). Cambridge: De Gruyter, DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Suñer, M. (1982). Syntax and Semantics of Spanish Presentational Sentence-Types. Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Tacke, F. (2020). Notizen zu einer historisch-vergleichenden kognitiven Grammatik. In L. Becker, J. Kuhn, C. Ossenkop, A. Overbeck, C. Polzin-Haumann & E. Prifti (Eds.), Fachbewusstsein der Romanistik. Romanistisches Kolloquium XXXII (pp. 73–102). Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
(2021). Ahé en castellano medieval y su funcionalización narrativa en el Cantar de Mio Cid. Nueva Revista De Filología Hispánica, 69(2), 541–570. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2022). Aufmerksamkeitslenkung in den romanischen Sprachen. Historische Syntax und Pragmatik von Zeigeaktkonstruktionen. Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(forthcoming). Ampliando la perspectiva: Acerca de la problemática categorización de (a)he y sus cognados románicos. In Á. Ezcurra & C. Garatea Grau (Eds.), Actas del XI Congreso Internacional de Historia de la Lengua Española (Lima, agosto 2018). Peter Lang.
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
(2008). Origins of Human Communication. MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Traugott, E. C. (2008). The grammaticalization of NP of NP constructions. In A. Bergs & G. Diewald (Eds.), Constructions and Language Change (pp. 23–45). Berlin, New York: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Traugott, E. C., & Trousdale, G. (2013). Constructionalization and Constructional Changes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Trousdale, G. (2008). Constructions in grammaticalization and lexicalization: Evidence from the history of a composite predicate construction in English. In G. Trousdale & N. Gisborne (Eds.), Constructional Approaches to English Grammar (pp. 33–67). Berlin, New York: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ulrich, M. (1985). Thetisch und kategorisch. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Valdés, J. d. ([1976] 1535). Diálogo de la lengua. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.Google Scholar
Varga, E. (2017). Verbstellungsmuster im Altfranzösischen. Ein Beitrag zur historischen Syntaxforschung aus diskurstraditioneller Perspektive. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, DOI logo [20/12/2022].
Vattuone, B. (1975). Notes on Genoese syntax. Kernel ‘VOS’ strings and theme-rheme structures. Studi Italiani Di Linguistica Teorica Ed Applicata, 4, 335–378.Google Scholar
Viejo Sánchez, M. L. (2017). Usos y valores de ahé. In M. T. Echenique Elizondo & M. J. Martínez Alcalde (Eds.), La fraseología a través de la historia de la lengua española y su historiografía (pp. 155–172). Valencia: Tirant Humanidades.Google Scholar
Wandruszka, U. (1982). Studien zur italienischen Wortstellung. Wortstellung – Semantik – Informationsstruktur. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
(1984). Subjekt und Mitteilungszentrum. Romanistisches Jahrbuch, 35, 14–35. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wehr, B. (1984). Diskurs-Strategien im Romanischen. Ein Beitrag zur romanischen Syntax. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar