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Article published In:
Copulas in Spanish and Beyond
Edited by Silvia Gumiel-Molina and Isabel Pérez-Jiménez
[Spanish in Context 20:2] 2023
► pp. 313–342

Perspectivized estar-sentences with aesthetic adjectives across American Spanish varieties

| Universidad de Alcalá
| Universidad de Alcalá | Equipo de gramática RAE
| Universidad de Alcalá

The article describes the behavior of aesthetic adjectives (bonito ‘beautiful’) in the so-called innovative constructions with estar ‘be estar ’, documented in some American varieties of Spanish. These innovative structures (El poema está bonito ‘The poem is beautiful’) do not compare stages of the subject with respect to an aesthetic property (as would be their meaning in general Spanish), but rather express a perspectivized assertion, linked to the subjective judgment of the speaker about a particular quality. The article explains this pattern of variation on the basis of the work by Gumiel-Molina, Moreno-Quibén and Pérez-Jiménez (2020) and Moreno-Quibén (2022), according to which the classes of adjectives that appear in perspectivized estar-sentences have undergone a process of argument augmentation. Aesthetic adjectives in innovative estar-construction have an experiencer in their argument structure in the varieties of Spanish where this construction is possible. This experiencer serves as the basis for establishing the comparison required by estar and ultimately gives rise to the subjective/perspectivized meaning of the copular structure.

Keywords: variation, copulas, estar , aesthetic adjectives, evaluative adjectives
Article outline
  • 1.Aesthetic adjectives in standard vs. innovative estar-predications
  • 2.Lexical-syntactic classes of adjectives in innovative estar-constructions
  • 3.Corpus study of aesthetic adjectives in copular sentences with estar
    • 3.1Lexical items selected
    • 3.2The corpus
    • 3.3Aesthetic and non-aesthetic uses of the selected forms
    • 3.4Aesthetic adjectives in standard vs. innovative estar-sentences
    • 3.5Geographical distribution and semantic type of subject
    • 3.6Conclusions from the corpus study
  • 4.Theoretical accounts
    • 4.1Semantic neutralization in the copular system
    • 4.2Innovative estar-sentences derived from pragmatic processes
  • 5.Innovative estar-sentences and the lexical-syntactic properties of adjectival classes
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 27 July 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.00086.gum
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