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New Trends in Grammaticalization and Language Change
Edited by Sylvie Hancil, Tine Breban and José Vicente Lozano
[Studies in Language Companion Series 202] 2018
► pp. 185–206

From time to surprise

The case of será posible in Spanish

| University of Alicante

This paper focuses on the meaning and behavior of será posible in Spanish. The structure may have two interpretations: a compositional one (será posible 1 ), which describes a situation that can hold in the future; and a less transparent one (será posible 2 ), related to a negative assessment. The analysis of the different structures invoked by será posible proves that será posible 2 is no longer interpreted as a copula in future plus and adjective, but has been reanalyzed as a mirative marker. Despite its fixed behavior, the mirative value seems to be motivated by the deictic nature of the future. The paper introduces a wide definition of this verb form, based on the deictic instruction of ‘distance forward’. Productive, mirative interpretations of the future are analyzed from this perspective and confronted with the mirative será posible. More generally, this paper shows that if a wide definition of grammar is assumed, será posible 2 can be considered a case of grammaticalization.

Keywords: Spanish future, mirativity, distance, information structure
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.How to deal with the future
  • 3.The mirative future
  • 4.Analysis: Será posible in contemporary Spanish
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 December 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.202.08ros
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