Renata Enghels

On the crosslinguistic equivalence of sentir(e) in Romance languages: A contrastive study in semantics

Abstract Recent linguistic studies on perception have focused mainly on verbs referring to the dominant visual and auditory modalities, (e.g., English see/look and hear/listen) and have largely ignored the minor verbs. The present paper seeks to fill this gap by comparing the complex semantics of the cognate verbs sentir(e) in three Romance languages, namely Spanish, French and Italian. Since the objective study of semantics is a problematic issue, we pay special attention to methodological problems and opt for a “combined corpus approach” involving both a translation corpus and comparable data. Evidence from both corpora indicates that, notwithstanding the fact that the rich polysemy of the three verbs partly coincides, each individual verb has undergone semantic specializations differentiating the morphological cognates.

Transitivity of Spanish perception verbs: a gradual category?

This article examines to what extent perception verbs occurring in a syntactically transitive scheme are also semantically transitive. Indeed, since the perception process represents a mental rather than a physical contact between the perceiver/subject and the stimulus/object, it should be distinguished from the prototypical transfer of energy. It is shown that the semantic and conceptual differences between the perception modalities influence on the linguistic behaviour of Spanish perception verbs. In this perspective, the verbs ver ( to see ), oir ( to hear ), mirar ( to look at ) and escuchar ( to listen to ) are ranged on a scale of transitivity. The validity of the elaborated hierarchy of transitivity is verified by means of empirical data. Based on a large corpus of infinitive constructions, it will be examined to what extent the position of a perception verb on the scale of transitivity correlates with the preferred case markings of its stimulus/object. A specific morphosyntactic phenomenon is studied, namely the special marking of the DO by the prepositional accusative.

De verbos de colocación a pseudo-copulativos: procesos de gramaticalización en los cuasi-sinónimos poner/meter y pôr/meter en español y en portugués

Most studies on locative verbs focus on (a) the internal organization of this verbal category and its position within various verb classifications, (b) the syntactic analysis of their arguments, and more particularly the status of the locative complement. The aim of the present paper is to compare the syntax and semantics of the frequently used locative verbs poner and meteresp in Spanish with their Portuguese cognate counterparts por and meterptg. We examine to what extent the use of these near-synonyms goes beyond the basic locative meaning and extends towards other, more grammaticalized, domains. More particularly, on the basis of translation corpus data and comparable corpus data, we empirically analyze the semantic features of their transfer use, their causative/inchoative uses and their (pseudo)-copulative uses, and we shed light on their frequencies. It will be shown that the Spanish verbs present a higher degree of grammaticalization compared to their Portuguese counterparts, and that intralinguistically, poner and por are far more grammaticalized than their near-synonyms meteresp/meterptg.

Towards a constructional approach to discourse-level phenomena: The case of the Spanish interpersonal epistemic stance construction

Abstract This study contributes to a better understanding of how constructional models can be applied to discourse-level phenomena, and constitute a valuable supplement to previous grammaticalization accounts of pragmatic markers. The case study that is presented concerns the recent development of the interpersonal epistemic stance construction in Spanish. The central argument is that the expanding use of sabes as a pragmatic marker can best be fully understood by taking into account the composite network of related expressions which Spanish speakers have at their disposal when performing a particular speech act. The diachronic analysis is documented with spoken corpus examples collected in recent decades, and is mainly informed by frequency data measuring the productivity, as well as formal properties of the construction and its instantiations.

El proceso de gramaticalización del marcador epistémico deverbal sabes

Resumen Este artículo tiene el objetivo de reconstruir detalladamente el proceso, los contextos y las motivaciones de gramaticalización seguidos por el marcador epistémico sabes en su evolución histórica desde su fuente verbal. Un microanálisis diacrónico que estudia de cerca el proceso de surgimiento y de fijación de sabes entre los siglos XIX y XXI permite observar una serie de cambios semánticos, funcionales, morfosintácticos que coinciden con los criterios de gramaticalización asumidos. Los datos muestran que el marcador epistémico no parece haber llegado aún a la fase final del proceso de gramaticalización, pero sí apuntan a que el proceso se ha acelerado a partir de la segunda mitad del s. XX.

The polysemy of the Spanish verb sentir: A behavioral profile analysis

Abstract This study investigates the intricate polysemy of the Spanish perception verb sentir (‘feel’) which, analogous to the more-studied visual perception verbs ver (‘see’) and mirar (‘look’), also displays an ample gamut of semantic uses in various syntactic environments. The investigation is based on a corpus-based behavioral profile (BP) analysis. Besides its methodological merits as a quantitative, systematic and verifiable approach to the study of meaning and to polysemy in particular, the BP analysis offers qualitative usage-based evidence for cognitive linguistic theorizing. With regard to the polysemy of sentir, the following questions were addressed: (1) What is the prototype of each cluster of senses? (2) How are the different senses structured: how many senses should be distinguished – i.e., which senses cluster together and which senses should be kept separately? (3) Which senses are more related to each other and which are highly distinguishable? (4) What morphosyntactic variables make them more or less distinguishable? The results show that two significant meaning clusters can be distinguished, which coincide with the division between the middle voice uses (sentirse) and the other uses (sentir). Within these clusters, a number of meaningful subclusters emerge, which seem to coincide largely with the more general semantic categories of physical, cognitive and emotional perception.

La négation dans les langues romanes, Sous la rédaction de Franck Floricic

Le vingt-sixième volume de la collection Lingvisticæ Investigationes. Supplementa réunit une sélection de dix communications présentées aux Journées Romanes sur la négation, qui se sont déroulées à Toulouse les 2Ð3 février 2003. Il est bien connu que la série, dirigée par Éric Laporte, Christian Leclère, Gaston Gross et Elisabete Ranchhod, se consacre à des problématiques particulières dans le domaine de la linguistique générale et de la linguistique française en particulier. Le présent fascicule s’inscrit dans un renouveau tant de la romanistique que de la recherche autour du thème de la négation, thème qui est annoncé dans l’introduction écrite par l’éditeur invité Franck Floricic comme étant «particulièrement riche et fécond» [VII]. En effet, la lecture de l’ouvrage permet sans aucun doute au lecteur de se rendre compte de la diversité abondante des configurations morphosyntaxiques dont témoigne le domaine roman en matière de marquage de la négation. De plus, comme il est annoncé en quatrième de couverture, l’originalité du livre réside dans la multidisciplinarité des approches et des perspectives qu’il offre. L’ouvrage prend effectivement le parti de réunir des études dont les postulats théoriques et méthodologiques sont variés, couvrant un éventail de perspectives: l’on y trouve effectivement des analyses structuralistes (T. Espinal), des études selon les modèles de la grammaire HPSG (D. Godard/ J.-M. Marandin) ou Frame Semantics (H. Huot) ainsi que des approches plutôt descriptives et empiriques (L. Jagueneau). Les études concernent aussi différentes langues ou différents états de langues: non seulement les langues romanes modernes les plus étudiées comme le français (G. Dal et al.), l’italien (F. Floricic/ F. Mignon), le catalan et l’espagnol (T. Espinal) ou encore le roumain (A. Falaus), mais aussi des sources moins évidentes telles que le limousin (L. Jagueneau),