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The aim of this paper is to study the function and origin of the locutions of causal sense a santo de qué, a qué santo, a cuento de qué, a qué cuento and a cuenta de qué. These phrases introduce marked interrogative constructions, so they imply a negative evaluation by the speaker, that is, they constitute a grammatical sign of the negative implication of the causal question in which they are inserted. The data from all the examples provided in the CDH and CORPES corpus for the forms a santo de qué, a qué santo, a cuento de qué, a qué cuento and a cuenta de qué are analyzed, and an account of the main functional characteristics of the mentioned structures are given. Finally, a hypothesis is posed about the origin and development of the different phrases according to the formal and significant affinities between the different constructions and the relations of interference and analogy in use that may have arisen between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with so-called 'particle verbs' or 'phrasal verbs' in Peninsular Spanish lexicography and grammaticography from the 15th century to the present. These structures, situated halfway between the lexicon and the grammar, are considered marginal in modern Spanish from a typological and pan-Romance perspective. They also do not appear systematically in current dictionaries and grammars, where some are explicitly criticised. However, recent studies document certain (semi)productive patterns, some dating back to Old Spanish, that decline in diachronic corpus data starting in the 1500s (cf. Wiesinger 2020; in press a). The present contribution explores the interplay between this diachronic development and the treatment of particle verbs in normative and/or didactic Spanish dictionaries and grammars. In fact, the decline of Spanish particle verbs can be linked to normative and (re)latinising tendencies in Renaissance dictionaries and grammars, where certain adverbial particles are omitted and most particle verbs lack their own entries despite being used in the definitions. Although particle verbs are increasingly recognized in the works of the Real Academia Española in the 1700s and part of the 1800s, this traditional tendency reemerges in the 20th century and is slow to disappear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interjection is considered in some grammars as a class of words, other times it is included among the exclamatory groups. Its macrosyntactic behavior has been scarcely approached despite constituting a broad and dynamic paradigm. The interjection can act as an autonomous modal utterance or be included within the utterance performing various functions. The scope of the affected element in each case differs. This paper analyzes those contexts in which interjective terms with malsonant content develop procedural meanings of argumentative intensification. We describe their syntagmatic distribution, their scope and the constructions they generate. We also delimit whether we are dealing with free or semi-fixed constructions and in which cases we can already speak of grammaticalized discourse operators or those close to fixation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chile in the mid-19th century was the moment of affirmation of the national state. In this context, the expansion of the educational system was necessary, which in turn required the production of books for teaching in schools. As far as grammatical discourse was concerned, although it generally showed a remarkable stability, the manual genre of school grammar, on the other hand, was not yet established, nor were the differences between the texts for the different school levels (primary and secondary) clearly established. This instability explains the vacillations exhibited by the texts of the period and the various theoretical, methodological and discursive options that are set. In this paper, we focus on two early school grammars: Fernando Zegers Tratado de gramática castellana dedicado a la juventud americana de los pueblos que hablan la lengua española (1844) and Andrés Bello’s Gramática castellana para uso de las escuelas (1851). The first precedes Bello’s consecrated grammar of 1847; the second summarizes how Bello believes grammar should be taught to children. While Zegers had teaching experience, Bello was the great grammarian who repeatedly reflected on the importance of teaching grammar in elementary schools, as shown in several notes he wrote and in the typographical separation he designed for his key work of 1847. In particular, we will analyze from the glottopolitical approach how one and the other author resolve in their respective works the tensions between the grammatical tradition and the new space of school circulation, and between the legitimized grammatical knowledge and the specific objectives of teaching. In this sense, we observe three aspects that operate differently. First, the parts of the traditional study of grammar that are consigned (analogy, syntax, orthography, orthology, prosody, metrics). Second, the type of discourse adopted, which accentuates, with greater or lesser emphasis, the dogmatic tone based on the presence of normative sequences rather than reasoned exposition. Finally, the function of the examples that in one case privilege a religious formation and in the other lead to an indoctrination that contemplates the integral development of the citizen. In summary, we perceive two opposing models of grammar teaching: while Zegers is in line with classical studies that focus on teaching the language in order to reach the written text; Bello, on the other hand, is concerned with promoting grammatical reflection. Both models expose, in addition, different configurations of collective imaginaries and social projects from their discourse on language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the geolectal dimension of the aoristic uses of the present perfect (he cantado) in European Spanish. To that end, a bank of samples of oral speech gathered from the Audible Corpus of Spoken Rural Spanish will be analysed with the aim of mapping the area of influence of these uses and showing if their distribution in peninsular Spanish abides by any identifiable geographic pattern. Namely, it will be argued that the aoristic uses of the present perfect are a characteristic phenomenon of the Northern Central zone of the Iberian Peninsula and that their approximate area of influence broadly overlaps with the Castilian dialectal domain. These data will be connected to the particular traits of this linguistic area and to the diachronical processes of functional expansion of the Spanish perfect tense. This analysis will demonstrate that this spread is greater in those areas where this form has historically shown a more robust use compared to the rest. Thus, the geolectal nature of a syntactic phenomenon not considered until now within the framework of Geolinguistics will be unveiled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questions about language and its teaching occupy a special place in the pedagogical press, since this was a central aspect in school and in teacher training by legal mandate (Ezpeleta Aguilar, 2015: 159). Specifically, in the case of grammar, the periodical pages host both theoretical articles on the language, as well as didactic works with an eminently practical approach, debates on specific grammatical aspects, reviews of grammatical works, etc. All this makes the educational press a material of great relevance to know in depth the development of grammatical ideas. In this paper, we approach the linguistic ideas present in one of the lasting periodical publications of the specialized press, the newspaper El Magisterio Español (founded in 1867), during its first decades of existence and, especially, in the period 1871-1880 dominated by the presence of Fernando Gómez de Salazar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a broad overview, seen from the perspective of Diachronic Construction Grammar, of the readings and values developed in Latin by the construction so/eo+iNF. The evidence provided and the analysis of the various factors involved in the interpretation of this periphrasis show that its original and basic value is not the expression of habitual aspect, as traditional models maintain, but a typifying meaning that should be considered in the framework of the continuous aspect. On the other hand, the structural possibilities and the behavior of so/eo+iNF in Latin allow to set an interesting reference framework to explain some particular uses of so/er+ INF in the earliest stages of the Spanish language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the description of the verb soleo, the Latin cognate of the Spanish auxiliary soler, with the aim of contributing to the explanation of the Spanish lexical periphrasis soler + INF, when considering it from a diachronic perspective. Soleo is an especial verb whose singularity is manifested in its etymology and its grammatical particularities. Concerning its etymology, two hypotheses have been considered which start from two different Aktionsart stems: one makes it derive from a Proto-Indo-European iterative stem, the other from a stative one. From this second etymological hypothesis, soleo could be included among Latin denominative stative *e-presents with the basic meaning of 'to be of oneself, to have as one's own, to be normal, to be custom'. Regarding its morphosyntactic features, the semi-deponent soleo has a morphologically passive perfect stem, solitus sum, whose use with aoristic value comes into contradiction with the morphological restriction of the Spanish auxiliary soler and with the aspectual categorization of habitual auxiliary attributed to it. Together with the function as an auxiliary verb constituting a periphrasis with an infinitive, it also presents a use as a full lexical verb in which the prototypical semantic value of its etymology emerges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the main results of the allophonic variation of the consonantal group /...ɾ/ in a variety of Chilean Spanish -that of speakers that have not completed secondary education- obtained from eight cities (Iquique, La Serena, Valparaíso, Santiago, Concepción, Temuco, Coyhaique and Punta Arenas), using two elicitation tasks -semi-spontaneous interview and reading-aloud- completed by male and female speakers. The results showed that the sequence of plosive followed by a tap, that is /...ɾ/, was more frequent. In addition, the independent variables geographic origin, elicitation task and gender were shown to have a statistically significant effect on the phonetic realizations of /...ɾ/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the diatopic variation of the periphrasis andar + GER, comparing its use in Mexican and Peninsular Spanish. To this end, the relative frequency of the construction is analyzed in several corpora, as well as its most distinctive semantic and syntactic features. Our quantitative analysis shows, on the one hand, the high frequency of andar + GER in Mexican Spanish as compared to Peninsular Spanish. On the other hand, it reveals that the periphrasis occurs, above all, in informal language modalities. Semantically, the present study corroborates that, in periphrases with a gerund, the verb andar ('to walk'), has progressively lost its lexical meaning of physical movement and has come to transmit pragmatic values, particularly of determination and insistence. In addition, unlike Peninsular Spanish, in Mexican Spanish the periphrasis is less subject to selectional restrictions with respect to the gerund, a relatively recent change that points to a strong grammaticalization. Syntactically, the grammaticalization process is reflected in the adjacency of the auxiliary and the gerund, the fixed internal order of the two components of the periphrasis, clitic climbing and a drop in the frequency of coordinated gerunds. The case of andar + GER demonstrates that grammaticalization of the same construction can take place in different ways depending on the specific dialectal environment. Likewise, and at a more general level, it stresses the importance of a diatopic approach in studies on verbal periphrases and grammaticalization processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a diachronic study of the inchoative periphrases comenzar a and empezar a + INFINITIVE drawing upon grammaticalization theory, in an attempt to contribute to the history of Spanish and, particularly, to the studies focused on verbal periphrases. Based on the results of an analysis of a large number of documented occurrences between the 11th and 21st centuries, we propose that the lexical meaning of words to be relevant in the construction of grammatical pieces; therefore synonymy seems to play an important role in shaping the grammar of a language. As we will see, alternation of the studied forms shows that both coexist nowadays, and that their use is conditioned both by contextual and chronological factors, because both express the same semantic values. Since the use of empezar a + INFINITIVE increases around the 19th century, we reflect on other change processes linked to verbal periphrases during this period, and on their importance in the syntactic periodization of Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the description of the verb soleo, the Latin cognate of the Spanish auxiliary soler, with the aim of contributing to the explanation of the Spanish lexical periphrasis soler + INF, when considering it from a diachronic perspective. Soleo is an especial verb whose singularity is manifested in its etymology and its grammatical particularities. Concerning its etymology, two hypotheses have been considered which start from two different Aktionsart stems: one makes it derive from a Proto-Indo-European iterative stem, the other from a stative one. From this second etymological hypothesis, soleo could be included among Latin denominative stative *ē-presents with the basic meaning of 'to be of oneself, to have as one's own, to be normal, to be custom'. Regarding its morphosyntactic features, the semi-deponent soleo has a morphologically passive perfect stem, solitus sum, whose use with aoristic value comes into contradiction with the morphological restriction of the Spanish auxiliary soler and with the aspectual categorization of habitual auxiliary attributed to it. Together with the function as an auxiliary verb constituting a periphrasis with an infinitive, it also presents a use as a full lexical verb in which the prototypical semantic value of its etymology emerges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a broad overview, seen from the perspective of Diachronic Construction Grammar, of the readings and values developed in Latin by the construction soleo+INF. The evidence provided and the analysis of the various factors involved in the interpretation of this periphrasis show that its original and basic value is not the expression of habitual aspect, as traditional models maintain, but a typifying meaning that should be considered in the framework of the continuous aspect. On the other hand, the structural possibilities and the behavior of soleo+INF in Latin allow to set an interesting reference framework to explain some particular uses of soler+INF in the earliest stages of the Spanish language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the studies and widespread international appraisal of Andrés Bello's writings, his crucial importance in the history of Spanish Grammar is not only highlighted, but also does this paper manifest his remarkable role as precursor of the major currents of linguistic studies of the 20th century: the European and the American structuralisms, the generative grammar and the pragmatics. By referring to Bello's traditional studies his significance in Modern Philology is clearly shown, and some unique and surprising findings on Bello's idea on the translation of libretti (i.e. the actual vocal parts of opera) are presented by the author of this paper. Bello's characterization and assessment of the difficulties that arise from the symbiosis of text and music in these texts are pronounced about 80 years ahead of Gustav Becher's famous holistic theory on the translation of this type of texts. A theory which, according to distinguished European musicologists, has lead the way in the discussion of the functionality of these distinct interlingual transfers throughout the 20th century, as well as a revaluation of this specific activity during the preceding centuries (15th - 19th century). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers of Leonetti (2001, 2004) and Escandell Vidal and Leonetti (1997) hypothesized that the functional categories (FFCC) proposed in the Minimalist Program of Chomsky (1995, 1998, 1999, 2005) are the procedural categories proposed by Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson, [1986] 1995). This is demonstrated convincingly for some of the FFCC, the Determinant and the Complementizer, for example, but there is no mention of the FC light verb (v̲). This paper will attempt to show that v̲ can also be considered a procedural category. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Castilian grammar became a teaching discipline in Spain and Latin America in 1813, when its study was generalized; before that, Latin grammar was mandatory. This paper aims at making a structural and content analysis of the text Brevísimas nociones de Analogía Castellana (1891) taking into account the context of the teaching of this discipline in Cuba. The book was edited in Santiago de Cuba in 1891 by Julio Severiano Hernández y García, "Full Professor of incomplete teaching" and Director of the private college San Severiano; the book follows the peculiarities of the manuals of that time, but it also stands out, unlike others, by the use of example belonging to the colloquial level in the language of the region at the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some Castilian grammars intended for use in secondary school are published in the decade of1850. These grammars must be understood in relation with those used in primary school. They participate in the consolidation of national subjectivities (thanks to the spread of the common language), in social disciplining (determining the standard to be met by the practice) and in the reproduction of social structures (educating the members of the elite). The present paper refers to the subject of syntax in four texts published respectively in Buenos Aires, Santiago, Guanajuato and Madrid. We consider the units established in the grammars, the treatment of figures and the analysis they propose in exercises or in recapitulating illustrations. The study allows us to appreciate the guidance offered by grammars but also the different perspectives on grammatical knowledge, on its function in secondary school and on the subject who attends school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of the latest developments in descriptive linguistics and, specifically, in contemporary studies in English grammar , this paper presents a model of text grammar of the English language applicable to the process of teaching English as a foreign language. In particular , the model is viewed in connection with, mainly, the development of reading and writing skills. On the one hand, the aim is to delimit the model' s object of study, to identify and characterise its components, to establish its scope and, finally, to point out its comparative advantages with respect to other sentence-based models. On the other hand, some practical applications of some of the components of the proposed model are presented for the teaching of English as a foreign language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study we deal with the notion of contour from a lexico-syntactic perspective. It is our contention here that, in the lexicographic definition of the predicative lexical units of monolingual semasiological dictionaries, contour states the 'arguments' (subject, objects, etc.) that they themselves select in virtue of their semantic-syntactic properties. Thus we hypothesize that the information provided by the contour is a constituent part of lexical items. Specifcally, we argue that, contrary to what is often believed, in the dictionary the lexicographic definition contains grammatical information in its own right, as the contour is a 'projection' of the syntactic nature of the concerned entries. Besides, we have verified that procedures used in current lexicography to formally define the contour (restrictive formulas of the type Dicho de .... Referido a .... and square, round or angle brackets) are applied in current general Spanish dictionaries, on an asystematic and barely exhaustive way, failing to describe the argument structure of the entries of their macrostructures. The use of bracketing, in particular, not only hinders the right comprehension of the senses provided by the definition, but it also baffles the reader. We therefore maintain that for a lexicographic definition to be considered well stated, all the arguments required by the entry must be explicitly stated regardless whether they are actualized in discourse or not. Finally, we subscribe to Bosque's (2001, a, b; 2004) idea that the contour implies the 'selectional restrictions' that the entries themselves (when they are predicate) impose on their arguments and, in line with this notion, we propose a tentative typology of such restrictions based on the content (categorical, semantic and lexical) of the chosen elements. It is the author's conviction that a lexicographic approach of the kind discussed in this paper will certainly provide key insights into the syntactic structure of natural languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the grammatical trait peculiar to Spanish and other Romance languages consisting in the ateposition of the preposition a to the direct object when this object refers to a person. The study begins with some considerations on transitivity and types of direct object, states that prepositional direct object must have its origin in Latin, since it exists in an ample zone of the Romania, examines possible semantic-functional motivations for its use (disambiguation when subject and object are animated and can therefore act as agents, individualition, or emphasis). Afterwards it presents an extense number of texts with direct object, with and without a; it concludes that in using or omitting the preposition a with direct object the speaker has much freedom to choose one or the other alternative provided there is no abiguity and that the only rule never violated in this respect is that personal pronouns functioning as direct object must be preceded by a ("La veo a ella") [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]