Evaluating grammaticalization and constructional accounts : the development of the inchoative construction with put verbs in Spanish

This article explores the historical development of the inchoative construction in Spanish with the put verbs poner and meter filling the auxiliary verb slot. Previous studies have focused mainly on the syntactic and semantic processes through which full lexical put verbs come to fulfil an auxiliary role in the inchoative periphrasis. The analysis presented in this article aims at going beyond this traditional, grammaticalization account, and examines whether a constructional approach offers a more nuanced account of the empirical data. The main objective is to verify the extent to which different structural patterns of the inchoative construction have given rise to a general constructional schema.

ISBN:9789027264169

Publication year:2018

Accessibility:Open