Mirativity in Spanish middle se constructions
- Autores: Ricardo Maldonado, Juliana de la Mora
- Localización: Expressing Surprise at the Crossroads: Mirativity, Exclamativity and Cooptation in Romance Languages / coord. por Susana Rodríguez Rosique, 2025, ISBN 978-3-11-138648-5, págs. 13-37
- Idioma: inglés
- Enlaces
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Resumen
- English
This paper identifies the most frequent compositional patterns encoding mirativity in Spanish middle se constructions. While mirativity in Spanish is notmorphemic, it cannot be reduced to a language using “mirative strategies”. Although there may be some “lexical strategies” for mirative values (as in verbs of perception ¡mira! ‘look’), Spanish has developed a compositional system whereby middle se energetic collocations, normally designating energetic events (fast, abrupt, brief eventschange of state, have extended and specialized to encode mirative readings. It is proposed that mirativity in Spanish is hierarchically organized in collocations where the middle marker se combines with: a) verbs having strong negative implications,b) dative markers and, c) other pragmatic factors conveying information that is either new, unexpected or undesired for the speaker. These events run against the canonical representation of world events.
- English
This paper identifies the most frequent compositional patterns encodingmirativity in Spanish middle se constructions. While mirativity in Spanish is notmorphemic, it cannot be reduced to a language using “mirative strategies”. Althoughthere may be some “lexical strategies” for mirative values (as in verbs of perception¡mira! ‘look’), Spanish has developed a compositional system whereby middle se ener-getic collocations, normally designating energetic events (fast, abrupt, brief eventschange of state, have extended and specialized to encode mirative readings. It is pro-posed that mirativity in Spanish is hierarchically organized in collocations wherethe middle marker se combines with: a) verbs having strong negative implications,b) dative markers and, c) other pragmatic factors conveying information that iseither new, unexpected or undesired for the speaker. These events run against thecanonical representation of world events.
- English
