THE PREPOSITION DE AS A POLYSEMIC ITEM IN BUENOS AIRES SPANISH María Soledad Funes Universidad de Buenos Aires
[email protected] Keywords: Cognitive-Prototypical Approach, Grammar, Spanish, Preposition de, Polysemy. From a morphological point of view, prepositions are invariable. All the different Spanish Grammar Approaches are in agreement on this. However, there is not the same consensus about the semantic and syntactic nature of this part of speech. There are three main questions concerning prepositions: their meaning (semantic and pragmatic), their grammatical function in the sentence, and the syntactic relation that they establish with the grammatical element that precedes and follows them. Some authors consider the preposition as a functional grammatical category (empty), while others consider it a lexical item. Among the latter, there are contradictions within the same theory (for example, some structuralists argue that prepositions form part of an exocentric construction, whereas the latest generative models treat the lexical prepositions as heads of an endocentric construction). There is no agreement either on the semantic characterization of the preposition de. Some grammarians propose different classifications, which are not always exhaustive, as in Gili Gaya (1955) and Alarcos (1994). Other scholars suggest usage lists instead of classifications, as in the Grammar of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language (1931), Hernández Alonso (1970) and Esbozo (1973). There is also an internal contradiction in Alcina Franch and Blecua Grammar (1975) concerning the description of de, defined as an empty category and further on, considered a polysemic preposition. Given the absence of a clear grammatical characterization of the preposition de, this presentation proposes the pragmatic, semantic and syntactic study of the preposition de in a nominal context, in Buenos Aires Spanish. The research draws on the Cognitive-Prototypical Approach that posits that grammar is a system of tendencies that reflect the world view of a society. In that regard, each linguistic form has meaning. Thus, the preposition de has a meaning that consists of a radial category structure whose main meaning is possession. This basic meaning is combined with the surrounding elements to establish other meanings. Syntactically, the preposition de appears in contexts with different degrees of coherence that, depending on the context, favour different syntactic relations by connecting the noun head to the complement: coordination or nucleus-satellite relation (Matthiessen & Thompson, 1988). Pragmatically, the preposition de tends to introduce the satellite element of the construction, i.e., the element that does not persist to the right in discourse (Givón, 1980). The hypotheses are validated by a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the corpus data gathered in Habla Culta de la ciudad de Buenos Aires (1987), which retrieves language usage from the 1960’s. The oral corpus PRESEEA-Buenos Aires (Proyecto para el Estudio Sociolingüístico del Español de España y de América) (2011) has also been consulted and used as a control corpus as it retrieves present language usage from 2010 to 2011. References Alarcos Llorach, E. (1994). Gramática de la lengua española. Madrid: Espasa Calpe. Alcina Franch, J. Y J. M. Blecua. (1975). Gramática española. Barcelona: Ariel. El Habla Culta De La Ciudad De Buenos Aires. Materiales Para Su Estudio. (1987). Tomos I y II, Buenos Aires: University of Buenos Aires. Gili Gaya, S. (1955). Curso Superior de Sintaxis Española. Barcelona: Spes. Givón, T. (1980). On understanding grammar. New York: Academic Press. Hernández Alonso, C. (1970). Gramática funcional del español. Salamanca: Unta de Castilla y León. Matthiessen, Ch. y S. Thompson (1988). “The structure of discourse and ‘subordination’”. In: J. Haiman y S. Thompson, Clause combining in Grammar and discourse. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 275-329. Preseea-Buenos Aires (Proyecto para el Estudio Sociolingüístico del Español de España y de América) (2011). Buenos Aires: CONICET. Real Academia Española. (1931). Gramática de la lengua española. Madrid: Espasa Calpe. Real Academia Española. (1973). Esbozo para una nueva gramática de la lengua española. Madrid: Espasa Calpe.