A lexical-constructional approach to some a-prepositional phrases: towards the identification of a constructional pattern in Spanish

Abstract

This paper analyses the features that characterize some syntactic-semantic patterns involving a-prepositional complementation in Spanish. The analysis is situated at the core-grammar level or level 1 of the Lexical Constructional Model in which lexical templates and constructional templates undergo various processes of Subsumption (see Ruiz de Mendoza and Mairal, 2008; Mairal and Ruiz de Mendoza, 2009). Special emphasis is made on the mechanisms of Subsumption across verb classes and, more specifically, on how such mechanisms determine the (re)construction of meaning and mark differences and commonalities between the Spanish verbs golpear and tocar. Examples extracted from relevant corpora of the Spanish language are used in support of the analysis.