Force dynamics and conceptual metaphor in “pasarse de largo”. A Cognitive Linguistics study

Abstract

IIn  this  article,  we  present  the  systematic  relations,  both  at  concept  and syntactic  level,  between  the  spatial  sense  of  going  beyond  a  point  in space and the metaphoric sense of excessive quality in a syntactic pattern which in Spanish includes the formal reflexive verb “pasarse”, within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics. We present the theoretical principles of this approach and characterise the descriptive tools used: image schemes, conceptual metaphor, and mainly force dynamics. We also show that the latter permits the explanation of the use of the reflexive form encodes the fact that the expectation imposed for both senses is not fulfilled: in the spatial sense of ‘pasarse de largo’, the expectation that a moving object must stop at some reference point and, in the metaphorical sense of ‘excessive quality’ (“pasarse de bueno”), the expectation that the quality must not exceed a certain degree of normality.