Morphosyntactic Alternations in English - Functional and Cognitive Perspectives - Pilar Guerrero Medina
11. Looks, appearances and judgements: Towards a unified constructionist analysis of predicative complement alternations in English and Spanish
Morphosyntactic Alternations in English - Functional and Cognitive Perspectives - Pilar Guerrero Medina
Francisco González-García
University of Almenia
Description
This chapter by Francisco Gonzálvez-García focuses on the non-equivalence of predicative complement alternations with a phrasal and infinitival realization after seem-type verbs in English and Spanish (e.g. He seems (to be) angry/Parece (estar) enfadado). Through analysis of data from corpora and other sources, the author argues for a unified constructionist account of the semantico-pragmatic and information structure restrictions which impinge upon the alternation of predicative complements in the subjectiveattributive construction with seem-type verbs and their Spanish counterparts. Gonzálvez-García then proposes that this unitary analysis can also be applied to the evaluative subjective-transitive construction with consider-type verbs in both languages, as both constructions display a number of similarities which affect not only the core constructional meaning but also the semantico-pragmatic profile of the construction’s components.