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Article published In: Constructions and Frames
Vol. 17:1 (2025) ► pp.65–91

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The similative-pretence alternating pair and filler-slot relations

A revised version of distinctive collexeme analysis

 | Illinois State University
 | University of California, Santa Barbara | JLU Giessen
Published online: 28 February 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/cf.23020.olg
Abstract
The present paper investigates the similative-pretence alternating pair in Mexican Spanish (como/igual que and como si constructions) based on the analysis of 1362 instances from The Corpus del Español NOW (News on the Web) corpus. We apply a revised version of distinctive collexeme analysis to our concordance data to explore the variety of different verbs that can occur in the first slot of similative and pretence constructions. Specifically, we use (i) a new measure that distinguishes the attraction that a verb lemma exerts on a construction from the attraction that a construction exerts on a verb lemma and (ii) bootstrapping on the level of files to, for the first time, provide proper confidence intervals in the context of collostructional studies. The from-verb lemma-to-construction analysis shows that there is a significant attraction of epistemic lemmas (e.g., parecer ‘to seem’) to occur in como ‘like’, and of mistaken identity lemmas (e.g., actuar ‘to act’) to appear in como si ‘as if’ constructions. The from-construction-to-verb lemma analysis, on the other hand, demonstrates that igual que ‘like’ significantly attracts epistemic perception verbs (e.g., ver ‘to look’), and como si ‘as if’ constructions significantly attract the verb lemma sentir ‘to feel.’
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Setting the stage
  • 2.Methods and results
    • 2.1Corpus data, data extraction, and annotation
    • 2.2The statistical analysis
      • 2.2.1From verb lemma to construction
      • 2.2.2From construction to verb lemma
  • 3.Discussion
    • 3.1Linguistic implications
      • 3.1.1The from-verb lemma-to-construction analysis
      • 3.1.2The from-construction-to-verb lemma analysis
    • 3.2Methodological implications
  • 4.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
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Cited by two other publications

Gries, Stefan Th. & Stefanie Wulff
2025. Introduction to the special issue on collostructions. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 21:3 ► pp. 465 ff. DOI logo
Olguín Martínez, Jesús & Stefan Th. Gries
2025. Similative-pretence constructions in language contact situations. Cognitive Linguistic Studies 12:2 ► pp. 292 ff. DOI logo

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