On meteorological denominal verbs in Spanish

This chapter focuses on meteorological denominal verbs. Besides studying their morphological processes, the argument structure presented by these verbs is analyzed in order to determine which conceptual components are condensed in the lexeme. The chapter then goes on to establish a classification based on the semantic content provided by each of the incorporated arguments. From the synchronic study, it is concluded that it is possible to distinguish several semantic classes among meteorological denominal verbs – i.e. local, causative and inchoative –, and that they differ in the degree of impersonality, depending on the implicit argument which is limited in each case. The paper also provides cross-linguistic evidence that supports the theory, including languages such as Slovenian, Russian, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Portuguese and Creole. Keywords: meteorological denominal verbs; argument structure; impersonality; contrastive analysis