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In:Verb and Context: The impact of shared knowledge on TAME categories
Edited by Susana Rodríguez Rosique and Jordi M. Antolí Martínez
[IVITRA Research in Linguistics and Literature 34] 2023
► pp. 149–170

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Quantifiers of factual proximity and counterfactuality in Spanish and other Romance languages

Un paso más y me mataba/habría matado

 | Uppsala University
Published online: 4 January 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ivitra.34.07kro
Abstract
Quantifiers of Factual Proximity (QFPs) are subconstructions (e.g. Spanish un paso más and French un pas de plus) of conditional constructions, as in Un paso más y me mataba/habría matado (‘One more step, and he would have killed me’). Indicating the proximity of realization of hypothetical eventualities or instants in the protasis, they have a propensity for co-occurring with axiologically marked eventualities (matar ‘kill’) in the apodosis, irrespective of its TAM-morphology (mataba, Imperfect Indicative ‘killed’, habría matado, Compound Conditional ‘would have killed’). Here we elaborate the conceptualization of QFPs for counterfactual conditionals in Romance languages with special emphasis on Spanish. The theoretical framework is Construction Grammar, more specifically Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 1987, 2008).
Keywords:
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical framework: Construction Grammar (CxG)
  • 3.Quantifiers of factual proximity as subconstructions
  • 4.The data
  • 5.Syntactic constructions: Parataxis and hypotaxis
  • 6.Constructional homonymy: Counterfactual and factual constructions
  • 7.Construal: Eventuality quantifiers
  • 8.Construal: Interval quantifiers
  • 9.Construal: Profile and base
  • 10.Quantification of factual proximity and axiology
  • 11.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Kronning, Hans
2023. Quantifieurs de proximité factuelle et praxématique : Un instant après le train déraillait / aurait déraillé. Cahiers de praxématique :79 DOI logo

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