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Article published In: Review of Cognitive Linguistics
Vol. 22:1 (2024) ► pp.204–257

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Cuanto(s) más datos, (tanto) mejor

A corpus-based study of the Spanish comparative correlative construction

 | Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt
Published online: 27 June 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00157.hor
Abstract
The Spanish comparative correlative (CC) construction (Cuanto más leo, (tanto) más entiendo) has a complex syntactic structure and complex semantics. The syntactic relationship between its two subclauses has been subject to much debate. This study, the first large-scale (> 3,000 tokens) corpus investigation, explores various aspects and provides evidence for hypotaxis. However, statistical analysis of the data also revealed ‘under-the-surface’ parataxis. I therefore argue that the construction cannot be classified as either hypotactic or paratactic, but as hypotactic and paratactic to certain degrees, also compared with its counterparts in English and Slovak. I argue that the ‘competition’ between hypotactic and paratactic encoding can be attributed to the principle of iconicity, that is, the “(partial) motivation of a construction’s form by its meaning” ( (2019). English comparative correlatives: Diachronic and synchronic variation at the lexicon-syntax interface (Studies in English Language). Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, p. 12). Finally, I discuss various formal aspects of the Spanish CC construction that have so far gone unnoticed, providing new evidence in the form of corpus data.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Clause-initial elements cuanto and tanto
      • 3.1.1Cuanto Agreement
      • 3.1.2Presence Tanto C2
    • 3.2Lexical Filler
    • 3.3Constituent order: Comparative Element Position C1 & C2
    • 3.4Cross-clausal associations: Filler Types and Deletion
      • 3.4.1Filler Type
      • 3.4.2Lexical Filler: Filler Type interaction
      • 3.4.3Deletion
    • 3.5Verb morphology: Mood and Tense
      • 3.5.1Mood
      • 3.5.2Tense
  • 4.Discussion of results
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
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