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In:A Layered Approach to Habitual Constructions
Edited by Sune Gregersen and Kees Hengeveld
[Typological Studies in Language 136] 2026
► pp. 339–371

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Chapter 11
Habitual constructions in Spanish

ORCiD logo with link | Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
Published online: 6 January 2026
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.136.11olb
Abstract
This chapter discusses the Spanish infinitival auxiliary constructions with soler and acostumbrar (a) from a Functional Discourse Grammar perspective. A preliminary description leads to hypotheses on their semantics: both constructions are expected to apply to Episodes, States-of-Affairs and Situational Properties, and soler seems to operate additionally on Proposional Contents, but without expressing genericity, contrary to what the theory predicts. These hypotheses are tested by means of a questionnaire that checks the interaction of the constructions with adverbials and other grammatical operators, and their behaviour in complement clauses. The results confirm the hypothesis regarding soler; however, acostumbrar (a) turns out to operate maximally on the State-of-Affairs. Finally, a mutual interaction test results in acostumbrar (a) being less grammaticalized than soler.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Some relevant properties of Spanish
    • 2.1Introduction
    • 2.2Verbal morphology
    • 2.3Some properties of verbal syntax
    • 2.4Some observations on glossing
  • 3.The habitual auxiliaries soler and acostumbrar
    • 3.1Introduction
    • 3.2Soler
      • 3.2.1Introduction
      • 3.2.2Preliminary overview of the semantics of soler
      • 3.2.3The interaction of soler with adverbial modifiers (tests in B)
      • 3.2.4The interaction of soler with grammatical categories (tests in C)
      • 3.2.5The occurrence of soler in complement clauses (tests in A)
      • 3.2.6Conclusion on the use of soler
    • 3.3Acostumbrar
      • 3.3.1Introduction
      • 3.3.2Preliminary overview of the semantics of acostumbrar (a)
      • 3.3.3The interaction of acostumbrar (a) with adverbial modifiers (tests in B)
      • 3.3.4The interaction of acostumbrar (a) with grammatical categories (tests in C)
      • 3.3.5The occurrence of acostumbrar (a) in complement clauses (tests in A)
      • 3.3.6Conclusion on the use of acostumbrar (a)
    • 3.4The co-occurrence of soler and acostumbrar a
  • 4.Summary
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
  • Corpora
References (24)
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Corpora
AdH: Moreno Fernández, F., Cestero Mancera, A. M., Molina Martos, I., & Paredes García, F. (2004). La lengua hablada en Alcalá de Henares: Corpus PRESEEA-ALCALÁ. Universidad de Alcalá. [URL]
ARTHUS-LE: Archivo de textos hispánicos de la Universidad de Santiago (ARTHUS) [URL].
CORDE: Real Academia Española. Corpus diacrónico del español. [URL]
CORPES: Real Academia Española. Corpus del Español del Siglo XXI. [URL]
CREA: Real Academia Española. Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual. [URL]
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