Disambiguating Spanish Change of State Verbs

Keywords

change of state verbs, experimental approach, expressing "to become"

Abstract

A previous corpus-based study suggests that the uses of the verbs llegar a ser, ponerse, volverse, quedarse, convertirse, transformarse, and hacerse are not mutually exclusive. However, the corpus study has several drawbacks. A questionnaire was developed to address some of the problems inherent in the corpus analysis. Spanish speakers were asked to choose between the seven change of state verbs in order to complete a series of sentences appearing in specific semantic/syntactic contexts. The results of the questionnaire agree with the corpus study, and indicate a high degree of overlap in the uses of each verb.

Original Publication Citation

2002. “Disambiguating Spanish Change of State Verbs.” Hispania 85.921-929.

Document Type

Peer-Reviewed Article

Publication Date

2002

Publisher

American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese

Language

English

College

Humanities

Department

Linguistics

University Standing at Time of Publication

Full Professor

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