Keywords

Spanish, adverb, nominalization, corpus, locative

Abstract

Instances of adverbs modified by adjectives (e.g. detrás mío, delante tuyo) were extracted from the Corpus del Español. The corpus analysis reveals that these constructions are attested in all 21 Spanish-speaking countries to varying degrees, but are most frequent in Argentina and Uruguay. Adjectives following the adverbs in questions are predominantly masculine; however, in Peninsular varieties feminine forms are quite common. Although alrededor and lado are both adverbs as well as masculine nouns, they are occasionally followed by feminine adjectives (e.g. al lado suya), which is arguably due to the use of the feminine in other constructions such as encima mía and debajo nuestra.

Original Publication Citation

2017. “Nominalized adverbs in Spanish: the intriguing case of detrás mío and its cohorts.” Research in Corpus Linguistics 5.47-55