The Dutch change-of-state copulawordenand its Spanish counterparts

Abstract

By means of a contrastive corpus analysis we will examine the different translation possibilities in Spanish for the Dutch change-of-state copulaworden. Unlike English or French, Spanish does not have a single verb to translate the Dutch copulaworden, but instead displays a whole range of possibilities to express change. In the present study, we will focus on the three Spanish predicates that – in our corpus – are most frequently used to translate the attributive construction withworden, viz. A semi-copula, a lexical verb and a simple copula (serorestar ‘to be’). Our data will reveal that the selection of an appropriate translation of worden is not random. On the contrary, a different translation category corresponds to a different conceptualization of the process of change. A variety of contextual, formal and semantic factors can help explain the preference for one translation possibility over the other.

The Discovery of Aspect: A Heuristic Parallel Corpus Study of Ingressive, Continuative and Resumptive Viewpoint Aspect

“…9 Table 1-which covers part of the full classification in Bogaards (2020a, p. 88)-lists the 14 verbs with ingressive meaning in this construction, subcategorized by causativity and modality. A final construction linked to ingressivity is the verb worden 'become' in its function as a "change-of-state copula" (Hanegreefs 2004). Worden selects an adjectival or nominal complement (e.g., boos worden 'become angry', vader worden 'become a dad') and construes the beginning of the state denoted by the adjective or noun.…”

A Mandarin map for Dutch durativity*

“…This method differs considerably from more conventional comparative research on Dutch aspectuality (e.g. Krause 1997;Boogaart 1999;Hanegreefs 2004;Lemmens & Slobin 2008;Mortier 2008;Behrens et al 2013;Geleyn & Colleman 2014;Breed et al 2017). What these studies have in common, is that they start from the assumption that some conceptual content is expressed by a presupposed (set of) construction(s) in each language, which are subsequently compared.…”

“…The expression of aspectuality appears to be highly diffuse, spanning different levels of linguistic abstraction. For instance, Lemmens (2015) situates Dutch progressive aspect in partially schematic constructions like [aan het inf zijn] 'to be inf-ing ' , and Hanegreefs (2004) points to copulative use of the verb worden 'become' for change-of-state aspect. Mapping out Dutch aspectuality systematically, and gaining a bird's-eye view of the category, is therefore not a straightforward enterprise.…”

Corpus-driven Cognitive Semantics. Introduction to the field

“…Quantitative approaches to semantic structure within Cognitive Linguistics begin with counting examples of a certain kind and comparing them to examples of another kind (e.g. : Hanegreefs 2004;Davidse et al 2008;Dziwirek & Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 2009). Such quantitative data may employ tests for statistical significance, such as the t-Test or Chisquare test.…”