Manner object constructions of satellite-framed languages with Spanish physiological verbs

Abstract

Despite their unergative status, the Spanish verbs that express physiological processes are said to enter two transitive structures in which they are complemented by a direct object that is either the actor ( Golpearon con sus puños hasta sangrarlos sobre la puerta ‘They punched with their fists until they bled on the door’) or the product ( Murió vomitando sangre ‘He died vomiting blood’) involved in the process described in the sentence. The English-Spanish contrastive, corpus-based analysis, carried out on 10 Spanish physiological verbs, which underlies the present piece of research, reveals, however, that their transitivity potential is higher than originally expected, due to their participation in four other transitive structures different from the two ones previously illustrated. This finding suggests, furthermore, a clear crosslinguistic relationship between Talmy’s ( 1985 , 2000 ) well-known linguistic typologies, since three of these patterns are prototypical constructions of satellite-framed languages; namely, resultatives ( José Luis había sudado hasta la sobriedad ‘José Luis had sweated until he was sober’), reaction object constructions ( Cuatro hombres sudan despiertos su deseperanza ‘ Four men lie awake, sweating out their despair’), and the Spanish equivalent of the English Away construction ( Ahí seguirá Antonio, roncando la borrachera en el sofa ‘ There Antonio will still be, snoring off his drunkenness on the couch’).