Antiphrasis-Based Comparative Constructional Idioms in Spanish

Abstract

The aim of this study is to show the constructional character of the antiphrasis-based comparative structures in Spanish [SUBJ_[anaph] V_TENER de S1 como/lo que yo de S2] and [SUBJ_[anaph] V_[COGN] de S1 como/lo que yo de S2], respectively with the referential meaning 'not to be S1' and 'to not know/understand absolutely anything about S1' and the pragmatic meaning disagreement/criticism. These schemata in Spanish have not been studied previously, either from the perspective of phraseology (in terms of their character as idiomatic schemata) or that of Construction Grammar (looking at their value as constructional idioms). Hence, this study has a double aim: on the one hand to fill a gap in Spanish phraseological research, exploring in detail the value of these structures in terms of schematicity and as constructional idioms and on the other to establish a unifying bridge between Spanish phraseology and Construction Grammar. For the study a corpus has been compiled of 435 occurrences of the construction [SUBJ_[anaph] V_TENER de S1 como/lo que yo de S2] and 240 occurrences of the construction [SUBJ_[anaph] V_[COGN] de S1 como/lo que yo de S2], these drawn either from the CREA corpus or from the Internet/Google using the Webcorp tool.