This paper examines the diatopic variation of the periphrasis andar + GER, comparing its use in Mexican and Peninsular Spanish. To this end, the relative frequency of the construction is analyzed in several corpora, as well as its most distinctive semantic and syntactic features. Our quantitative analysis shows, on the one hand, the high frequency of andar + GER in Mexican Spanish as compared to Peninsular Spanish. On the other hand, it reveals that the periphrasis occurs, above all, in informal language modalities. Semantically, the present study corroborates that, in periphrases with a gerund, the verb andar (‘to walk’), has progressively lost its lexical meaning of physical movement and has come to transmit pragmatic values, particularly of determination and insistence. In addition, unlike Peninsular Spanish, in Mexican Spanish the periphrasis is less subject to selectional restrictions with respect to the gerund, a relatively recent change that points to a strong grammaticalization. Syntactically, the grammaticalization process is reflected in the adjacency of the auxiliary and the gerund, the fixed internal order of the two components of the periphrasis, clitic climbing and a drop in the frequency of coordinated gerunds. The case of andar + GER demonstrates that grammaticalization of the same construction can take place in different ways depending on the specific dialectal
environment. Likewise, and at a more general level, it stresses the importance of a diatopic approach in studies on verbal periphrases and grammaticalization processes.
Keywords:
verbal periphrasis, andar Gerund, Mexican Spanish, semantics, grammaticalization, construction grammar
Nieuwenhuijsen, D. (2020). Algo anda ocurriendo: diatopic variation of andar + GERUND. Boletín De Filología, 54(2), pp.135–170. Retrieved from https://boletinfilologia.uchile.cl/index.php/BDF/article/view/55949
Twitter