Abstract

VASQUEZ-BUSTOS, Víctor  and  RAMIREZ FUENTES, Yesenia. Grammaticalization of the Prepositional Phrases con miras a and con miras de Based on an Analysis of the CORDE and CREA Corpora. Anu. let. lingüíst. filol. [online]. 2023, vol.11, n.2, pp.37-62.  Epub Oct 23, 2023. ISSN 2448-8224.  https://doi.org/10.19130/iifl.adel.2023.11.2/00x27os132.

This study is a historical tracing of the Spanish prepositional locutions con miras a and con miras de in the Corpus Diacrónico del Español (CORDE) and the Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual (CREA). It describes the grammaticalization of these locutions and its relation to their metaphorical conceptualization, considering previous research on grammaticalization (Traugott and König, 1991; Traugott, 2003; Elvira, 2015) and metaphor as understood in the field of cognitive linguistics (Lakoff and Johnson, 2015 [1980]). The study also examines the evolution of the word miras from its function as a free lexical unit to its integration in the prepositional locutions con miras a and con miras de, through consideration of the concordances and relationships between the nominal item and the pre-nominal (con) and post-nominal (de/a) elements. Three tests proposed by Cifuentes Honrubia (2003) are used to verify the degree of fixation and internal cohesion of the compositional elements. A phenomenon of grammaticalization is found of the locutions progressing from the lexical behavior of the nucleus miras to its fixation in the structure preposition + noun + preposition. In cognitive terms, the form miras is expressed in three domains: one related to visual perception, a second pertained to intellect, and a third related to actions in general.

Keywords : grammaticalization; prepositional locutions; conceptual metaphor; corpus linguistics.