“How to become a woman without turninginto a Barbie”: Change-of-state verbconstructions and their role in Spanish as a Foreign Language

Abstract

Abstract Pseudo-copulative change-of-state (PCOS) verbs are predicates that involve a change in the composition of an entity undergoing a particular event. Due to their complex linguistic nature, these verbs are not easy to be accounted for and consequently, they represent a real challenge to language teachers and learners. First, this paper critically examines the specialized L1 and L2 literature on PCOS verbs in Spanish. Then, it is shown that previous studies are unable to provide a unanimous theory, but rather offer heterogeneous explanations that are full of exceptions and overlook semantic nuances. The second part of this work presents a corpus-based constructional study of the PCOS verbal structure [Vcl+NP] in two PCOS verbs, hacerse ‘make.cl’ and volverse ‘turn.cl’. It is argued that a multi-level family of PCOS constructions captures both the specificity of fully-saturated constructions (María se hizo mujer ‘María became a woman’), as well as the more general abstract patterns ([Subject PCOS-verb Object]). This constructional approach offers a unified and motivated explanation for these PCOS verbs that can be very useful for Spanish as a Foreign Language (SFL).