Chapter 12. On the role of verb-particle constructions in Old Spanish

Abstract

The present contribution investigates verb-particle constructions formed with atras ‘back(wards)’ in Old Spanish, against the background of the typological change from (mostly) satellite-framed patterns in Latin to the predominantly verb-framed strategies in the Romance languages. The study innovatively combines diachronic Construction Grammar with a functional-onomasiological perspective. This means that VPCs are studied relative to “competing” strategies of motion encoding such as instantiations of the prefix-construction [re-V] ‘V back’ and newly formed path verbs such as tornar/volver ‘turn/go back’. The diachronic study shows that VPCs are in principle available at all language stages of Spanish. Moreover, the onomasiological perspective suggests that the observed “rise” of VPCs in Old Spanish could in fact be related to constructional micro-changes occurring among path verbs and instantiations of [re-V]. Within this network of functionally related constructions, VPCs prove to form a transparent and potentially expressive, mostly intransitive pattern to encode directed motion meanings.