Ambivalencia transitiva y estructura argumental: resultados de un estudio de uso

Abstract

In this article we focus on a group of verbs which in the literature are defined as ambitransitive, in the sense that they may occur in clauses with or without an overtly expressed direct object: comer ‘to eat’, dibujar ‘to draw’, llorar ‘to cry’, sonreír ‘to smile’, dormir ‘to sleep’, soñar ‘to dream’ y rezar ‘to pray’. The central aim of our corpus-based study is to explore the possibility of establishing lexical argument structures that may account for the constructional variability attested in actual language use. In particular, we examine the frequency of occurrence of transitive and intransitive constructions as well as the productivity of the objects, in terms of the range of their semantic-referential properties and syntagmatic coding options. The analysis shows that it is indeed possible to distinguish between bivalent verbal lexemes, which in certain contexts omit their object, and those that are clearly monovalent and take a cognate object on very rare occasions. Interestingly, the argument structures emerging from the use of the verbs do not always coincide with the lexical frames proposed in purely theoretical discussions.