A Corpus Analysis of Sentence-Initial "Lo que". A Constructionist Approach

11 pages•Published: November 28, 2016

Abstract

The present paper is concerned with sentence-initial Lo que ‘What’ – a so-called “copulativa enfática de relativo” (NGLE 2009: 3024). The focus marker Lo que is considered a construction because its form, function and even meaning are not strictly predictable from its component parts. The work with the CREA and CORDE shows that the construction’s frequency has increased over time so that the construction can nowadays be said to occur “with sufficient frequency” (Goldberg 2006: 5; cf. also Hilpert’s concept of constructional change, 2013).

Keyphrases: construction grammar, focus markers, lo que construction

In: Antonio Moreno Ortiz and Chantal Pérez-Hernández (editors). CILC2016. 8th International Conference on Corpus Linguistics, vol 1, pages 159-169.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/7dR
	https://doi.org/10.29007/htvk

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{CILC2016:Corpus_Analysis_Sentence_Initial,
  author    = {Anja Hennemann},
  title     = {A Corpus Analysis of Sentence-Initial "Lo que". A Constructionist Approach},
  booktitle = {CILC2016. 8th International Conference on Corpus Linguistics},
  editor    = {Antonio Moreno Ortiz and Chantal Pérez-Hernández},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Language and Linguistics},
  volume    = {1},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2398-5283},
  url       = {/publications/paper/7dR},
  doi       = {10.29007/htvk},
  pages     = {159-169},
  year      = {2016}}

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