Search

This work studies three 'denominal' verbs which has been classified as 'agentive': protagonizar, fiscalizar and tiranizar. The paper examines the relationship between the nominal bases and the meaning of these verbs. It also analyses some of their syntactic and semantic properties: the semantic role of their arguments, their participation in diathesis alternations, some of their aspectual characteristics. The analysis allows to conclude that fiscalizar and tiranizar are 'activity' verbs with a 'similative' meaning, but protagonizar differs from them in many ways. This verb does not seem to be specified with respect to 'agency' or 'activity', and the (sub)lexical, encyclopedic or 'frame' properties of its complements are clearly relevant for the semantic composition of the sentence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the Spanish verb tener 'to have' when used in a collocation co-occurring with an emotion noun (tener miedo 'to be afraid'). From the semantic viewpoint, tener is a quasi-empty verb; from the syntactic one, it is construed with two diathesis: one with three syntactic actants (Todos le tenían respeto 'Everyone had respect towards him/her'), the other, with only two (Tuve una profunda emoción 'I felt a deep emotion'). Most of the emotion nouns go either with the former or with the latter diathesis, and only a small group combines with both of them (La gente tiene miedo a la Policía/La gente tiene miedo (de la Policía) 'People are afraid of the Police'). The objective will be to find evidence of tener as an aspectual marker through the use of this double diathesis. The results will be applied in the elaboration of lexical entries for collocates in the Diccionario de colocaciones del español. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]