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This paper attempts to explain the alternation between the prepositions a and de when used as complements to the adjectives contrario 'contrary', diferente 'different', and distinto 'distinct', as illustrated in Yo no fui distinta __mi madre 'I wasn't different __my mother', where both prepositions can be inserted. Relying on Langacker's3 notion of construal, the hypothesis is that a construes the comparison in the sense of 'direction toward' while de construes it in the sense of 'separation' or 'point of departure', and that these senses should be reflected in the usage contexts of the two prepositions. The quantitative analysis of some 800 cases extracted from Davies'4 two billion word Corpus del español, however, shows no indication of a and de setting up different construals. This lack of correlation between usage and semantics appears to be due to the diachronic generalization of a as complement of the three adjectives, thus relegating the use of de to specific collocations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the origin, current usage and norms of usage of the Spanish gerund using corpora of spoken and written language. Our findings show that the present variety of uses of the gerund is a result of two very different Latin forms: the ablative form of gerund and the present participle. The convergence of these two forms is also partially responsible for the frequent disagreement among grammarians on the correctness of some usage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spanish concessive clauses usually are constructed with the indicative when they refer to facts and with the subjunctive when they apply to hypothetical or future objections. However, the prototypical marker of counterarguments, "aunque," often appears with the subjunctive in merely factual contexts, like in the statement "No soy nacionalista, aunque sea vasco", pronounced by a Basque politician. The traditional explanations of this phenomenon are based upon factors like information structure (the subjunctive is supposed to convey more topical and less relevant information) or the speaker's attitude (the subjunctive is thought to reflect a more polemic and less cooperative behaviour). The aim of this paper, inspired by textual linguistics, is to connect the "aunque"-subjunctive in factual contexts with the underlying textual sequence. Numerous examples obtained from the Real Academia corpus show that the "aunque"-subjunctive plays an important part in polite argumentation and can be considered as a case of what I would like to call "argumentative subjunctive". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]