Va a ser que no
The Spanish periphrastic future construction as refutative and assertive marker
This study seeks to gain a better insight into the origin and expansion of the construction <va a ser que
sí/no
> (lit. goes to be that yes/no) in Peninsular Spanish. We argue that this construction derives from the use of the
periphrastic future construction <ir a ‘go to’ + inf> in a pseudo-cleft sentence whose subject is a deictic
element or an element that conveys the speaker’s attitudinal assessment of the propositional content expressed in the attribute, a
complement que-clause. The etymological structure evolves through a process that formally implies the suppression of the
explicit subject and the fusion of the components va a ser que leading to the conventionalization of refutative and
assertive values. To demonstrate this directionality, we examine recent stages of change and develop syntactic and semantic-pragmatic
arguments grounded in a data-based approach.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Constructional features
- 3.A bit of history: The constructionalization process
- 4.Conclusions
- Notes
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Corpora used
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References