¡Con lo felices que éramos! Otra mirada sobre la construcción [con ART (X) que V] del español
¡Con lo felices que éramos! Another view on the Spanish construction [con ART (X) que V]

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to provide a holistic description of the Spanish construction [con ART (X) que V] (¡Con lo felices que éramos! ‘we were so happy’) from the perspective of Construction Grammar (CxG). The description, in addition to formal and semantic features, factors in pragmatic ones and adopts an essentially inductive approach. Following the usage-based models developed in the field of CxG, the analysis is performed with data extracted from the Corpus del Español del Siglo XXI (CORPES), which is analysed quantitatively and qualitatively, with special attention being paid to the behaviour of the linguistic units within the context. The analysis brings to light a construction of colloquial language with a prototypically contrastive meaning and an intensifying value that implies a strong expressive charge. It is clearly associated with subjectivity and valuation, and its use stands out in the expression of lamentation about a frustrated expectation. This paper demonstrates that constructional approaches, particularly those with a cognitivist and usage-based orientation, contain interesting postulates for the study of these partially lexically filled patterns, and benefit the integral description of their semantic-pragmatic and discursive potential.

• Details
• Contents