LES PRÉPOSITIONS POR ET PARA : CONVERGENCES DISCURSIVES ET DIVERGENCES EXPRESSIVES
THE PREPOSITIONS POR AND PARA: DISCURSIVE CONVERGENCES AND EXPRESSIVE DIVERGENCES

Summary/Abstract: Drawing on a corpus of spatial, temporal, and notional occurrences, we propose to revisit the analysis of the Spanish prepositional pair "por" / "para" from a monosemic perspective attentive to the effects these forms produce in discourse. The opposition between the two relators cannot be reduced to the textbook distinction between causation and purpose: "por" construes its support within an immanent, inclusive, or motivating orientation, whereas "para" construes it within a transcendent orientation, projecting it towards a destination, a threshold, a beneficiary, or an intended endpoint. The series "para entonces / por entonces", "para siempre / por siempre", "para complacer / por complacer", "faltar para / faltar por", "estar para / estar por", and "vivir por y para" show that the proximity of these uses does not efface the expressive difference between them; on the contrary, it brings that difference into sharper relief, since each alternation requires us to examine how the relator constructs the relationship between the process and its support.

• Details
• Contents