On the Development of Mirative ReadingsA Contrastive Study on English and Spanish

Resumo

Mirative meaning —i.e., the linguistic expression of surprise and related senses like unexpectedness and counterexpectation— may emerge from an array of sources. The present paper focuses on one such source: culminative or resultative meaning, which often develops mirative nuances (completion/ end result > surprise). To explore this path of semantic change, this paper zooms in on two mirative verb constructions: English [end up Ving] and Spanish [acabar Vndo], both of which are strikingly similar in form and function. The paper contrasts the diachronic developments of both constructions, focusing on their semantic change. Data for this corpus-based study have been drawn from several diachronic and synchronic corpora: COHA and COCA for English and CORDE and CORPES for Spanish. My results show that, alongside their conclusive meaning, both verb constructions have acquired semantic mirative extensions related to unexpected information and counterexpectation via subjectification and pragmatic enrichment.