The content conditional construction in Spanish with the protasis [Si (X) Fuere Y]: a conceptual transposer of the prescriptive authoritative voice beyond normative domains
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31513/linguistica.2025.v21n2a67932Abstract
In this article, guided by the theoretical framework of the Usage-Based Construction Grammar, we present research on the contemporary use of the Content Conditional Construction (CONTCC) with the protasis [Si (X) Fuere Y], in varieties of Spanish from Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. This symbolic unit features a verb form inflected in the future subjunctive, a tense considered obsolete in modern Spanish. We conducted a data survey in two subcorpora of the Corpus del Español (Web/Dialects and Now), in which we mapped 205 occurrences of CONTCC with the protasis [Si (X) Fuere Y] in discourse genres produced mainly in the legal, political and journalistic spheres, between 1967 and 2019. The study reveals that this construction is marked and has a low frequency. Despite this, the data showed that the CONTCC with the protasis [Si (X) Fuere Y] is productive in normative genres (laws, bills, regulations, etc.). In addition, we found instances of use of this construction in informative, explanatory, and argumentative genres (news articles, opinion pieces, legal blog posts, user comments on legal websites, etc.), in which the CONTCC with the protasis [Si (X) Fuere Y] works as a conceptual transposer of prescriptive authoritative voice coming from normative domains.
Keywords: Usage-Based construction grammar. Content conditional construction. Future subjunctive. Spanish Language.
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