PHD THESIS
Marta Pino obtained the qualifications of Doctor in Hispanic Philology and Doctor Europaeus in July 2000 at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, with a PhD thesis entitled “Las construcciones pasivas e impersonales transitivas en español” (Transitive Passive and Impersonal Constructions in Spanish).
Title
Las construcciones pasivas e impersonales transitivas en español (2000)
(Transitive Passive and Impersonal Constructions in Spanish)
Abstract
This PhD thesis studies transitive passive and impersonal clauses in Spanish within a functionalist theoretical framework (Role and Reference Grammar) and using a methodology based on corpus linguistics. The corpus texts are in peninsular Spanish, recorded or published between 1982 and 1997, and comprise various kinds of journalism, radio and television texts. In the corpus as a whole, the clauses under study were analysed according to a range of parameters.
In addition to developing a statistical analysis of the data, a qualitative study was also undertaken based on a detailed event typology. By means of corpus analysis it was found that there is a strong tendency to codify telic events in a passive way (achievements and completed actions), whereas they are not normally codified with this type of structure in atelic events (activities). It was also found that it is not enough to describe the differences between pronominal and participle passives in terms of existence/non-existence of generic events. In passive structures each auxiliary imposes its own eventive restrictions in the selection of types of events.
In terms of distribution by media, a much higher density of participle passives was observed in the press than on the radio and the television. The density of pronominal impersonal and passive constructions is higher in oral than in written media.
Supervisors and Examining Board
Supervisors: Dr. Mª José Rodríguez Espiñeira (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela) and Dr. Carmen Silva Corvalán (Southern California University)
Examining Board
Chairman
Dr. José Manuel Blecua Perdices (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Board Members
Dr. Ignacio Bosque Muñoz (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
Dr. Agustín Vera Luján (Universidad de Murcia)
Dr. Nicole Delbecque (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium)
Secretary
Dr. Jesús Pena Seijas (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela)
The thesis was funded by Fundación Caja Madrid
Publication
CD-ROM (ISBN: 84-8121-820-0)
Servicio de Publicacións da Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
Campus Universitario Sur
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