El papel de la coerción en la alternancia ser / estar con adjetivos

Abstract

This thesis examines the distribution of the Spanish copulas ser and estar with adjectives of different semantic categories. The focus of the analysis is the way in which combinations of Individual Level Predicates with estar, and Stage Level Predicates with ser can result in new readings of nominal predicates. Naturally occurring data are taken from Corpus del Español in order to study these combinations. We approach the study of these combinations through the concept of coercion and use it as a tool to reveal the different linguistic procedures involving meaning-changing processes in adjectives within copular constructions. In our work, coercion is seen as a semantic mechanism where not only estar is a trigger of coercion, but ser as well.