Gerundio no perifrástico. Estudio de corpus orales del español de Mérida, Venezuela

Abstract

This thesis describes the uses of the non–periphrastic gerund in the Spanish of Mérida, Venezuela. A functional analysis of this form has been conducted. It explores mainly the semantics, pragmatics and sociolinguistics of this verbal form in two oral corpora.

I propose that its main interpretation is temporal. To demonstrate this assertion, I explore the Arktionsart of the gerunds and analyze the subevent structure that the gerund and the main verb form. I show that gerunds are mainly activities. Accomplishments, states and achievements tend to be interpreted as activities if they appear as gerunds.

Regarding to its pragmatics, I suggest that this form can introduce new and old information according to its position within the sentence. The results show that the gerund placed at the beginning of a sentence introduces old information interpreted as frames and gerunds placed at the end of a sentence introduce new information that can be interpreted as comments.

On the presumption that young and non-educated speakers would use more often the non-periphrastic gerund, the sociolinguistic analysis was carried out. The analysis enabled to show that the hypothesis was wrong. Non-educated speaker obtained lower results than the other groups. There are not significant differences related to age and there are few differences related to sex.

The main contributions of this thesis to the study of the non-periphrastic gerund are the following: a deep analysis of its Aktionsart and subevent structure as well as the study of its pragmatic functions. In addition, this thesis presents evidence of a semantic interpretation that has not been described before: especificativa and provides evidence of the use of this form in positions that usually are occupied by the infinitive.