Las preposiciones por y para: estudio sobre los complementos de finalidad con por.

Abstract

In this thesis we will explore the cases where the Spanish preposition por can introduce final complements instead of causal ones in certain prepositional constructions. The preposition por can sometimes denote the notion of purpose, for example in constructions like "Se casó por dinero", where the complement denotes the objective of the action expressed by the verb, a notion which is usually characteristic of the preposition para. Throughout this thesis we will show that the term of the preposition por can denote the purpose of the action expressed in the main verb, provided that there are given certain conditions that affect the noun that the preposition takes as its term, the main verb and the pragmatic context. In short, the problem that we will investigate in this paper is in what situations the term of the preposition por can be interpreted as the purpose. To find whether it is possible to interpret the preposition por as introducer to final complements we will make two questionnaires to try to find the elements that facilitate the final interpretation of these sequences. In Chapter 5 I explain the methodology used and why I have chosen to do questionnaires rather than look for examples in a corpus, and the results of the questionnaires are presented in Chapters 7 and 11. In Chapter 12 we analyse the results obtained adopting the model of Qualia Structure presented by Pustejovsky (1996) as a technical implementation that allows us to formalize the conditions under which the preposition por may produce final complements.