Abstract

MOJICA CONTRERAS, Magdalena Isabel  and  GALLEGOS SHIBYA, Alfonso. Morphopragmatics of the Augmentative in Spanish: The Case of Mexico. Anu. let. lingüíst. filol. [online]. 2023, vol.11, n.2, pp.63-90.  Epub Oct 23, 2023. ISSN 2448-8224.  https://doi.org/10.19130/iifl.adel.2023.11.2/00x27os133.

This paper analyzes the morphopragmatic component of the most frequent aug­mentative suffixes in Mexican Spanish (-ón/a, -azo/a, and -ote/a), under the hypothesis that they are polyfunctional exponents that show a specific pragmatic distribution. Our corpus uses data from the PRESEEA (Mexico City, Guadalajara, Mexicali, and Monterrey) and the Corpus Michoacano del Español. Based on the analysis of these data, we establish the following generalizations: (i) these suffixes may express semantic, evaluative-referential, or pragmatic information; (ii) there are transitions between these types of information, which can be explained in terms of metonymic processes; (iii) the augmentative suffix contributes evaluative senses (positive or negative), based in large part on the context and the lexical-semantic characteristics of its base; and (iv) these pragmatic senses can be grouped into four categories: positive intensification, negative intensification, attenuation, and irony. We conclude that the augmentative morphemes are polysemic and polypragmatic, and that they are used in informal contexts where there is little forethought. We also conclude that although in principle all of the augmentative suffixes can perform any of the pragmatic functions, there are important differences in the distribution of these functions across the exponents, and the suffix -ón/a is the only one used for attenuation.

Keywords : augmentative morphemes; morphopragmatics; semantic-pragmatic continuum; meaning and sense; Mexican Spanish.

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