Mira que te lo tengo dicho (Spanish Edition)

Grammar/Translation - "Mira que te lo tengo dicho"

---

On the other hand, in frequent situations like those represented by 4 - 9 , the relevant overall effect is that of a 'strong reproachful reminder in support of a current directive'. As I will argue in the following section, a coerced reinterpretation of the construction as the expression of an anterior rather than a resultative meaning is blocked by the relevant effect just described.

At the limits of the resultative construction In the preceding section, it was pointed out that the act of reproach expressed by tengo dicho can be reinforced by additional linguistic material. In 4 , this is done by an independent proposition 'I will not repeat this any more'. A simpler form of reinforcement is iteration. Iteration, in turn, can take two different forms see Harre In reinforcement by predicate coordination, the speaker construes the cumulative results of at least two or more separate consecutive chains of speech acts.

CREA Technically, however, the simplest way of reinforcing the reproach expressed by tengo dicho is iteration by quantification as in the following examples. CREA 13 Te lo tengo dicho veces.

Grammar/Translation - "Mira que te lo tengo dicho" | SpanishDict Answers

CREA However simple examples like 12 - 14 may be from a grammatical point of view — their semantics is considerably complicated by the insertion of the iterative adverbial. In 12 - 14 , tengo dicho still expresses the incremental result of an iterated activity see Fig.

Lo tengo dicho muchas veces 'I have told this many times' Mapping a quantified, non-transitional past activity onto a current result should lead to coercion by putting the focus on the quantified activity rather than on the abstract result see above section 1. This interpretation should even be further facilitated in cases where iterative quantifiers like muchas veces 'many times' are added to the construction. Therefore, in cases like 12 - 14 , its relevance is exactly the same as in 4.

Thus, it seems that the coerced reinterpretation of the resultative as an anterior is not automatically triggered by the constellation of resultative construction and non- transitio al e ; o is it t igge ed the ite ati e ad e ial. Note that in 12 - 14 , we are maximally close to an interpretation of the construction as an anterior.

That it still is a resultative, however, can be understood from the fact that speakers who judge 12 - 14 as grammatical do not accept Harre who has conducted a survey among native speakers formulates the latters' intuitions as follows: The fact that they can lend it again automatically cancels the resultant state caused by lending it the first time" Harre By contrast, the reason for the grammaticality of 12 - 14 is, of course, the non-transitional aktionsart of decir 'to say'.

An incremental-result reading is equally possible in the case of tengo visto muchas veces 'I know from having seen many times'. This construction is normally used in situations where it supports the relevant usage effect of 'safe current knowledge' 16 Lo tengo visto muchas veces. The only exceptions to this rule are adjective-like verb forms such as participles muy decepcionado 'very disappointed'.

Resultant states can but need not be property predications, and can therefore be modified by muy, e. By contrast, event predications with the same lexical items, e. Therefore, combinations like lo tengo muy visto and lo tengo muy dicho are arguments in favour of the view that the respective constructions are resultatives rather than anteriors.

Based on the preceding section, it should be clear that cases like 12 - 14 mark the very border between resultative and anterior meaning. Resultative B constructions with non-transitional verbs are a possible bridging context for the change in question. Despite the semantic mismatches produced by them, these cases nevertheless exist because of their argumentative usefulness, especially in contexts like 4 - 14 , as pointed out above.

Class Item n dicho 'said' 6 contado 'told' 2 ffablado 'spoken' 1 1. Speech Act mandado 'ordered' 1 consejado 'advised' 1 departido 'debated' 1 visto 'seen' 2 2. Other rroto 'broken' 1 Table 1a. First occurrences of the PC quantified by 'many times' 13th c. Given all of the above, we cannot be sure, for most of the cases indicated in Table 1a, whether we are really still dealing with incremental-result readings, or whether the construction already has an anterior meaning.

Note, however, that in the 6 occurrences of he dicho muchas vezes 'I have said many times' in Table 1a, the construction does not function as a reproachful reminder of a past directive speech act, but is used to introduce assertions 'I have informed you many times'.

Finally, the isolated case of lo he rroto muchas veces 'I have broken it many times' — where an incremental result reading is excluded — proves that a change has taken place. As demonstrated in the previous sections, speakers have clear intuitions regarding the boundary separating resultatives from anteriors.

This, in turn, means that, from a diachronic viewpoint, this border can be expected to be relatively stable. Thus, examples like 12 - 14 cannot be taken as evidence for an ongoing change from resultant state to anterior — despite the extremely close metonymic relationship that holds between both readings in such a case. In fact, this change may never happen. In the following section, an explanation will be given as to why this is so.

Why change does not happen: As operations of re-interpretation, reanalyses are usually brought about by hearers. All reanalyses are ultimately based on one or both of two pragmatically motivated cognitive principles. The first and more important of these, the "principle of relevant usage effect" is given in Hearers who unknowingly carry out reanalyses turn this principle around by applying it as an abductive rule 17': A simple case in point for rule 17' , based on the Principle of Relevant Usage Effect 17 , is the rise of the verb-final interrogative particle -ti in dialectal French La dame, vient-ti?

This item was brought about by a reanalysis of the masculine weak pronoun il clustered together with the liaison-consonant -t-. Importantly, as a pronoun, -t -i l already indicates a yes-no-question when used in the inversion construction vient-il? However, when preceded by a full subject-NP, it agrees with the latter in number and gender Pierre, vient-il?

One of his primary concerns has been the task of reporting, reflecting on the topic in many works

This is what qualifies il and its feminine variant elle as pronouns. Nevertheless, even before the change, the relevant usage effect of inverted il is already to indicate the interrogative function of the sentence. But crucially, before the reanalysis, 'interrogative function' is not its meaning, but rather simply a frequently recurring relevant usage effect, given that il as well as its feminine variant elle are still anaphoric pronouns.

The outcome of the reanalysis, however, is not only that pronominal il turns into the invariable particle -ti. More important is that indicating the interrogative function has now become the meaning of this new element. Thus, what was once a mere usage effect before the change has now turned into a new entrenched meaning.

As a consequence, the computational effort necessary for deriving the relevant usage effect from the construction or the elements thereof has been lessened. In other words, the meaning of the interrogative particle -ti is a more direct instantiation of the relevant usage effect — interrogative function — than are the inverted pronouns il and elle. These examples therefore represent a recurring situation type where the relevant usage effect of tengo dicho is to reinforce a currently uttered directive.

From a purely semantic point of view, a coerced re-interpretation as an iterative anterior would be the most natural one, especially in those cases where tengo dicho is reinforced by an iterative adverbial. But such an interpretation would be a step away from the observed relevant usage effect 'strong reproachful reminder in support of a current directive'. Therefore, a change from resultative to anterior is extremely unlikely in such a situation. In contrast, a reanalysis via coercion will be more likely in situations where the speech act supported by tengo dicho requires less illocutionary force, thereby making the construction's current-result meaning appear less relevant.

Thus, the Principle of Relevant Usage Effect not only explains how and why reanalyses take place, but also, it can be used to make predictions concerning the unlikeliness of a change. Nonetheless, in many of its uses, it still exhibits features characteristic of a stage 2 perfect, namely, persistence and iteration. In principle, an anterior construction denoting the iterated repetition of a past speech-act with the perfecto compuesto — e.

As follows from a comparison of Figs.

EL PAÍS' Juan Cruz wins National Cultural Journalism prize

By the same token, however, Fig. In principle, however, this does not preclude "strong" uses as those discussed for tener dicho in the preceding sections. As we will see, such uses do exist, but they are far less frequent for he dicho than for tengo dicho. Given the still close temporal contiguity between the chain of iterated past events and the moment of speech see Fig. However, given that he dicho is less anchored in the moment of speech, it is more often used in cases where this pressure is weaker.

Te lo he dicho muchas veces 'I have told you many times' In 18 te lo he dicho muchas veces is used as part of the argumentative pattern already familiar to us from section 4. But such cases are not typical of he dicho, and compared to other usages, they are relatively rare. Sometimes, the directive introduced by he dicho is extremely polite see CREA In other cases, the dominant speech act is simply an assertion — i. This not is so, Juan, and you. CREA 23 Te lo he dicho muchas veces.

Madrid is more than 'I have told you many times.

Madrid is more than cien veces mayor que este pueblo. I don't want adventures. No me compensan, no merecen la pena. They don't pay off, they're not worth it. CREA By the same token, he dicho itself may express something different from a reproach; this is often the case when it is not specified by an iterative adverbial; thus in 25 he dicho introduces a reinforcing single repetition of an immediately preceding directive.

CREA In the vast majority of cases he dicho simply functions as neutral reminder of a punctual or repeated past speech act and represents it as being currently still valid; put more simply, it is a mere marker of reported speech. The debt as have. CREA The comparison of tengo dicho and he dicho shows that the latter is much more frequent, which is, of course, a symptom of its higher degree of grammaticalization.

Therefore, he dicho also occurs more frequently in the argumentative pattern described in section 4, at least in absolute figures. However, Table 2 also shows that only a small percentage of the total number of uses of he dicho occurs in such contexts, while tengo dicho is almost specialized in this pattern. These differences between both constructions are an indication that the illocutionary force of tengo dicho — i.

It also follows from Table 2 that tengo dicho is much more regularly used in situations where there is a strong need for its illocutionary force. Tengo dicho and he dicho as expressions of a reproachful reminder of a directive speech act From among the 40 instances of tengo dicho expressing a reproachful reminder of a past directive, only 3 i. This finding confirms the impression that he dicho, i.

Tengo dicho and he dicho as expressions of a reproachful reminder with and without iterative adverbials 8. Contexts of reanalysis What are possible context for a reanalysis of tengo dicho as an anterior? From what has been shown so far, it has become plausible that the change is most likely to occur in situations other than those of a reproachful reminder of a directive speech act. In many cases in my data, tengo dicho is used to introduce "strong" assertions. Cases in point are 27 , 28 and 29 , where the assertions introduced by tengo dicho all have a somewhat challenging undertone.

However, in none of these examples, the speaker explicitly addresses her hearer, e. Therefore, we may conclude that the illocutionary pressure exerted on the addressee is considerably less strong in cases like 27 , 28 and 29 than in the discourse pattern discussed in section 4. In the case of tengo dicho, this could mean that the construction be used in situations where its strong illocutionary force is not really necessary, but where its effect is nonetheless welcome.

As an unintentional by-product of repeated "overuse", the construction would gradually loose in pragmatic strength; more specifically, in those contexts its illocutionary strength will not be necessary for identifying the relevant usage effect. In light of what has been said in section 6, this means that in such a case, a major obstacle to a coercive reanalysis would be removed, and consequently, the original incremental-result interpretation would eventually be replaced by an iterative anterior one.

OBJ envy and wished. OBJ evil envied him and wished him evil como lo avemos ya muchas vezes dicho as it. Conclusion In this article, I have argued that mismatches between the meaning of a given construction and that of its lexical fillers are motivated by usage. Speakers willingly accept such mismatches if these help to create useful argumentative effects. When combined with non- transitional decir 'to say, to tell', the resultative denotes the currently still valid incremental result of a past speech act, thereby emphasizing the latter's strong impact on the present situation, and especially on the addressee.

In other cases, e. In these cases, coercion, i. As I have shown, tengo dicho 'I have said' is frequently used in situations where it functions as a strong reproachful reminder of a past directive, typically an interdiction. As long as this usage pattern is the most frequent single situation type in which tengo dicho is used, no change will take place.

Indirect evidence for this claim is provided by a comparison with he dicho, the grammaticalized anterior expressing, among other things, persistence and iteration. Among the uses of this construction, strong reproachful reminders of past directives, although possible, are but an extremely small fraction. We may therefore hypothesize that the reanalysis from resultative to anterior, based on a coercive reinterpretation, is brought about through contexts in which the strong illocutionary force of the resultative is less needed and therefore does not contribute to a relevant interpretation of the construction.

References Asher, Nicholas Lexical Meaning in Context. A web of words. An account based on pragmatics and metaphor", in: Oxford University Press, Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure. A semantic-pragmatic account of functional change in grammar", in: Studies in Language Eine kognitiv-pragmatische Theorie, dargestellt am Beispiel romanischer und anderer Sprachen. Change in Verbal Systems. Frankfurt am Main etc.: Detges, Ulrich in print: From Words to Discourse. Trends in Spanish semantics and pragmatics. A case study in linguistic description.

Studies in the Romance verb. Essays offered to Joe Cremona on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Romanistisches Jahrbuch 46, Cognitive Approaches to Lexical Semantics. Mouton de Gruyter, Typology of Resultative Constructions. Rivista di Linguistica Semantics and the Lexicon. The Syntax of Word Meaning. Grammatica Storica della Lingua Italiana e dei suoi Dialetti. III, Sintassi e formazione delle parole. I have told you with repetion and emphasis. Te tengo dicho que no pises el cesped. I have told you over and over again that you should not We only give brillant answers on this forum, jejeje.

Quentin, your questions are always correct, but not necessarily to the right question. Log in Sign up. SpanishDict is the world's most popular Spanish-English dictionary, translation, and learning website. SpanishDict is devoted to improving our site based on user feedback and introducing new and innovative features that will continue to help people learn and love the Spanish language. Have a suggestion, idea, or comment? Send us your feedback.

• Pathways: A Guidebook for Dementia & Alzheimers Family Caregivers
• My Odyssey
• Ridiculously Stupid Stories
• La biodiversità (Farsi unidea) (Italian Edition)
• Financial Crisis Survival
• Smoothies for Runners: 32 Proven Smoothie Recipes to Take Your Running Performance to the Next Level, Decrease Your Recovery Time and Allow You to Run Injury-free (Eat to Run Book 1)