MOTT, BRIAN (UB): Postmodifying prepositional phrases in English and Spanish (with special reference to locative modifiers)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1344/transfer.2013.8.153-160Keywords:
Prepositional Phrases, Spanish-English TranslationAbstract
Prepositional phrases are the commonest kind of postmodification in all registers of English (Biber et al. 1999: 634). The locative ones that can be expanded into a defining relative clause (the books [which are] on the table) are usually expressed by such a construction in Spanish (los libros que están encima de la mesa) or by a phrase introduced by de (los libros de encima de la mesa). Wonder (1979) argues that Spanish allows locative phrases with prepositions other than de in the case of “situaciones ‘activas’” (el aterrizaje en pleno campo) as against “situaciones estáticas” (*el sofá en la sala), and if the phrase can be given an adverbial rather than, or in addition to, an adjectival interpretation (el ruido en la calle), especially if that phrase implies an alternative location for an object or contrast with another similar object (el sofá en la sala contigua). This paper further investigates this claim and looks at Spanish equivalents of English postmodifying prepositional phrases in general, while proposing an explanation for the choice of these different structures in Spanish based on considerations of lexical density.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 transfer
![Creative Commons License](http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/4.0/88x31.png)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Transfer. Revista electrónica sobre Traducción e Interculturalidad/
e-Journal on Translation and Intercultural Studies by CRET is licensed under a Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-SinObraDerivada 3.0 Unported License.
Created from www.ub.edu/lettere/transfer
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.ub.edu.