Again on the Existence of Causative Periphrases in Spanish

The Case of “enviar/mandar a + Infinitive”

Bibliographic Data

ID19487429
AuthorsCarlos I Echeverría (0000-0002-5111-5129, Texas Tech University, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume11
Issue5
Pages90
Publication date2026-05-06
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguages (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2226-471X • E-ISSN: 2226-471X
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/languages11050090
OpenAlexW7160380480
LanguageEN
References cited26

The concept of verbal periphrasis has historically been a controversial one in Romance linguistics, especially in the Hispanic context, where there has been disagreement as to what multiverbal constructions should be considered periphrastic. One of the points of contention has been the class of infinitive causatives. This article revisits the controversy by focusing on Spanish “enviar/mandar a + infinitive” structures and drawing on historical corpus data. The analysis of various examples leads to the conclusion that strictly periphrastic instances of this constructional class are present across all main stages of the history of Spanish. Additionally, a series of quantitative analyses reveals what appear to be two distinct grammaticalization processes and a degrammaticalization process. These findings are discussed in connection with broader themes in the field, such as syntactic ambiguity and the concept of analyzability

Ambiguity · Causative · Class (philosophy) · Germanic languages · Grammaticalization · Historical linguistics · Infinitive · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Spanish Linguistics and Language Studies · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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