Continuative meaning and communicative distance: Notes on the use of the Spanish gerundial periphrases with seguir/continuar/proseguir

Abstract

This paper examines the differences in distribution between three Spanish verbal periphrases with continuative meaning: gerundial constructions with seguir, continuarand proseguir. Based on quantitative data extracted from two Spanish language corpora, our diachronic and synchronic analysis shows that over time the three auxiliaries have experienced changes in frequency which can be related to text genre and to the concept of communicative immediacy and distance. We argue that in Modern Spanish the whole discourse continuum of communicative immediacy and distance is covered by continuar and seguir. Contrastively, proseguir mainly survives in the prefab proseguir diciendo, which also seems to have played a significant role in the original expansion of the periphrasis. Thus, our data suggest that prefabs are not only involved in increasing the use of a grammaticalizing construction, but that they arguably also play an important role inthe preservation of a construction whose use has decreased significantly over time.