'Liking' constructions in Spanish: The role of frequency and stimulus category in constructional change

This study examines the diachronic change in argument structure in Spanish psych-verbs of ‘liking’, with emphasis on the change from nominative-experiencer gustar ‘to like’ to dative-experiencer gustar. While previous studies have looked at factors pertaining to frequency and semantics, this change must also be studied taking into account certain syntactic factors, and especially the evolution of prepositional finite clauses introduced by functional prepositions. Results suggest that the subcategorization properties of the preposition are grammatically relevant in determining the linguistic encoding of the arguments of Spanish ‘liking’ constructions. This study offers an extensive corpus study of ‘liking’ verbs, spanning the 13th to the 17th centuries, and adopts a constructionist usage-based view of syntactic productivity.