Two types of admiring construction. Approach to the ways of codifying surprise from the grammaticalization perspective

Abstract

Mirativity has been defined as the semantic category dealing with the surprise provoked in the speaker by the information a proposition conveys (DeLancey 1997, 2001). In other work (Soto y Hasler 2013) mirativity has been characterized as a subjective category constituted by two eventualities: the narrated eventuality and the surprise provoked by this eventuality. In the present work, we propose that there are two primary ways in which mirativity is codified: the Ser way, that expresses lexically the unexpected acquisition of some information using a verb of perception or cognition, and the Er way, that expresses lexically the narrated eventuality and marks grammatically the surprise it provokes in the speaker or the listener. There is a grammatical admirative category only in the latter case.