«Hablaba muy rápido pero armoniosamente». On the usage of adverbialized adjectives in the mixed attributive system in contemporary Spanish

Abstract

The article revolves around the usage of adverbialized adjectives in the mixed attributive system in peninsular Spanish and American Spanish. Having discussed the terminological confusion and chosen classificatory problems related to adverbialized adjectives, it focuses on the analysis of the semantic and syntactic characteristics of the use of six adjectives in adverbial function (alto, bajo, claro, duro, lento, and rápido) in copulative, disjunctive and adversarial structures based on the data extracted from the CREA and CORPES XXI corpora. The results of the research indicate that the mixed attributive system, which is manifested in the corpora almost exclusively in copulative struc- tures with the nexus y, is documented more frequently in American Spanish, compliant with the monocategorical attributive system described by Hummel (2013).