A macrosyntactic study of expressions introducing the source of enunciation: como…/ según…/ para…/ en palabras de…/ en opinión de…

Abstract

Traditional Grammar can hardly explain the performance of a certain kind of structure which usually appears at the edge of the sentence - between pauses - and is used to indicate the source of the information provided. We are referring to expressions introduced by según, como, para, en palabras de or en opinión de. These structures are not fixed in Spanish, they have free mobility inside the sentence, and can specialize either in presenting the main responsible of discourse or in underlining the person that pronounced those words literally. Consequently, we need a pragmatics perspective, which transcends the concept of sentence and approaches the Evidentiality Theory (Dendale y Tasmowski 2001, Akhienvald 2003, Willet 1988). Such a perspective will allow us to explain similarities and differences between these expressions, which are highly effective from an argumentative point of view. Therefore, we are going to study their syntactic behavior (functions, mobility, occurrence in subordinated clauses), their form (nouns or clauses), their communicative function, and, finally, their supra-segmental characteristics. Lastly, the objective of this paper is to systematize this type of expressions that are found beyond the borders of the sentence.