Constructions with communication verbs. Pragmatic and discursive values

Abstract

This research aims to demonstrate how certain structures that contain communication verbs, placed between pauses and with their own intonational frame, have acquired, from their conceptual meaning, pragmatic and discursive values ​​in specific contexts. The starting hypothesis is that the expressions me explico, ¿me explico? or repito have become constructions with different degrees of fixation and have developed discursive functions of reformulation (me explico, repito), interactive functions (¿me explico?), and others such as structuring of the discourse and argumentation (repito). On that basis, we explain the processes and mechanisms by which these functions have been developed and the evolution that has occurred in the case of ¿me explico?, which has meant its conversion into a contact control marker.