The Spanish discourse marker "dale" from from a monosemic perspective

Abstract

The unit dale, second person singular imperative form of the verb dar followed by the enclitic pronoun le, reveals various expressive nuances depending on the context. One of its referential capacities is typical of Argentinian and Urugayan Spanish, where it is used as a conversational discourse marker when accepting a proposal. Most of the studies concerning discourse markers indicate that these pragmatic units derive from full lexical forms having undergone morphosyntactic rigidification and some kind of semantic bleaching as a result of a process of grammaticalisation. Contrary to this opinion, we argue that the elements that constitute the discourse marker dale preserve their lexical content and morphosyntactic flexibility. We propose a semasiological analysis of the form dale from a monosemic perspective, according to which the unit allows the speaker to realize a speech act by means of the unique and invariable meaning of its constituents.