Logos

CONSTRUCTIONcon.spa.estar-gerundio

perífrasis progresiva con estar

A two part predicate stating that an event is in progress at the point the tense locates, viewed from inside rather than as a whole.

The construction is the most frequent member of the gerund family and the one closest to a pure aspectual marker, since the auxiliary contributes nothing of its locative meaning. It states that the event is under way at whatever point the tense of the auxiliary locates, which makes it available in every tense rather than only in the present. Its use is narrower than the corresponding English pattern in two ways worth stating. It does not express a scheduled future event, that work belonging to the prospective periphrasis and to the simple present. And it is unavailable with verbs of stative meaning, where the simple form is used instead, unless the state is being presented as temporary and unexpected, which is itself an aspectual claim.

statusstatus
documentedasserted, and the sources agree
provenanceprovenance
authoredwritten for Logos, from first principles
derivation statusderivation_status
unstatednobody has said whether it follows from anything
saliencesalience
No salience. Where no frequency source applies the object carries none, rather than a default or a guess (03-schema.md §3.5).
aliasesaliases
  • metalanguageprogressive with estar
sourcessources
  • SOURCENueva gramática de la lengua española (2009)src.nueva-gramaticano page in v1
  • SOURCEA New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish (Butt and Benjamin)src.butt-benjaminno page in v1

Why this is a construction at all

construction.admission

Goldberg's admission test: a template earns storage either by being unpredictable or by being frequent.

admissionadmission
frequentit is stored because it recurs often enough to be learned whole

The slots

construction.slots

At least two, by the schema: fewer is not a multi-element template. Every filler is a link, never a name in prose.

  1. 0el auxiliar estar, finitolexically specified: only the fillers below may occupy it

    fillerslots[].filler
    functionslots[].fn
    No function is assigned to this slot.

  2. 1el gerundio, invariablelexically specified: only the fillers below may occupy it

    fillerslots[].filler
    functionslots[].fn
    FUNCTIONnúcleofun.spa.nucleo

Slot template

2 slots: 2 constrained, 0 positional, 1 naming a grammatical function.

  1. el auxiliar estar, finito
    constrained
    • verbo auxiliarclass
  2. el gerundio, invariable
    constrained
    • verboclass

    names núcleo

Confusable with

construction.confusable

Objects a reader is likely to mix up with this one, and the difference that separates them. The edge is symmetric and stored once, so this renders on both objects' pages from the one statement.

Everything joined to this object

One group per typed edge, in both directions. A1b guarantees no object node is an orphan, so this is the whole navigation: an object with no edges would have failed the build rather than reached this page.

What this object is a kind of

Walking this object's own `is-a` edges: what it is a kind of. Several branches from one object are several classification axes, not competing supertypes.

objects
2
places drawn
2
multi-parent
None in this view. This subgraph happens to be a tree, which the explorer draws as one without assuming it is one.

dimensions in viewauxiliary

Siblings are listed by name, then by id to break ties. That is a display choice made here and not an order the graph asserts.

Fan-out per dimension

A4

One row per dimension, largest first. That is a display order, not a verdict: 03-schema.md declares no threshold above which fan-out is too much, so this reports the count and grades nothing.

  • case13 values
  • mood8 values
  • voice8 values
  • aspect7 values
  • aktionsart6 values
  • number6 values
  • person6 values
  • tense6 values
  • comparison4 values
  • evidentiality4 values
  • gender4 values
  • politeness4 values
  • valency4 values
  • animacy3 values
  • definiteness3 values
  • deixis3 values
  • finiteness2 values
  • information structure2 values
  • interrogativity2 values
  • polarity2 values
  • switch-reference2 values

What kinds of this object there are

Walking the `is-a` edges that point at this object: what kinds of it there are. An object reachable two ways is drawn in both places and is still one object.

objects
1
places drawn
1
multi-parent
None in this view. This subgraph happens to be a tree, which the explorer draws as one without assuming it is one.

dimensions in viewauxiliary

Siblings are listed by name, then by id to break ties. That is a display choice made here and not an order the graph asserts.

is-a

edges.is-a

subsumption

this object is a

has-a

edges.has-a

the parent carries this

this object carries

selects

edges.selects

the parent requires this elsewhere

this object requires, elsewhere

  • CATEGORYdurativecat.durativedocumented
    • conditionThe construction needs an event that lasts, so a verb naming an instantaneous change is either refused or forced into a repeated reading.

via

edges.via

this realizer, this way

this object realizes

derives

edges.derives

the why-chain

derived by