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ECHO EN CARA
la falta de curiosidad
(CdE:19-F, El lado de la sombra)
‘I
REPROACH
him his lack of curiosity.’
(187) …se
ECHÓ
agua
por la cara
y el pelo.
(CdE:19-F, Rayuela)
‘S/he
SPLASHED
water
on her/his face
and hair’
(CdE:19-F, Del agua nacieron los sedie...)
(188) …le
ECHÉ
el humo
a la cara
…
‘I
THREW
the smoke
in her/his face
’
(CdE:19-F, La catedral sumergida)
(189) …le
ECHABA
en la
cara
el mal aliento de cerveza rancia…
‘S/he
THREW
in his face
the stench of rancid beer’
Leaving aside the semantics for now, an abstract schema (the highest schema in figure
18) can capture the general preference for using
echar
with
cara
. Again, the schema leaves
the preposition open: any preposition can be used. I am glossing over the issue of the
determiner. Where
echar en cara
does not use a determiner, in all other cases, a determiner is
present. A full schema would capture this.
Figure 18
. Higher level schema capturing the attraction between
echar
and
cara ‘face’
in
both literal and figurative uses.
It is possible to use schemas to capture collocational restrictions and to describe fixed
phrases. Since both types of elements are schemas, they can interact and be connected within
the lexicon. It is likely not accidental that
echar
shows a high level of attraction to
cara
‘face’
I
NITIATOR
tirar
M
OVANT
[Prep]
cama
echar
en cara
echar
por la cara
echar
[Prep]
cara
echar
a la cara
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in both fixed phrases and in “free” phrases. If a speaker knows that
echar
combines with
cara
already in
echar en cara
‘to reproach’, this would likely motivate the use of
echar
with
cara
in other types of phrases.
Proposing the use of schemas to capture frequent combinations and routines may
seem to imply an extensive use of schemas throughout language. Schemas are in fact
pervasive. But this does not mean that there must be a fully specified schema for every
sentence or every combination that is produced. In other words, just because I can use
al
suelo
‘to the ground’
with
arrojar, lanzar
and
tirar
does not mean that there is a schema for
each combination. I propose a schema for
tirar al suelo
, because the combination is much
more frequent than would seem likely if it is the result of free combination. If the
combination of
tirar
and
al suelo
were left up to regular productive syntactic rules, it should
occur just as frequently as
arrojar al suelo
and
lanzar al suelo.
I follow Dąbrowska’s (2009:10-12) explanation for learning collocational patterns.
She suggests that speakers produce lexical representations (schemas) of typical collocational
patterns. Schemas that are only used once or twice tend to be forgotten. But schemas that are
striking for some reason or another, or schemas that are frequent tend to stick in memory.
These frequent and striking schemas will be the ones that persist.
Let’s take a concrete example: as I am writing this thesis I am using the phrases
lanzar al suelo
and
arrojar al suelo
with some frequency. Since the phrases are pertinent to
my task at hand and they are being repeated often, I will have schemas for each as part of my
memory. But once this thesis is finished, I will likely not use those combinations with
frequency. The schemas will become less and less salient and they will be forgotten. But a
schema for
lanzar al aire
, for example, will persist even past this period of time because it
will be repeated not only by me but also by those in my language community. Since this
schema will be used frequently in many different contexts (not only in the writing of a thesis)
it will remain salient, and therefore will be maintained in my mental lexicon.
This means that the schemas that are available in the mental lexicon can vary through
time, from context to context and even from speaker to speaker. It is possible for one speaker
to have a collocational preference that another speaker does not have. The linguistic
community is unified to the extent that the most frequent and salient schemas are shared by
all speakers. Dialectal variations can be seen as differences in the schemas that are present in
a given group’s mental lexicon.
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