The Interplay of Synonymy and Polysemy

4.1 Initiator 
The first participant in a typical throwing event is an 
INITIATOR
. It is an entity that is 
conceived of as the causer of the action. The variable chosen to explore this position was 
animacy
: whether the 
INITIATOR
is an animate or an inanimate entity. Previous corpus studies 
have used animacy as a variable for elements in subject position (Divjak & Gries 2008, 
Gilquin 2010, Glynn 2009, Newman & Rice 2004). Theoretical works have also proposed 
that verbs can have requirements on the animacy of their subjects (Rozados Vila 1998, 
Lamiroy 1991, Cruse 1973). In the annotation process, all humans and animals were marked 
as animates; all other entities (companies, body parts, natural forces, etc.) were inanimate.
Two issues had to be resolved during the annotation process. First, Spanish is a so-
called pro-drop language. Most of the time, no overt noun or pronoun appears as the subject 
in a sentence. 

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49 | 
(CdE:19-F, Memoria sin tiempo) 
(2) 
Tiró los despojos en el cantero de flores 
threw.3
rd
.sg the wastes in the bed of flowers 
‘S/he threw the waste in the flowerbed.’ 
In (2), there is no separate noun or pronoun to indicate the individual doing the 
throwing. Even so, the referent can be picked out because verbal morphology always 
indicates the person and number of the subject. Additionally, the referent is usually 
mentioned in the surrounding discourse.
The appearance or not of a subject is usually attributed to discourse pragmatics 
(NGRAE: §33.5). Since the presence or absence of an overt subject was likely not related to 
the choice of verb, presence or absence of an overt form was not studied. Instead all 
sentences were annotated for the animacy of the 
INITIATOR
, whether mentioned in the 
sentence or not. In two instances, once each with 
lanzar 
and 
tirar
, it was not possible to 
determine the exact nature of the 
INITIATOR
; in these cases, this slot was marked as unknown. 
A second difficulty arose with certain sentences involving a clitic. An example is 
shown below: 
(3) 
Nada
se 
tira. 
(CdE:19-F, Demasiada historia) 
Nothing CL.3
rd
throw.3
rd
.sg 
‘Nothing is thrown (out)’ 
These constructions are usually called 
pasivas reflejas
‘reflexive passives’ (Gómez 
Torrego 1998:28). The closest English translation is a passive form. These are sentences 
which occur with a 
se
-form clitic, where the referent is meant to be indeterminate. The 
grammatical subject, marked by verbal agreement, is actually what would normally be the 
MOVANT
; in (3) the subject is 
nada
‘nothing’. These sentences, though meant to be 
indeterminate in reference, are always understood as being performed by a human. Therefore, 
they can be classified as animates, and were marked as such in the study.
The counts from the corpus are 
shown in table 1. The results are 
significant; with a X-squared of 43.92 and 
a df of 3, the p-value is 1.567E-09. The 
test on effect size (Cramer’s V = 
0.3322048) shows a medium effect size 
(King & Minium 2008:327-329). The variation is significant and can be seen as reflecting 
actual differences among the verbs. 
Table 1
. Animacy of the I
NITIATOR
Animate 
Inanimate 
GOF p-
value 
arrojar 
71 ↓ 
29 ↑ 
9.99E-08 
echar 
95 ↑ 
5 ↓ 
0.03486 
lanzar 
87
12
tirar 
98 ↑ 
1 ↓ 
0.00087 

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50 | 
There is a relation 
between the choice of verb 
and the animacy of the 
INITIATOR
. 
Lanzar 
occurs 
mostly 
with 
animate 
INITIATORS
, though it has at 
least 
10% 
inanimate 
INITIATORS
. Both 
echar 
and 
tirar
reject 
inanimate 
INITIATORS
, having less than 5 
occurrences 
each. 
Arrojar
contrasts with the others by 
having a much higher number of inanimate 
INITIATORS
, almost 30%. This can be visualized 
in graph 1. 
Rozados Vila (1998:283) states that motion verbs generally have animate 
INITIATORS
.
The corpus data confirms this: animate 
INITIATORS
are by far the most common for all verbs. 
This is especially important considering that animacy applies to the different senses that the 
verbs express. In other words, even when the 
throw
-verbs express different notions, other 
than prototypical throwing, the 
INITIATOR
is still preferably animate. This feature of the 
INITIATOR
is maintained across most uses of each verb. 
The types of inanimate 
INITIATORS
appearing with 
arrojar 
and 
lanzar, 
and to a lesser 
extent with 
echar
,
 
are similar. One common 
INITIATOR
is a body part. This is understood 
through metonymy: the body part represents the whole being. The body part mentioned is 
usually the one directly related to the action. The body part is an 
INITIATOR 
since it is capable 
of exerting motion: it receives that power from the being.
(4) 
…
su puño
ARROJÓ