The Interplay of Synonymy and Polysemy

from the roof
), path of motion (
through the window
) and the 
destination (
to the floor
). It can also refer to a recipient (
at John
). The 
DIRECTIONAL
is usually 
expressed by a prepositional phrase or an adverbial and, especially in cases with a human 
recipient, as a pre-verbal clitic. The 
DIRECTIONAL 
also encompasses elements that are tied 
metaphorically to the concept of trajectory. Take the following: 

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(1) 
…el grupo se lanzó al ataque 
(CdE:19-F, “El domingo fusilan a Januar...”) 
the group CL.3rd threw.3rd to.the attack
‘The group went on the attack’ 
(2) 
…echó su caballo a correr 
(CdE:19-F, “Cuentos de muerte y de sang...”) 
threw his horse to run 
‘S/he made her/his horse run’ 
I will argue that (1) can be understood as moving to a place of attack. A continuum 
exists from the meaning of moving to a place, moving to an activity, and beginning an 
activity. This last meaning is salient in (2). Even though most 
DIRECTIONALS
provide a 
semantic function, it is possible to view these phrases with grammatical function as 
extensions of meaning and usage. This is in line with Brugman (2001:552) who states that it 
is best to view grammatical function as continuous to semantic function, rather than opposed 
to it. The examples are given here to show that phrases such as 
al ataque
‘to the attack’ and 
a 
correr 
‘to run’ are included in 
DIRECTIONALS
.
See §4.3.5 for a full analysis of these cases.
Though there are differences in the terminology and possibly the definition of each 
argument, several previous researchers have posited these same three participants as core 
arguments of (caused) motion verbs in general (Subirats 2004, Morante et al. 1998, Morimoto 
2001) and of verbs that mean ‘to throw’ in particular (Levin 2008, ADESSE, Spanish 
FrameNet).
The three roles can be seen quite clearly in the following sentence.
INITIATOR
VERB
MOVANT
DIRECTIONAL
(3) Bert
arroja
piedras
a su barquito 
(CdE:19-F, Adam Birner) 
‘Bert
throws
stones
at his little boat’ 
Bert is the thrower, the source of energy and the 
INITIATOR
. The noun 
piedras 
‘stones’ 
represents the element that moves; it is the 
MOVANT
. Finally, the phrase 
a su barquito 
‘at his 
little boat’ describes the trajectory of the stones. This last element is the 
DIRECTIONAL
.
It will become clear that the terms 
INITIATOR
,
MOVANT 
and 
DIRECTIONAL
are meant to 
be abstract, and cover a somewhat wide range of semantic participants. Conflating various 
senses of a verb into a single category for the purpose of annotation does not mean that I 
consider the meanings to be the same. It is a method for exploring how differences in verb 
meaning correspond to differences (or not) in the types of arguments expressed.
I begin by describing the 400-sentence corpus study (§3.1). I describe how the data 
was collected and annotated and the statistical tools used to explore the results (§3.1.1). Next, 
I describe a collostructional analysis (§3.2). It is a method for measuring the attraction of 

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each verb to frequently occurring nouns. I explain the theoretical background for this study 
and the statistical tools that are employed. Finally, I will detail the execution of a 
questionnaire in Juticalpa, Honduras (§3.3). Within this section I specify how the 
questionnaire was constructed (§3.3.1) and a general overview of the respondents (§3.3.2). I 
end by noting the statistical tests used in this final study (§3.3.3).