The Interplay of Synonymy and Polysemy

hacia atrás
… 
I.threw the head towards back 
‘I 
MOVED
my head 
back
’
In §4.2.2, I mentioned that in many cases 
echar
’s meaning was closer to an action of 
moving one’s body, and not necessarily throwing or thrusting as implied by the other 
throw
-
verbs. This is seen in (106). The 
INITIATOR
is leaning her/his head back.
The last attracted noun is 
tierra
‘soil’. There is a fixed phrase (§4.2.2) built by this 
verb and noun combination that means ‘to hide or to try to erase the memory of 
something/one’ (DDFH). If we cover something up with dirt, it is covered, and that which is 
covered is forgotten. This combination of 
echar 
and 
tierra
is also used literally to describe 
throwing dirt over an object.
(CdE:19-F, El camino) 
(107) …bajaron la caja a la tumba y 
ECHARON
mucha tierra 
encima
. 
‘They lowered the box into the tomb and 
PUT
a lot of dirt 
on top
’ 
Again, this example seems to illustrate a general tendency for 
echar 
to express less 
forceful motion. It can also be seen as a case of collocational preferences: when expressing 
the caused motion of dirt or soil, 
echar 
is the preferred verb. Collocational preferences are 
discussed further in §4.3.4. Most of the attracted nouns for 
echar 
in this collostructional 
analysis represent schemas that were already highlighted in the 400-sentece corpus. Still, 
some further uses (such as the various phrases with 
mano 
‘hand’) are also brought to light.
The collostructional results for 
lanzar
, shown in table 8, also converge with the 
analysis derived from the 400-sentence corpus. All the attracted nouns form LVCs with the 
verb. The nouns 
ofensiva 
‘offensive’ (8A) and 
ataque 
‘attack’ (8D) belong to the violence

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subschema. They refer to the initiation of violent 
actions, the launching of an offensive or an 
attack. 
Grito 
‘scream’ (8B) instantiates the 
SOUNDS 
schema: throwing a scream. Both 
carcajada 
‘laugh’
 
and 
mirada 
‘look’ fall into our 
FACIAL
EXPRESSIONS
grouping. Finally 
campaña
‘campaign’ exemplifies the 
POLITICS
schema, 
though in some cases it also refers to attacks and 
is then part of the violence schema. The attracted nouns instantiate the schemas that were 
already apparent from the 400-sentence corpus (§4.2.4). 
Finally, 
tirar
shows no significant attraction 
to any nouns other than those representing the 
THROWING 
schema. We have already seen that the 
verb can in fact express different meanings. There 
are two possible reasons for this lack of results in the 
collostructional analysis. First of all is the fact that some of the meanings associated with 
tirar 
have no limitation on the types of 
MOVANTS
. For example, the 
PULL
schema, like the 
THROWING 
schema, can include a wide variety of 
MOVANTS
; which we could classify as 
anything that can be pulled. A second reason is that some additional meanings are not 
common enough in the corpus to give significant results. For example the combination of the 
verb 
tirar 
with nouns referring to hits was attested in the 400-sentence corpus. But in the 
entire CdE corpus, there are only two instances of 
manotazo 
‘slap’ and one instance of 
golpe
‘hit’ with 
tirar
. So the combination is possible, but infrequent in the corpus.