In this paper we deal with an area of possession in Spanish, that of the prenominal possessive adjective, one of the most frequently used resources to express possession in Spanish. We place special emphasis on the form that refers to the third grammatical person su(s), prenominal modifier of a noun with which it forms a noun phrase that expresses a relation of possession, in which the prenominal possessive refers to the possessor entity as that the noun refers to the possessed entity. We propose that this form performs a series of functions, additional to its basic function
of possession, some of more syntactic basis, others related to pragmatic-discursive factors: i) it is a discursive resource of topic retrieval; ii) it is a disambiguating element in constructions in which it presents more than one possible referent in the context; iii) is a resource that in certain discursive contexts encodes possession with expressive values.
Keywords:
Posesivo prenominal, Contexto, Recuperador de tópico, Desambiguante, Enfatizante
Rivera Zepeda, C., & Ortiz Ciscomani, R. M. (2020). Prenominal possessive adjective’ functions in Spanish in the discursive context. Lenguas Modernas, (54), pp. 63–75. Retrieved from https://lenguasmodernas.uchile.cl/index.php/LM/article/view/56847
