put-PST.3SG in the inside of.ART.SG car between the asientos delanteros y el de atrás seats front and the of back. ‘In order not to flatten the still delicate branches of the saplings he just bought, instead of putting the two flowerpots into the boot, he put them in the inside of the car, between the front seats and the ones in the back.’ Indeed these examples seem to suggest that from an intra-linguistic viewpoint both Vs are freely interchangeable and may alternate in the same syntactic-semantic contexts. However, a quick analysis of a set of minimal pairs shows that in certain contexts only one of both Vs is highly frequent, while the other one causes problems of acceptability or does not occur at all. Consider the following cases: meterse en el ascensor (853 000 hits) vs. ponerse en el ascensor (5 hits), ‘to put oneself in the elevator’; poner los platos sobre la mesa (6700 hits) vs. *meter los platos sobre la mesa (no hits), ‘to put the plates on the table’. Hence, the verbs are no perfect synonyms and their syntactic-semantic distribution is not identical. The observed differences for the V pair were studied by Cifuentes (1996, 2004). The author argues that the fundamental difference between poner and meter resides in the direction of the placement movement (Cifuentes 2004: 81). In this view, both Vs belong to two different subcategories of the locative Vs: (1) meter is classified as a directional V with a particular preference for movements with an internally oriented directionality, that is, objects are placed inside a space; (2) poner is defined as a more static positional V (cf. also Cifuentes 1996: 103, 139). Although Cifuentes’ theory provides a plausible explanation for the clear preference for meter in the examples above expressing internal direction (e.g. meterse en el ascensor), two issues remain unanswered: Cifuentes’ analysis is mainly based on introspective reflection, illustrated with well-selected but often isolated examples. So, up to now, there is a lack of thorough empirical evidence for
The hypotheses and research questions presented hereafter will be exemplified and verified in Section 4 and 5. 3.1 Empirical verification of Cifuentes’ hypothesis 3.1.1 Directionality of the movement As mentioned in Section 1, Cifuentes (1996: 103, 139) claims that the main difference between poner and meter in their locative use is the directionality of the putting event: meter prefers an illative movement (i.e. placement of the Figure inside of the Ground), whereas poner is neutral with respect to the direction of the movement. In order to test this hypothesis and to gain further insight into the directionalities preferred by each of the two Vs, their locative complements are classified according to the direction of the placement event. For the variable Direction, with respect to the directionality conveyed by the preposition, three categories are distinguished in the corpus. Whenever the Figure is placed inside a container, the direction is marked as illative or internal. These illative movements clearly contrast with a category that includes vertically (i.e. locating the Figure above or below the Ground) and horizontally oriented changes of location (i.e. directed towards a location in front of, at the back of, next to the Ground, or in between two different Grounds). A third category includes other types of directionality (e.g. exterior movements or cases where no specific horizontal, vertical or internal direction can be distinguished due to semantic vagueness of the preposition: e.g. hacia, which designates a vague ‘towards’), as well as events without an explicit directionality (e.g. when the Ground is expressed by a semantically neutral adverb, as in I put the book here, or by an interrogative pronoun, as in Where did you put the book?). This leads to the following working hypothesis: Hypothesis (1): meter most frequently combines with prepositions that mark illative movement, whereas poner does not impose restrictions as to preposition selection. The directionality of the movement will thus be a first variable to be examined in the corpus. 3.1.2 Dimension of the Ground
Cifuentes (1996, 2004) also examines to what extent the directionality difference has an impact on the semantics of the Ground and, more particularly, on its dimension. On the one hand, the often internally directed orientation found with meter would make this V particularly suitable with large-sized Grounds (e.g. a house). Poner, on the other hand, would be less inclined to combine with a Ground of large dimensions: it expresses a simple positioning event, be it vertical, horizontal or interior. In contrast, according to Cifuentes (1996: 140–141) smaller-sized Grounds (e.g. an eye) combine both with poner and meter. In order to empirically verify this hypothesis, all instances of poner and meter are tagged as to the dimension of their Ground for the variable Dimension_Ground. The human body is taken as a reference point: human beings and every entity with the same size or larger than the human body are considered to be large Grounds (e.g. geographical places, streets, buildings, cars and rooms, as well as clearly spacious areas such as the sea). In contrast, entities with a smaller dimension compared to the human body (e.g. bags, birdcages, body parts) are marked as small Grounds. A third category (not applicable) is provided for events in which the dimension of the Ground is hard to classify in terms of large or small, i.e. metaphorical placements with a abstract Ground (e.g. troubles), events where the Ground is expressed by an interrogative pronoun (e.g. where?), an adverb (e.g. here), or a semantically vague location place (e.g. location). On this basis, the following hypothesis is raised: Hypothesis (2): meter occurs with both large-sized and small-sized Grounds, whereas poner preferably combines with small-sized Grounds. 3.2 In search of other factors of influence Cifuentes (1996, 2004) mainly examined occurrences of meter and poner in their prototypical locative meaning, that is, when referring to a literal non-reflexive placement event including a human instigator and an inanimate and concrete Figure and Ground. However, putting events can deviate from this basic definition in numerous ways. It is thus interesting to investigate to what
Me ató las manos y los pies y Me.DAT tie-PST.3SG the hands and the feet and me metió un pañuelo en la boca. me.DAT put-PST.3SG a handkerchief in the mouth ‘He tied my hands and my feet and put a handkerchief in my mouth.’ Me meto en el baño caliente de espuma. PRON.REFL put-PRS.1SG in the bath hot of fome ‘I put myself in the hot bath of foam.’ Nicanor Martos se acercó al Nicanor Martos PRON.REFL approach-PST.3SG to.ART.SG televisor y se puso delante […] television and PRON.REFL put-INF in front [...] ‘Nicanor Martos moved towards the television and put himself in front of it.’ Recogí el libro del suelo y le Pick up-PST.1SG the book of.ART.SG ground and him.DAT puse la mano en el hombro. put-PST.1SG the hand on the shoulder ‘I picked up the book from the ground and put my hand on his shoulder.’ No cojas la dirección norte […] métete Not take-IMP.2SG the direction north […] put-IMP.2SG-PRON.REFL hacia el sur. towards the south ‘Do not go northward […] go to the south’ (lit. ‘put yourself in direction of the south’) The light gray blocks in the association table in Figure 4 indeed signal that prepositions which express illative movement, such as dentro de ‘inside’, en ‘in’, entre ‘in between’, por ‘through’,
Discussion Let us now go back to our Hypotheses and Research Questions put forward in Section 3 and relate them to the results. As to Hypothesis 1: meter most frequently combines with prepositions that mark illative movement, whereas poner does not impose restrictions as to preposition selection. our model provides convincing empirical evidence in favor of this hypothesis, based on Cifuentes (1996: 81, 103, 109). According to Cifuentes, poner behaves like a positional V (like colocar ‘to place’), whereas meter is a movement V with internal direction (just like introducir ‘to introduce’). Indeed, we observed that with illative movements there is a strong preference for meter. This was seen both in the type of prepositions, and in the type of Grounds frequently combined with meter: 1) prepositions that most easily combine with meter express illative movement; 2) Grounds most easily combined with meter are usually containers or can be conceived of as a container, contrary to those combined with poner. The container-reading with meter necessarily implies that the Figure can be moved, as a whole, inside the Ground. Compare for instance the selection of the putVs in two sentences with the same Ground manos ‘hands’ (18a)–(18b). The sentence with meter (18a) evokes the image of the head as a whole disappearing between the hands of their owner, who is literally trying to hide his head within his hands. On the contrary, the cup of coffee combined with poner (18b) can be placed on top of the hands, which do not act as a container but more like a support: (18a) Al pronunciar aquella palabra, […], metió la cabeza At.ART.SG. pronounce-INF that word, […], put-PST.3SG the head entre las manos, como abrumado. between the hands, like overwhelmed ‘While pronouncing that word, [...], she put her head within her hands, like overwhelmed.’ (18b) Malena se acercó a él y
Malena PRON.REFL approach-PST.3SG to him and le puso una taza de café en las manos. him.DAT put-PST.3SG a cup of coffee in the hands ‘Malena approached him and put a cup of coffee in his hands.’ The container-reading also applies to metaphorical extensions of the directional movement. As an example, in combination with vida (‘life’), meter seems to be lexicalized (all 7 observations in the corpus likewise combine with meter), with the meaning of ‘being too curious about other people’s lives’: Yo en su vida no me meto. I in his life not PRON.REFL put-PRS.1SG ‘I don’t poke my nose into in his life.’ (lit. ‘I don’t put myself in his life.’) According to the container-reading, in this kind of contexts, Spanish speakers metaphorically conceive this person as transferring himself or herself inside of the other person’s life. Next, Hypothesis 2 stated that: meter occurs with both large-sized and small-sized Grounds, whereas poner preferably combines with small-sized Grounds Again, this hypothesis was based on Cifuentes’ theory (1996: 140–141), who stated that, because of the inherently illative movement, meter should be easily combined with large Grounds. Poner, which would express a simple positioning event, would preferably not be combined with large-scaled Grounds. This hypothesis was tested in our data by the variable Dimension_Ground. Contrary to what was expected on the basis of Hypothesis 2, our model predicts that small-sized Grounds show a slight preference for meter. Nevertheless, the model does not show very strong evidence in favor of such an effect. Now, how can we account for this effect contrary to expectations on the basis of Cifuentes’ theory or even the absence of such an effect? The data actually seem to suggest that, indeed, meter is used for illative movements: something is moved into a container. Poner, on the other hand, more frequently expresses a vertical or horizontal movement, where the goal is not to put the Figure into the Ground, but often to create a contact
We studied this question on the basis of the variable Nature of Placement. This variable did not turn out to have a significant effect in the light of the other significant predictor variables. Therefore hypothesis (5b) could not be confirmed and the choice for meter or poner seems to be more subjected to matters of animacy and direction than to possible metaphorical readings. In sum, through our research questions, we initially expected poner to allow for more variation within the locative use, since it allows for more semantic extensions apart from locative contexts. Meter is more frequent as a locative verb, and thus potentially more prone to be used in the prototypical settings. Meter was thus expected to be more specialized for the prototypical settings (animate Causer, inanimate Figure, concrete Ground; non-reflexive; literal placement), whereas poner was expected to allow for more deviations from this prototype. This is not entirely borne out: meter has indeed specialized, but not necessarily for the most prototypical contexts. Conclusion To conclude, in agreement with the principle of economy in natural languages, both Vs are thus specialized in different domains, even if, at first glance, they share a similar locative meaning. The choice for one of both options hinges on semantic aspects of the participants which are ubiquitous in language phenomena (animacy, concreteness, reflexiveness), and the cognitive construal of the locative event (the possibility of a container-reading and direction of the movement). The statistical analysis has indeed shown that the distribution of the near-synonymous V pair meter and poner in locative contexts is governed by a set of different intervening variables, even more than those dealt with in previous literature. When we take into account a diverse series of potentially influencing variables, Cifuentes was right in introspectively stating that the Direction of the movement is crucial in order to determine the V choice. Nevertheless, Cifuentes’ prediction that meter, being preferably used for internally directed movements, is preferred with large