The hypotheses and research questions presented hereafter will be exemplified and verified in Section 4 and 5. 3.1 Empirical verification of hypothesis Cifuentes’ 3.1.1 Directionality of the movement As mentioned in Section 1, Cifuentes (1996: 103, 139) claims that the main difference between and in their locative use is the directionality of the putting event: prefers an poner meter meter illative movement (i.e. placement of the Figure the Ground), whereas is neutral inside of poner 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 or These illative movements clearly contrast with a illative internal. 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 as well as events without an explicit directionality (e.g. vague ‘towards’), when the Ground is expressed by a semantically neutral adverb, as in or by I put the book here, an interrogative pronoun, as in This leads to the following working Where did you put the book?). hypothesis: Hypothesis (1): most frequently combines with prepositions that mark illative meter movement, whereas does not impose restrictions as to preposition selection. poner The directionality of the movement will thus be a first variable to be examined in the corpus. 3.1.2 Dimension of the Ground
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
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