Measuring the degree of near-synonymy of Spanish verbs of putting:
A multivariable corpus analysis of poner and meter
Abstract
The present article proposes a corpus-based study of two near-synonymous verbs in Spanish: the (locative)
verbs of putting poner and meter. Starting from the universal principle of linguistic economy, the paper
aims to empirically identify potentially influencing variables that determine the native speaker’s choice
between the two verbs. It is investigated whether and to what extent the verb choice is governed by a set of
variables related to the nature of the placement movement itself and the characteristics of the participants
taking part in the event. The difference between the near-synonyms is shown to be mainly determined by
the direction of the locative movement, the semantic nature of the participants (animacy, concreteness), the
reflexiveness of the event, as well as the cognitive construal of the locative event (the possibility of a
container-reading).
Key words: (locative) verbs of putting, Spanish, near-synonymy, logistic regression analysis
1. Introduction: Near-synonymous (locative) verbs of putting
Many languages display a host of morphologically or semantically cognate lexemes and
expressions which seem to be synonymous at first sight, but which, looking closer, present clearly
divergent uses. From an intra-linguistic viewpoint, most, if not all, seemingly synonymous
expressions turn out not to be perfect counterparts, presenting (subtle) differences in terms of
meanings, frequencies or syntactic, semantic and pragmatic configurations (Enghels & Jansegers
2013, Enghels & Roegiest in press, Fagard & Mardale 2012, Soares Da Silva 2012 among others).
This paper zooms in on linguistic parallels and differences between the verbs of putting
(henceforth putVs) poner and meter in European Spanish, in their purely locative use.1 PutVs
express a change of location of an entity from one place to another, and typically present a
syntactic configuration with three arguments in the V valency: [S + V + DO + Locative
Complement]. Following Talmy (1985: 62, 1991: 488), the prototypical — i.e. cognitively most
prominent — event of putting involves a human agentive participant (which will be called here
the Causer, first participant or P1), who moves an inanimate physical object, namely the Figure
1
In a recent paper (Comer et al.: in press), it is shown that both verbs (henceforth Vs), and especially poner,
are very polysemous and that their uses extend far beyond the purely locative meaning and beyond the
prototypical syntactic configuration. For instance, they can occur as causative and/or inchoative auxiliary
Vs (ponerse a reír ‘to start laughing’) or as pseudo-copulative Vs (ponerse enfermo ‘to get ill’, meterse
monja ‘to become a nun’).
1
(the second participant involved or P2), towards a location in space, called the Ground. This is
shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. The prototypical event of putting
However, when the Vs are used in a reflexive construction, the Causer P1 and Figure P2 are
co-referential and make reference to the same entity (e.g. Me pongo contra la pared ‘I put myself
against the wall’; Me meto en mi cuarto a estudiar ‘I put myself in my room to study’):
Figure 2. Reflexive event of putting
In their locative use, poner and meter seem to be synonyms, and can appear in semantically
similar contexts (1a)–(1b). Even in one and the same particular context both verbs can co-occur
with the same displaced Figure (2):
(1a) Ya
Yet
no
hay
que
not
have-PRS.3SG that
ir
a
ponerse
en
go
to
put-INF.REFL in
la
the
cola2
line.
‘It is not necessary anymore to go stand in line.’ (lit. ‘to put oneself in the line’)
(1b) Al
At.ART.SG
regreso, podrá
meterse
return, can-FUT.3SG
put-INF.REFL in
en
la
cola.
the
line
All the examples were extracted from CREA (Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual). Due to lack of
space, however, the exact details of the source of each cited example sentence are omitted.
2
2
‘At his return, he could go stand in line.’ (lit. ‘to put himself in the line’)
(2)
Para no
aplastar
las
todavía delicadas
ramas
de
To
not
flatten-INF
the
still
branches
of
los
arbolitos
que
acababa
de
comprar, en
lugar
de
the
saplings
that
end-PST.3SG
of
buy-INF, in
place
of
delicate
meter
las
dos
macetas
en
el
maletero,
las
put-INF
the
two
flowerpots
in
the
boot,
them
puso
en
el
interior del
coche, entre
the
inside of.ART.SG
car
put-PST.3SG in
asientos delanteros y
el de atrás
seats
the of back.
front
and
los
between the
‘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 nearsynonymous 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)3 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.
3
The frequency counts between brackets are the results of queries executed on the Google search engine
(consulted October 2014).
3
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:4
(a) 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 semantic definitions and subtleties proposed for the putVs. The present article aims
precisely to check these hypotheses against empirical data from an extensive corpus of
contemporary Spanish examples. The corpus analysis thus seeks to operationalize the
cognitive approach of Cifuentes.
(b) Is the internal vs. neutral directionality of the locative event (respectively leading to the use of
meter vs. poner), as proposed by Cifuentes, the only possible source of influence for the choice
between poner and meter or are there other intervening factors related to the semantics of the
main constituents of the event of putting itself?
The outline of this paper is as follows. In Section 2, we present the data set and methodology
on which the analysis is based. Section 3 introduces a series of hypotheses and research questions
on variables that potentially determine the choice between poner and meter, in order to assess
their influence on the choice between both putVs. Section 4 proposes a multivariable logistic
In her classification of all Spanish Vs of movement, Crego García (2000: 103, 116) also briefly points at
a possible explanation for the difference between both Vs. Poner is classified as a causative V expressing
a situational movement, emphasizing the resulting state, while meter would express a more directional
movement, focusing on the placement movement itself. Nevertheless, her focus is not on poner and meter
in particular, but rather on a classification of all Vs of movement; therefore we will take as our starting
point Cifuentes’ more thorough analysis of both Vs.
4
4
regression analysis in order to test the proposed hypotheses. These results are compared and
discussed in the last section of the paper (Section 5).
2. Towards a more advanced statistical approach in semantics
2.1 A multidimensional empirical method of analysis
The aforementioned research objectives situate this article within the domain of lexical studies
from the perspective of cognitive semantics. Indeed, one of the central areas of research within
this domain has been the investigation of polysemy and (near-)synonymy (e.g. the papers
collected in Glynn & Fischer 2010). Recently, special attention has been paid to the
methodologies by which semantics can be studied on the most accurate and verifiable basis. It is
well known that linguistics has experienced a significant shift from intuition-based approaches
towards the use of corpora and empirical methods. Not only have corpora proven useful for
quantitative studies of morphosyntactic aspects of languages, but also within the field of
semantics several authors have recently argued for the necessity of pursuing more empirical
methods (Geeraerts 2010; Gries 2006; Janda 2013, among many others). Hence, the methodology
of this article will also be corpus-based, and the degree of equivalence between the near-synonyms
will be examined on the basis of a comparable corpus.
Usage-based models of language call for multidimensional empirical methods of analysis, as
in most of the cases language phenomena are influenced by several linguistic variables at a time.
Linguistic choices are indeed rarely the result of only one influencing variable, and therefore
bivariate statistics, often applied in corpus studies, are not always the best way to describe them.
Bivariate analyses do not take into consideration the combined effect of different influencing
variables together, nor do they give insight into possible interactions between these variables. It
is also hard to tell which effects are stronger or weaker than others, as effect measures (e.g.
Cramer’s V) often lie in the same order of magnitude. We therefore propose a multivariable
logistic regression analysis in order to study the effect of a series of variables on the choice for
poner and meter in present-day peninsular Spanish.
5
Logistic regression is a standard approach to analyze dichotomous outcomes of a so-called
response-variable (in this case the V choice meter vs. poner, where meter is called the success
outcome), often applied in corpus-linguistic research. For all possible occurrences, the resulting
statistical model allows to predict the outcome (meter/poner) in function of a series of influencing
variables (called predictor variables). The analysis provides insight into how strong each
independent predictor variable determines the choice of one of both putVs in the presence of the
other potentially influencing variables, and enables to detect possible interactions between two
different predictor variables. The output of a logistic regression analysis is a series of estimated
coefficients for each variable as part of a mathematical equation which predicts the outcome (i.e.
whether meter or poner will be chosen) on the basis of all the predictor variables together (see
Table 3 in the Results section). The further the coefficients are away from zero, the stronger the
effect. In that sense, high (in absolute terms) coefficients with a statistically significant effect
indicate a strong influence and coefficients close to 0 indicate a weaker influence. In our analysis
below, positive coefficients indicate an increased chance for the success outcome (meter),
whereas negative coefficients indicate an effect in the sense of the other outcome (poner). As
these coefficients are not straightforward to interpret (they do not indicate a linear relation
between the predictor variables and the outcome, but a logistic relation with respect to the
response variable), they are more easily interpreted in the form of effect plots (see Figure 3
below).5
5
It is beyond our goal to extensively explain the technical details of logistic regression analysis to readers
who are not familiar with it. Even if some necessary technical information is included, the overall results
are presented and formulated in such a way that they are accessible to readers. See e.g. Baayen 2008, Gries
2013 or Speelman & Geeraerts 2009 for some clear (conceptual and practical) introductions on the
technique.
6
2.2 Data
In order to study the choice between poner and meter, we collected a random sample of 667
locative uses of the two putVs in modern Spanish fiction texts.6 This sample was extracted from
a larger corpus of 2000 random examples of poner and meter, in three contexts of usage: the
locative use as studied in this article, a transfer use (e.g. El profesor nos ha metido tantos deberes
‘The teacher gave us so much homework’) and a pseudo-copulative use (e.g. Me pongo nervioso
‘I get nervous’). The data were extracted from the online database Corpus de Referencia del
Español Actual (CREA).7 Since this is a non-lemmatized corpus, we have collected the data by
searching for specific verb forms, namely all regular and irregular verb stems. For poner, we
searched through the query pong* o pone* o puse o pusi* o pondr* o puso o puest* o ponía* o
ponie*, and for meter, we searched for meto o metí o metie* o mete* o meti* o metía* o meta*,
where the o stands for ‘or’. CREA automatically gives the results of each verb in a random way,
with all verb forms mixed up randomly.8
For the analysis in this paper, only the examples of the locative use were selected. Table 1
shows that there are many more locative examples of meter than of poner (401 vs. 266): meter
seems to be more restricted to the expression of placement alone, and does not extend its use to
other semantic domains to the same extent as poner (cf. Comer et al.: in press).
Table 1. Frequencies of the two Vs in our corpus
Spanish
Poner
Meter
266
401
667
6
Since we opted for a corpus containing Spanish written fiction texts, the question arises whether the results
are generalizable to other types of discourse (in particular, oral speech). This question, however, falls
beyond the scope of this article but will be the topic for future research.
7
See http://corpus.rae.es/creanet.html.
8
The first 2000 examples were extracted, but noisy results (like ponedero (‘laying-house’), ponencia
(‘report’), meticuloso (‘meticulous’), metálico (‘metallic’) etc.) had to be manually discarded from the
corpus.
7
Moreover, only cases with three explicit arguments (Causer, Figure and Ground) were
retained, including reflexive uses of the Vs, so as to determine the impact of the semantic nature
of all participants on the V choice (cf. Section 3.2).9 As a result, examples with an implicit locative
complement (3), and cases of passive voice, where the Causer remains unspecified, are excluded
(4):10
(3)
Fue
al
Go-PST.3SG to.ART.SG
cementerio
a
poner unas
flores.
churchyard
to
put-INF some
flowers
‘He went to the churchyard to put some flowers.’
(4)
Está
metido
Be-AUX
put-PTCP.3SG in
en
un
grupo con
sus
amigos.
a
group
his
friends
with
‘He is part of a group together with his friends.’ (lit. ‘He is put in a group with his friends.’)
The corpus contains both concrete events of putting (e.g. poner el libro en la mesa ‘to put the
book on the table’) and metaphorical location events (e.g. poner a alguien por la nubes ‘to praise
someone’, lit. ‘to put someone in the clouds’).
3. Overview of potentially influencing variables
This section sets forth five groups of predictor variables that potentially influence the choice of
one of both near-synonymous Vs. These variables present both event-related characteristics and
inherent properties of the participants. In Section 3.1, we formulate two working hypotheses to
be investigated in the corpus, both based on Cifuentes’ theory. In order to maximally broaden the
scope of the empirical analysis, Section 3.2 adds three variables, leading towards three additional
9
Indeed, Maldonado (2000) argues that in true reflexive uses, the subject and the co-referential (in)direct
object can be clearly differentiated in the event, although they refer to the same entity extra-linguistically.
This is not the case with middle uses of Vs, which imply a low degree of separateness between participants
(e.g. Se come la pizza, ‘He eats the pizza’).
10
By limiting the study to cases with three explicit arguments, we can of course not find out whether
argument structure alternations themselves represent differences in the usage contexts of the two Vs.
However, a look at the data frequencies shows that the presence or absence of the Ground does not seem to
be a differentiating factor between the Vs (poner counts 10 locative examples with implicit Ground, meter
12). As regards the examples with unspecified Causer, we found 11 cases in the passive voice with meter,
but zero with poner. There might thus be a difference in diathesis between the Vs. Yet, since only cases
with three explicit arguments are included, we will not go further into this matter.
8
research questions, which take into account possible deviations of the prototypical putting event.
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,11 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?).12 This leads to the following
working hypothesis:
11
When we refer to the variable an sich, a capital letter is used.
In our classification of the locative events according to the direction of the movement, we took into
account the polysemy of certain prepositions introducing the locative complement. The preposition en, for
instance, not only expresses illative directionality (e.g. en el armario ‘in the cupboard’), but also vertical
directionality (e.g. en la mesa ‘on the table’).
12
9
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 nonmaterial 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.
10
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
extent the selection between poner and meter is influenced by possible semantic extensions from
the prototype. More particularly we want to examine to what extent one V, in casu meter, could
have specialized as a prototypically locative V, whereas poner would be more frequently used to
denote non-prototypical locative events. This hypothesis is in line with the results of a previous
study (Comer et al., in press) which showed that poner allows for much more semantic extensions
than meter. Consequently, meter can be defined as the locative V par excellence in Spanish. These
semantic extensions can be related to the animacy and concreteness of the participants (3.2.1), the
co-referentiality of the Causer with the Figure (3.2.2), and the literal or metaphorical
interpretation of the putting event (3.2.3).
3.2.1 Animacy and concreteness of the participants
In the first place, given that this study aims to investigate whether both lexemes poner and meter
can be correlated with different event types and different patterns of location, it makes sense to
take into account the semantics of the participants implied in the locative event. In fact, Talmy
(2000a: 434-435) affirmed the impact of animacy on linguistic patterns of force dynamics in
language and cognition, and specifically also with locative events (Talmy 2000b: 301, 319). As
described in Section 1, the prototypical locative event consists of a human agentive Causer,
moving an inanimate physical Figure towards a concrete Ground or location in space. However,
various semantic extensions from this prototypical configuration are possible. The Causer, for
instance, is not always a human being, but can be an inanimate abstract entity (e.g. a lucky chance
put him in my life). Nor is the moved Figure necessarily an inanimate object: it can also be an
animate entity (e.g. to put someone in jail). The Ground is not always a concrete location, but can
11
also be abstract (e.g. to put yourself in someone’s life). Given the diverse semantic nature of the
participants, the question arises whether the animate or inanimate and concrete or abstract nature
of the three arguments in the locative event have an influence on the choice between poner and
meter.
Indeed, on a typological basis it has been affirmed that the notion of animacy, in close
correlation with the notion of agentivity, has a high impact on linguistic coding (e.g. Comrie 1981,
Croft 2003, 2012). In Spanish for instance, Differential Object Marking phenomena (see Bossong
1998, Fernández Ordoñez 1999 among others) are conditioned by the animacy of the object
participant; moreover, the semantics of the participants implied in a causation event (in terms of
animacy and concrete vs. abstract nature) have been shown to largely determine the syntax of
factitive constructions in Spanish and Portuguese (Enghels & Roegiest 2014). What these case
studies share, is the idea that a deviation from the ‘expected’ animacy pattern can be correlated
with a higher degree of morphosyntactic ‘markedness’, in agreement with the iconicity principle.
This reasoning could be extended to the domain of lexical-semantic research, in the sense that
certain lexemes prefer the more prototypical, less semantically ‘marked’ settings, while other
lexemes are more open for deviations from the prototype. Hence the following research questions:
Research Question (3a): Is there any correlation between the animacy of the three participants
implied in the event of putting and the selection between poner and meter?
Research Question (3b): Is it possible to affirm that one lexeme has specialized for the
semantically speaking ‘prototypical configuration’ in terms of animacy (most probably meter),
whereas extensions from the prototype are expressed through the selection of another lexeme
(most probably poner)?
Each example in the corpus is labeled according to the semantic nature of the Causer, the Figure
and the Ground: animate, inanimate concrete or inanimate abstract. Humans, animals and human
collectives (e.g. the crowd) are encoded as animate. Within the category inanimate, abstract nouns
refer to intangible and/or invisible concepts (e.g. peace, idea, doubt), in contrast with concrete
entities such as a book, smoke or a smile, which are tangible and/or perceptible. Nevertheless,
12
since the cross-tabulation of all three variable levels for the three participant types in our database
yields many empty cells, it is more reasonable to conflate some of the levels and focus on the
most outspoken contrasts in our data. Thus, in view of arriving at the most economic and reliable
model of the data, in our analysis we will compare animate vs. inanimate (including both abstract
and concrete) Causers and Figures, and concrete (including animates) vs. abstract Grounds.
3.2.2 Reflexiveness of the putting event
Within the same reasoning, the impact of co-referentiality between participants in the event on
causal relations and verbal semantics has been proven to be significant (Croft 2012). We will
investigate to what extent the co-referentiality of the Causer with the Figure, corresponding to the
reflexiveness of the V, has an impact on lexical V selection.
Prototypically, putVs are used in a non-reflexive setting, with a subject, a DO and a PP which
clearly refer to different participants in the locative event. However, when the Causer is coreferential with the Figure, the V is used in a reflexive construction. The object is expressed by a
reflexive clitic pronoun se functioning as a DO (e.g. meterse en la habitación, lit. ‘to put oneself
into the room’). It is interesting to examine whether this deviation of the prototypical putting event
has an influence on the V selection:
Research Question (4a): Does the selection between poner and meter correlate with a
preference to denote reflexive or non-reflexive readings of the event of putting?
Research Question (4b): Is it possible to affirm that one lexeme has specialized for the
prototypical non-reflexive configuration (most probably meter), whereas extensions from the
prototype are expressed through the selection of another lexeme (most probably poner)?
3.2.3 Literal vs. metaphorical placement
Finally, in close relationship with the above-mentioned factors, we will look for a possible
correlation between V selection and the nature of the placement. Indeed, events of putting can
have a literal or a figurative reading, obtained by metaphorical extensions of the putting event to
other domains (e.g. to put yourself into trouble). It is known that metaphorical placements break
13
the rules of semantic selection (Lamiroy 1987: 51), by accepting more abstract arguments
compared to literal concrete placements. The question arises whether the literal or metaphorical
placement and subsequent semantic liberty could also be an influencing factor for the V choice:
Research Question (5a): Does the selection between poner and meter correlate with a
preference to denote literal or more figurative readings of the event of putting?
Research Question (5b): Is it possible to affirm that one lexeme has specialized for the
prototypical literal locative configuration (most probably meter), whereas extensions from the
prototype through metaphorical uses are expressed by another lexeme (most probably poner)?
3.3 Overview table of predictor variables
Table 2 gives an overview of the variables and their levels that are included in the multivariable
analysis.13
Table 2. Overview of the predictor variables and their levels
No
1
2
3a
3b
3c
4
5
Variable
Direction
Dimension_Ground
Animacy_Causer (P1)
Animacy_Figure (P2)
Concreteness_Ground
Reflexiveness
Nature of placement
Scale of measurement
Categorical w/ 3
Categorical w/ 3
Categorical w/ 2
Categorical w/ 2
Categorical w/ 2
Categorical w/ 2
Categorical w/ 2
levels
levels
levels
levels
levels
levels
levels
Labelling of levels
illative, horizontal/vertical, other
large, small, n/a
animate, inanimate
animate, inanimate
concrete, abstract
+, –
literal, metaphorical
13
Note that initially we modeled the variables in more complex ways, in particular Direction of the
movement and Animacy/Concreteness of the participants: some of their levels were conflated, which led
to a better (more economic and less complicated) statistical model. For the sake of simplicity, we
immediately present the simplified variables here.
14
4. Results: A multivariable analysis of poner and meter
In the following paragraphs, we describe the results of the logistic regression analysis that was
carried out in order to investigate to what extent the variables presented in Section 3 influence the
V choice of the Spanish putVs.14 The analysis reveals significant effects for 6 predictor variables
(see Table 3 and Figure 3): 4 main effects (Animacy_Figure, Concreteness_Ground, Direction,
Dimension_Ground) and an interaction effect (Animacy_Causer: Reflexiveness).15 The variable
Nature of the placement is not retained by the model (i.e. this predictor turns out not to be
significant in the presence of the other variables).
Table 3 displays the coefficient estimates for our logistic regression model, as well as the
Confidence Intervals (CI). The effects of the variables are visualized and more easily interpretable
through the effect plots in Figure 3. Model diagnostics indicate a pretty good fit: the C-index of
concordance of 0.919 indicates that the model predicts the outcome very well on the basis of these
predictors.16 The Variance Inflation Factors (VIFs) were all below 3.5, indicating no
multicollinearity problem for this model.17 Moreover, the classification table (Table 4) reveals
that 84.6.% of the data are predicted correctly (vs. 60.1% for an intercept-only model, i.e. a model
which only takes into account the relative frequency of meter vs. poner in the corpus), and that
the choice for meter is predicted more accurately than the choice for poner (90.5% vs. 75.6%).
14
All analyses were conducted with R (R Core Team 2014). Scripts for reproducing the analyses in the
present paper can be obtained from the authors upon request.
15
The model was built via a stepwise backward elimination procedure, performed manually on the basis of
the p-values of the predictor variables and the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) values of several models
(cf. Burnham & Anderson 2002). The maximal model to which backward elimination was applied included
all predictor variables, as well as all two-way interactions. Initially, we included all two-way interactions
in the model rather than selecting only those who intuitively could be of potential interest. This decision is
motivated by our desire to keep open every possibility of interactions between predictor variables in the
initial model. However, several interactions could not be tested due to missing or sparse data for certain
predictor level combinations (leading to very high VIFs).
16
C-values range from 0.5 (no prediction at all) to 1 (perfect fit). Above 0.8 they indicate a good fit.
17
In the case of (multi)collinearity, predictor variables are strongly correlated, i.e. one variable can be
predicted from another. This situation reduces the reliability of the estimated coefficients and thus the
reliability of the overall model. One way to check for multicollinearity is to calculate the VIFs. With VIFs
below the value of 4, the model is taken to be ‘safe’ as to collinearity.
15
Table 3. Logistic regression model estimates for outcome = meter with the estimated coefficients, the
standard errors (SE) on the estimated coefficients, 95% confidence intervals (CI) for the coefficients, Wald
test statistic (z), and the probability p of observing a value of z that is larger than or equal to the one observed
under the null hypothesis
(Intercept)
Animacy_Cause(r) inanimate
(Ref. level: animate)
Animacy_Figure inanimate
(Ref. level: animate)
Concreteness_Ground concrete
(Ref. level: abstract)
Reflexiveness +
(Ref. level: –)
Direction
Internal
Other
(Ref. level: horizontal/vertical)
Dimension_Ground
Large
n/a
(Ref. level: small)
Animacy Causer INAN: Reflexiveness +
(Ref. level: animate:–)
Estimated
coefficient
95% CI
-2.09 -3.35/-0.86
SE
Z
p
0.63
-3.31
<0.01
-2.84 -4.42/-1.60
0.70
-4.07 <0.001
-1.96 -2.85/-1.11
0.44
-4.43 <0.001
1.65
0.80/2.49
0.43
3.82 <0.001
0.94
0.06/1.79
0.44
2.13
3.78
2.61
3.19/4.41
1.83/3.41
0.31
0.40
12.13 <0.001
6.47 <0.001
-0.54 -1.14/0.06
-1.09 -1.94/-0.26
0.30
0.43
-1.77
-2.56
<0.10
<0.05
1.26
3.20
<0.01
4.03
1.73/6.72
<0.05
Figure 3. Effect plots for the four main effects and one interaction effect of the logistic regression model
for Spanish
16
Table 4. Classification table for the fitted model in Table 3
Predicted
Poner
201
38
Observed
Poner
Meter
Overall correct
Meter
65
363
Correct (%)
75.6
90.5
84.6
Let us now look into the different predictor variables shown in Table 3. First of all, the
Animacy of the participants seems to have an important influence on the choice between both
putVs: the effects for Animacy_Causer and Animacy_Figure are quite strong (cf. the relatively
high — in absolute terms — estimated coefficients). As for the Ground, the difference between
concrete and abstract entities (rather than its animacy itself) seems to have an impact on the V
choice as well.
Overall, animate Figures are more easily used with meter than with poner (upper left graph in
Figure 3) (5). With inanimates, poner is slightly preferred (6). So, when the moved ‘object’, by
being human or animate, deviates from the prototype (i.e. where an inanimate Figure is moved
by an animate Causer), meter is the preferred solution:
(5)
Han
metido
a
mi
marido en
la
cárcel.
Have-AUX.3PL
put-PTCP
to
my
husband in
the
jail
de
humor incluso en
los
of
humor even
the
‘They have put my husband in jail.’
(6)
Hay
que
poner
alguna nota
Have-PRS.3SG that
put-INF some
más
pensamientos.
sombríos
more dark
note
in
thoughts
‘One should put a note of humor even in the darkest thoughts.’
Animacy_Causer shows a more complex pattern, as it interacts with Reflexiveness. The two
lower right graphs in Figure 3 show how this interaction between both predictor variables works
from different perspectives: for non-reflexive Vs, animate Causers (7) are more easily used with
meter; inanimates prefer poner (8). So, with respect to the Causer, the pattern that deviates from
the prototypical configuration increases the preference for poner. With reflexive Vs, there is no
17
difference between animate and inanimate Causers as to the preference for one of both Vs (9)–
(10) (hence, the overlapping CIs). Overall, Reflexives are more likely to be used with meter, but
this effect is most outspoken for inanimates (compare the very low predicted probability of
inanimates with meter in the graph to the left to the probability of inanimates in the graph to the
right). The Reflexive pattern, deviant from the prototype (i.e. in which Figure and Causer are
different entities), thus shows a preference for meter:
(7)
Me
dediqué
PRON.REFL
había
have-AUX.1S
leer
una
novela que
devote-PST.1SG to
read-INF
a
novel
metido
en
el
bolso.
in
the
bag
put-PTCP
a
that
‘I devoted myself to reading a novel I had put in my bag.’
(8)
El
azar
puso
en
mi
camino al
juez
García
The
chance put-PST.3SG
on
my
way
judge
García
to.ART.SG
Mouriños.
Mouriños
‘(lit.) The chance put the judge García Mouriños on my way.’
(9)
Se
había
PRON.REFL
have-AUX.3SG put-PTCP
de
tía
Blanca.
of
aunt
Blanca
metido
en
el
antiguo dormitorio
in
the
old
bedroom
‘She had got into the old bedroom of aunt Blanca.’ (lit. ‘She had put herself in the old bedroom.’)
(10)
La
niebla
se
me
había
The
mist
PRON.REFL
me.DAT
have-AUX.3SG put-PTCP
metido
dentro.
inside
‘The mist had sneaked into (lit. put itself inside) my bones.
Furthermore, Concreteness_Ground also seems to have an influence on the V choice: with
concrete Grounds (i.e. both animate and inanimate concrete), the chance of using meter increases
(11):
18
(11)
Qué
gente
tan
What people so
meten
extraña los
cirujanos,
que
se
strange the
surgeons,
that
PRON.REFL
dentro de
put-PRS.3PL inside
of
los
demás.
the
others
‘How strange people they are, those surgeons, who like to tinker in other people.’ (lit. ‘who
put themselves into others’)
Strikingly, Dimension_Ground appears to have an effect which is contrary to what we
expected on the basis of Cifuentes (1996: 140-141; 2004: 83), who stated that meter is more easily
used with large Grounds (see Section 3.1.2). According to our model, the choice for meter
increases when the Ground is small (12) (as opposed to large Grounds and other types of
Grounds). However, the evidence for such an effect is not very outspoken, as the p-value is above
the threshold of 0.05 and the CIs for large and small Grounds overlap. So, in the presence of other,
more outspoken effects, Dimension_Ground seems to have a rather small influence on V choice.
(12)
Recojo
de
mi
mesa
unos
papeles y
los
Pick up-PRS.1SG
of
my
table
some
papers and
them
meto
la
cartera.
the
briefcase
en
put-PRS.1SG in
‘I pick up some papers from my table and I put them in the briefcase.’
Finally, Direction turns out to be one of the strongest effects: meter (13)–(14) is significantly
more used with internally directed movements than with horizontally/vertically directed
movements, which prefer poner (15)–(16). Moreover, the model predicts that meter is more prone
to be used when the movement has another direction (17):
(13)
Me
ató
las
manos y
los
pies
y
Me.DAT
tie-PST.3SG
the
hands
the
feet
and
me
metió
un
pañuelo
en
la
boca.
me.DAT
put-PST.3SG
a
handkerchief
in
the
mouth
and
19
‘He tied my hands and my feet and put a handkerchief in my mouth.’
(14)
Me
meto
PRON.REFL put-PRS.1SG
en
el
baño
caliente de
espuma.
in
the
bath
hot
fome
of
‘I put myself in the hot bath of foam.’
(15)
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.’
(16)
Recogí
el
libro
del
suelo
Pick up-PST.1SG
the
book
of.ART.SG
ground and
puse
mano
en
el
hombro.
hand
on
the
shoulder
la
put-PST.1SG the
y
le
him.DAT
‘I picked up the book from the ground and put my hand on his shoulder.’
(17)
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’,
more frequently combine with meter. Prepositions that express horizontal and vertical movement
clearly prefer poner (e.g. sobre ‘on’, encima de ‘on top of’, delante de ‘in front of’):
20
Figure 4. Association table for a number of prepositions in function of the V. The light-colored blocks
indicate cases where the frequency of the preposition is higher than expected with one of the two blocks
(proportionally to the Pearson residuals), the dark-colored blocks indicate the opposite. The width of the
blocks is proportional to the quantity of the data
This pattern is also confirmed when we take a closer look at the most frequent Grounds that
combine with poner and meter, as shown in Table 5. Meter typically ties up with potential
containers (mouth, pocket, head, house, bed, car, room, shower), whereas poner is more
frequently linked to entities which cannot act as a container (forehead, shoulder, table, telephone):
21
Table 5. The most frequent Grounds combined with poner and meter
Poner
Meter
#
boca ‘mouth’
bolsillo ‘pocket’
bolsillos ‘pockets’
cabeza ‘head’
cama ‘bed’
casa ‘house’
coche ‘car’
cuarto ‘room’
ducha ‘shower’
frente ‘forehead’
hombro ‘shoulder’
manos ‘hands’
mesa ‘table’
teléfono ‘telephone’
vida ‘life’
3
1
1
2
0
2
1
0
%
20,0
11,1
20,0
20,0
0,0
22,2
9,1
0,0
0
5
13
5
22
5
1
0,0
100,0
100,0
71,4
100,0
100,0
12,5
#
12
8
4
8
42
7
10
5
%
80,0
88,9
80,0
80,0
100,0
77,8
90,9
100,0
5
0
0
2
0
0
7
100,0
0,0
0,0
28,6
0,0
0,0
87,5
5. 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’
22
(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, […],
[…],
At.ART.SG.
pronounce-INF that
word,
entre
las
manos, como
abrumado.
between
the
hands, like
overwhelmed
metió
la
cabeza
put-PST.3SG
the
head
‘While pronouncing that word, [...], she put her head within her hands, like overwhelmed.’
se
acercó
a
él
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
(18b) Malena
y
‘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’:
(19)
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
23
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
zone between the Figure and the Ground. This would explain why poner does not only combine
with small Grounds: a situation of contact can be created both for small and large Grounds:
(20)
Pone
los
pies
desnudos
en
la
gastada esterilla.
Put-PRS.3S
the
feet
bare
on
the
shabby doormat
‘He puts his bare feet on the shabby doormat.’
(21)
cedió
La
plataforma
The
platform break down-PST.3SG
en
ella.
on
her
apenas puso
el
pie
hardly put-PST.3S
the
foot
‘The platform broke down after he had hardly put his foot on it.’
Thus, the rationale behind Cifuentes’ prediction on large and small Grounds seems to be
somewhat misguided: poner does not impose specific restrictions to the Ground, because the main
restriction is that a contact zone should preferably be created between Figure and Ground, be it
large or small Grounds. For the use of meter, not the dimension of the Ground per se is important,
but the dimensional relation between Figure and Ground: the Ground should be larger — or at
24
least as large as — the Figure, so that the Figure can be placed into the Ground (22). In contrast,
poner does not impose such a restriction.
(22) Le
risa
que
metió
provocaron
tanta
Him.DAT
cause-PST.3PL
so much laughter that
sus
pies
en
el
agua
mientras
brincaba
his
feet
in
the
water
while
jump up-PST.3SG
de
satisfacción.
of
satisfaction
put-PST.3SG
‘They made him laugh so hard that he put his feet in the water while he was jumping out of
satisfaction.’
Next, as to Research Question (3a):
Is there any correlation between the animacy of the three participants implied in the event
or putting and the selection between poner and meter?
we did indeed observe strong effects as to the animacy of the Causer and the Figure: overall,
animate participants enhance the preference for meter, while inanimates more easily combine
with poner. The Spanish language thus seems to be sensitive to the animacy of participants within
the realm of lexical choices, and not only, as often documented, within the domain of
morphosyntactic phenomena (e.g. well-known phenomena like the Differential Object Marking,
(e.g. Roegiest 1999), leísmo (e.g. Fernández Ordóñez 1999), or the position of the subject, e.g.
Enghels & Roegiest 2014). Moreover, in this respect, we can say that the role of animacy in the
choice between meter and poner follows a universal tendency: animacy is shown to be a crucial
factor in linguistic coding of many languages universally (Dahl 2008) and plays a role in a huge
number of linguistic phenomena (e.g. Differential Object Marking phenomena, cf. Aissen 2003,
or the choice of referential expressions, e.g. Yamamoto 1999). However, Research Question (3b)
is not completely confirmed. The V meter does seem to have specialized for prototypical animate
Causers and concrete Grounds, thus being closer to the ‘prototypical’ locative event, but as to the
nature of Figure the results go in the opposite direction: meter prefers animate Figures. However,
25
this seems to be related to the reflexiveness of the V: meter is the preferred V to denote reflexive
events, which often include a co-referential animate Causer and Figure.
Moreover, Research Question (4a)
Does the selection between poner and meter correlate with a preference to denote reflexive
or non-reflexive readings of the event of putting?
is related to the former question, as we observed an interaction effect between Reflexiveness
and Animacy_Causer. Reflexiveness has an overall effect on the V choice, but this effect is more
outspoken when the Causer is inanimate: in this case the preference for meter drastically increases
with Reflexive events. This does not seem to confirm hypothesis (4b), but goes in the opposite
direction: meter has specialized for reflexive uses.
Finally, Research Question (5a) stated:
Does the selection between poner and meter correlate with a preference to denote literal
or more figurative readings of the event of putting?
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.
26
6. Conclusion
To conclude, in agreement with the principle of economy in natural languages, both nearsynonymous 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
Grounds, is not borne out. Rather, the crucial thing about the Ground for the choice between both
putVs, is its possible container reading, as this follows directly from its internal directionality.
Furthermore, the multivariable analysis not only filtered out the variables that were not relevant
while controlling for all other variables (Nature of the placement), but also suggests a subtle
interplay between diverse linguistic levels that influence the interpretation of the putVs: the
semantics of the preposition and the Ground which reveal the direction of the movement, the
semantic nature of the three participants (animacy and concreteness), and the reflexiveness of the
event.
Our study is thus another illustration that fine-grained corpus-based methods, such as logistic
regression analysis, offer an added value to semantic studies. Introspection remains an essential
part of semantic analysis: it is a starting point (hypothesis-generating), and an end point
(interpretation of the results), but advanced statistical analysis helps to find other factors of
influence and to precisely measure the relative importance of different influencing factors and
potential interactions between them.
27
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