Entre movimiento espacial y continuidad temporal: El surgimiento de la perífrasis seguir + GER

This paper examines the emergence and expansion of the periphrasis seguir + GER on the basis of quantitative data extracted from the diachronic corpus CORDE. After a semantic description of the lexical verb seguir, it analyzes how the semantic extension of the sequence of seguir and gerund took place. Several factors are identified which may have favored the reinterpretation of the sequence as a verbal periphrasis with an aspectual meaning that focuses on the continuity of the action or event. Following the conceptual framework of Construction Grammar and the criteria of pairing, compositionality, schematicity and productivity, it is argued that the periphrasis is the result of a process of grammatical constructionalization, which gave rise to a new construction with a new form and a new meaning.