The Hyperbolic Expression of Sensations in Spanish and German: An Analysis of the Constructional Idioms [morir(se) de (ART) S-sing{sensación}] and [vor N-Sg{Gefühlsempfindung} sterben] (engl. ‘to die of/to be dying of N-sing{sensation}’)

Abstract

In Spanish and German, to hyperbolically express the experience of a physical or psychological sensation, the constructional idioms [V de (ART) S_{sing{sensación}}] / [vor N_{Sg{Gefühlsempfindung}} V] are employed. In these constructions, the verbal fillers morir and sterben stand out due to their high frequency of use and their great combinatorial ability compared to any other verb. This article aims to conduct a contrastive analysis, based on corpus data, of the constructions [morir(se) de (ART) S_{sing{sensación}}] and [vor N_{Sg{Gefühlsempfindung}} sterben], which are vertically related to the former. Data will be extracted for each language from the Spanish and German corpora in the Sketch Engine tool (esTenTen18 and deTenTen20), supplemented with information from the parallel corpus PaGeS. We will, consequently, analyse the formal characteristics of these constructions, relating them to the degree of structural fixation and their semantic and/or pragmatic properties. Additionally, we will provide a detailed description of the noun slot from a semantic perspective, with the goal of identifying the differences and similarities between the two languages.