Contestar versus responder: A contrastive analysis of their syntactic and semantic structures

Abstract

This article aims to show the differentiation and the contrast between the syntactic and semantic-conceptual structures of two synonyms verbs belonging to the subclass semantic communication in spanish: “contestar” y “responder”. Our analysis is developed thanks to the frequency and co-occurrence data provided by ARTHUS –corpus from the University of Santiago de Compostela–. The divergences between lexical items sharing similar meanings offer important data about how to configure the combinatorial environment of these verbs. Information compiled in this paper about the specific verbal valency allows us to use them properly in context and helps us to seek clues that clarify the relationship between language and cognition.