Corpus Linguistics and Phraseology: The Pattern [PREP + S {arbitrariness}] in the Usual Combinations ‘a su antojo’, ‘a su gusto’, and ‘a voluntad’

Abstract

The article provides a brief overview of points of convergence between phraseology and corpus linguistics in the field of the so-called phraseological constructions or usual combinations. To do so, we suggest carrying out a study of the phraseological construction [PREP + S {arbitrariness}] in the usual combinations a su antojo, a su gusto, and a voluntad based on the questions posed in the corpus Sketch Engine European Spanish Web corpus (EseuTenTen11). Once the theoretical framework has been developed, the internal cohesion between noun and preposition and the lexicographic meanings of the nouns that are part of the construction are described. Furthermore, external cohesion based on the syntagmatic profile (co-ocurrence with some verbs or other lexical units) and on the domain of use is analyzed, in other words, the main meanings of the construction are inductively determined from a random sample of occurrences. The results show the importance of corpus linguistics as a tool to (1) explain facts about syntactic, semantic, and communicative-pragmatic aspects of the language (authentic instances in context) with attention to the inductive and empirical methodologies used as a complement to introspection-based assumptions of the language and (2) to identify recurrent lexical patterns.