From cause to purpose: the preposition "de" and the "continuum" of cause and effect

Abstract

This paper focuses on causality in Spanish, broadly understood as a semantic continuum ranging from cause to finality, from the very specific point of view of a single preposition, de. The aim is to offer an account of the apparently contradictory uses of the Spanish preposition de for expressing the two partly opposing values of causation and finality. On the basis of a diachronic corpus covering approximately six centuries from the early 13th to the late 19th century, it is concluded that the use of de for expressing causality and finality has been constant during the history of Spanish. However, its use for expressing inality has been more constant, since its use to express causality appears to be losing ground to the preposition por. The study places importance on the notion of theme, an abstract semantic category that plays a fundamental role in the uses of the preposition de. It is argued that this abstract semantic category can account for the use of one single preposition for covering both poles of the semantic continuum of causality in the easiest and most transparent fashion. The paper concludes with a schematic presentation of the whole rank of the causality continuum which incorporates the various new semantic nuances that have been identified during the empirical analysis of the corpus. In this way the study gives a wider and more detailed understanding of the linguistic expression of causality in Spanish, since the study of the preposition de presents new data in this field, which, to date, has largely ignored the role of de.