Chapter 8. Quotative que constructions in Spanish

Construction Grammar is a theoretical approach amenable to accommodating any conventional feature of the meaning or form of a construction as part of its description, including lectal information. This paper provides a constructional analysis of the quotative que construction in Spanish, focusing on discourse and geographical variation. It demonstrates that a model based on different levels of generalization (parent schemas vs. subschemas) allows us not only to describe the specific contexts in which constructions are used (subschemas), but also to incorporate geographical and discourse variation that could not be captured at a higher level of abstraction (parent schema).