Construction Grammar and Corpus Linguistics: The Example of Spanish Con Respecto a/de ‘with Respect to’

This study adopts a constructionist approach to the diachronic development of the Spanish topic marker con respecto a/de ‘with respect to’. The study is on the one hand qualitative, on the other hand quantitative in nature. Con respecto a/de is considered a construction, and its characteristics as well as its use are described. It is shown that the topic marking construction is used in various syntactic positions and that its frequency in use has increased over time. The data are retrieved from the corpus programme Corpus del español.