2016 # 4 (18)
Gurevich D.L/
The Spanish que and its functions
Abstract
The Spanish que, the result of fusion of a few Latin words of different classes that functioned as subordinative conjunctions, has an extremely wide range of syntactic values and is used to adduce various clauses: substantive (objective and subject ones), causal, final, conditional, concessive. The specificity of que is in its grammatical polyvalence than leads to a kind of blurring effect when the logical-semantic relations between propositions are rather hinted at than explicitly marked. As a consequence, this use of que has been branded as que polivalente. In contrast to what the traditional grammars and reference grammar books suggest, this que is more than just a conjunction / relative pronoun: it is capable of expressing a whole complex of logical-syntactic, modal-pragmatic, discourse and communicative meanings. The versatile semantics of que makes one to think of a clearer approach to classifying its functions, and this if what the present paper is focused on.
Key words
Spanish language, uses of que, subordinative conjunction, discourse marker, syntactic connector