Library science

Subject pronoun

Linguistics

Philosophy

Statistics

Coherence (philosophical gambling strategy)

Computer science

Modal verb

Discourse marker

Personal pronoun

Psychology

Mathematics

Object pronoun

Verb

Sentence

Pronoun

Subject (documents)

Journal of Pragmatics

The Spanish neuter personal pronoun ello ("it" or "this" in English) refers to abstract objects that have been previously expressed in large discursive segments. Hence, when used as a subject pronoun, ello collocates with verbs that connect the sentence in which they appear with the text segment to which ello refers. These so-called discourse verbs are defined by signaling coherence relations in a fashion similar to that of discourse markers. In this article, we conduct a corpus analysis of the ello + verb construction to identify the verbs with which ello collocates and the discourse relations they usually signal. The results show that ello + verb construction is limited to a restricted group of verbs, including implicar (to imply), permitir (to allow), and significar (to mean), signaling coherence relations of a causal or interpretative nature that are semantically richer than those relations shaped by discourse markers. Moreover, the interaction between tense and aspect with discourse verb meaning seems to be decisive for the coherence relation signaling of this construction.

Neuter pronoun ello and discourse verbs in Spanish