Polo camiño, polo camiño adiante e camiño adiante, tres fórmulas do locativo por onde en galego

Abstract

This article analyses the behaviour of Galician camiño adiante-type constructions. This construction type consists of combining a substantive with an adverb to indicate a Path Locative Role. It is a less common construction than some other structures that express the same notion. To understand how it works, we therefore need to contrast all their uses. This study is based on a corpus of samples of real linguistic output in the Tesouro Informático da Lingua Galega. The contrastive approach shows that the various options belong to a continuum between, at one end, a prepositional construction with por (e.g. polo camiño), which acts as an unmarked exponent of a Path Locative Role, and at the opposite end the locative accusative (within the frame of transitive verbs of movement, e.g. colleu o camiño). The structure that is the object of our study occupies an intermediate position on this continuum, together with another intermediate structure with which it shares many aspects of behaviour: polo camiño adiante. Although they are part of a constructive continuum, or perhaps precisely because they can be described in this fashion, each choice available to the speaker has constructive features of its own. Nevertheless, they are not quite identical in regard to the information they convey.