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Sol Saporta
University of Washington Every first-year student of Spanish is presented with a group of expressions consisting of tener plus a noun:
Not always included in elementary text books, but clearly similar in structure are expressions like:
In pedagogical grammars, these expressions are typically said to be 'idiomatic', presumably because of the asymmetry in the English equivalents, a fact to which I return below. What is often ignored is the fact that a quite parallel set of nouns occurs with the verb dar.
If these expressions refer to some physical or psychological state, it is clear that the list is not exhaustive. That is, alongside the above are expressions of a different form:
Although expressions like tengo cansancio and estoy hambriento are possible they are marginal (similarly for English I have (a) hunger, which, incidentally, is more likely to be used metaphorically). In fact, there are more or less synonymous expressions of different form:
In other words, here as elsewhere, one cannot predict the form from the meaning. Nevertheless, the overlap in distribution is presumably connected to a semantic relationship: to GIVE (someone Y) is to CAUSE (someone) to HAVE (Y). Similarly, for the English expressions: to MAKE (someone Z) is to CAUSE (someone) to BE (Z); that is, English has pairs of parallel expressions with be and make, where Spanish has tener and dar. e. g.,
[The issue is complicated further in English by the fact that Z may be an adjective or a noun:
The symmetry is imperfect, however. Just as there are different forms for comparable semantic notions (tener rabia/estar enojado), so there are cases where parallel forms do not exhibit the same semantic relationship: tener razón means 'to be right,' but dar (la) razón does not mean 'to make (someone) right,' but rather 'to agree: Thus, whereas it is nonsense to say Me da hambre pero no tengo hambre 'that makes me hungry, but I'm not hungry; it is conceivable that Me da la razón, pero no tengo razón 'He agrees with me, but I'm wrong, (because, for example, I lied.) Similarly, I think, for tener prisa 'to be in a hurry' and dar prisa 'to hurry;' it is not completely self-contradictory to say Me da prisa, pero no tengo prisa 'He hurries me, but I'm not in a hurry'. Some expressions may have no counterpart:
So, CAUSE is a semantic concept which may be expressed differently, even in closely related languages. In fact, CAUSE may be expressed differently within the same language. In Spanish, in addition to the tener/dar paradigm, there exist causative verbs corresponding to the construction with estar
Similarly, in English. Whereas to anger is 'to cause (X) to be angry; to hunger does not mean 'to cause (X) to be hungry.' In any case, CAUSE is one of those notions about which the child has intuitive knowledge, independently of experience, and which therefore constitutes an element in a conceptual semantic framework which 'is a common human property' (Chomsky 1987, 22). Actually, it was facts such as these that were used as evidence for a theoretical model in which the distinction between semantics and syntax was claimed to be spurious. (For example, cf. Binnick 1971, for a discussion of bring and come.) If tener and dar are as closely related semantically as suggested above, then it should follow that they would appear in more or less comparable environments elsewhere. And, indeed, it is not obvious that the examples above are any different from 'non-idiomatic' usage:
Which raises the question of the 'idiomaticity' of forms like tener hambre. It is clear that pedagogical grammars treat such forms as idiomatic because of the bias that results from equating meaning with English translation. Presumably the Spanish child who knows the meaning of tener and knows the meaning of hambre also knows the meaning of tener hambre. It is no more idiomatic than English 'I am hungry'. These forms should not be confused with bona fide idioms (Spanish tomar el pelo or English to pull someone's leg). So, for example, conjunction between the two uses of tener is quite common:
But conjunction between bona fide idioms and non-idiomatic expressions is normally prohibited:
Interestingly, then, the facts, which are quite familiar, are typically misrepresented in pedagogical treatment. Furthermore, they seem to bear rather crucially on controversial theoretical issues of considerable interest. WORKS CITED
Binnick, Robert 1. «Bring and come». Linguistic Inquiry 11 (1971); 260-64. Chomsky, Noam. «Language in a Psychological Setting». Sophia Linguistica, Working Papers in Linguistics, 22 (1987). 
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